On vanity

If they could choose, babies would probably be happiest dressed in sleepsuits (aka babygros) all day. Stretchy, snuggly, with integral socks and easy opening, they don't impose uncomfortable waistbands or restricted movement on the little wrigglers. Yet for some reason, you will rarely see babies older than three months wearing these in the day time. Instead, you will mostly see babies dressed as miniature grown ups - jeans and woolly jumpers for the boys, dresses and tights for the girls.

How to get a baby interested

I've been pondering the fact that Orson seems to have a huge capacity for interest in some objects, but a very low attention span for others. Ironically, he is tugging at my laptop cable as I type this, which pretty much summarises the whole issue. Basically, anything that holds my attention holds his.

It doesnt matter how shiny, noisy, complex, expensive etc the thing is. If its a toy, and therefore something that I tend to put in front of Orson,and then try to leave him to it, then he'll play with it for ten minutes if its brand new, five minutes if he hasnt seen it in a few weeks, and 40 seconds if i'm lucky otherwise. His change mat on the other hand, a beige rectangle of padded plastic, is an object of so much ongoing fascination for him that sometimes he sings to it. Its the first and last thing he wants to examine whenever he is on the floor with it and a load of toys. He has equal admiration for my keys, my handbag, my purse, wipe packets, nappies, not to mention the obvious phone, laptop.  I think he'd give anything for a go on my morning cup of tea.

The only thing I can think that unifies these otherwise disparate items is my attention. Apart from lampshades: I have no idea why he likes lampshades so much. But its sobering to think about how much I am influencing him by my choice of activities. It makes me realise I ought to make extra special effort to lead by a good example, to stop fiddling with my phone all day and look at books, people, animals instead.

New year new me

I think my brain has been working as if having a baby is something one does for a year. I have a year off work, playing stay at home mummy, and then everything goes back to normal. But puppies aren't just for Christmas, and babies aren't just for maternity leave. It's dawning on my hindbrain finally that things are never going to go 'back to normal', whatever that was. 

2014 is going to be the year of carving out a new identity for myself as mother and academic. From what others say, I'm bracing myself for at least a period of feeling I'm failing at both. So my new years resolution this year?

Try not to let guilt get the better of me. I'm looking forward to having some time for the sort of cognition our animal cousins probably don't share for a change. And I'm looking forward to everything Orson might do and bloom into as the year unfolds (not that he hasn't already scaled the highest heights of perfection!)

Happy new year y'all, I hope your next year makes you as happy as 2013 made me! 

Oh and one more resolution........no more candy crush saga ;) 

The happy starfish

Merry christmas all!

Lazy parenting

Haven't blogged so much lately. Orson feeds much more quickly now, and is hugely distractable so I'm actually in some ways missing the days when I was stuck on the sofa with one free hand for an hour at a time several times a day. 

Orson has been a delightfully easy baby so far, and I'm trying to stay aware of how lucky I am in that respect. He rarely cries, always smiles, and eats very (very) well. Nonetheless, I am completely and without limit exhausted by the end of each day. In part I think this is because, thanks to hormones or whatever, at least 50% of my brain, whatever Orson is doing or not doing, is incessantly  and intensely engaged with him. When he is asleep it says 'has he woken up yet? How long has he been sleeping? What are you going to feed him when he wakes up? Is he still asleep? Is he breathing? Did you dress him warmly enough? Has he woken up yet?' 

When he is eating it says 'Does he like this meal? Is he eating enough? Did you warm it up enough? Has he had too many carbs today? Doesn't he like it? Did you feed him too early? What did he eat earlier? Should i offer him something different? Am I going to encourage him to be a fussy eater?Is he choking? Is it too hot? Has he eaten too much? Is he going to get diabetes?'

Till I sometimes want to rip the top of my skull off and scream 'Enough! Shut up for a second' into the bloody hole.

Return-to-work nerves

I’ve more than three months still left to go, but for some reason I have started getting nervous about my return to work at the end of March. 

Buslife 2

Unexpected consequence of becoming a mother: utilising a bus service when pushing a pram tends to make one a target for outbursts of aggression from elderly women. Specifically those travelling with a shopping trolley.

It's an unsavoury symptom of the fact that buses have very little space for anything other than bottoms, and, in oxford at least, tend to be overcrowded at all times of day. Double deckers are able to carry three pushchairs, or one pushchair and one wheelchair. Several times I've had to wait for the next bus because there are too many prams already. But there is no formal allowance for the little wheeled carts, without which many elderly people would presumably be unable to fetch groceries. It's so unfortunate that the upshot of this seems to be that the little old ladies are cultivating an unhealthy defensiveness and hostility towards the mothers against whom they always lose the competition for space.

Buslife

So I'm sitting at the front of the bus with Orso on my knee, and he's making eyes at everyone, and the whole crowd are falling in love with him. I'm thinking yeah, go on, look at how awesome my baby is, smug as you like.  And then he throws up all over the place :o

Guilty as charged

An article at the Huffington Post details five things parents need to stop saying to non-parents and I am totally guilty as charged. Before having Orson I explicitly said to myself that I wasn't going to become one of those parents who can't talk about anything other than babies (yawn), who acts like their child is everyone else's problem (grr), or like the world actually owes them one for being generous enough to reproduce. There is a serious debate to be had as to whether reproduction qualifies, in some respects, as an act of biological altruism (for example, some have called mammalian breastfeeding a selfless act). But my gut instinct says its mostly entirely selfish. Aside from environmental guilt, I'm pretty sure that nobody (apart from maybe grandparents) gets such a kick out of Orson's existence as I do.

Anyway, Simo and I swore blind that we weren't going to stop going out, or let our lives revolve around the baby. We weren't going to let the everyday phenomenon of self-spawning make us lose sight of the bigger picture, of our idiosyncratic interests and intellectual activities. In short, we were going to be cool parents, who stayed just as close to all our non-parent friends and didn't become boring.

But its so HARD!!!! At some point, some number of weeks into the brain-numbing relentlessness of the nappy changing, breastfeeding, rocking etc etc you just realise that fighting the baby-take-over just makes life harder, and we-must-not-do-anything-that-makes-life-harder.

I'd like to think I'm still a fairly considerate parent. I fold my pushchair up on busy buses. I try to keep Orson quiet in places where people need quiet. I try not to subject family members to him before about 8am. But clearly I'm falling into all the cliches of a new parent who thinks everyone should be interested in the details of their darling offspring's daily habits (i'm blogging about it, for god's sake!) and that life pre-baby was a meaningless distant memory (see Exiting the cave). As for being a cool parent? I haven't got the energy!

So yes, I am guilty as charged, and I'm sorry! I really ought to be more considerate to the feelings of all those who cannot or choose not to have children. On the other hand, its hard enough worrying about the impact of all this on my academic life without worrying about my social life as well. Hopefully one day when all of this has calmed down a bit (*will that ever happen, she pleads*) my good friends will still be there for me, waiting patiently with a large bottle of vodka.

Poorly boy

Well we have finally broken the seal on the calpol. We had a miserable, clingy and sleepless baby boy there for a few days, with a fever, blocked up nose and no appetite. I'd been reluctant to resort to calpol, having read the long list of e-numbers on the ingredients, but when the thermometer read 41 degrees C I couldnt get it open fast enough. As well as distressing, it has been exhausting, like looking after a newborn again who won't be put down. Made me wonder how on earth we ever coped with a newborn! And I'm such a wuss, I coped with about 3 minutes of 4am screaming before I was like 'we have to call a doctor!'

Turns out that the best way to make a feverish baby stop screaming and calm down is to call a doctor and claim the baby won't stop screaming * embarrassed*. Anyway, we all three survived it and the boy's appetite has returned with a vengeance. On a more serious note, it made me feel so bad for all those parents of truly sick babies : (