1) On Thursday I drove for the first time since coming home, to West Auckland to meet up with some lovely ladies with babies around the same age as Jeremy for lunch (I am truly a woman of the 21st century now as these were people I met on the internet! Scary!) and to visit Daddy and his clucky female workmates at the office in Henderson. Driving felt really weird, I could feel every bump in the road, and it took a little while for me to get up to speed (literally). Plus it was like I'd been away on holiday or something - so much had changed on the road, for instance a big swathe of Riverhead Forest has been cut down. I can report that driving does indeed send JJ off to sleep so we can store that one away for future reference if we need it.
2) On the sleeping front - I am pleased to announce that we have mastered the art of self settling. This probably doesn't seem like a big deal to those of you without children but it has come as a revelation to me. For the first 3 weeks of JJ's life I was rocking or patting him to sleep after feeding, changing and playing with him, making putting him to bed a fairly labour intensive exercise. I had been doing some reading on sleep patterns and there's lots of material out there to say that what I was doing was Naughty and Setting Bad Habits (or, at least, it's naughty to keep doing it after your baby is 3 months, and if you can stop doing it before then so much the better).
The theory is, you need to teach your baby to fall asleep by themselves so they don't think they NEED you in order to fall asleep, and so if they wake themselves up they don't freak out that they're somewhere different from where they fell asleep (the bassinette or cot as opposed to Mum's or Dad's arms), but just fall back asleep again. The way to do it, or at least one established way, is to wrap them up and put them down awake, and leave them to cry for 10 minutes, then come back, pick them up for a cuddle, calm them down, then put them back down again, leave them to cry for 10 minutes etc etc. You really need to watch the clock because 10 minutes of your baby crying can seem like hours.
But anyway, the first time I tried it he didn't cry at all, just took himself straight off to sleep! And that has been the usual story! There have been a couple of times when he's needed to be picked up and comforted once, and that was because he still had a bit of wind in his tummy (Dad picked him up to comfort him and got an immediate burp, and he settled straight away). So, getting JJ to sleep is a much less labour intensive exercise, and it means I get an extra half hours sleep or so because I can start to doze immediately rather than having to wait until he drops off, and it also means he sleeps for longer because when he stirs he goes back to sleep. Absolute bliss. The routine for the last few nights has been one 5-6 hour sleep followed by one approx 3 hour sleep until dawn when he wakes up with the birds. I'm going to work on extending that second sleep - I suspect he's not filling himself right up when I feed him at 3-4am, might be a bit sleepy, and I haven't forced the issue because I'm pretty sleepy myself at that hour :-)
3) It's a small thing, but every little thing like this counts as a bit of a return to normalcy: I cooked dinner on Friday for the first time since coming home. Perhaps I've made a rod for my own back and should have milked the non-cooking thing a bit longer! I should point out however that I only managed it by doing the actual cooking in the afternoon, not the early evening. I suspect in the coming months our slow cooker will get a lot of use.
4) Another return to normalcy thing. I weighed myself yesterday and I have lost 16 of the 18kg I put on during pregnancy. I have a rib cage again! And I fit into lots of my pre-pregnancy pants AND my favourite boots! Oh the vanity - but I had been really worried my feet had permanently grown and I'd never fit all my shoes again. I can give Mum back her size 9 gumboots now as I fit my size 7s again :-)
We've had a fair amount of flooding in Kaukapakapa, blocking the road in three of four directions (all the ways of getting to our place except Dave's route to work!), up to our boundary but not into our paddock. Hasn't affected us really, but thanks to those who texted to check we were ok. The paddock is very wet, the calves aren't particularly happy, but the pigs - who seem to be a permanent fixture now, despite the original plan being for them to be in the freezer months ago - are loving all the mud.
Photo of the day time. Sorry about my finger in the way of the ones with Beans :-/
3 comments:
JJ has already lost the little baby look I see. Cute wee fella. Where does that come from?
just check the car insurance policy to see if you are covered yet - I thought it was 6 weeks after an operation that you aren't allowed to drive.
Good work on the sleep thing - makes a huge difference to how you feel and cope with things if baby is sleeping better.
Dave must enjoy his new alarm clock at dawn - much better than beep, beep, beep or the radio. new excuses to be late for work have been found now - cuddle time, nappy change time etc rather than an accident on the way held me up.
Great work guys - 1 month old already!
yeah Dave checked with the insurance company and they said 6 weeks unless you have sign off from a medical professional, and my midwife (who counts as a medical professional) was happy to give me a note.
Not sure where the cuteness comes from, I suspect it's just cos he's little, give him some time before he starts looking like either parent ;-) Speak for yourself - you managed to produce some pretty great-looking kids too, proves it can happen :-P
Bum, not sure if my last comment on this topic got to you or not. Anyway at the risk of repeating myself ---- well done Rach and Dave!!! What you are doing is to teach JJ that he is well loved and part of the universe as a whole -- not the CENTRE of the Universe. He is certainly the centre of your love, within the parameters of your parental rules, but definitely not the centre of our universe. You have served him well!!! As it is said: there are no such things as naughty babies or children, only naughty and inept parents!!! You are proving that you are good parents who have children whom you will make good citizens for the future. There is nothing more unattractive than to see a child make the parents scared and inadequate in public - because such a child is telling everyone in public that his parents are 'not such wonderful creatures'. You are telling JJ that public tantrums will be a waste of effort. Good on you both for being the BOSS jointly!!!! Luv Imm. PS - did you get something in the post???
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