storbarnsförälder

I'm sitting here listening to Rob humming and purring Emer to sleep, as she grumbles in his arms. He's infinitely patient with grizzly babies, can do the same thing over and over for hours without getting irritated, and - as far as I can tell - utterly, utterly calm.

Given how much I struggle with frustration and temper, I find this infinitely admirable.

Rob didn't even know how much he liked babies until he had some. Now, when we go away, he visits families with babies and toddlers to get his fix in. Other babies and toddlers really like him, too, though that's less surprising as lots of kids have liked him. He used to have trouble playing with babies, when Linnea was new, but he learned quickly and now he can and does play "swooping hands" or "nibbling feet" or peekaboo for as long as the baby wants him to.

I know that if he had to do this full-time he'd be less effective, and that the discipline end of things gives him trouble, but really, I think his attitude and the way he's learned to handle kids is...

... well, admirable.

Saturday morning was brightened by a delivery of 70% chocolate from Hotel Chocolat, courtesy of mouse262, whom I don't even know. Thank you. The kindness of strangers knows no bounds. It's lots of little batons, which I have been eating in the mornings so's not to keep Emer up all night.

At some point - two points, actually - we cut my hair. First Rob stood behind me and chopped a straightish line off, then I decided it wasn't short enough yet but I was too tired to do it again, and the next morning Rob cut it shorter. I washed it. It's fine. It's roughly straight if I brush it all back, takes much less time to brush in the mornings, can still be tied back, etc. It can't quite be worn down, because it falls forwards, and I hate hair in my face, but it's a great time saving over what I had before.

With any luck, my hair is also not pregnant any more and I can stop gunging up hairbrushes. Yeurgh.

It's shorter than it's been since I was seven. It only just passes my shoulders.

Last night I managed over 60 consecutive minutes of sleep at one point. Between 7:15 and 8:20 am, actually, but it all counts. Rob took Linnea to the Farmer's Market without me, therefore, and I lay in bed nursing Emer and listening to Fi Glover and, er, Elvis McGonagle. It was very restful, honestly.

Then they came home and we had soup for lunch, involving a freak defrost-three-times-what-we-need accident, and then we headed out to the library. Where we stayed until 4 pm when they chucked us out. I have two books on gardening, one on bread machine use, one teen fiction, and one "The Bookseller of Kabul" by Asne thingy, whom I like.

On the way home from the library we stopped in to Sweet Masala for a masala dhosa and something Rob ate which he said was "definitely not vegan" but couldn't name beyond that. Then we went to the supermarket and bought portion-cartons of juice, ready-made cake, and a flamethrower.

I've wanted a flamethrower for the weeds on the front path and the patio for years. But they always seem very expensive, and it's insane for us to get expensive garden equipment; we're not interested enough in it to maintain anything.

However, I need to get interested; I must draw up some kind of plan for the allotment and start work on it. Rob will have to do the digging but I can probably do light weeding and so on. I should probably try to borrow a wheelbarrow so he can spread our compost on it. Ew.

The only downside today is that Emer was in the hugabub while Rob was frying onions (dinner is spag bol, any minute now) and she screamed blue murder. She has inherited my eyes, which I get in a direct line from my mother. Oh well; at least her mascara use will be strictly limited.

I must get a photo of my mother, myself and both my daughters.

Today wasn't all bad. To being with, Linnea and I had tea together for the morning snack. I filled the teapot from the miniature set with tea and cold water, and filled the jug with ricemilk and filled the bowl with sugar (it took two spoons!) and found a small plastic spoon for her to use with it.

She poured her own tea, added milk and sugar, stirred, and drank. Several times. It was lovely. We ate bread and butter with it. (I had hot tea from my own pot; a pot each seemed to work well).

We sat and read together, then; me with Emer on my stomach in the sling (ow) and Linnea on her chair.

She buttered some bread in her own personal way; apply lump of margarine to centre of slice, eat lump off slice without touching bread; ask for more margarine.

We had a little chat about Emer, and when she's going to be big like Nea.

We cooked some hard-boiled eggs and waited for them to cool. She peeled her own, which went fairly well.

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Then we had the distaster afternoon from hell. With hindsight, I think it may have been because lunch was late and inadequate.



When we got home from the hospital, Rob went to fetch Linnea from Nicki's house and I called my mother. Since becoming a mother myself I appreciate and need her so much more. I didn't need advice from her; I just knew she'd understand exactly how I felt all the way on the other end of the phoneline, and I wanted to talk to someone who really would understand. She did.

Motherhood has been life-altering for me. My self-image has entirely altered just because now I know that someone felt about me as I felt about Linnea the day after she was born - and I feel about them both now. And the underlying love will still be there, though I assume the anxieties and pride have different focusses now. Foci. Dammit.

And I think I benefitted from being my mother's fourth child. She was 37 when I was born, on her birthday. She'd had a lot of practice, seen clearly where doctors had given bad advice and where childcare gurus had been insanely wrong, seen where her instincts were to be trusted, that sort of thing. I learned my parenting instincts as an infant, like most people, and mine were learned from a mother confident in her instincts and sympathetic in her approach.

My mother says I'm obviously very confident in myself as a mother.

It's not obvious to me, but as long as it's obvious to the kids, that's ok.

We had a phenomenally stressful morning which pretty much ruined the day. In fact, we're both still exhausted today. However, Rob left for work on time and I got up, dressed, ate, made the bed, sorted nappies, failed entirely to get Emer in the ring sling, and shoved Linnea upstairs brutally after she picked up the blanket Emer was lying on.

Time for nappy changes now.

(LJ Support are still working on my weird usericon problem.)

Rob's going in to work again. Today was supposed to be TOIL of interrupted paternity leave when he worked last week; they called and he's going in again now.

I'm livid.

I'm much angrier than that, in fact.

This is the fourth time they have interrupted his paternity leave. Twice the day he went in. Once on Sunday - on a Bank Holiday Sunday when he was on paternity leave - and then today. Why? Because they need his help on some technical documentation they've been working on for months. I have never encountered more pathetic time-management. It seems like nothing at all is ever planned for accurately in this place. When he took the job, he asked at the interview about things like daily working hours being adhered to, not being on call, not being routinely required to do out of hours work, all the usual things that enable one to have a life outside work. And he got satisfactory responses. They are completely not living up to this. I'm furious.

After Emer was born, we went into recovery, and Rob had cups of tea, we called my mother and Rob's parents, I got given drinks of water, and I gave baby Emer her first feed. She did it as efficiently and competently as Linnea had, in spite of being much, much smaller.

Somebody somewhere messed up badly when it came to having me give birth, but they sorted it out with the breastfeeding thing. I get babies who know how, and that's all there is to it.

We took photos and chatted in the recovery room, and Rob and Fiona dressed Emer in her first vest and babygro, dyed especially for her by http://www.happybabysling.com/. Since she was over a kilo smaller than Linnea had been, the gro was a little loose on her, but she was fine.

There was some argument over my refusal of an electric bed. I really, really wanted a bassinet for Emer that would clip onto my bedframe so I could get her without sitting up or getting out of bed; these do not attach to the electric beds which would enable me to sit up without others' assistance. I later discovered that some of the staff don't much like the bedside bassinets anyway because they are harder to move around and make the bed much wider. But I stuck to my guns and got the bed I wanted. Then they moved us upstairs, and had some real trouble finding me food, since I was insisting on dairy and soya free things, given the dire warnings I've had about post-section digestion anyway.

I got crackers and biscuits, in the end, and a dietician came to talk to me about dinners. I hope to make a whole post about that later, because it was shocking and amusing and edifying.

I don't remember a great deal of that day. Linnea came to see me, and said "You have a baby Emer out of your tummy!" and stroked Emer's head gently and touched her hands gently. She's very gentle to Emer, in fact, and was incredibly pleased to see her, pleased she'd been born, pleased about the whole thing. Still is, a week later.

My mother came, of course, exhausted from several nights of broken sleep and two days' toddler-wrangling.

Rob spent a lot of time sitting in the bedside chair holding Emer and being tired and happy. He also left to get lunch and dinner. He changed her nappy - meconium is very, very black, and very, very heavy, and I am convinced that had Linnea waited until after being born to pass hers she'd have weighed a full 10lb.

Rob went home to dinner, and stayed home, to get to bed early, and Mum came back in to sit with me for the permitted time. We overheard some nasty arguments, from behind my curtains. Those probably need a seperate post too.

They brought me some dinner while Rob and Mum and Linnea were away eating; it was weird. They had real trouble finding something dairy-free, soya-free, and light enough to eat after abdominal surgery. What I was served in the end looked like a toddler meal of the kind one can buy in its own plastic bowl, designed to be microwaved and eaten with a fork. It was pasta and tomato sauce, soft and flavourless and overcooked. Glutinous. I ate it anyway; I don't know a whole lot about surgery but I do know that the body needs fuel to heal, and I don't intend to do anything to slow the healing process down a nanosecond.

The first night was all about breastfeeding, really. And the first day. Everything noteworthy that happened to me or that I overheard on the postnatal ward was about feeding the newborns, one way or another. So that needs its own post too.

On Friday evening, late, my mother arrived by ferry and train from Dun Laoghaire. On Saturday we all went into town to fetch a wheelchair and give the invalid (me) an outing. On Sunday we rested and Rob took to his bed in the afternoon with a slightly queasy stomach.

On Sunday night we called a friend to take Rob to A&E as he was vomiting uncontrollably and his temperature was dropping faster than we liked. Early Monday morning he came back, and I started vomiting. Later Monday morning Rob was in bed, pale and wan, and Linnea was being babysat by a neighbour while my mother took me to hospital. I was attached to monitors which I had to detach in a nurry to rush to the loo, and later a doctor came in and asked "Are you ok?" as I spewed into a cardboard bowl. I wasn't in a position to retort anything witty, unfortunately.

They took some blood, and as the baby was apparently fine, said it was ok to come back in the following morning for the section, but that Rob needed to be asymptomatic for at least 12 hours, preferably 24, to be allowed in.

We found someone else to care for Linnea after I got home, and I lay on the library floor while Rob lay in the master bedroom, both sick as parrots, trying hard to rehydrate. Late in the afternoon Rob managed to eat a fair bit of toast, and Linnea came home. We decided he was well enough to attend the section.

So on Sunday night I got less then three hours sleep, between Rob being sick and my being sick, interrupted by Linnea being woken by the commotion. And on Monday night I got about four hours, between pre-op nerves and alarms set so that I could take my pre-op antacids.

However, come Tuesday morning, I was wide awake and cheerful - optimistic even - and I even made Rob drink something before we set off. Linnea woke in time to be kissed goodbye too.

Rob got back from A&E at about 1 am and I went in to hospital at 7:30 am. We both have viral g-e. They are not postponing the section tomorrow morning, however, and if Rob is asymptomatic by this evening he will be allowed to attend. I'm allowed to attend anyway but may have to go it alone.

Rob is upstairs in bed and I am lying on a camping mattress on the floor downstairs.

It coud be worse; my sister has just got back from Rumania, where she was bitten by a stray dog who might have been rabid.

Edit: Mum arrived safely but late by train and ferry, Friday evening, and we had a lovely Saturday. Rob did no overtime this weekend.

Rob and I take our responsibilities towards our relationship very seriously, so we're going to regular counselling sessions before the new baby is born, just making sure all the communications are working nicely before introducing a big stress. These are on Thursday mornings. We've been to one so far, and the second one was booked for tomorrow morning.

To accommodate this, I rescheduled my NCT toddler group coffee, we arranged a creche for Linnea (takes advance notice and some luck) and, finally, this evening, Rob sorted out time off in lieu leave so that he could attend.

As soon as he finished sending the last email to sort that out the phone rang to say that our counsellor is sick and can't see us in the morning.

So he'll be going to work as usual. I will probably just put Linnea in creche, because she's looking forward to it and I'm very tired, and use the time to get the house actually clean for the toddlers. I think at least one mother and toddler are coming, which is something. My other confirmed attendee went and had a baby on Saturday so she doesn't feel up to facing group socialisation yet (home water birth, TENS machine, beautiful 6lb baby girl, all going well - I do love it when people have babies).

(We had a pleasant and amusing anniversary dinner, and I ate too much.)