Little things that make life easier...

Well this time I am going to write about little things that can help make your life easier when you go out with your little one and at home if you are weaning your baby. My daughter will be 7 months on Sunday... Unbelievable. For a few weeks now she has been getting solids, which has improved a lot of things such as her sleeping for even longer at night. I'm confident that in a few weeks she will be able to sleep from 7 pm to 7 am. Three things however that weaning have made more difficult are: 1)laundry, 2)dishes and fridge space, 3)going out. I am going to explain here little things that I have found to help me with these three points.

1) Laundry:
Well, anyone who has a baby knows that it increases laundry by what feels like 10 folds. It is absolutely crazy the amount of clothes a tiny person passes through. Once the baby gets weaned, things get even more hectic: stains that need almost immediate attention, bibs that get dirty even faster, increase the change of clothes during the day (because every mum feels that it is OK for her to go out covered in food stains and baby throw up if the little one looks fantastic like out of the last baby fashion show...and she is right, people barely look at you, they only have eyes for the little one!). I found that Vanish ( website: http://www.vanish.co.uk/ )is a life saver when it comes to stains, for the tough ones, I spray some gel on them first and then add a scoop or half a scoop to the laundry and it works miracles just like it says on the box! It removes tough stains such as tomato and the ones you don't really want to hand wash first like poo that succeeded to escape from the nappy or nappy liner if you use terry nappies. Lilly is fine with all of their products but if your baby has sensitive skin, you can always wash it once with Vanish and then with your regular product. Another thing that I am so thankful for a friend to introduce me to were the Tommee Tippee bibs (http://www.tommeetippee.co.uk/department/bibs/. They have the Roll and Go bibs and Comfi Neck bibs that are great since you can just wipe them clean and therefore can't run out the way you do with bibs that end up in the laundry pile if you've missed laundry day or if the baby has dipped five bibs in a row in her carrot stew. They also have disposable bibs for a very cheap price if you are out and about.

Lilly with her pink Roll and Go bib.

2) Dishes and Fridge space:
Now I know that the best way to feed your baby is by making food for her yourself. I do agree with that fully. It does also save you money. However if your baby is like mine and very picky to start with, and you do live in a flat where the fridge freezer is tiny tiny, you quickly end up with a space problem since you will be cooking batches of different vegetables that will go unused for maybe ever (unless your baby's palate gets a bit more open or your husband loves eating the baby's food). So here are a few suggestions that will save you from running out of fridge/freezer space and keep you from that tiny bit of extra dishes to wash because you cook separate for baby. We know that a baby should not have any salt nor sugar added to his food because it causes damages to his organs (it is not a joke, take this seriously!) so you can't just put a portion of the meal you would eat in the blender for the baby. However, you can adapt your meals and the way you cook them a bit and then have something to blend for the little person: to start with, since you should only introduce food elements one by one to prevent the baby from having an allergic reaction (and you not knowing which of the vegetables in your five veg soup he is allergic with for the future) you can cook some of your own vegetable without adding salt, blend what you want to give to baby and then add salt for the rest of the family. Once your baby has been introduced to everything your family eats, you can just cook your regular meals without salt and blend a little bit for baby. An advantage of this is that he will start to feel part of the pack and as he grows he won't face a big change when you want him to join in the real family meals.
Another thing you can do is find a brand of baby food that is reliable and does not add stuff to its food, so you can buy little bits of everything to get yourself a better idea of what your little one likes. That way we found out Lilly has a deep love for blueberries, loves anything with tomato, will take carrots and cranberries but dislikes pears and summer fruits. We've used the HiPP Organic brand (http://www.hipp.co.uk/ ) since they just use vegetables and fruits, and meat in some products but do not add anything so it is as close as one will get from home made and easy to replicate so you are at least using space storing something your baby will consume.

3) Going out: If you formula feed your baby or mix breast and formula or breast and expressed milk, you've known that going out can be a bit of a nightmare since Day 1. If you have just been breastfeeding, weaning will be even more of a shock. I'd suggest you find yourself a Thermos bag where you can put the little one's food and keep it fresh if it is home made or pre-made but already opened, and a flask to carry hot water to heat up the meals if your baby likes it hot. Not all babies do, Lilly actually prefers most of her food at room temperature but I have seen pickier babies, and why not after all you find all tastes under the sky and it is not because they can't speak that they do not have preferences and feelings. A pack of baby wipes will be essential to your survival too, I do not feel the need to expand there. When it comes to bibs, I have found that the disposable ones from Tommee Tippee were great and affordable and saved me carrying extra dirty items with me, but their Roll and Go ones are pretty good too and if you get sanitary wipes you can reuse them throughout the day. If you are fine with pre made food, it is easier in general to transport, it is more expensive but knowing what your baby likes will allow you to get extra if you've not got enough on you or the little one knocks off the plate.

Enjoying a moment out!

Using all these little things help me a lot, it takes a lot of trying but once you find something that works for you and your little angel everything feels better and easier, so just keep on trying whatever feels right for you!

Flexibility and Routines

One thing that being a mum taught me is being flexible. Not that I am a really bad control freak to start with but I am a happier person when my house is tidy, laundry is done, dishes are washed etc. I also like being able to down a book in one day or watch a whole movie on TV or at the cinema. Now, I am not saying that since I have a daughter my house is a mess, the laundry piled up to the point we buy new clothes because we ran out and order take away because there is no clean dishes, I am just saying that I have learnt to adapt my routine in order to get these things done.
When I was working and then pregnant, all the cleaning would be done in the morning so I could enjoy the rest of the day. By 11 am at least I would have been ready to go out, hair and make up done. Now things are different. I have to accept that some days the hoovering will have to wait for the baby to be in bed, or the dishes will be done by Simon because Lilly is learning a new skill and needs quality time at home if we are to go out in the afternoon. It is not that I do not do things anymore, it is just that I have to be flexible about the time when they do get done. It does sound easy but when you are in the middle of a living room that never seems tidy, knowing that you will come around to tidying it before you go to bed (so that it is tidied at night but will be messy again by around 8 am the next day) is not always much comfort. It can take its toll on the mind. It makes me look back sometimes at my mum who was stressed and tired and at me who as a child would not understand why she just couldn't sit down and watch that Disney movie for the 27th time in a row with me and I now feel very thankful for what she did, which was her best. As a mum, the best you can do is what matters, as long as you take the time to make your child feel loved and you still feel like yourself, the little you do makes the difference. It is hard but knowing you have accomplished a little will make anyone feel better than doing nothing at all.
Another thing you need to learn to be flexible about as a mum is the way your child is, the way you interact with him or her, and his or her needs. The best for a baby is usually a routine, I know a lot of people who say you should just drop everything and feed the baby whenever she wants it for how little or too much she wants and sleep when she sleeps etc. (Which to me looked like you should live as a human food distributor and  not exist as a person anymore). I did notice that any parent who adopts that way of living just craves for "THE DAY" the baby will finally sleep through the night (i.e. the day she will have a routine). I think that if you do have the strength to do it this way and that is what you want then it is perfect for you. However if you are exhausted, you should not feel guilty about trying to put the baby into a routine, to wake her up for a week during the day to make sure she feeds all she can during daytime so she starts making a difference between night and day and slowly moves most of her sleep time at night. I personally used the Gina Ford method ( here is a link to her website: http://www.contentedbaby.com/ )which had been recommended to me and it did work wonders. It is hard but it made my life easier in the long run and gave me the sense that I still was in charge of my life and could have time to do things that I needed to see done. Another advantage I noted of teaching your baby to sleep at night is that if you are like me someone who does not naturally nap but stays awake during daytime, you do get a chance to get some proper rest which is essential just as much as eating in order to make milk for your baby (or to have the patience to take care of her/him without potentially snapping out of tiredness). If you are breastfeeding and are not getting enough sleep your baby is not getting enough milk and therefore will need to feed more often which means wake you up more and more at night and you can see how it turns into a vicious circle. There are reasons why in the old days nursing a baby was either a professional job or a group activity, because people were aware that rest was needed in order to feed a baby properly. Nowadays we do know that these old ways of doing things can potentially be health hazardous but it does not mean mothers should not use ways such as routines or expressing milk so a partner or friend can feed the baby. A mother should not feel guilty if she needs rest and need to ask support.

Lastly I am going to put a word about sacrificing something for a greater good. I used to think that I would never leave my child sitting alone watching a film because that made me feel sad to think of that. However my daughter has started a week ago to want to just sit in the morning after breakfast to watch a certain Disney movie. Everyday she wants that one, she doesn't speak yet but shows discontent if I put something else on. Anyway, I discovered that it gave me time to shower, blow dry my hair and clean up the breakfast and hoover without her missing me. And if she does I can always just sit beside her for a bit and in the end both of us are happy!

Communication is a key...

To start with, I'd like to say that without my husband, motherhood would have been harder an experience than it is. I feel that one thing that you are not prepared for when expecting a baby is how much harder everything gets once you are pregnant and there is the nagging feeling that once the baby is there, life will never be what it used to be again and it is the end of staying up late together, going on dates, wearing nice clothes, make up, showers of more than 2 minutes, home tidied, dishes washed, etc. Pregnancy takes a toll on a woman's body, it makes you tired, makes you feel like you can't go anywhere if you do not know where the next lavatories are, it turns you into a hormones bomb and you do not feel like yourself anymore. Your husband seems like a foreign person by moments and when you try to talk about your feelings you will either start crying or laughing and end up upset at him. And he will have no clue what this was all about.
Something very hard about pregnancy is remembering that your partner is in love with you (if he weren't he would have ran away the minute you told him about your future arrival), and since he is not in your body, is not a woman and never will be, well, he probably has a very hard time understanding what you are going through. You need to talk to him about it, and you should not feel guilty, he needs to know you still love him and what he can do to help you. Talking with my husband I found out how worried he was for me that I looked so tired, that he was scared he might lose me and that he wanted to help me all he could through this.  
I did feel guilty about how little I seemed to accomplish with my heavy body, I also had to tell him that I could not stand him eating onions or having chicken tikka or southwest sauce on his sandwiches anymore and that something about him was different. It turns out that with the pregnancy hormones, the way he smells was different to me. I am not saying there that my husband smells, but every human being as a body smell that is exceedingly discreet but unique, that is how for instance your baby will know who you are instantly when coming out of the womb. During pregnancy, your hormones change the way everything smells and tastes and it is normal that you feel like there is something different about your husband, and you'll see that the minute the baby is there your husband will feel just the same as he was before you were pregnant.

Lilly loves spending time with Simon. And he is crazy for her, so it is a relief for me
when he comes home in the evening or when he is off to know that if I need time to myself I have
someone I trust who is willing to take care of Lilly.

Anyhow, the point of this is communication is VERY important...and you need to work on it during pregnancy if you want any of it when the baby arrives, and you will need your husband or partner when the baby is there. The odds are that the resident of the other side of the bed will be much more responsive to helping you with the little angel in the middle of the night if he has had a vocal reminder of how much you loved him and were grateful for his presence during the past 9 months. I would never have expected anyone to read my mind before I was pregnant, yet I did notice that it was pretty easy for me to start resenting Simon for ridiculous things such as the bins not being emptied or a sock fallen out of the laundry hamper while if I took a second to think rationally before getting upset and saying something hurtful I would realize that he would not mind a bit taking the bin bags outside and that I could pick up the sock. Tiredness makes everything seem worse, it is not your fault if you experience it, it is the price that comes with motherhood, so take the time to think things through and to ask someone to help you, don't isolate yourself, communicate your needs :)

Let's start at the beginning...

When I was pregnant, I was very lucky to have people around me ready to help and give me suggestions. One friend in particular was very helpful, she told me a lot about what had happened to her during pregnancy, what she found helpful or not and she helped me to prepare to the life with a newborn. Looking back I appreciate even more the help this friend gave, without her I would have been even more clueless and lost. Now my daughter is 6 almost 7 months old and I decided that I could share what I found helpful or not during pregnancy, but mostly for motherhood. I think that no one can prepare anyone for the life changing experiences that are pregnancy and motherhood, but sharing experiences can still be helpful. So, this is what this blog is going to be about... sharing my experiences as a mother. I will talk about all the joy that being a mum brings me, all the difficulties that I would never have thought of that come along, the challenges of everyday life etc. I am going to write about things such as helping a colicky baby, playing with her when I don't have the strength to brush my hair, but also little tips about how to feel like a whole person again and appreciate the new person you have become.

I am not a professional, I am not a doctor, I am a mum and everything provided here is what I have observed so far as a new mum, it might help someone a bit hopefully but if you disagree with anything I say it's fine, motherhood is not about copying someone else, there is not one right way, there are as many different ways to be a mum as there are children, their little personalities make the experience change every time. So the best I can say is that you should always do what feels right, follow your guts and never be afraid to ask help from anyone you trust. But above all, enjoy the ride, every day is unique and those special times will not come back so cherish them!