Three months and two days

I'm being slightly haunted by an uncharacteristically stern comment from Penelope Leach (can't check the exact quote because the book is packed away ready for moving house). Something along the lines of 'don't get cross if your baby wants to be held all the time and cries when you try to put her down; it's not her who's being unreasonable, it's you'.

Unreasonable? Maybe. But only in the sense that human beings ARE partly unreasonable. Show me any person who wouldn't feel 'unreasonable' enough to want to put their baby down when by two o'clock in the afternoon they'd not eaten since the previous evening, been woken twice in the night, not showered or dressed, and not spoken to another adult for hours, and I'll show you a saint/liar. It's not that I want to deny Alice's need to be held, but it doesn't make me a bad mother if I also want to perform the basic functions necessary to my own survival and sanity, does it?

Another writer who I mostly respect, Naomi Stadlen, has also made me feel guilty/indignant with her take on 'maternal ambivalence', which she claims is NOT an inevitable part of the mothering experience. She quotes women writers who describe feeling wretched and angry when they couldn't get time away from their babies, and concludes that it's only when mothers want time to themselves - to read, write, earn a living etc - that they feel anger towards their babies. If they gave up these foolish desires they would be a lot happier and not hate their babies any more - voila, no ambivalence after all.

I don't think I would ever *express* anger towards Alice for crying incessantly. But I do want her to shut up without having to attach her to my person 24/7, and not just because I hate to see her upset (though I do). Sorry Penelope and Naomi, but I'm only human.

Ten weeks and one day

24 Hours in the Life of Alice:

1800: big feed from dad, followed by sleepy cuddles
1900: bath ( still not sure if this is nice or nasty) then story, swaddled and put to bed
1930 - 2000: not ready to sleep yet, has a bit of a cry
2000 - 2030: sucking on dummy only thing which stops her crying
2030: still crying, v tired now though and falls asleep on her own (dummy removed as she can't keep it in by herself and I'm not going to hold it in her mouth all night)
1030: fast asleep but has 60ml 'dreamfeed' - bid to get her to have her long sleep starting from now instead of waking up at 0200
0145: damn, wakes up for a feed
0215: nappy change and back to bed
0230: won't settle, wide awake then crying
0300ish: eventually grizzles herself to sleep after a bit more food, shushing and pacing from dad, and rocking her cradle
0645: wakes up for a feed
0730: no more sleep just now thanks
0845: awake but quiet, comes into the bathroom with me while I have a bath
0900: crying again, nappy change
0930: decide to give a feed
1000 - 1100: dozing after feed. I manage to have breakfast.
1100 - 1200: grouchy, alternate crying and sleeping, nappy change
1215: sucks on dummy for a bit, grouches a bit more, falls fast asleep
1300 - 1315: still pretty much asleep but stirring to cry briefly once or twice
1330: not fully awake but not quite happy either - time for lunch (takes 120ml)
1345: face wash, new lip strapping and nappy change
1350 - 1425: little bounce and then play on floor mat and in chair with dangly toys (loves this - can follow toys with eyes but not yet reach out for them)
1425: yawning but not ready for a nap yet - we listen to some Classic FM
1430: leave A. with the radio while I wash and sterilise her bottles and hang up the washing
1445: crying and sleepy - has a suck on dummy
1450: after shushing, rocking and dummy, falls asleep
1520: unsettled unless sucking dummy
1530: dad gets home, briefly distracted and happy
1535 -1550: still won't settle, hungry AGAIN?
1600: feed (110ml)
1620 -1645: cuddles and play, alert and happy
1700: adult dinner time
1745: very sucky and grumpy so we go for another feed
1900: goes suddenly to sleep listening to Jocelyn Pook and doesn't wake up until 0200!

Six weeks

To celebrate Alice reaching the grand old age of six weeks, here are:

Six Things I Wish I'd Packed In My Hospital Bag:
1) more sanitary pads (oh so many more)
2) more baby clothes (babies be MESSY)
3) more towels (hospital towels are tiny and unforgivingly WHITE)
4) nice teabags (like on the Heart of Gold in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the hospital vending machine produced a liquid almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea)
5) lip balm (actually I had this but it was VITAL during labour so worth emphasising)
6) strong liquor (ok I wouldn't have been allowed it but Rescue Remedy just wasn't cutting it when it came to dulling the sheer shock of delivering a baby)

and I wish I'd left out:
1) books (couldn't concentrate)
2) carefully chosen 'birth' CDs (music last thing on mind during labour)

Six Pieces of Advice:
1) don't bother 'getting as much rest as you can before the baby arrives' - it's not like we can store up sleep like water in a camel's hump
2) don't buy any toys for the baby - he or she will be drowning in them from other people and won't appreciate them for months yet anyway
3) stock up your freezer with meals that require no further preparation, or ensure people bring you food - cooking will be the last thing you feel like doing
4) don't read baby 'bibles' etc if you can possibly stop yourself
5) go with the baby's flow at all times
6) ignore everyone else's advice, including the above :)

Six Things I Know About Alice:
1) she cries most between 7am - 10am (when I want to get washed and eat breakfast) and 7pm - 10pm (when I want to eat dinner and go to bed)
2) her favourite things to look at are bright lights and people's faces, in that order
3) she prefers hip hop and classical to indie
4) she finds her own hiccups quite entertaining
5) she will cry herself into a frenzy before admitting she's tired and just going to sleep
6) every day she will do something that makes me realise I don't know her at all

-

Five weeks and three days

Tough night and day with Alice. She's been feeding at totally random intervals, some as short as an hour, and my failure to anticipate this makes me feel like a horrible mother as I faff about getting the feeds ready while she screams inconsolably. She's had a few quite peaceful naps but when she's awake she's crying; there's no in between where she's awake and happy.

Didn't help that when I got to the checkout in Sainsbury's with her in the baby carrier this morning the cashier said 'doesn't your baby need a hat?' Instead of telling her to mind her own business I just pointed out that she had a hat, it was in the basket and I would be putting it on when we got outside. Undeterred, she then moved on to speculate that the suit Alice was wearing wasn't warm enough. I wonder if people realise the damage they do with comments like this. I knew that Alice was perfectly cosy and managed to stay calm by telling myself (and the cashier) this repeatedly, but it would take a very confident mother to shrug off other people's opinions altogether. And I don't think I'm that very confident mother...

Tomorrow we have to to take the train up to Guys in London so Alice can be assessed before her lip surgery in April. It's the longest/furthest trip we've done with her - I just pray she isn't in the same frame of mind as today, because I don't fancy dealing with all this in public and in a totally strange environment.

Five weeks and two days

Ok, I need to amend what I wrote five days ago, I think. I just started reading What Mothers Do by Naomi Stadlen, which in its very first chapter addresses the issue of there being nothing to say about looking after babies:

a mother who has little to relate usually assumes that this is because there really is very little worth telling ... Our language can be very clear and precise about anything practical. A person who has 'tidied up' has both the word and a tidy area to show for it. It is much harder to find a word that describes the giving-up-things mode of attention a mother is giving to her baby.

At first I thought it was just coincidence that made me reach for that particular book (which I borrowed from the library before Alice was even born). But I wonder whether subconsciously I was uncomfortable about the 'motherhood is boring' trope that I'd flippantly evoked in the last post, and wanted something to counter my own words. Because deep down I know that what I do for Alice is NOT trivial and menial. It's just that it's hard to externalise the things that now feel important, because the language of the public world doesn't fit the achievements of the domestic one.

In other words, there might not be a conspiracy of silence as such, but a silence is imposed anyway through not having the right words.

One month and one day

Alice was a month old yesterday, still feeding brilliantly and gaining weight which is about all she's supposed to achieve at the moment. She also spends more time awake, can focus on our faces for longer, and may have started awarding her first proper smiles (although wind is still a possibility).

I'm now beginning to understand why both celebrities and literary types have the urge to churn out baby books, but also why there are very few epic works about caring for newborns. One the one hand I do want to talk about her endlessly, and could no doubt fill pages about her biscuity baby smell, the changing shape of her eyes, the amount her hair has grown, the way she stretches her arms... but on the other hand there is pretty much nothing transcendent or miraculous or poetic about the daily tasks which fill up the majority of my hours. Maybe there's not some misogynist conspiracy of silence about motherhood after all; it's just that there isn't anything worth saying about the two fundamentals - feeding one end and wiping the other. However loving and amazed and transformed you feel towards the object of these attentions, it's still basically just feeding and wiping, feeding and wiping, feeding and wiping. And nobody needs to read about that.

(Having said that, my god, it's astonishing how many foodstuffs suddenly become anathema when you're exposed to a variegated menu of baby shit all day: peanut butter, hummous, mustard... all deeply unappetising until further notice.)

Two weeks and four days

Well, Alice is now 18 days old, and since her dad went back to work it definitely feels like the 'babymoon' is over. I'm still smitten with her, but not so much with night feeds (especially when she's going through a phase of eating every two hours) or with the endless, mindless round of preparing formula and washing, sterilising, warming and cooling bottles and accessories.

I thought I was prepared for the consequences of her cleft, but now I realise that I was subconsciously expecting it to be like mine - a narrow cleft on one side of her lip, not the wide gap going through both lip and palate that she actually has. Aesthetically it didn't take long to get used to and she looks absolutely beautiful anyway, but I must admit to being deeply disappointed that I can't breastfeed her normally. I am expressing milk but we have to top her up with formula, something I never thought I would have to do. The ridiculous palaver of bottle-feeding doesn't help - I can't just stick her on a boob when she seems hungry, so it's a constant struggle to stay one step ahead with preparing feeds.

But she feeds very well (if a bit messily) from her squeezy bottle and at this point her cleft really doesn't make her different from any other baby, just more time-consuming. I don't know what the future will bring though, except that I'm already dreading the day we go for her lip surgery and her adorable face changes forever - even though I know I'll love her new smile just as much.