The Tenth Month: August
10th
Discovered you trying to climb the stairs today – alone – you’ve been doing it with Dada for a few weeks now. You can also get out of your cot when the side is down. I have been sewing your quilt this afternoon, started a week before your birth, and you have played for half an hour, entertained solely with a wooden spoon, waving it about, exploring it, and hitting the big green gym ball. You’re very happy exploring, although keen to press the sewing machine pedal.
A few days of hot weather, nearly drove to Cornwall to camp at Zennen Cove with Pippa’s family, but the site was full, and too far to go alone with crawling, curious you, while Dada works. We had a lovely day near Tintern yesterday, picnicking on a slope above a field of sheep, while you chewed twigs and grasses. Today you slept in your cot for an hour (1-2pm), once I’d fed you to sleep, and then for another hour (2-3pm) on my breast/lap. So lovely to sit quietly, staring into space with you in my arms. Also reading - What Mother’s Do, Especially when it looks like Nothing (Naomi Stadlen).
18th (Thurs)
What a sweetie you were tonight. Really tired – we both were. I was trying to feed you to sleep on our bed after an interrupted night’s sleep at Joanna’s last night, bout 7.30pm. After a long feed, you started crawling round the bed and climbing on me in a tired, dozy sort of way, but always looking at me with a winsome smile and with your little tongue sticking out. It’s what you do when you are tired, but still awake. You kept cuddling up to me and smiling in a way you never do in the day, because now you are out there exploring the world, standing up, holding onto shelves, poking wooden spoons in draws and sucking on flexes, and I guess I’m just food to you.
26th
You are a vibrant, vigorous little boy these days. I feel we are moving into new territory, a new era, as you stand up and hold onto furniture, the cat’s basket, and today, the rice cooker I left on the floor. I am suddenly aware that you are taking in everything, all that we say and do. Today I felt bad because I shouted at you as you tried to crawl in the rice and peas I was trying to sweep up at the grandparent’s house (Salisbury Rd). You love brooms and the dustpan and brush! You are no longer a tiny bundle, a helpless creature, but a little person exploring, and curious about the world.
You had loads of company today, Anjuli and Vinni Gupta came from Oxford, with Kabir (11), Malika (10) and Anisha (11), who spent all day entertaining you, bouncing you up and down and walking through the corridors at Grandpa’s. You seemed quite bewildered at all the new people, but you were happy to sit on Anjuli’s knee at lunchtime and eat basmati rice from her hand, while I sat next to you.
Later I left you with them for half an hour to go up the Gloucester Rd. I think you were OK, you didn’t cry, but overall in the day you seemed more unsettled that usual, and had your serious, observing expression on, taking it all in, surveying the scene. I wondered if you’d be like that at a nursery or childminders and am so glad that we’re still in each other’s company so much, because you seem to be so assured and happy most of the time.
I’ve been reading Our Babies Ourselves, How Biology and Culture shape the way we Parent by US anthropologist Meredith Small, fascinating and passionately factual about the evolutionary reasons why babies (basically small mammals) need to be close to their mothers 24 hours a day and how the industrialised, Western way of parenting is possibly damaging, or at least less healthy for the baby (separate rooms, formula feeding at long intervals etc). I have been so tired this week, have not felt like seeing anyone, in fact today is the first day for a week I’ve felt I’ve had a decent night’s sleep, but up at 6.30am even so, and when I read part of this book about babies and sleep, I cried thinking of all the babies put to sleep away from their mothers. I feel so passionate about the promotion of a symbiotic (?) relationship between mother and newborn. Unfortunately we live in our isolated, nuclear family pods that make it hard for mothers to sustain such close contact for very long. The hunter-gatherer society is more suited to happy child raising. This book has helped me to reconnect with my instinct about what is right for you, my little mammal, although you are growing into a little boy person and are no longer the suckling creature of newborn-ness.
Little bumps on your head daily…yesterday you collided with my tooth while leaping on my knee with your usual vigour. Poor love, you cried, and afterwards I felt concussed.
Discovered you trying to climb the stairs today – alone – you’ve been doing it with Dada for a few weeks now. You can also get out of your cot when the side is down. I have been sewing your quilt this afternoon, started a week before your birth, and you have played for half an hour, entertained solely with a wooden spoon, waving it about, exploring it, and hitting the big green gym ball. You’re very happy exploring, although keen to press the sewing machine pedal.
A few days of hot weather, nearly drove to Cornwall to camp at Zennen Cove with Pippa’s family, but the site was full, and too far to go alone with crawling, curious you, while Dada works. We had a lovely day near Tintern yesterday, picnicking on a slope above a field of sheep, while you chewed twigs and grasses. Today you slept in your cot for an hour (1-2pm), once I’d fed you to sleep, and then for another hour (2-3pm) on my breast/lap. So lovely to sit quietly, staring into space with you in my arms. Also reading - What Mother’s Do, Especially when it looks like Nothing (Naomi Stadlen).
18th (Thurs)
What a sweetie you were tonight. Really tired – we both were. I was trying to feed you to sleep on our bed after an interrupted night’s sleep at Joanna’s last night, bout 7.30pm. After a long feed, you started crawling round the bed and climbing on me in a tired, dozy sort of way, but always looking at me with a winsome smile and with your little tongue sticking out. It’s what you do when you are tired, but still awake. You kept cuddling up to me and smiling in a way you never do in the day, because now you are out there exploring the world, standing up, holding onto shelves, poking wooden spoons in draws and sucking on flexes, and I guess I’m just food to you.
26th
You are a vibrant, vigorous little boy these days. I feel we are moving into new territory, a new era, as you stand up and hold onto furniture, the cat’s basket, and today, the rice cooker I left on the floor. I am suddenly aware that you are taking in everything, all that we say and do. Today I felt bad because I shouted at you as you tried to crawl in the rice and peas I was trying to sweep up at the grandparent’s house (Salisbury Rd). You love brooms and the dustpan and brush! You are no longer a tiny bundle, a helpless creature, but a little person exploring, and curious about the world.
You had loads of company today, Anjuli and Vinni Gupta came from Oxford, with Kabir (11), Malika (10) and Anisha (11), who spent all day entertaining you, bouncing you up and down and walking through the corridors at Grandpa’s. You seemed quite bewildered at all the new people, but you were happy to sit on Anjuli’s knee at lunchtime and eat basmati rice from her hand, while I sat next to you.
Later I left you with them for half an hour to go up the Gloucester Rd. I think you were OK, you didn’t cry, but overall in the day you seemed more unsettled that usual, and had your serious, observing expression on, taking it all in, surveying the scene. I wondered if you’d be like that at a nursery or childminders and am so glad that we’re still in each other’s company so much, because you seem to be so assured and happy most of the time.
I’ve been reading Our Babies Ourselves, How Biology and Culture shape the way we Parent by US anthropologist Meredith Small, fascinating and passionately factual about the evolutionary reasons why babies (basically small mammals) need to be close to their mothers 24 hours a day and how the industrialised, Western way of parenting is possibly damaging, or at least less healthy for the baby (separate rooms, formula feeding at long intervals etc). I have been so tired this week, have not felt like seeing anyone, in fact today is the first day for a week I’ve felt I’ve had a decent night’s sleep, but up at 6.30am even so, and when I read part of this book about babies and sleep, I cried thinking of all the babies put to sleep away from their mothers. I feel so passionate about the promotion of a symbiotic (?) relationship between mother and newborn. Unfortunately we live in our isolated, nuclear family pods that make it hard for mothers to sustain such close contact for very long. The hunter-gatherer society is more suited to happy child raising. This book has helped me to reconnect with my instinct about what is right for you, my little mammal, although you are growing into a little boy person and are no longer the suckling creature of newborn-ness.
Little bumps on your head daily…yesterday you collided with my tooth while leaping on my knee with your usual vigour. Poor love, you cried, and afterwards I felt concussed.
posted by f at 11:16 AM
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