Posts Tagged ‘baby’

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Metamorphosis

Friday, February 22nd, 2008

Money has always provided me with a perfectly good reason to live. So, although I had a very meagre pay cheque, I now had my reason. Perhaps surprisingly, it was when I had finally rediscovered my reason to live that I realised I actually had two reasons to live.

I blinked and missed the moment that made everything change from surviving to enjoying. I had been waiting for this blob to transition into a real person and cannot even pinpoint the exact time when it felt like I had a purpose in being there for him.

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Galleries in Paris

Monday, February 18th, 2008

If you have a baby and you don’t want that to get in the way of a good holiday, go to Europe where they are tolerated in even the trendiest restaurants and even woken up by friendly restaurant staff and fellow patrons … usually when you have just got them to sleep in their prams … people want them around. And if you are into a cultural trip to see great art, Paris is the place to be on even the busiest long weekend with the most popular masterpieces on show.

It seemed too easy – taking a 7-month-old baby on holiday to London and Paris had images of crying in queues, restaurants, planes and trains. People still claim I’m just one of those lucky mums with an easy child. I can’t claim to not have had luck, as I can’t claim to know what it would be like any other way. What I can claim is that, even if there had been an element of luck involved, it also had a lot to do with dedication, perseverance and tenacity (and that’s baby and me).

To digress slightly, there was an issue with dummy sucking as opposed to thumb sucking. My baby started sucking his thumb as soon as he could get it to his mouth (around 6 weeks) and I switched his thumb for a dummy every time due to the nattering of concerned friends and relatives. Once I realised that dummy sucking involved getting up in the night to replace the dummy every time it fell out (spiral staircase one unfortunate obstacle), I withheld the dummy until my baby learnt to either go to sleep without it or use his thumb or blanket (this involved only two sleep times worth of crying to sort out). But, back to the story …

I booked a flight to coincide as closely as possible with my baby’s sleep routine. Because he had a blanket (several actually but all pretty similar) that he was attached to at sleep time and because he sucked his thumb, he knew it was sleep time as soon as I gave him his blanket and promptly started sucking his thumb … to coincide with take off (and middle ear neutralising!) He then slept all night until the lights went on in the cabin, by which time he (as well as all passengers in close proximity) was well rested.

To digress again, we ordered a TwinArc Travel Cot by LittleLife online, which we had posted to where we were staying in London. This is the most lightweight travel cot you can buy and, therefore, does not reduce your luggage allowance by too much. And, while I’m on the topic of luggage, the pram does not get counted towards your allowance because you push your baby in it all the way to the plane where it gets put in the hold last minute (and not weighed in).

Because baby was following The Routine, there was no issue with putting the cot in our room as he was used to going to sleep at certain times and was not even unsettled by the different environment because we prepared him (never underestimate how much a non-speaking baby can understand) and never made a fuss about putting him in his travel cot to sleep. This gave us free reign to go out when we wanted to and because we were shopping and sightseeing every day, all we had to do was put the pram in recline mode, throw a blanket over the top to block out some light and, hey presto, baby would fall asleep effortlessly … because he was used to The Routine. There are certainly pros and cons to The Routine and I would never be able to convince someone to follow one unless they were that way inclined from the start … but being free to wander the streets of London and Paris with a perfectly rested baby is certainly one of the pros.

Where the luck came in was visiting galleries and exhibitions in Paris where the queues wrapped around buildings and stretched down streets for what seemed like miles. There was always a kindly guard wandering around, ushering all parents with small children to a special queue, which was immensely shorter. At the Picasso museum we even got a personal guide to show us the easiest route and help us into the private elevators.

If you are more geared for rave holidays in Goa and Ibiza, The Routine probably isn’t for you because what parent wants their baby to go to sleep at 7 p.m. and wake up at 7 a.m. when they only get to bed around 7 a.m. themselves?

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Plus one

Friday, February 15th, 2008

So, there I am, sitting in semi-darkness, with my baby attached to my left breast. Again! I had tried using this time to do breathing exercises. I had tried using this time to rest. I had tried using this time to make up fantasy stories for him. I had tried using this time to sing. The problems with the above were: (a) it’s hard to meditate or rest when you are obsessed with knowing the exact time your baby is feeding from each breast; (b) without the rest, I could only think up one story before I hit the bottom of the barrel; and (c) I can’t sing.

I’ve always been good at math though and that part of my brain was still remarkably in tact. From three weeks old, my baby had the entire times table recited to him four times a day.

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Baby OM, The Economist and Pavlov

Thursday, February 14th, 2008

My child now asks for Om Pady Hom … which, in case you still have post-baby jelly brain … is really Om Mani Padme Hom and is a Buddhist chant. To calm him through his crying fits – whether from the reflux, the sleep training, or my total lack of ability to be anywhere near him – I would either play the CD of chants (the very ones that calmed my nerves on many death-defying bus journeys through India) or chant to him in my very own off-key tone. It is a coincidence that he was trained like Pavlov’s dog but he now has his own chant and it is a relief to everyone that there is something that calms him instantly.

I chose reading to him, above the ubiquitous kid-friendly DVDs, which I couldn’t bring myself to watch let alone inflict them on my child. I only had one children’s book in the house at the time – Mr Happy (a gift I had bought my husband when we were in London and he was miserable) – so, when I was thoroughly sick of reading that, I turned to my subscription of the Economist and let him drift to sleep over the latest news of global economies and banking scandal. Turns out, it usually sent me into a deep, much-needed slumber too. Another Pavlov victory: he loves listening to me read to him and can sit still for hours while I read anything I have with me at the time.

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Slop

Wednesday, February 13th, 2008

You unfortunately can’t give your child fillet steak and truffle sauce from day one. You also can’t be sure of the flavours your baby will enjoy … you have to get all the flavours and food groups in and everything comes in the form of slop. When you are giving the baby something that looks so frightful, you can feel free to experiment with all kinds of disgusting sounding combinations because, chances are, you will stumble upon something that baby truly likes while getting all the nutrients in. My baby liked the following combinations:

Mashed banana and avocado
Mashed chickpeas and banana
Mashed lentils and sieved pears
Cooked apples and chickpeas
Pureed rice with potato flour cheese sauce

They sound dreadful and who knows how I came up with them, but they worked and I managed in this way to keep him off meat, wheat and sugar for an entire year.

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A Message in a Bottle

Wednesday, February 6th, 2008

Or rather, a message about a bottle … a bottle of cold pressed sesame seed oil.

I was too stubborn to do the baby-bathing test before I left the hospital. I was totally unprepared for how minuscule baby would be and the thought of trying to wash him in a bath of water while supporting him from head to toe was more than I could comprehend (on top of all the other stuff I couldn’t quite comprehend).

There’s a solution: a sturdy changing table with a comfy changing mat; a plastic bowl; a few facecloths; a baby massage book and a bottle of cold pressed organic sesame oil (there are other oils that can be used but this was the most lightweight I could find). At bath time, the naked baby is wrapped in a towel on the changing mat while you work on each part of the body separately, massaging the oil into baby’s skin (and even the head). Once complete, you use a facecloth and a basin of perfectly warm water to wipe baby down before drying gently and dressing.

This is not only a way around the cumbersome process of bathing, it is also better for baby’s skin – sorting out skin rashes and cradle cap, amongst other things – the massage is great for baby’s body, and it is an incredible bonding experience. While I hate to differentiate between the functions of mum and dad (mainly because it is usually a gross generalisation more than anything else and my husband proved to be a better mother than I was at times), it is a fact that there are men out there terrified of caring for their babies. This massage method brings an easy caring experience to dads as well, and at the right time of day too.

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Naked

Thursday, November 15th, 2007

The volume on bhalababy has been muted for too long so I have decided to turn it up with a sample of freewriting from baby’s first photograph.

‘Please wipe my cheek’, she asks as another tear rolls down, dragged in the wake of the one that has gone before. Her husband leans in and, as he does so, a tear of his own drops down to meet those he is wiping away. These are not sad tears but tears of relief and joy and love. The mound on her belly has been slit open to release the yell of a tiny baby; and not only that but it has released the anticipation and apprehension that has been mounting for the six months since they had discovered their lives were going to change forever. The theatre, a usually sterile, white, odourless and lifeless place is transformed. Her joy bubbles into laughter; her head flicking from side to side attempting to make eye contact with someone; anyone she can focus on; anyone she can share another anecdote with to disperse these overwhelming emotions. The doctors and theatre nurses squelch in their wellington boots through the river of blood and amniotic fluid which is turning the floor her favourite colour. She takes the swaddled baby and smiles. Her nose wrinkles but the tears no longer flow.

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Bugger

Thursday, September 20th, 2007

A baby’s brain is growing at an alarming rate. I’m not speaking from medical knowledge, but it stands to reason that while the brain is growing, and despite the fact that there is no sensible uttering from the mouth of your babe, one should talk to the baby. And I mean actually talk … sense. It puzzled me that most parents believe their babies will understand cooey, gooey crap until I realized that it was the cooey, gooey crap they wanted as their children’s first words. Most parents think it’s cute for their kids to say ‘ta ta’ instead of goodbye. I find it annoying.

I used to live in hope that my child’s first words would be something along the lines of dada, cat or woof. But based on his later exposure to the spoken word, there became a higher likelihood that the first coherent uttering would be more along the lines of fuck or bloody hell. His first real word turned out to be ‘bugger’, repeated several times in quick succession. With his first swear word under his belt, the rest was easy.

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Reaching out on the Radio

Wednesday, August 1st, 2007

What I should have said on Cape Talk was, ‘Yes, I do agree with you that a baby should be put into a routine. But perhaps you shouldn’t make it sound so easy. You are telling all your listeners that your method is the only solution and that they should never allow their kids to be in the driving seat. But perhaps you need to express to them that although they will need to give up the relative ease of demand, demand, demand, it will be easier only after a very long period of extraordinarily hard work. Any new mother will tell you that when trying to get on with life while coping with this new little person in their life it’s as easy being in the driving seat as it is being in the pilot’s seat of a Boeing without a licence to fly. Putting a baby in a routine requires commitment, dedication and vigilance … not to mention a strong will and a tolerance for methods such as controlled crying.’

I should have. But I didn’t.

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Walk the Line

Tuesday, June 19th, 2007

So, you’re feeling evil about having bad thoughts about your newborn. Everyone around you is offering you words of encouragement, but you never let on how you’re really feeling. You’re terrified of being judged a bad mother. You feel inadequate because everyone around you behaves like they were born to motherhood. It looks effortless … or is it just a sham?

There is a thin line you have to walk, a veritable balancing act. You do everything possible to do all the right things for your child so you can be seen in a good light. But it’s a trap! You must do your best up to the point that you don’t surpass any of your peers in your apparent parenting ability. You should never be seen as one of those self-satisfied mums with a perfect life and a perfect child. Cope enough to be seen as a good mother, yet battle just enough to still get the sympathy of your peers.

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What doesn’t kill you makes you want to die

Wednesday, June 13th, 2007

The last time I had this thought was when I was cycling the Argus (109km around the Cape Peninsula i.e. many, many hills), the day after arriving in Cape Town on holiday – with a hangover. I am not a cyclist so the 7+ hours it took me to complete the course felt like an eternity. This is like motherhood, except motherhood is an eternity.

A new mother should never be let out of hospital so soon. Unless there is a support team, a few cheerleaders and several spare bicycles, no one would embark on a race of such epic proportions. You leave the support behind when you walk out of the hospital, armed with nothing more than a tiny baby and a bottle of painkillers.

The rush was so intense, the painkillers were sure to push me over the edge. So I endured the pain and let the exhaustion get me instead. This is a race with no finishing line.

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XY

Sunday, June 10th, 2007

A prerequisite for all new mothers before they leave the hospital is to take a baby-bathing test to prove to the nurses that they are capable of (if nothing else) bathing their newborns. But, besides feeling that I had endured as many tests of my ability as I could in any four-day period, when someone says to me that I can’t do X until I
have done Y, I tend to try my hardest not to do X. As it was I had no intention of doing X until my baby was at least six weeks old. I had a bottle of cold-pressed sesame oil, a purpose-bought shiny white kitchen bowl and a soft flannel. The plan – massage oil into baby’s skin, dip soft flannel into warm water on wipe baby’s body before gently drying and dressing.

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