Sleep

Lily seems to be grabbing life by the proverbial short and curlies, I think the technical term is thriving. Since we have waved goodbye to Scary Colic Lily she is all smiles and coos and dribbles. She seems determined to sit up and look about and take in all the world has to offer, a by-product of this is that she pretty short on nap time. Suddenly I am obsessed by sleep, by how little I am getting and the small amounts she seems to manage on.

Some arsehole, correction many so called 'expert' arseholes lured me into thinking babies slept 16-18 hours a day. HA! Not my Lily, nowhere near. This naturally sent me into paroxysms of guilt and distress that I was sleep depriving my child; that I had to force her to nap constantly, that she would become retarded from not enough so-called 'deep' sleep, that this insomnia was affecting her eating patterns and turning her into a 'snacker' and this in turn was stunting her growth etc, etc, etc....blah,blah,blah...and this in turn was making her mummy into 'evenmoreneuroticmummy' forcing her to write extremely long sentences with very little punctuation and generally sending her round the twist.

Another spin-off of this is that I spend most of my time obsessively googling 'my baby does not sleep', revelling sadistically in the fact I am not alone.

12lb 2oz

Tuesdays (and yes, I remembered what day it is for a change) are "weigh your daughter at the clinic" days to make sure you are not starving her.

I know I am not starving her because she is a fat little beastie who is now wearing size 3-6 month sleep suits at 10 weeks old but I like to get out and about and sad though it is, I look forward to clinic days and the many possibilities of comparison it provides.

It is almost impossible not to compare your child with another person's child, I try my hardest not to because it a nasty and fruitless pass time which only results in needless jealousy and panic.
Fortunately as my baby is the prettiest, smartest, heaviest and most advanced baby I have nothing to worry about.

And Another Thing...

Wow, nobody told me either how difficult it is to get things done. After lights out and Lily has hit the sack I run round like a whirling dervish trying to complete all the household chores I have been unable to accomplish during daylight hours (as my high maintenance daughter demands I rock her to sleep for 5 hours at a time). Seems like I am drowning under piles of unwashed babygros, bottles are building mountains in the sink, stinky old nappies overflow out of every nook and cranny.
Maybe I am just incompetent? Maybe I'm a bad mother? Maybe I suck at this housekeeping/parenting malarkey? Maybe this is all there is now?
Maybe I need a beer.

Roll Over and Beg

Little 9 week old Lily Long Toes can just about roll over which, according to my baby bible, is not supposed to happen until 4 months. Next week she shall be performing Beethoven's Concerto for Violin and Orchestra with the Royal Philharmonic.

The Conspiracy

Basically if you went to the Doctors with all the possible side-effects of pregnancy he would probably say go home, lie down in a darkened room and prepare to die.

I had no idea all this really disgusting shit was going to happen to me, at several points I wouldn't have been surprised if a couple of my limbs had started to lepromatous. It seemed every few weeks more and more unspeakable horrors were unfolding, losing control of bodily functions, bleeding orifices, uterine cramps, particularly nasty and bizarrely colourful discharges, extreme flatulence...
However, what startled me the most is that NO F*CKER BOTHERED TO TELL ME ABOUT IT! Rather like the time I started my period and thought I had cancer because my mother apparently decided menstruation was not important enough to mention.
Well, I am not subscribing to the conspiracy of silence anymore and for all you young ladies who might be considering popping the birth control pills back in the packet tonight, read on...

exhaustion
altered appetite and senses of taste and smell
nausea and vomiting
heartburn and indigestion
constipation
weight gain
dizziness and light-headedness
bloating, swelling, fluid retention
hemorrhoids
abdominal cramps
yeast infections
congested, bloody nose
acne and mild skin disorders
skin discoloration (chloasma, face and abdomen)
mild to severe backache and strain
increased headaches
difficulty sleeping, and discomfort while sleeping
increased urination and incontinence
bleeding gums
pica
breast pain and discharge
swelling of joints, leg cramps, joint pain
difficulty sitting, standing in later pregnancy
inability to take regular medications
shortness of breath
higher blood pressure
hair loss
tendency to anemia
stretch marks (worse in younger women)
loose skin
permanent weight gain or redistribution
abdominal and vaginal muscle weakness
pelvic floor disorder
changes to breasts
varicose veins
scarring from episiotomy or c-section
loss of dental and bone calcium
psychosis

Large Protruberences

I thought I would suck at being pregnant but actually I quite excelled at the sport....I got fat, I ate a lot of cake, occasionally I would venture out to 'Yoga for Pregnancy' classes and wiggle my ass with the rest of the hormonal ladies and I slept as much as humanly possible. I just about perfected the 18 hour sleep except at night when I was routinely woken by Lily doing the fandango in my uterus.

Really one could do with being pregnant for 3 years, like an elephant. 9 months is not enough. To be fair, 3 years is probably not enough for the large reality check you receive on depositing your small parcel of DNA onto planet earth.

I never quite made the connection between being pregnant and having a child, the mental leap was just too much for my rather small and shonky brain to comprehend. I felt her move at 18 weeks, just flutterby sensations at first progressing onto good old footballer kicks by the end, but even then I didn't really register...I was too busy getting my fill of pastries and enjoying being smiled at. In a world where you feel everyone is ignoring you, my humble advice is get up the duff, strangers greet you in the street, old ladies pat your enormous belly, bus conductors let you ride for free.

In The Beginning

In the beginning...

In the beginning there was Lily. Life B.L. seems pretty much irrelevant now. I have a vague memory of a time where my meals were not always eaten a break-neck speed, where the continual drone of a washing machine was not always the theme tune to my day and where I slept, often, repeatedly, deeply and sometimes for what seems like days at a time. Blissful, uninterrupted sleep, the sleep of the innocent, the sleep of the non-parent.


But these are just vague, fleeting memories and of no consequence to me now.


Lily came into being because of the result of one very drunken evening way back in May 2006, in the days when I did drink, in the days when I did smoke, in the days when I partied hard and could remember the harsh realities of a hangover; the parched throat, the sticky lips, the JCB digging a large hole through ones jelly-like cranium. Sometimes I would take the occasional recreational flavour, sometimes I would stay up all night and pole dance on tables, sometimes I would projectile vomit over flower beds...just sometimes.

Not any more.