Walk this way!

She did it! She bloody did it! At 16 months and 22 days, she found the confidence to take those unaided steps! SHE WALKED!!!!

She loved it and got so excited at her new skill.

Millie found her feet quite young, she loved her legs and for months she has been making us walk all over the place while holding her hands. For this reason, we were convinced she'd be an early walker. But when no walking unaided, or even standing unaided, followed, we resigned ourselves that she was going to follow in her brothers 'last minute' footsteps. In fact I think she is a big tease! She leads you down a path that she will achieve a milestone early then it never materialises. She rolled when she was 12 weeks and then hardly ever rolled again. She took forever to bum shuffle and then started a half crawl, half bum shuffle around 14 months.

Now, with Millie being our second child, we have learnt that children will do things in their own time so we haven't been pushy or even wishing it along, we just wanted to be encouraging towards her next development but she would get us all excited and then never provide. My daughter is no 'completer-finisher' that's for sure! (sorry, you can tell I'm a trainer!)

Even though she was keen to walk around holding our hands, it took some time before she would trust using a walker. Then recently, she started pushing Callum's toy pushchair around with her baby in it which was a big improvement in her confidence.

We would try to make a game of letting go of her hands to see how long she would stand on her own but as soon as you would let go of her hands she would buckle her knees. Then recently she seemed to understand that the game was to half walk and half fall from us to the nearest object (like the sofa) and yesterday she seemed to want to play so I let go of her hands and she took a few steps into the room before falling on her bottom. Then, to my amazement, she tried to stand up on her own - I quickly got my phone out to start recording and this is what happened next:

Well done our clever Millie - no stopping her now. You have a very proud Mummy and Daddy!

Silent Sunday

BLW: Master of the Spoon

It has been a while and, as I was observing Millie eating at the weekend, I thought it was time for an update on BLW progress. Millie is 15.5 months now.

I was observing Millie eat as I had noticed that her spoon control had not only improved significantly in the last couple of months but she can now correct a spoon if not in a good feeding/handling position and can recognise when it has food on he underneath. She will usually try hard to use her spoon in the first instance and will only resort to using her fingers after several failed attempts. The spoon is still her preferred utensil as forks and knives are more for bashing and playing with. Haha, how does that sound? I let my child play with knives!

Actually, on that topic, I kind of do. Well, I’m not so strict about the ‘no licking the knife’ rule that most people have. I will teach her what is a sharp knife and it will be some time before I let her use a sharp knife. It is impossible for her to cut herself on the usual dinner knives. I wonder whether this rule came about in days where it was all sharp knives cutting through hunks of meat? I know it isn’t polite table manners but she’ll learn those in time as she develops in her feeding/eating skills like Callum has learnt his table manners. In fact, shhhh don’t tell anyone, but sometimes I lick the knife too! I know, shocking!

I’m much more relaxed about her eating what she instinctively chooses from the plates I’m offering rather than pushing certain foods on her and stressing. With Callum, shortly after he started nursery we started to mistrust his instincts and worried about how little vegetables he was getting but much of that was down to the repetitive and not particularly nutritional meals he was given at nursery. And, as has been said of children’s ‘natural’ eating habits, when left to their own choices, foods go in and out of favour quite frequently.  You’ve just got to keep offering them – especially while they are still quite young. Also, doing so positively so as not to draw attention to some foods as being ‘good’ or ‘bad’.

When we first started weaning Millie, peppers and cherry tomatoes were her favourite. She would also love chomping on a roasted carrot. Over time, she has discarded (quite literally, on the floor) these previous favourites and peas and sweetcorn became her preferred choice of vegetable. Then, at the weekend, when faced with a plate containing cabbage, peas and carrots, it was the peas she was spitting out and the carrot she picked up and happily munched through. She has often turned her nose up at mashed potato but couldn’t get enough of it on Sunday.

Another firm favourite was Weetabix but nursery have said she is no longer so keen – however, that’s understandable if she has it day in, day out. Although, what I did find funny was how the manager came up to me all proud and said

"I’ve found a way to get her to eat her breakfast…letting her feed herself!”

“Exactly!” I said, “That is because we followed the BLW approach when we weaned her, she has been feeding herself from the start!”

I had explained this to her key worker when she started and emphasised it on a couple of occasions but the manager is not her keyworker and she covers in the baby room when they haven’t enough staff or to cover shift changes.

At least this nursery provide a varied and nutritional menu – I’m often quite jealous of the meals they have!

Strangely, Millie definitely seems slower with her spoon control than Callum was but she probably has a much wider variety of flavours.

Mojo, Where’d You GoGo?

With my return to work, I’ve kind of lost my blogging mojo.

It’s been a hectic and often stressful couple of months which feels like it is finally starting to settle down a bit now. However, after a morning of getting the kids out of the house on time and off to nursery/breakfast club, a full day at work often involving a 45min to 1.5 hour drive, then flying home to pick kids up, feed cats (and often kids), do the usual chores and then get kids to bed, the last thing I want to do is give away any more of myself.

I’m even a lot quieter on social media *thud* – I know, me -the prolific twitterer – did just say that!

I’m just not ‘feeling’ it. I don’t have the mind power to make casual chitter chatter. I loiter for a bit feeling like I’m looking in through the window at a party in full swing while I hover unsure outside in the cold. So then I often just close the laptop, pick up Wordhero on the phone and switch off to the outside world.

I do miss it though. I hope it will come back again soon.

Anyway, thought I’d provide a brief update on the family.

It feels like we have had a good couple of months of pass the bug, each having our share of colds, viruses etc. I’ve currently lost my voice (which is probably a relief to those in the ‘real’ world) and Millie has a lingering cough.

I’ll start with me and work. I feel like I’ve made a good impression and am proving my worth. Of course, there are insecurities occasionally, but I think that is natural especially with a new job and I think it is healthy to feel a little insecure otherwise you get cocky. I’ve received lots of good feedback from my line managers and other trainers which feels good. The project I’m working on is a bit chaotic, disorganised and, up until recently, a bit of a mess but think it hit a wall last week and positive steps are being made to turn the project around so I’m optimistic. It is all providing good experience and looks like my contract will probably continue past the end of March.

Millie is as cute as ever! Surprisingly, still not walking. After being so sure on her feet from quite early on, I really expected her to be running about by now. However, the bum shuffle has developed into a kind of monkey crawl with one knee crawling, one leg reaching forward like a bum shuffle and her arms propelling her forward.

She appears to say a few words but nothing clear enough to say for definite. I think the ones she can say are “no” while wagging her finger (similar to Callum’s first word of “don’t” while wagging his finger), Mumma, Dadda and Cat. She points at everything and knows how to get what she wants!

She generally sleeps well again now. There was a period over the summer where it was getting really tough and I thought she would never go back to being a good sleeper. She still occasionally wakes in the night but very quickly goes back off with the dummy being replaced and it definitely isn’t every night.

We’ve had Callum’s first parents….sorry Family Evening as it is now called.

Lots of good comments from his teacher about him being where she expects him to be reading and with making ‘marks’. He is very good at doing what he is told, sitting down and listening and continuing with a task until he has finished. He also has lots of friends which of course is nice to hear.

Taking him to the breakfast club and afterschool club at Millie’s nursery can often be cause for contention. He regularly says he doesn’t like Mini Beasts as the clubs are called (though he calls it Millie Beasts he he) and says he doesn’t want to go there despite him enjoying it when he is there. I think it is probably seeing his friends’ parents taking them to school and picking them up and he wanting us to do the same which pulls at the guilt strings a little.

Since his grommets being fitted and his adenoids were removed, his speech has come on leaps and bounds and his hearing is excellent now. His teacher said he does so well at school that she forgot he even had it done. He still misses off a  letter at the end of a word occasionally but he really listens if we correct him and tries to say words correctly.

With work, school, nursery etc there have been a lot of changes over the last few months so overall I think we are doing pretty well.

Now to be patient and await the return of my blogging mojo.

Tits Up!

I wasn’t going to blog about this but I think I feel passionately enough about it for it to pull me out of my blogging hole.

We all know (if you don’t, you bloody should so have words with yourself!) that we shouldn’t listen to anyone else who thinks they know what’s best for our children and feel it necessary to bully you into feeling guilty about something or other so I’m going to take a different approach and just blurt out my experience. You’ll probable be able to work out how I feel about the vouchers for breastfeeding scheme!

When pregnant with Callum, I originally wasn’t going to breastfeed. To me the idea felt so alien. The though of a baby sucking on your nipple just *shudder*. I had seen my friends struggle with it in different ways and it did nothing to appeal to me. Yes, I knew that breast was best but formula hadn’t killed me either. I was always a very healthy child (and pretty healthy adult), I wasn’t an overweight child or fit any of the other ‘risks of formula feeding’ threats they threw at you so formula was going to be fine for my child too.

Then Stuart found out and he really didn’t understand my decision. In his eyes, why wouldn’t you breastfeed? It was free….it would provide our child with invaluable antibodies and other health benefits. If he could do it, he would, no question. In the end I agreed I would try it for a day and take it from there.

I wrote on my birth plan that I would try breastfeeding but would rebel against anyone who pushed me!

Callum arrived a little early (3.5 weeks) - I tried to breastfeed but was explained that because he was early he may struggle to suckle at first. This was true, he did and I spent much of the 4 days I spent in hospital trying to get him to breastfeed, distraught that he wouldn’t latch, learning what it felt like to be a milking cow when shown how to use the hospitals electronic breast pump to express the milk out. Not helped by the baby blues hitting during that week and no one warning me.

The hospital midwives respected my birth plan and didn’t push me…in fact, I felt I could have had a bit more encouragement (no pleasing some people eh?).

Finally, on my last day, I managed to successfully feed Callum but only on one side and expressing the other.

When I left, I continued to breastfeed on the left and express on the right. I’d heard of support groups but I didn’t have the confidence to go to them. Because I’d heard of people’s negative reactions to breastfeeding in public, I had no confidence in doing so and would hide in toilets when out, especially in restaurants. Eventually I’d try to make the feed out a bottle of expressed milk and then express when I got in. By expressing every other feed, I wasn’t getting the full benefits of the breastfeeding experience as I was still washing and sterilising the bottles. At night, I had to feed off my left breast and then put my sleepy baby back to sleep which I desperately wanted to do too but instead had to stay up and express.

I quickly found out, breastfeeding hurt! And not because there was anything wrong with my latch. In those early days, while your nipples get used to this strange vacuum like suction a dozen or more times a day, you will experience a pain like hot needles shooting down your nipple that makes your toes curl. Your fight or flight kicks in and it takes all your power not to rip the baby from your nipple. Your poor week nipple may get sore (and yes this may be from poor latch too). I went through the pain of sore nipples and quite quickly lansinoh became my saviour.

Other things I wasn’t told about breastfeeding was that they cluster feed in the evenings. They have growth spurts where they would literally want to stay on your boob all evening! This was normal! Go with it!

I lasted about 4 weeks with a slow wean taking it to 6 weeks.

In the time between Callum and Millie I’d learnt a lot more from friends about what was ‘normal’ when breastfeeding. So, by the time I was pregnant with Millie I’d decided I wanted to try again and I really wanted to try to breastfeed for longer than 6 weeks. I would go to support groups, I would seek help if I needed it and I would try my hardest to get my baby to feed of both breasts.

I’d hoped for one of those babies that came out knowing exactly what to do, latching on and away we would go but Millie still needed to learn how to latch on and so did I.

Early on, the midwives and health visitor were very supportive, helpful and not at all pushy. They put me in touch with the breastfeeding counsellor at the hospital who came to see me and set me up with an electronic pump for a few weeks (they were only permitted to lend it out for a while) along with little bottles for collecting the milk and a syringe.  She gave me lots of tips and was just lovely.

I had heard about nipple shields and had bought some in preparation! The BF Counsellor explained the benefits and risks and agreed it was worth me trying. She showed me how to use them and recommended, after a while, breaking the seal and removing it to encourage Millie to feed straight from the nipple. Thanks to these incredible inventions I managed to get Millie to feed (after quite a bit of work) off both sides. After a couple of weeks of using them I ditched the nipple shields.

My left nipple got a little sore again but quickly recovered but my right? Oh My God!!!! I had an open sore that shocked and scared me. It also got infected. Yet I tried to feed through it. The night times were the hardest and many a time Stuart would wake up to me in bits because I was in incredible pain but feeling helpless with what he could do for me. The nipple shields made a return but eventually they were starting to rub and make the pain worse.

I went to a Bossom Buddies group at the local children’s centre and had my latch checked and confirmed it was fine. Still I had pain due to the open sore on my nipple. I went for a few weeks but a number of the mums that went regularly were from the same antenatal group (being second timers in a new area, I didn’t have the support of an NCT group like the first time) so everyone seemed to know each other and their babies were about the same age. It made it intimidating to try to break into that group. No one shared their stories as to why they were there so you saw happy successfully feeding mums feeding their babies so I didn’t feel I really fit in and stopped going. The breastfeeding counsellor was nice and helpful though and I was able to borrow (for free!!!) an electronic breast pump for a while so I would still say it was worth going. I probably should’ve looked for other local groups.

I was recommended Jellnet and the BF counsellor agreed it was worth trying to encourage healing. I was given fungal cream to try to remove the infection. I continued to feed but the healing process was very very slow.

At 6 weeks, I acknowledged my incredible achievement at managing 6 weeks and beating my target, as well as succeeding in getting Millie to feed off both sides, but decided I couldn’t take the pain any more and I would start weaning to formula. However, after a week of one bottle of formula and the rest still breastfeeding I noticed my nipple started to finally heal…so I continued with this routine!

Then Millie started refusing the bottle! Once more I was breaking down in floods in the middle of the night as she refused to feed. After a very stressful weekend away, I decided that as my nipple had healed I would return to fully breastfeeding. By this time, I’d made it to 8 weeks. She had a few nights of waking up more frequently but then seemed to settle again.

Because of all the ups and downs of feeding, within the next couple of weeks I decided to wean to bottle again and the intention was to bottle feed during the day and breastfeed at night but she soon went back to refusing the breast altogether. The slow wean had turned into a flat refusal.

I know I gave it a bloody good shot at breastfeeding with Millie. I achieved so much and managed over 11 weeks. I’m proud of this. Yet I still look back and beat myself up as tears come to my eyes that I gave up.

“I shouldn’t have swapped the feed, I should have continued through the pain. “

No one makes me feel guilty but me. I can step back and I know I made the right decisions for us throughout that time. I know I couldn’t have continued in the amount of pain I was in without something having to give. Before Millie, I would have told anyone else that they should no way feel guilty for making such a huge effort and I would tell them I am sure I wouldn’t have managed so long if it was me in that pain. Stuart no way blames me and I  know he found it hard dealing with the pain I was in. He was shocked to discover the first time with Callum, how much it hurt and when he made his “why wouldn’t you?” argument he was unaware of how tough it could be. I can think logically about the whole situation but the day I started breastfeeding some magic switch was put in my brain that meant when I stopped I was programmed to feel guilty about it.

Despite being told it shouldn’t make a difference as it’s ‘breast’ feeding not ‘nipple’ feeding but I do suspect the fact I had inverted nipples were a contributor to the pain I felt and the sores I got. Even if the baby is latched onto the breast the nipple is still sucked out.

So…do I think vouchers would’ve changed my actions? No I don’t! Do I think other mothers should be made to feel guilty for not breastfeeding for 6 months or choosing not to breastfeed at all?  No I bloody do not! And for those that really want to but can’t for a million and one different reasons…if this makes me mad, how does it make those poor women feel?

If I was to have another child (which I’m definitely not going to) would I breastfeed again? No, I don’t think I would but I don’t regret it with Callum and Millie. I wouldn’t change that!

Just my experience and my opinion. Please don’t let my experience put you off. If you want to breastfeed or experience trouble breastfeeding yourself, I can’t recommend enough reaching out for support- whether that be groups or health visitors or breastfeeding counsellors. I’ve known friends who have gone through similar pain but gone on to happily and pain free feed for over 6 months. I’ve also known loads of people that were lucky in that they breastfed and from day one didn’t experience any discomfort at all. We are all different and everyone’s experience is their own.

Silent Sunday

Silent Sunday