The Seventh Month: May

9th
Such a happy boy last night. Sunny Sunday evening, lush garden: lilac blooming, white hawthorn flower. You sat in the breeze, sighing at the wind. You love holding leaves and flowers, twisting, turning and examining them. I showed you the parsley and rosemary and Mia miaowing. You talk to the cats, exclaiming excitedly when they pass – now you can squeal and squeak in a high voice, different to your low growls and babbles.

I've often imagined a film camera filming from your point of view as you lie in the pram in the garden; a view of washing flapping in the breeze as you wake up or sleep, of the sounds you hear as you drift into wakefulness in the garden, the zoom of a scooter pelting up the cycle track behind the house, my voice coming up behind you as you cry yourself awake, the breeze playing with your pudgy feet and hands. I wonder what it's like to be a little one lying in a pram with lots of unknown sounds and new sensations around and big people high above you.

You sit and bounce up and down on your haunches, smiling at your face in the mirror, sometimes taking a forward dive and banging your head on the floor. You love to sit on my bended knees when I lie down. We go up and down and you chuckle away. I love your smiling eyes. I was so happy yesterday – we were at home playing in the house and garden. I held you in the bath while you splashed and kicked, the warm water always calms you down when you are tired and crotchety at the end of the day. Happy willy fondling before bath time yesterday!

16th
You were 6 months old on May 3rd. We put 6 ½ candles in a slice of lemon almond cake! I’ve offered you a few foods in the last fortnight: mashed carrot, pureed sweet potato, avocado and banana. Sometimes mixed with breast milk, but on the whole you’ve not been too interested, spitting out the lumps, although you have swallowed minute amounts of banana and pear. I first gave you pieces of avocado and sweet potato to hold. You enjoyed mashing them between your fingers and spreading them on the table.

We stayed at the Bear Hotel, Crickhowell at the weekend. You slept surprisingly well in the hotel’s travel cot. I went to pick you up at 4am to find you sitting up in the cot – amazing, the first time you’ve done this. You seem to like sleeping on your side or front these days and can wriggle around quite well.

20th
Bottom right tooth came through this week. You’ve been grumbling and miserable, crying inconsolably first thing in the morning and once you’ve gone to bed. Poor little love, you’re not yourself at all – the happy, amiable soul you’ve been up to now. I left you sitting on the floor with the will solicitor today (in our sitting room) and you looked so unsure when I left the room, the first time you’ve complained when you’ve been left momentarily with a stranger.

27th
We played and had a feed in the garden today. You are so lively and grown up these days. You climb on me like a little mammal creature that you are. I love the way you nuzzle your head into my chest when you’re hungry and lie across my cross-legged lap to feed. You put your hand to my breast and pinch me some times or push my flesh, maybe to get the milk to flow quicker. Such a hot day (24C?) You rolled about with your nappy off in the shade next to the bed of rosemary and parsley, chewing the ribbon attached to your mat and squawking at the pussycats. I held you by your hands and you pulled yourself up on your strong legs, as you have for a few weeks. You are so happy and proud of yourself. This morning I helped you stand in your cot holding onto the side. You’re so clever, and not even 7 months yet. You fill me with delight and laughter with all your lovely ways.

The other day when we bathed to together I lay back as you sat between my knees, and you stretched yourself on top of me and started suckling from my breast. It was the most delightful thing and made me laugh. I wish I had a poet’s gift to express my delight and wonder in your special self. You are so obviously your own little person and I read all your ways and expressions as well as I can. You’re always up for a giggle when I tickle you or put my face right up to yours and speak in a funny voice, as I did this morning while queuing in Sainsbury’s, as you lay awake so patiently in your pushchair.

A few difficult nights. P. away paragliding in Austria. T. taking 2 hours or so to settle at bedtime. The first two nights alone I went to bed at 9pm to feed you to sleep (tried to watch TV adaptation of Meera Syal’s novel ‘Life’s not all Ha Ha Hee Hee). I left you crying for 10 minutes while I finished dinner hurriedly to come and sleep with you, to discover you had got your little head wedged in the 10cm gap between the bedside cot mattress and our mattress. Did I feel bad…

29th
How can I describe the delightful presence of your being…the smell of your luscious skin where I bury my face in your neck…your fleshy arms, and little piggy toes, your large dimpled hands (sculptor’s hands Sophie says)…your Cumberland sausage things. When you are asleep I appreciate you in a different way. You are still enough for me to look at your face and study your features; still enough to stroke your downy, smooth skin, to hold your hands and stroke your head – all of which I do when you are in your half-sleep crying state, tossing and turning, on all fours, and from one side to the other, as if you are searching for the perfect state of sleep, bottom in the air, burrowing into the pillow. Tonight you slept for an hour before waking (7.20pm-8.20pm). I could draw you in the evening light that crept through our bedroom curtain. When you awoke I held you in my arms, your head on my chest, rocking and singing to you, before lying beside you and stroking your head.

The Sixth Month: April

18th
You are six months this week. How fast the time flies. You are just sitting up, have been for a couple of weeks and are now keeling over less. I think about writing often, to hold on and be aware of these precious moments. You sleep 3 times a day, usually 2 x half hours and 1 hour and it’s barely time enough to catch up, usually on necessary things like washing up, hanging out washing and making myself lunch. Never mind anything grander or more creative.

You giggle when I massage your thighs, and I wonder if I hold you and touch you enough. You play more when you feed – looking away, kicking you legs, batting the book or paper I am reading. Sometimes you look at me and I have been staring miles away, spaced out and I wonder if I need to be more connected. Am I making you into a self-sufficient, contained child, like I was? I want you to need people more and to be at ease with them, to have friends, to make them easily.

You explore everything with your mouth, look around the room when we arrive anywhere. I feel it is all going in, being absorbed. You are dribbling a lot, and I can just see 2 tiny teeth on your lower gums, they look as if they are already there.

Feeds; 7/8am, 10/11am, 1/2pm, 4/5 pmish, 7/8pm, 10/11pm. Waking t 6anm and usually in the bed with me after midnight. You are very restless from 4-5am, twitching and rubbing your face. You maybe feed at 1/2am then at 4/5am or sometimes not and just wake at 6am. I put your face to my breast and let you suckle as I try to snooze. From about 4 months old you would wake and be talking to yourself. Each time I have tried to record or video this, the sight of the camera silences you. You’re just too curious!

The Fifth Month: March

3rd
Exhaustion. T. nearly 5 months old and we’ve had a few days/nights where we have been unable to settle him. I was feeding him in bed this morning at 9am, when he started his projectile vomiting. I tried to hold him over the edge of the bed, only to bang his head on the corner of the bedside cot. Awful war wound, bleeding bruise under left eye. I was mortified and cried a lot of the day, after taking him to the health centre to be checked. They made me sign a form to say what had happened, probably monitoring me for child abuse. Full of guilt and remorse, I hope there will be no scar on his lovely baby skin. Am in zombified state.

The Fourth Month: February

15th
You rolled over for the first time. At 14 weeks you were able to reach out for a rattle, keeping yourself entertained while we changed your nappy.


23rd
You laughed today – really giggled as I changed your nappy. P away, skiing in the Dolomites. I’ve been staying with Joanna in Stroud. You enjoyed watching the antics of Jude (5) and Callum (7), jumping on the sofa. You also smiled winsomely when 18 month-old Amy looked at you, examining you closely, stroking your head repeatedly. She tried to do up your cardi buttons and offered you a bit of apple she was eating, much to our amusement.


27th
Time whizzes by; it seems as if T. is no longer a baby, or at least a different baby. He is more wakeful and alert, finally over his cold, and ghastly cough he had since early Feb.

So terrifying at first, coughing at night, and us worrying about it, that we couldn’t help him to feel better. Also, being sick almost daily, having to change our bed sheets at 4am...or his. Once I heard him crying in his cot at 10pm, and he had been sick. He had been lying on his side propped between 2 towels. P had been doing all sorts so that he’s not horizontal, taking the bottom castors off the cot etc. Unbelievably he has been in a cot for the past few weeks. He sleeps with his arms flung out. I still think of him as a little dormouse at night, he sits all curled up after feeding. The last few nights he has been unable to sleep after 4am, or at least has fed sleeping, but then twitched and cried every time I have tried to put him back into his cot. He has a stage of sleep where he twitches in a kind of ‘St Vitus’ dance’ way, throwing back his head, and jerking his limbs.

I feel more exhausted and depressed on the days with little sleep - ‘tired and emotional’. Things have been strained between me and P; my love and intensity of feeling for T is counter balanced by an ill at easeness and occasionally loathing for P. Sometimes I feel he wants to express an opposing opinion for the sake of it. We constantly disagree about how many blankets to put on the baby, whether he has enough outdoor clothes on etc etc. I feel P undermines my way of doing things. In the night he would point out helpful hints on breastfeeding: to hold T with his head higher that his body, not to feed him lying down (he thinks it contributes to wind); suggesting that T’s frequent vomiting is due to over feeding – when T was vomiting a lot, he would tell me to feed him less.

Now T. is 4 months, P keeps asking about weaning and suggests we try him on various things (bits of banana etc). This ended in an emotional confrontation yesterday, with me sobbing “he’s my baby, and I like feeding him.” I felt P was putting pressure on me to start the weaning process. I go upset partly because I realise this wonderful intimate thing I have with him is nearly over, and I felt I wasn’t’ ready for that. I mourned the fact that he is no longer a tiny baby, though still a baby. I love how he is now, and that he is dependent on me. I can’t imagine not having the special bond which breastfeeding gives. That’s why I love having time at home with him, resting in our bedroom in the afternoons, feeding him and reading or trying to sleep, or sitting on the big chair in the dining room on sunny mornings, feeding him and listening to the radio or reading. I know I will miss the breastfeeding. (Although the beginning of solids is n’t the end of breastfeeding, I felt it might be the start of the end of the exclusive relationship we had.)

Everyone I know seems to want to be out and about all the time, but I need time and space just to be with him. I love mornings after he wakes up, just playing, talking and singing. He’s so chatty now, and laughing too. He wakes up and smiles at us, looking around the room with his inquisitive eyes. Sometimes he has a kind of uncertain expression on his face, and I wonder if we are good role models??? Do we laugh enough? The quality of our relationship could be better.

The Third Month: January

1st
Around midnight of the old year, I was holding T high on my shoulder, rubbing his back to calm him to sleep while fireworks exploded outside the bedroom window in Sandy Park, Liverpool, the house of his grandparents.

A difficult evening as we had tried to put him to bed since 8pm, by feeding him, rubbing his belly, and holding him. Each time he fell asleep for 10-15 minutes and then re-awoke crying. Sometimes even holding him could not comfort him. He has had a cough, a cold, and a snuffly nose, so somehow he needed more re-assurance. My week to ten days of semi-formed bedtime routing went to pot in Liverpool as we spent our evenings reading in our bedroom, as the ‘parlour’ is permanent fug of cherry tobacco smoke.

A few nights of semi-sleeplessness worrying about childhood illnesses/diseases and how much risk they pose to a new baby. When I’m breastfeeding I’m sometimes thinking/daydreaming about all sorts of things. The other evening I was reminiscing about my youth in Portobello, after a visit from Mary-Enna and family.

Often though, I look into little T’s face, enjoying the perfect shape of his head and his sometimes-open eyes, which are huge in the semi-darkness. At night he looks and seems different, usually perfectly calm, a little feeding creature. He really is a creature; his little sucking mouth that sucks even when he has dozed into perfect milky sleep, his great dark eyes that stare around the room, quite different to their daytime blue. I call him my little dormouse, my chipmunk, and hamster cheeks. P calls him Popsie and Popsicle, but usually I call him Baba. I feel we are just getting to know him.

When in Liverpool, all P’s family thought baby T looked like them, a replica of his cousin Tim as a baby, or his brother Bruno. There does seem to be a likeness, but I said to P I feel cheated! Where are my genes?? Of course my family see the likeness to them, but I think he’s definitely got the King nose.

He really is gorgeous. I look at him and wonder what he will be like in a few years, but at the same time, developing a sense of who he is now, a calm baby, a smiley boy who appears quite gregarious and chatty. Sometimes if he’s being held by others and catches my eye, or I look directly at him, his face lights up, it feels that he know me, his gaze meets mine and is transfixed.

24th
Your first train trip! (from Stapleton Rd to Clifton Down with Sophie and Samuel Shotter). Do you know that when you ring National Rail Enquiries you speak to someone in India?!

The Second Month: December

The Second Month: December

3rd
T is 4 weeks and 1 day old. We sang him ‘Happy Monthday’ yesterday. This morning in bed I sang:

Good Morning
Good Morning
Good Morning to you

(from Singing in the Rain), and he smiled. He smiled again each time I sang it. His first proper smiles, when awake. He has smiled in his sleep, and I imagine he’s having a lovely dream, although apparently it’s just wind.

I love his soft skin, and his little face, which sometimes looks like a dormouse, so tiny and vulnerable. I nuzzled to his neck when he was just a few days old and thought how his sweet smelling softness was just poetry, and wished I could write a poem about his deliciousness. Now his neck smells of old milk, but he is just as lovely. His cheeks are rounder and he has a sizeable double chin. P discovered putting him on his front makes him quite contented. He makes these sweet sounds that I can’t quite describe, but they are happy. Sometimes he has a furrowed little brow and looks a bit anxious and I worry if I am making him insecure by not getting to him fast enough, when he cries to be fed.

Amazing how in the first few weeks I though it was quite easy, apart from my soreness. He slept a lot in the day and I could do things, like hang out the washing or download the digital camera. I felt all I had to do was feed him. P was still at home and changing all his nappies. Then I’ve had a week or so where he has wanted to feed, snacking continually and not sleeping very long and it felt impossible to do anything else. (I remember during his third week he seemed to feed about every 10 minutes. I spoke to someone from La Leche, who suggested he was having a growth spurt.)

I have ventured out each day with the Wilkinet sling, which always sends him to sleep. He was about 2.5 weeks the first time I took him out, just up the cycle track at the back of our house. At first it was hard to walk.

I don’t feel ready to go very far, or even hang out with other mothers and babies, too noisy and I worry about him getting a cold. Lara and Lizzie have been to visit me this week with their respective babies (Jed, 3 months and Robin Autumn, 6 weeks). I don’t feel like going out in the car yet.

8th
Days melt away, as I sit on a chair or a bean bag, breastfeeding, listening to Radio 4 or Radio 2 at lunchtime; reading a snippet of a magazine or a book; Penelope Leach’s Baby and Child or Trevor Gunn’s Immunisation, a Point in Question.

Sometimes T seems to hardly sleep; he will fall asleep in my arms, over my shoulder or at my breast, but if I put him down, he soon realises there is no warm body or heartbeat, and his eyes pop open.

This writing is interrupted by his cries for comfort and feeding and my exhaustion. He is 5 weeks today, and I am just surfacing. My ‘parts’ are almost better – I can walk and sit, though just discovered a cut (?) inside my labia, very painful, and I don’t know how it got there. Also feel mildly incontinent.

It’s the first night I am not exhausted and collapsing into bed at 9pm. Miraculously he has slept from 7 – 10pm and I have listened to an old ‘Round the Horn’ programme on BBC7, with Kenneth Williams making me laugh out loud. Just my style and what I need. Also watched a documentary on righting dysfunctional teens and spent 1 hour (!) on the web researching immunisation, reading Informed Parent website.

My mind feels fine but my body is exhausted I long for a sauna and look forward to my first massage tomorrow. Realise my posture is awful and I am holding tension in my arms, wrists, back and shoulders during breastfeeding and through carrying darling boy in the Wilkinet sling. P out for first time at some talk on paragliding in the Himalayas. Nearly 11pm and I am wondering when he is returning…hope this is not a regular thing as it is a long day without him though amazing to have a quiet evening of solitude so early on.

This was the first time Theo slept through from 7- 10pm, and I took it as a cue to put him ‘to bed’ in his Moses basket, which lay next to our bed, after feeding him. Later I regretted starting this bedtime thing so early, because later on he never really settled and we’d spend the whole evening running up and down stairs when he woke crying.

17th
Lovely boy rarely sleeps for longer than 15 minutes in the day. I mean – he will sleep on me, after feeding or being held upright, head over our shoulders, but occasionally I can snatch half an hour - yesterday I made a fruit salad, craving some fruit. He has a couple of smiling moments, again in his wide eyed contented face, after feeding, when he stares in to my eyes and I sing to him, he will smile and chuckle and make those wonderful sounds of childish wonderment. ‘Agu’, ‘aou’, soft open mouthed laughing sounds.

We did our first trip out alone this week (15th Dec) by which I mean negotiating the baby car seat and driving. I drove with Sophie and baby Samuel (9 weeks) to the Galleries in town for 2 hours of concentrated Christmas shopping. Hard pushing the pushchair, carrying bags etc. My shoulders and back are in a permanent ache from holding growing boy and breastfeeding. You become invisible with the pushchair. Apart from a few old women and other mothers, people look through you.

When I took him out to the post office aged 3 weeks, my precious cargo strapped to my front, the women behind the counter didn’t pass one remark about this special tiny being I carried, even as I struggled with my large pile of envelopes. I was posting our birth announcements, which I had written lying in bed, leaning on a tray, still in pain after the birth. I wanted to tell everyone – see how wonderful he is! But I am just another woman with a pushchair.