Disappointingly I created the last post over the week gone by and it managed to disappear somewhere other... somewhat like the last 3 months of my life.
I couldn't really tell you very much about the two weeks since my last post - in fact, without this blog and the contents of my 'sent items' folder in my emails I couldn't tell you anything about the last 3 months at all.
What I do recall is basically a flicker book of repeated moments, most of which involve breastfeeding. However, since I put my back out and have started feeding Charlie lying down, even those memories are fading as about 20 seconds after I lie down beside him and latch him on to a boob, I fall asleep. In fact, I am getting more sleep than is publically acceptable for a new mother. The downside to this is that so is Charlie which means we are staying up progressively later and later every night, 'we' being Charlie because all mothers refer to their offspring as 'we', I've noticed. 'We had a good feed this morning didn't we?' 'Didn't we do a good poo?' 'We love our bouncy chair' 'Aren't we going slowly around the bend?'.
Tonight we were awake until 10pm (with a few catnaps thrown in) and we are now having nightmares about something. Not sure what a baby has nightmares about. Being left alone in the cot for five minutes while Mum sneaks in a crafty trip to the loo? The boob falling out before we're finished? Perhaps it's the shark attack we let him watch on TV tonight. Charlie isn't allowed to watch TV because of the reported link between children watching fast-moving images on TV and hyperactivism, however while he was feeding I let him watch a very slow-moving and beautifully filmed nature documentary, in the middle of which a shark ate a seal in slow motion. I somehow doubt his baby mind is dreaming up sharks however and so I'm quite concerned about this early predisposition to nightmares.
I do try to make Charlie's days interesting, however as he is not so easily amused these days and he is also not yet fully able to amuse himself due to lack of motor skills, making his day interesting means paying him a lot of attention, which means that I don't get anything done. So, between getting up, feeding him, dressing him, changing him, amusing him and getting him to bed there's not much time to formulate day-specific memories. Some afternoons he can happily sit playing with his hands and cooing to himself but some days, any attempt on my part to have anything resembling a moment to myself results in swift revenge - shouting, yelling, screaming and, if I am so bold as to stay in the kitchen buttering my toast through all three of these stages, inconsolable sobbing, as though he had been left alone at the end of time. Interestingly, (and appropriately) inconsolable sobbing can be consoled by in-action. After I finally can't stand it any more and rush to the side of my offspring over-flowing with motherly love (amongst other things) I usually find him happily playing with his fingers, or fast asleep.
Actually, Charlie's occasional fits of rage are becoming more and more well-timed. He can sense an important phone call before the phone ever rings and can time his once-a-day poo for the precise moment we are leaving the house 10 minutes late. I suspect I may have a budding Machiavelli sobbing quietly to himself in that cradle. At least he'll give me something to remember at some point.
Soon, I hope.
.
Monday, November 27, 2006
Saturday, November 11, 2006
The winds of change...
Well here we are, 10 weeks in and still alive. It's actually quite difficult to remember life without Charlie. It's as if I've had the mental builders in ripping out old memories and putting up new ones. Not that I forget what it was like to be free to do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted... I just... forget what it was like. Or rather, I remember, but in my memory Charlie is somehow there, like having a dream in which you are talking to Ghengis Khan and it's perfectly normal. In other words, I suppose, it feels as if Charlie has always been around. This must be another one of those sneaky Motherly Love tricks designed to obliterate the blissful memories of going brightly off to the spa with friends, doing a spot of shoe-shopping on the way home to ones immaculate appartment where one puts on a gay little dress and trips merrily out of the house to dance all night with some young swain. I must have memories like that, surely?
Perhaps this is why you see couples arguing about events that happened 20 years ago before they had their children - in fact neither of them can remember a damn thing and the argument is the process by which they invent memories that suit them. 'You wore that brown suit that I liked' 'No I didn't, I wore my old chinos' 'No you didn't, I never let you go out in those' 'Really? Oh well I guess I must have worn the suit'. 'Remember the night I had too much to drink and threw up on your shoes?' 'No' 'Oh good, neither do I' And so on as the past becomes rosy and soft and full of champagne.
Meanwhile there is a baby in the spare room. In fact, it's difficult to even think of him as a baby anymore. 10 weeks in and he's practically fully grown. He is a very opinionated child and, just like his father, has absolutely no patience. The gratifying look of joy on his little mush when I start to take out a boob is swiftly replaced by a red mug of rage if I fumble about for a few seconds too long and god help me if I make him hang about in a damp nappy. He's speaking a lot at the moment - in general I think he's saying 'Golly do my vocal chords do THAT? Look what happens when I move my tongue' and then 'Damn, I can't do it twice'. What I hear of course is 'ghuuh, aaa, aaOOOaa, earugh and brrrrrr' but I think I know what he's getting at most of the time. I live in dread of the 'aauwaah aauwaah aauwaah' that is levelled at me on serious repeat and top volume for making him do something he doesn't want to do, like lie down for 10 seconds while I get him a new sleep suit.
My mother once informed me that when I was very young, if she could hear me, she wasn't worried. If she couldn't hear me, it meant I was either dead, passed out, or doing something I didn't want her to know about like feeding my baby brother something poisonous. I make the same assumptions about Charlie. In general, when he's quiet it means he's asleep rather than anything terminal - otherwise he's quite a noisy child. Even when he's lying peacefully looking at his mobile and playing with his hands he is making little gooey noises these days. So, when I lay him on his changing table (from whence it is impossible for him to roll) and turn my back, I normally hear him kicking his feet and making noise. As soon as that stops I have about 4 seconds to turn around and throw a towel at him as invariably he is concentrating very hard on how far he can pee and what clean, dry or perishable items he can pee on before I get there. Every time I think I have moved these things out of pee-shot, he proves he has a bigger bladder and better muscles than last time by increasing his range.
One would hope, therefore, that by night-time when he is peacefully sleeping beside our bed in his moses basket, that quiet would reign and all we could hear would be the gentle sound of his ickle breaths.
Can we, bollocks.
While there are times when the only noise he makes is one of breathing, in general, sleeping with a baby is like sleeping with an old dog, an old man, an alien, or all three. Firstly, he snores. Little baby snores, agreed, but snores. Secondly, he grunts. A lot. Grunts, snuffles, groans, a whole orchestra of strange and wonderful sounds - and finally, he farts. Man, can this baby fart. All babies, apparently, can fart for England and this one is definitely on the first team.
What they don't tell you (Those Who Have Gone Before) is that baby farts are not sweet little puffs of daisy-scented air, but rather startlingly robust reports of adult proportions with the vague hint of nappy about them. In fact, sometimes little C farts so loudly that, if he is sleeping, he wakes himself up and has a little 'wah' afterwards. If awake then he just chunters gaily on with whatever little scheme he's working on at the moment - trying to hit that rattle, trying to stick out his tongue, or, most likely, trying to get out another fart.
It's amazing how much wind one small baby body can actually trap, and how much effort it takes to get it out. He thrashes around with his knees to his chest making his collection of unhuman noises and still it can take fifteen minutes for gas to escape bottom.
The result is something out of a really bad 'B' movie. His moses basket is on a rocker and as he thrashes about, it rocks erratically as if possessed. Lying in bed it is not possible to see baby flesh and, since one is relying only on dodgy parental memory to identify the contents of the basket, anything could be in it - and by the sounds emitting from said basket, anything is. It rocks, it shifts, the beast within grunts and groans, the basket thrashes and shifts and then... just as it reaches a frenzied peak... a fart rings out.
Ah yes, mean old Mum, finding humour in the pain of baby's trapped wind. But you see, Mum has spent a significant amount of time studying baby yoga moves designed to help relieve baby wind and then practised them on said baby - and sometimes Mum can even help the little darling to express some of said wind... imagine her poised solicitously over the changing mat, circling baby's legs and making encouraging noises while little gusts are emitted and baby smiles happily. It's not all thrashing baskets and alien wind monsters - it's just that sometimes, there is nothing one can do but watch.
And sometimes... laugh.
.
Perhaps this is why you see couples arguing about events that happened 20 years ago before they had their children - in fact neither of them can remember a damn thing and the argument is the process by which they invent memories that suit them. 'You wore that brown suit that I liked' 'No I didn't, I wore my old chinos' 'No you didn't, I never let you go out in those' 'Really? Oh well I guess I must have worn the suit'. 'Remember the night I had too much to drink and threw up on your shoes?' 'No' 'Oh good, neither do I' And so on as the past becomes rosy and soft and full of champagne.
Meanwhile there is a baby in the spare room. In fact, it's difficult to even think of him as a baby anymore. 10 weeks in and he's practically fully grown. He is a very opinionated child and, just like his father, has absolutely no patience. The gratifying look of joy on his little mush when I start to take out a boob is swiftly replaced by a red mug of rage if I fumble about for a few seconds too long and god help me if I make him hang about in a damp nappy. He's speaking a lot at the moment - in general I think he's saying 'Golly do my vocal chords do THAT? Look what happens when I move my tongue' and then 'Damn, I can't do it twice'. What I hear of course is 'ghuuh, aaa, aaOOOaa, earugh and brrrrrr' but I think I know what he's getting at most of the time. I live in dread of the 'aauwaah aauwaah aauwaah' that is levelled at me on serious repeat and top volume for making him do something he doesn't want to do, like lie down for 10 seconds while I get him a new sleep suit.
My mother once informed me that when I was very young, if she could hear me, she wasn't worried. If she couldn't hear me, it meant I was either dead, passed out, or doing something I didn't want her to know about like feeding my baby brother something poisonous. I make the same assumptions about Charlie. In general, when he's quiet it means he's asleep rather than anything terminal - otherwise he's quite a noisy child. Even when he's lying peacefully looking at his mobile and playing with his hands he is making little gooey noises these days. So, when I lay him on his changing table (from whence it is impossible for him to roll) and turn my back, I normally hear him kicking his feet and making noise. As soon as that stops I have about 4 seconds to turn around and throw a towel at him as invariably he is concentrating very hard on how far he can pee and what clean, dry or perishable items he can pee on before I get there. Every time I think I have moved these things out of pee-shot, he proves he has a bigger bladder and better muscles than last time by increasing his range.
One would hope, therefore, that by night-time when he is peacefully sleeping beside our bed in his moses basket, that quiet would reign and all we could hear would be the gentle sound of his ickle breaths.
Can we, bollocks.
While there are times when the only noise he makes is one of breathing, in general, sleeping with a baby is like sleeping with an old dog, an old man, an alien, or all three. Firstly, he snores. Little baby snores, agreed, but snores. Secondly, he grunts. A lot. Grunts, snuffles, groans, a whole orchestra of strange and wonderful sounds - and finally, he farts. Man, can this baby fart. All babies, apparently, can fart for England and this one is definitely on the first team.
What they don't tell you (Those Who Have Gone Before) is that baby farts are not sweet little puffs of daisy-scented air, but rather startlingly robust reports of adult proportions with the vague hint of nappy about them. In fact, sometimes little C farts so loudly that, if he is sleeping, he wakes himself up and has a little 'wah' afterwards. If awake then he just chunters gaily on with whatever little scheme he's working on at the moment - trying to hit that rattle, trying to stick out his tongue, or, most likely, trying to get out another fart.
It's amazing how much wind one small baby body can actually trap, and how much effort it takes to get it out. He thrashes around with his knees to his chest making his collection of unhuman noises and still it can take fifteen minutes for gas to escape bottom.
The result is something out of a really bad 'B' movie. His moses basket is on a rocker and as he thrashes about, it rocks erratically as if possessed. Lying in bed it is not possible to see baby flesh and, since one is relying only on dodgy parental memory to identify the contents of the basket, anything could be in it - and by the sounds emitting from said basket, anything is. It rocks, it shifts, the beast within grunts and groans, the basket thrashes and shifts and then... just as it reaches a frenzied peak... a fart rings out.
Ah yes, mean old Mum, finding humour in the pain of baby's trapped wind. But you see, Mum has spent a significant amount of time studying baby yoga moves designed to help relieve baby wind and then practised them on said baby - and sometimes Mum can even help the little darling to express some of said wind... imagine her poised solicitously over the changing mat, circling baby's legs and making encouraging noises while little gusts are emitted and baby smiles happily. It's not all thrashing baskets and alien wind monsters - it's just that sometimes, there is nothing one can do but watch.
And sometimes... laugh.
.
Monday, October 30, 2006
My baby can lick your baby
I have recently noticed a pointed and competitive edge amongst certain mothers, something I thought was reserved for middle class women at boarding schools and grandmothers outside Sunday schools. I have quickly to add that none of my close friends or my ante-natal friends are included in this because the display of this edge immediately eliminates the offender from my circle.
I am talking about improbable mothers who are endlessly blurting about how much their baby sleeps, how early it smiled, how it's laughing already and is only 3 weeks old, how much hair it has, how it grasps it's little rattle when the midwives say it shouldn't have any control over it's hands (rather like it's mother and her mouth)... and these boasts are always couched as worried questions 'I don't know if this is normal ha ha but little Fluffypootykins is already spelling four syllable words. Should I take her to the doctor?' My Ass. Normally little Fluffypootykins is a doughy blob with a dummy shoved into it's wet little mouth and too many frills on it's socks.
A few scant months ago I had no idea that that this was a competition - and apart from the inevitable 'I'm so glad Charlie doesn't look like THAT' I had nothing to say on the very private matter of how ugly most babies truly are... but I realise now I was sadly deluded. In fact, I've noticed some Mums being competitive about everything from the birth to the length of their baby's toes.
Having had what is universally accepted by everyone except me as an easy birth it would be terribly bad form for me to go on about it and those of my friends who've had genuinely awful births speak about them in hushed tones if at all - however there are those out there for whom every contraction was The Worst Ever and every stitch was Ten At Least and every pound of baby was doubled because I'm So Small. It's inevitably those same women who go on to talk about how their three-week-old snookums is smiling and nearly potty trained and oh dear is Charlie really not rolling over yet? Little Wonder is sleeping 20 hours at a go and eating a three course meal and he's half Charlie's age, Have You Spoken To The Health Visitor About It?
In fact it seems to me that those Mums are the same ones still receiving visits from the Health Visitor which always makes me think of nits and rats and babies at risk. I have to swallow my tongue to stop myself from saying 'If Snookums is so perfect, why is there a civil servant still coming to your house to check on it's progress?' because... well er... because perhaps secretly I am worried that they are right and there is something wrong with Charlie not being able to hold a toy at 8 weeks old or not sleeping through the night or not having all his hair.
It's really pernicious this competition and even though I genuinely do not care if Charlie is sitting up before or after any other baby in the world, I do find myself being glad he doesn't have a big fat head, or being narked that his hair fell out - or looking at babies in massive bourgeouis strollers and feeling superior about Charlie's sling.
In fact, I can't see the point in being competitive about anything, I mean, Charlie is doing fine. He was holding his head up from the day he was born, you know. He's taller then any baby the midwife ever saw, we had the fastest birth, he's stopped pooing in the night and he's already trying to stand up.
To be honest in fact I think he's already trying to say 'Mama'... but you can't be sure, you know, it may just be 'my mama's mad'.
.
I am talking about improbable mothers who are endlessly blurting about how much their baby sleeps, how early it smiled, how it's laughing already and is only 3 weeks old, how much hair it has, how it grasps it's little rattle when the midwives say it shouldn't have any control over it's hands (rather like it's mother and her mouth)... and these boasts are always couched as worried questions 'I don't know if this is normal ha ha but little Fluffypootykins is already spelling four syllable words. Should I take her to the doctor?' My Ass. Normally little Fluffypootykins is a doughy blob with a dummy shoved into it's wet little mouth and too many frills on it's socks.
A few scant months ago I had no idea that that this was a competition - and apart from the inevitable 'I'm so glad Charlie doesn't look like THAT' I had nothing to say on the very private matter of how ugly most babies truly are... but I realise now I was sadly deluded. In fact, I've noticed some Mums being competitive about everything from the birth to the length of their baby's toes.
Having had what is universally accepted by everyone except me as an easy birth it would be terribly bad form for me to go on about it and those of my friends who've had genuinely awful births speak about them in hushed tones if at all - however there are those out there for whom every contraction was The Worst Ever and every stitch was Ten At Least and every pound of baby was doubled because I'm So Small. It's inevitably those same women who go on to talk about how their three-week-old snookums is smiling and nearly potty trained and oh dear is Charlie really not rolling over yet? Little Wonder is sleeping 20 hours at a go and eating a three course meal and he's half Charlie's age, Have You Spoken To The Health Visitor About It?
In fact it seems to me that those Mums are the same ones still receiving visits from the Health Visitor which always makes me think of nits and rats and babies at risk. I have to swallow my tongue to stop myself from saying 'If Snookums is so perfect, why is there a civil servant still coming to your house to check on it's progress?' because... well er... because perhaps secretly I am worried that they are right and there is something wrong with Charlie not being able to hold a toy at 8 weeks old or not sleeping through the night or not having all his hair.
It's really pernicious this competition and even though I genuinely do not care if Charlie is sitting up before or after any other baby in the world, I do find myself being glad he doesn't have a big fat head, or being narked that his hair fell out - or looking at babies in massive bourgeouis strollers and feeling superior about Charlie's sling.
In fact, I can't see the point in being competitive about anything, I mean, Charlie is doing fine. He was holding his head up from the day he was born, you know. He's taller then any baby the midwife ever saw, we had the fastest birth, he's stopped pooing in the night and he's already trying to stand up.
To be honest in fact I think he's already trying to say 'Mama'... but you can't be sure, you know, it may just be 'my mama's mad'.
.
Saturday, October 28, 2006
Swiss Army baby
Luckily for my sanity I have discovered that babies are not just all about eating, sleeping and dirty nappies. They're not just for cooing over and worrying about, they actually have a few alternate uses which make them rather more practical units to have about the house.
The first and (sadly for me) most often utilised function I've noticed recently is their ability to normalise. 'Well Charlie' I say as I walk through the crowds 'They didn't have ink in that store did they, but then they didn't look like the sort of place that stocked ink did they? Oh, I know, Mummy wants a coffee, shall we go for a coffee? Should I buy these shoes? Where's that shopping list? What do you think we should do next, should we have lunch? Did we leave the coffee pot on?' etc. etc. All people see is a nice lady talking to her baby. They have no idea that an insane muttering person has just passed them by.
Next, and very usefully is their ability to launch one to the head of selected queues and make people be nice to one, not unlike being pregnant - airlines, for example, although we have yet to try that one out. Bus queues. People still stand up for me on the tube. In fact, while being pregnant is a 'get out of jail free' card for many things in life, it is after all, temporary. All those women you see being pregnant in commercials and on magazine covers and in the bus queue - they're not professional pregnant people, it's temporary for all of them. I used to think I was merely a usurper to the pregnant throne but in fact I was a fully crowned queen... hence the current status as 'mother of baby' which is a much more long-lived state than pregnancy. As a member of the Least Exclusive Club in the world (see previous posts) there's a lot of sympathy out there from other members... and crucially, unlike members of the 'pregnancy' club, members of the 'parenthood' club are normally in a much better position to actually help one out by virtue of the fact that they are not completely incapacitated. So, doors open (literally), crowds part, queues shorten.
Next, having a baby is a ticket to one of those handy 'close to the door' bays in supermarket and shopping mall parking lots. Yes, those extra-wide bays where nobody can reach your car's fender with their door are reserved for the handicapped and parents (clearly indicating society's opinion of parents). All one needs is the business, in the form of said baby. Yes folks, no more carting heavy bags of shopping across an acre of lot while hunting for one's car - it's wham-bam-in-front-of-the-door-ma'am for me.
Next, and this is one for all you shut-ins out there, having a baby is a guaranteed way to get people talking to you. Particularly Grandmothers and other Mothers. 'How old is he'. 'I remember when mine were that age'. 'Isn't he cute'. 'Look, pumpkin, it's a baybee!!!' 'What's his name?'. What's his name? What freaking use is that snippet of information? Have you any idea how many perfect strangers are out there prowling the streets and asking baby's names? Is this some sort of hunter-gatherer poll system whereby information about the decline of society is accumulated by the examination of random baby names? What? I mean, I go to some sort of baby-related event on a weekly basis now and I have no inclination to find out the names of any of them.
And, having a baby is a freebie ticket to all sorts of goodies. The parent-and-baby market is cash-rich and exploited ruthlessly by all sorts of big and small businesses. By this I mean all The Stuff we are convinced that we need. You know, baby baths, baby wipes, top and tail bowls (no, I don't know what they are either). Washes, oils, creams, organic cotton squares for £10 a shot, muslins for £2 a shot (do you know how many muslin squares one can get out of a £5.99 yard of muslin? Plenty, that's how many), baskets, buckets, brushes, plastic doohickeys, protective nets, mirrors, seats that bounce, seats that vibrate... all The Stuff. Well, all the people who make The Stuff want you to buy THEIR stuff and not anybody else's Stuff and so they give you free samples. If you know where to go, there's quite a haul to be had. 'Parenting Clubs' everywhere (clearly even the club itself is not exclusive). Join the club for store 'A' and get a whole box of freebies. Join the club for store 'B' and get another one. Sign up for a baby bank account at Bank 'A' and get free money. Free money!
If you're on the ball there's hardly anything you need to pay for in the first few weeks - companies are lining up to give bags of the stuff away to you before you even leave hospital. Of course, it's all crap, but at least it's free crap. In the last week I've got free nappies (disposable unfortunately) free wipes by the ton (which you can wash and re-use) a free teething gum massager, free baby food, a free baby spoon, a free nappy bag with changing mat, free creams and lotions for me, free baby wash, free lotion for the baby and free breast pads by the score. OK, so without Charlie there would be no need for all these particular freebies and thus the joy is rather tempered with the knowledge that one is rather a captive market but it does levy the experience with an amusing competitive edge and I can happily play 'Hunt the Freebie' with other mothers for hours.
Finally, there are all the 'Mother and Baby' amusements such as, oh bliss of bliss, the 'Watch With Baby' film screenings at our local art house cinema - matinees for half price! And, you can't get in without a baby. So, while you have to tune out the odd squawk, there are no irritating youths shouting at the screen and crucially, no 8 foot fat blokes in hats blocking the view. Any bloke who does venture into the cinema with his baby however is treated to a stunning array of naked breasts so this is a treat the boys can enjoy as well, provided they don't mind seeing their favourite toys put to other, less frivolous uses.
So, there are some useful advantages to be had out of little Charlie of which he is blissfully unaware. And, while he's hardly paying his own way, fixing my back or giving me a tummy tuck and a boob lift, it does make life a little simpler. Now all I need to do is to have him cast in rubber so that when he's older and doesn't want to be seen with me I can carry around a fake Charlie and I will never look like a mad person again.
.
The first and (sadly for me) most often utilised function I've noticed recently is their ability to normalise. 'Well Charlie' I say as I walk through the crowds 'They didn't have ink in that store did they, but then they didn't look like the sort of place that stocked ink did they? Oh, I know, Mummy wants a coffee, shall we go for a coffee? Should I buy these shoes? Where's that shopping list? What do you think we should do next, should we have lunch? Did we leave the coffee pot on?' etc. etc. All people see is a nice lady talking to her baby. They have no idea that an insane muttering person has just passed them by.
Next, and very usefully is their ability to launch one to the head of selected queues and make people be nice to one, not unlike being pregnant - airlines, for example, although we have yet to try that one out. Bus queues. People still stand up for me on the tube. In fact, while being pregnant is a 'get out of jail free' card for many things in life, it is after all, temporary. All those women you see being pregnant in commercials and on magazine covers and in the bus queue - they're not professional pregnant people, it's temporary for all of them. I used to think I was merely a usurper to the pregnant throne but in fact I was a fully crowned queen... hence the current status as 'mother of baby' which is a much more long-lived state than pregnancy. As a member of the Least Exclusive Club in the world (see previous posts) there's a lot of sympathy out there from other members... and crucially, unlike members of the 'pregnancy' club, members of the 'parenthood' club are normally in a much better position to actually help one out by virtue of the fact that they are not completely incapacitated. So, doors open (literally), crowds part, queues shorten.
Next, having a baby is a ticket to one of those handy 'close to the door' bays in supermarket and shopping mall parking lots. Yes, those extra-wide bays where nobody can reach your car's fender with their door are reserved for the handicapped and parents (clearly indicating society's opinion of parents). All one needs is the business, in the form of said baby. Yes folks, no more carting heavy bags of shopping across an acre of lot while hunting for one's car - it's wham-bam-in-front-of-the-door-ma'am for me.
Next, and this is one for all you shut-ins out there, having a baby is a guaranteed way to get people talking to you. Particularly Grandmothers and other Mothers. 'How old is he'. 'I remember when mine were that age'. 'Isn't he cute'. 'Look, pumpkin, it's a baybee!!!' 'What's his name?'. What's his name? What freaking use is that snippet of information? Have you any idea how many perfect strangers are out there prowling the streets and asking baby's names? Is this some sort of hunter-gatherer poll system whereby information about the decline of society is accumulated by the examination of random baby names? What? I mean, I go to some sort of baby-related event on a weekly basis now and I have no inclination to find out the names of any of them.
And, having a baby is a freebie ticket to all sorts of goodies. The parent-and-baby market is cash-rich and exploited ruthlessly by all sorts of big and small businesses. By this I mean all The Stuff we are convinced that we need. You know, baby baths, baby wipes, top and tail bowls (no, I don't know what they are either). Washes, oils, creams, organic cotton squares for £10 a shot, muslins for £2 a shot (do you know how many muslin squares one can get out of a £5.99 yard of muslin? Plenty, that's how many), baskets, buckets, brushes, plastic doohickeys, protective nets, mirrors, seats that bounce, seats that vibrate... all The Stuff. Well, all the people who make The Stuff want you to buy THEIR stuff and not anybody else's Stuff and so they give you free samples. If you know where to go, there's quite a haul to be had. 'Parenting Clubs' everywhere (clearly even the club itself is not exclusive). Join the club for store 'A' and get a whole box of freebies. Join the club for store 'B' and get another one. Sign up for a baby bank account at Bank 'A' and get free money. Free money!
If you're on the ball there's hardly anything you need to pay for in the first few weeks - companies are lining up to give bags of the stuff away to you before you even leave hospital. Of course, it's all crap, but at least it's free crap. In the last week I've got free nappies (disposable unfortunately) free wipes by the ton (which you can wash and re-use) a free teething gum massager, free baby food, a free baby spoon, a free nappy bag with changing mat, free creams and lotions for me, free baby wash, free lotion for the baby and free breast pads by the score. OK, so without Charlie there would be no need for all these particular freebies and thus the joy is rather tempered with the knowledge that one is rather a captive market but it does levy the experience with an amusing competitive edge and I can happily play 'Hunt the Freebie' with other mothers for hours.
Finally, there are all the 'Mother and Baby' amusements such as, oh bliss of bliss, the 'Watch With Baby' film screenings at our local art house cinema - matinees for half price! And, you can't get in without a baby. So, while you have to tune out the odd squawk, there are no irritating youths shouting at the screen and crucially, no 8 foot fat blokes in hats blocking the view. Any bloke who does venture into the cinema with his baby however is treated to a stunning array of naked breasts so this is a treat the boys can enjoy as well, provided they don't mind seeing their favourite toys put to other, less frivolous uses.
So, there are some useful advantages to be had out of little Charlie of which he is blissfully unaware. And, while he's hardly paying his own way, fixing my back or giving me a tummy tuck and a boob lift, it does make life a little simpler. Now all I need to do is to have him cast in rubber so that when he's older and doesn't want to be seen with me I can carry around a fake Charlie and I will never look like a mad person again.
.
Monday, October 23, 2006
Friday, October 20, 2006
rockets in the night
It is amazing what crosses one's mind in the tiny hours. Bearing in mind that I've not slept for more than 4 hours in a row for the last 7 weeks and that I spend a lot of time awake in a darkened room at 4am with nothing to do but make sure Charlie has a good mouthful of boob it's frankly a wonder that I can think at all. Needless to say there's only one subject of any note drifting through my diminished brain-pan and it’s hardly rocket science. There must be thousands of us out there, all sitting alone in the dark, falling asleep in our chairs, lurching awake, waiting for the baby to eat and sleep, starship Mum, sailing through the night. My marketing brain screams 'untapped market' very sadly - one does start to think all sorts of strange things when there's one's own personal baby in the vicinity.
All your cliches come true at once, particularly that old chestnut about how 'nobody will ever love you as much as your mother'. This is not, in fact, a sentence designed to make you feel guilt about leaving home and it’s not romantic love we’re talking about here - motherly love, it turns out, is something different altogether, something that hits on a more instinctive level. She's watched you breathe your first breath, she grew your bones, she's given you life and then spent it's length worrying about it. It's a tremendously protective thing. It creeps up on a mother quite unsuspectingly. One day there’s a wriggly baby who’s rather cute but perhaps nothing to do with you after all and then the next day you’d rent the fabric of time to prevent any harm drifting its little, damp, squirmy way.
Time, however, isn’t really on the side of us Mums. At the start all they want to do is to be sweet and content and curled up on a parent and it turns out that in fact parents feel exactly the same - tremendously content when he's curled up on a shoulder. This is short lived however and despite having spent the best part of a year as one unit, soon he will be able and willing to crawl away, and then walk, then run and eventually, take the car keys and drive. And if it wasn’t bad enough that the child itself will depart, economics force the ultimate betrayal by sending him off into the arms of a carer in order for Mum to waltz back to work before he can even talk.
Meanwhile, back at 4am I hold onto him while he snores into my ear and hope that one day his shoulders will be big enough for my head - and then I hope again that he won't be too averse to giving his old mother a hug. It's hard to hold onto something who you know is potentially going to cause you more pain, more trouble and more worry than anyone else and still love it but that, I suppose, is another function of this motherly love thing.
It's at these times, in the gloaming, when one starts thinking about all the possibilities, all the futures, all the lights and all the darks.
Having a baby is a bit like sending a rocket off into time. For a while you can hold it, light the fuse and watch it while it goes but in the end, if you're lucky, it goes on into the un-imaginable future and leaves you behind. Time, however, has no final destination. Everything on its rocket gets off at some point, gets left behind, gets further away. Eventually, we get off ourselves. Sometimes when Charlie is fretting I can lull him to sleep while stroking his little bald head and I hope that at the other end of time for him there is someone else stroking his head, loving him and lulling him to rest. I have hope of him or her for when I'm not there - I send messages to them across the years.
.
All your cliches come true at once, particularly that old chestnut about how 'nobody will ever love you as much as your mother'. This is not, in fact, a sentence designed to make you feel guilt about leaving home and it’s not romantic love we’re talking about here - motherly love, it turns out, is something different altogether, something that hits on a more instinctive level. She's watched you breathe your first breath, she grew your bones, she's given you life and then spent it's length worrying about it. It's a tremendously protective thing. It creeps up on a mother quite unsuspectingly. One day there’s a wriggly baby who’s rather cute but perhaps nothing to do with you after all and then the next day you’d rent the fabric of time to prevent any harm drifting its little, damp, squirmy way.
Time, however, isn’t really on the side of us Mums. At the start all they want to do is to be sweet and content and curled up on a parent and it turns out that in fact parents feel exactly the same - tremendously content when he's curled up on a shoulder. This is short lived however and despite having spent the best part of a year as one unit, soon he will be able and willing to crawl away, and then walk, then run and eventually, take the car keys and drive. And if it wasn’t bad enough that the child itself will depart, economics force the ultimate betrayal by sending him off into the arms of a carer in order for Mum to waltz back to work before he can even talk.
Meanwhile, back at 4am I hold onto him while he snores into my ear and hope that one day his shoulders will be big enough for my head - and then I hope again that he won't be too averse to giving his old mother a hug. It's hard to hold onto something who you know is potentially going to cause you more pain, more trouble and more worry than anyone else and still love it but that, I suppose, is another function of this motherly love thing.
It's at these times, in the gloaming, when one starts thinking about all the possibilities, all the futures, all the lights and all the darks.
Having a baby is a bit like sending a rocket off into time. For a while you can hold it, light the fuse and watch it while it goes but in the end, if you're lucky, it goes on into the un-imaginable future and leaves you behind. Time, however, has no final destination. Everything on its rocket gets off at some point, gets left behind, gets further away. Eventually, we get off ourselves. Sometimes when Charlie is fretting I can lull him to sleep while stroking his little bald head and I hope that at the other end of time for him there is someone else stroking his head, loving him and lulling him to rest. I have hope of him or her for when I'm not there - I send messages to them across the years.
.
Thursday, October 12, 2006
Poppin' fresh
You would think that centuries of experience dressing babies would have provided the human race, or at least the manufacturing industry of the West with enough knowledge to create clothing which was not only well made and good-looking, but which was easy to get on and off of a flailing infant. You would think. You would think that we could even get two out of three.
The truth is that even with hundreds of thousands of shops selling the stuff, millions of mothers every year buy it and don't complain. One assumes therefore that civilisation has achieved the acme of baby clothing design and there is nowhere further to go on our ascent to garment excellence. This is mind-boggling however as clearly, there are three gaping flaws in this argument.
One: Most baby clothes pull over the head.
Two: All baby clothes for boys are blue and covered in bears.
Three: Pop studs.
Firstly. Babies have soft bits on their heads that one normally steers clear of and that are largely in the way during the descent of bear-covered cloth over body. Babies' heads are ungainly lolly things which are difficult to stuff through an 'envelope' neckline no matter how large the opening. Babies don't actually like having cloth dragged across their face, bunched around their necks and then tugged down their bodies even if ever so gently. A sleepy baby who has dozed quietly through a nappy change can be instantly rendered a flailing red ball of rage if he happens to open his eyes just as the 'vest' is being pulled over his head and a quiet wakey baby instantly goes all quivery-bottom-lippy. Interstingly, all the clothes we bought in France wrap around the body, so what's up with the rest of the world?
Secondly. Why can't we have stylish fabrics? What's with the bears? What's with rainbow bears? He's 5 weeks old for crying out loud, he can't even focus on a bear let alone actually want one printed on the trousers he's just peed on again. And what's with all the blue? The other choice is white - a brave choice to put on an individual whose main occupation is the production of bodily fluids. Other pattern choices stretch to stripes or trains and to have a simple, plain, non-blue-or-white (or pink or yellow for girls) colour is clearly a taboo-breaker, likewise any patterns unless, crucially, they have a bear in them. Or a train. Or both. If you're very lucky, you may get a tractor. Again, the French have it right with back-fastening khaki, beige and some good browns.
Finally and most puzzlingly... pop studs. Everwhere, pop studs. Down the legs. Down the front. Down the side. Pop studs, pop studs, pop studs. Have you ever tried to fasten pop-studs down the length of a baby's legs when he's kicking like a bronco? Well have you?
With up to a dozen poppers per outfit it must be an absolutely massive industry. Pop-stud pressure groups lobbying the garment factories, bribing key baby-design officials, carpet-baggers slinking around the warehouses pushing money into maw of the developers while the crippled and prematurely-aged hands of a miilion seamstresses work overtime attaching pop-studs to cotton. OK so they probably have a machine for that now.
Meanwhile, millions of mothers bend tearfully over changing tables begging their enraged offspring to 'just hold still a moment' while trying to guide a bucking foot into the end of an open 'leg' and attempting to not only fasten a dozen poppers up the inside leg but to not pop-stud a fold of baby-skin in the process. They certainly don't have a machine for that. It's possible to turn a footed sleep-suit into one long tube with a baby inside it and there's always one left over once the baby has been popped into submission. There he is, lying angelically in his little blue suit with one leg shorter then the other and a gaping hole somewhere in the region of his belly where one half of a pop-stud blinks seductively at you and you realise there's been a pop-stud wife-swap and the ugly one has ended up on its own. Even getting him undressed is difficult - some of these studs are like super-glue and take forever to get apart. Even the French haven't gotten this one right, the pop-stud lobby group is clearly international.
The mystery bit is that there are plenty of other fasteners on the market. Why not short ribbons that can tie at his sides? Why not velcro for crying out loud? He's got a little wrist-rattle which secures with the softest, most delicate velcro you've ever seen (which doesn't seem to catch on other fabrics). Why can't we have that sewn into his clothes? Just run your finger up the gap and hey presto - clothes fastened.
In fact, why have fasteners at all? Anyway 'fasten' is a bit of a mis-nomer as it's actually quicker to pull a pair of elasticated trousers over his legs then it is to pop all those studs. And since we're pulling things over his head anyway... t-shirts will do just fine thank you, I just need some first-class bears on that envelope neck.
.
The truth is that even with hundreds of thousands of shops selling the stuff, millions of mothers every year buy it and don't complain. One assumes therefore that civilisation has achieved the acme of baby clothing design and there is nowhere further to go on our ascent to garment excellence. This is mind-boggling however as clearly, there are three gaping flaws in this argument.
One: Most baby clothes pull over the head.
Two: All baby clothes for boys are blue and covered in bears.
Three: Pop studs.
Firstly. Babies have soft bits on their heads that one normally steers clear of and that are largely in the way during the descent of bear-covered cloth over body. Babies' heads are ungainly lolly things which are difficult to stuff through an 'envelope' neckline no matter how large the opening. Babies don't actually like having cloth dragged across their face, bunched around their necks and then tugged down their bodies even if ever so gently. A sleepy baby who has dozed quietly through a nappy change can be instantly rendered a flailing red ball of rage if he happens to open his eyes just as the 'vest' is being pulled over his head and a quiet wakey baby instantly goes all quivery-bottom-lippy. Interstingly, all the clothes we bought in France wrap around the body, so what's up with the rest of the world?
Secondly. Why can't we have stylish fabrics? What's with the bears? What's with rainbow bears? He's 5 weeks old for crying out loud, he can't even focus on a bear let alone actually want one printed on the trousers he's just peed on again. And what's with all the blue? The other choice is white - a brave choice to put on an individual whose main occupation is the production of bodily fluids. Other pattern choices stretch to stripes or trains and to have a simple, plain, non-blue-or-white (or pink or yellow for girls) colour is clearly a taboo-breaker, likewise any patterns unless, crucially, they have a bear in them. Or a train. Or both. If you're very lucky, you may get a tractor. Again, the French have it right with back-fastening khaki, beige and some good browns.
Finally and most puzzlingly... pop studs. Everwhere, pop studs. Down the legs. Down the front. Down the side. Pop studs, pop studs, pop studs. Have you ever tried to fasten pop-studs down the length of a baby's legs when he's kicking like a bronco? Well have you?
With up to a dozen poppers per outfit it must be an absolutely massive industry. Pop-stud pressure groups lobbying the garment factories, bribing key baby-design officials, carpet-baggers slinking around the warehouses pushing money into maw of the developers while the crippled and prematurely-aged hands of a miilion seamstresses work overtime attaching pop-studs to cotton. OK so they probably have a machine for that now.
Meanwhile, millions of mothers bend tearfully over changing tables begging their enraged offspring to 'just hold still a moment' while trying to guide a bucking foot into the end of an open 'leg' and attempting to not only fasten a dozen poppers up the inside leg but to not pop-stud a fold of baby-skin in the process. They certainly don't have a machine for that. It's possible to turn a footed sleep-suit into one long tube with a baby inside it and there's always one left over once the baby has been popped into submission. There he is, lying angelically in his little blue suit with one leg shorter then the other and a gaping hole somewhere in the region of his belly where one half of a pop-stud blinks seductively at you and you realise there's been a pop-stud wife-swap and the ugly one has ended up on its own. Even getting him undressed is difficult - some of these studs are like super-glue and take forever to get apart. Even the French haven't gotten this one right, the pop-stud lobby group is clearly international.
The mystery bit is that there are plenty of other fasteners on the market. Why not short ribbons that can tie at his sides? Why not velcro for crying out loud? He's got a little wrist-rattle which secures with the softest, most delicate velcro you've ever seen (which doesn't seem to catch on other fabrics). Why can't we have that sewn into his clothes? Just run your finger up the gap and hey presto - clothes fastened.
In fact, why have fasteners at all? Anyway 'fasten' is a bit of a mis-nomer as it's actually quicker to pull a pair of elasticated trousers over his legs then it is to pop all those studs. And since we're pulling things over his head anyway... t-shirts will do just fine thank you, I just need some first-class bears on that envelope neck.
.
Sunday, September 24, 2006
A day in the life
Posting on this blog has become more and more difficult as Charlie becomes more and more people and less and less like something that landed in Area 52 and has been stored in a bunker by the US government (see photo, above). I recently read a column written by a new dad saying that newborns are like aliens and there's something to be said for this point of view.
Charlie arrived on the scene complete with a Thousand Yard Stare that seemed to see everything and nothing. You can imagine anything going through his mind - wide eyed and silent, solemn and somehow aged looking he seems to hold all the answers to life and to sit in judgment of everything. Until, of course, he wails in rage because he has a dirty nappy.
He's been like that for the last month and because the periods of time in which he's awake have been relatively short, that's the only way we've known him - the alien buddha baby. Now, however, he's awake a lot more and is becoming a little less alien and a little more like somebody's baby. Not like my baby, not yet, I don't think, although perhaps... but definitely like a baby.
I never actually had a picture in my head of what my baby may look like, if I ever were to have a baby (which clearly I have) however that doesn't stop me from thinking, sometimes, that he doesn't quite look like what I expected. Not that I was expecting anything, you know. Anyway, some days Charlie looks like my baby but some days he still looks like a bit of an alien. The best way for me to deal with this is to love him even when he's an alien because I just can't be certain when he's going to morph back into my baby. So I take it day by day and day by day he returns my efforts by focusing a little more on things, by looking around more, by nearly smiling when he's pleased, by showing some enthusiasm for his favourite things - the left one, the right one and whatever surprise is in that bottle.
Day by day it goes a little like this: Assuming the day starts at midnight, normally Charlie begins it by sleeping but swiftly wakens demanding food. It's a good idea to give it to him as if he's lulled back to sleep he merely wakes at 1 or 2am and is impossible to get back to sleep. So, I feed him in the nursery on the sofa with the lights fairly low. He then plops back to sleep often without the pleasure of a burp and is soundo until between 3am and 4am. This heralds the Battle of the Boob in which the distraction of a filthy nappy means that while his head is diving towards the boob at warp speed, his arms and legs are protesting the nappy situation. And so, being half alien with no control over his human arms, they beat against the boob and push him off it and his little legs thrash and his neck arches and after a few tries he bursts into tears of rage and frustration and so I change him - and, as a good feed loosens the bowels (surely you all know that by now) I end up changing him again.
Between 4am and 5:30am he falls asleep for the third time (the first two times he falls asleep until I put him in his moses basket which wakes him up instantly - and because waking up in the night means that he's hungry, he thinks he's hungry and we go through the whole scenario again, only shorter. Eventually I put him back on the boob with a sigh and he falls asleep with the same sigh... only smaller. Once he no longer wakes up in his basket, I carry it back into the bedroom, slither back into bed and, after checking his breathing once or twice, I too fall asleep.
Sometime between 6am and 8am he wakes up and if I'm lucky, D feeds him a bottle of expressed milk and I snore on until 9am or 10am when he wakes up again. This time he wakes me up and I sit up, reach into the basket by the bed and pick him up and feed him in bed. If I'm lucky, his Dad has padded him properly and he doesn't pee down his leg onto the pillow. Then, if there's nothing to do and nowhere to go, I change him, lay him on his blanket on my mattress and lie down beside him and we sleep for an hour or more, absolutely soundly. Once in a while I wake up and peer at him and sometimes he's staring back and sometimes he's sleeping. Whatever the situation is, he always hates it when I get him up, he wails and wails.
Following this it becomes like an episode of the keystone cops in the flat. Firstly, he normally need a major change of everything and secondly, he's slept longer than he should hae done and he's absolutely starving so he's particularly fractious during the change period which makes it nearly impossible. At this point I have also to get dressed, put in my lenses, do the laundry, have breakfast, drink a glass of milk for my mother, fill in a passport application or my income tax or pick a number of things I haven't done yet and because it's the afternoon, changing him and feeding him make him particularly wakey and he needs company so I have to have him with me on my travels around the apartment or listen to him wail in frustration and loneliness while I sneak into the loo to comb my hair - so I do nearly everything one-handed.
Once I've approached completion on 75% of my tasks (the final 25% normally being my taxes) I give up and sit down with him and we do something like listen to music while I make his hands dance (he seems to like this) - by doing this we've discovered that he likes Johnny Cash but he doesn't much care for Abba. So far. Yesterday I walked him around the apartment looking at things. He stared for ages at the bookshelf, particularly when I took books out and put them back again, he couldn't quite figure that one out. Today he stared for ages at himself in the bedroom mirror.
Sometimes he decides he's sleepy after all and I lie him in his cot where, if he wakes up, he can watch one of his mobiles go around for a while. So we go until we land up around 5:30pm (or if we're really bad and have let things slip, 6pm) where he either wakes up starving or I wake him up to tell him he's starving and we repeat the 4am experience including the boob battle. At this time of day however he's normally more awake and therefore makes much funnier faces as he prepares to latch on to the boob. My favourite is the one where he screws up his little face, furrows his eyebrows in concentration and dives for the boob with his mouth open like an angry little politician - sometimes so quickly that the hand I use to support his head can't keep up and he gets there without my help. Sometimes he misses and reaches his head back again making several different open and shut cross-eyed faces while he rearranges his expression which normally makes me laugh so hard that he can't latch on because I'm moving.
After that I run about 4 inches of warm water into the bath and put him in it for a float. He loves this more than nearly anything. I have one hand under his head and the other under his chest or his bum and I swoosh him through the water while he looks around with his eyes wide and his mouth slightly open making little 'ooh' noises with his breath. He hates being taken out and by the time the towel is wrapped around him he's had one good wail, at which point he realises he's actually warm and dry and shuts up. And we feed again until he gets sleepy, or gets full and stops eating.
At that point it's either a nap or a sit in the livingroom with Mum and Dad while he stares at everything. Normally he falls asleep at some point and we put him in his basket in the cot. This frees us up for our own dinner until he gets a bottle of formula at around 10 or 10:30 while I express a bottle full for D to give him in the morning. He then falls asleep for the rest of the day and the cycle starts again.
Every day he's awake a little longer, every day he eats a little more, every day he looks around a little more, reacts a little more, nearly smiles a little more and needs changing a little more. Every day his clothes get a little tighter and his head a little stronger. Every day he's a little more human and that alien stare is a little further away. Every day he's more like my baby. I think.
.
The Poo Chronicles
I have been asked not to include any more poo stories in this blog. This is a blog about a new baby. Excluding all mentions of poo is going to be like writing about Nixon without mentioning Watergate - after all, what are new babies other than factories for processing breast-milk and turning it into by-products - 50% of which are poo?
The fact that there is nothing one can do with these by-products other than add them to the general bulk of the city's effluvient is, I think, more of a indictment of the general human imagination rather than any failing on the part of new babies. After all, they do what they do very efficiently...
I will, however, endeavour to keep poo references to a minimum... after this post...
My Mother is here, has been for the past two weeks and has the best part of another week to go and it's been lovely. She's cooked, cleaned, babysat and force-fed me fluids throughout the day. Once she leaves, the whole place is going to hell in a handbasket. The upside of her leaving is that I will no longer be regaled with stories of what a truly horrible infant I was, how I wouldn't sleep, wailed all the time and generally escaped Sudden Infant Death At The Hands Of my Parents by otherwise being 'a darling little fat cuddly thing'. She's also changed a few nappies. I wish they had had more poo in them.
While Mum adores Charlie, she is a little disgusted with him as he is not the hell-raiser I deserve after my own behaviour at his age - or D's at the same age for that matter according to his Ma. In fact, both our Mothers visibly rubbed their hands together with glee at the thought of us getting our come-uppance and much to their disappointment we've landed Mr. Cool Bird who only really grizzles when he's hungry or has a full nappy.
The downside of little Charlie is that he's inherited the worst of both my brother's and D's combined cleanliness obsessions and cannot stand the slightest mess in his nappy - he won't feed or be calmed until he's got a dry one on. The bad side of this is that he starts complaining the instant poo hits bottom and so is often not finished when the new nappy is on, resulting in either projectile-pooing during the change (and the resulting question 'how did I get poo there?) or a long, noisily satisfying second-stage poo moments after a clean nappy is attached.
At the moment it's all a dream as breast-milk poo does not smell - the baby just gets a little more milky-scented. Once he starts eating real food and having real poos however the situation will change but at the moment clearly I cannot think about that. It's a great trick by old Motherhood, this business of non-stinky poo, it's obviously designed to makes one imagine that nappies for the next 2 years won't be that bad and therefore prevent one from putting the baby into the washing machine with all his nappies in a moment of madness - and the story from my friend L about how she vomited and had to leave the house for five hours after changing her daughter's first baked-bean poo nappy seems a million miles away.
In fact, while the idea of changing pooey nappies for two years may have seemed inconceivable prior to the arrival of little C, it's amazing how much it actually doesn't bother you when a) it's your own baby and b) it doesn't actually smell. You see, Motherhood is completely suspect.
The downside of all this poo ('what' I hear you say, 'there's a DOWNside?') is the incredible number of nappies one has to change... 7 to 9 in a 24 hour period. The magazines I've read estimate that every baby goes through around 7000 nappies in their life. If you imagine standing beside a pile of 7000 dirty nappies and then multiply that by the number of babies on your street and the number of streets in your city, suddenly it's a fairly alarming picture. Add to that the thought of carrying that many nappies home from the shops plus the cost - around £2000 - and suddenly all my cloth-nappy laundry doesn't seem so bad.
Washing them at 40 degrees every three days does put somewhat of a strain on the environment but use the right detergent and dry them on the line and it's not that bad. In terms of cost, we paid £150 for enough to get him through the first six months. Add incremental detergent and electricity and we reckon it'll be well under £1000 to get him through to toilet training - possibly £750 or less. This is a saving of £1000 to £1250, or enough money to keep his parents in vodka for the duration... something which I'm sure is going to come in handy once we hit the baked bean poos.
A final note on poo. Some parents seem determined to spell it 'pooh' as if one's baby is ejecting lovely little fuzzy bears into his nappy instead of the reality of liquid yellow turds (this last sentence specifically dedicated to Hoto). I feel I must rebel against this spelling but I'm not quite sure why. Perhaps it's something to do with the Disnification of the world and the appearance of Pooh bear on everything from mobiles to wet wipes.
Anyway, while I cannot promise to refrain from inflicting more poo upon you during the course of this blog, I will do my very best to give you only the more inciteful and humourous instances of what, it has to be said, is the main focus of my every day.
poo
The fact that there is nothing one can do with these by-products other than add them to the general bulk of the city's effluvient is, I think, more of a indictment of the general human imagination rather than any failing on the part of new babies. After all, they do what they do very efficiently...
I will, however, endeavour to keep poo references to a minimum... after this post...
My Mother is here, has been for the past two weeks and has the best part of another week to go and it's been lovely. She's cooked, cleaned, babysat and force-fed me fluids throughout the day. Once she leaves, the whole place is going to hell in a handbasket. The upside of her leaving is that I will no longer be regaled with stories of what a truly horrible infant I was, how I wouldn't sleep, wailed all the time and generally escaped Sudden Infant Death At The Hands Of my Parents by otherwise being 'a darling little fat cuddly thing'. She's also changed a few nappies. I wish they had had more poo in them.
While Mum adores Charlie, she is a little disgusted with him as he is not the hell-raiser I deserve after my own behaviour at his age - or D's at the same age for that matter according to his Ma. In fact, both our Mothers visibly rubbed their hands together with glee at the thought of us getting our come-uppance and much to their disappointment we've landed Mr. Cool Bird who only really grizzles when he's hungry or has a full nappy.
The downside of little Charlie is that he's inherited the worst of both my brother's and D's combined cleanliness obsessions and cannot stand the slightest mess in his nappy - he won't feed or be calmed until he's got a dry one on. The bad side of this is that he starts complaining the instant poo hits bottom and so is often not finished when the new nappy is on, resulting in either projectile-pooing during the change (and the resulting question 'how did I get poo there?) or a long, noisily satisfying second-stage poo moments after a clean nappy is attached.
At the moment it's all a dream as breast-milk poo does not smell - the baby just gets a little more milky-scented. Once he starts eating real food and having real poos however the situation will change but at the moment clearly I cannot think about that. It's a great trick by old Motherhood, this business of non-stinky poo, it's obviously designed to makes one imagine that nappies for the next 2 years won't be that bad and therefore prevent one from putting the baby into the washing machine with all his nappies in a moment of madness - and the story from my friend L about how she vomited and had to leave the house for five hours after changing her daughter's first baked-bean poo nappy seems a million miles away.
In fact, while the idea of changing pooey nappies for two years may have seemed inconceivable prior to the arrival of little C, it's amazing how much it actually doesn't bother you when a) it's your own baby and b) it doesn't actually smell. You see, Motherhood is completely suspect.
The downside of all this poo ('what' I hear you say, 'there's a DOWNside?') is the incredible number of nappies one has to change... 7 to 9 in a 24 hour period. The magazines I've read estimate that every baby goes through around 7000 nappies in their life. If you imagine standing beside a pile of 7000 dirty nappies and then multiply that by the number of babies on your street and the number of streets in your city, suddenly it's a fairly alarming picture. Add to that the thought of carrying that many nappies home from the shops plus the cost - around £2000 - and suddenly all my cloth-nappy laundry doesn't seem so bad.
Washing them at 40 degrees every three days does put somewhat of a strain on the environment but use the right detergent and dry them on the line and it's not that bad. In terms of cost, we paid £150 for enough to get him through the first six months. Add incremental detergent and electricity and we reckon it'll be well under £1000 to get him through to toilet training - possibly £750 or less. This is a saving of £1000 to £1250, or enough money to keep his parents in vodka for the duration... something which I'm sure is going to come in handy once we hit the baked bean poos.
A final note on poo. Some parents seem determined to spell it 'pooh' as if one's baby is ejecting lovely little fuzzy bears into his nappy instead of the reality of liquid yellow turds (this last sentence specifically dedicated to Hoto). I feel I must rebel against this spelling but I'm not quite sure why. Perhaps it's something to do with the Disnification of the world and the appearance of Pooh bear on everything from mobiles to wet wipes.
Anyway, while I cannot promise to refrain from inflicting more poo upon you during the course of this blog, I will do my very best to give you only the more inciteful and humourous instances of what, it has to be said, is the main focus of my every day.
poo
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