On our final arrival

Looking back over my archives, the reason I've been quiet for so long is predictable;

This little love joined our noisy family at the end of August.  This year has been so full of good things that keeping sane meant choosing what to drop.  Children, home, work, husband and sleep won out!

Elias Andrew Longden Ingram

25th August 2015

7lb 13.5oz

He was nameless for nearly a week, much longer than our other little ones whose names were mostly set before they were born.  It didn't help that we truly didn't know what we were expecting; we actually had a girl's name ready to go.  He'd been Eli in my head for weeks but it didn't seem long enough for a 'proper' name.  A couple of days after he was born, Andy suggested Elias (which is the Greek form of Elijah and means 'The Lord Most High') but it was another 3 days before we could discuss it properly and make a decision.

The children have adored him since day one; I'm slightly concerned that Sammy will love him to pieces!  He's settled in nicely and I've felt better after this delivery than I did after any of the others.  Life carries on around him; Isaac's back at school for Year One, Anna's at preschool 5 mornings a week and Sam is just learning to talk.

Andy and I are tired and busy but delighted that our family is complete.  Here's to the next stage on our big adventure!

Around our dining room table

One of the memories I want to leave my children is that of sitting around the table as a family, enjoying food and conversation together.  As with seemingly every other aspect of parenting, it turns out that modelling the behaviour you want your children to adopt is the best route to take.  So the best way to teach table manners, healthy food attitudes and good conversational skills is to display them on a regular basis.

Part of our weaning strategy (if you can call it that) is having the children sit at the table as part of the family.  It feels awkward at first, to try and make conversation with a toddler while still maintaining some semblence of order.  Every day we ask the same question and let that lead us into a conversation.  "How was your day?"

It feels daft to ask a toddler what they did that day and what their favourite part was.  Especially when you then use closed questions to get them to tell you something you already know.  "Tell Daddy what you saw in the carpark."

But it's paying off, because now, the three year old is asking us how our day was.  And the two year old copies her brother.  And we're actually having a conversation.

On January 11th

Apologies for my absence.  It's been a little busy round here.

Samuel Robert Longden Ingram

Born 11th January 2014 at 11:16pm

Weighing 8lb 14 1/2oz

He's beautiful, the children love him and I'm very tired.  But what else is new?!

Actually, things are pretty great right now.  I'm tired and busy but really enjoying my time with my littlest.  He's growing before our very eyes.  He sleeps, he feeds, what more can you ask for at this stage!  Normal service to be resumed at some point.

On being a supermum

There's a chap at our church who calls me Supermum.  He's married with grown children; he means it kindly, not creepily.  He admires the fact that I bring snacks and drinks and toys for my two to play with during the service.

I have some lovely friends who have, from time to time, also called me Supermum.  And again, they mean it as a positive.  A term of admiration and encouragement.

Can I let you into a little secret?  Well, two actually but they're inextricably linked.

1. I hate the word.  Hate it.  With a firey passion.  Well, at least with as much passion as I can summon for anything right now.

2. I'm not.  Not in that sense anyway.

I want to say right away that I love the people who use it.  They are good people, who see into my life and want to applaud me for what I'm doing.  We all need a cheerleading squad from time to time.  Even if you know what you're doing and why, there are still going to be hard times and moments of doubt when you need someone else's reassurance.

The problem I have is the separation.  The notion that 'she', whoever she happens to be that day, is Supermum or Superwoman.  She has something that sets her apart, something I don't have.  She is more than I am.  She is better than me.  It separates us when I think of her as 'Super' because the corollary is that I am ordinary (no capital letter for me).

The reality is that each one of us is an individual, creating our individual families in the best way we know how.  I am the only wife of my husband and the only mother to my children.  I was purpose designed to love and serve them at this time and in my own, unique way.  No one else can do precisely what I can do.  And the same goes for you.

I have some internet friends.  Even my husband finds this a bit weird but stick with me.  Somehow, over social media, having only ever met 3 of them in real life, I have managed to evolve a community of mutual support and reassurance.

One of them has just become a mummy for the second time.  She worries about doing the best for her boys.  What she doesn't see is that she bakes yummy treats and creates fun crafts with them more than I ever have with my two.

One of them worries about her son's eating and sleeping.  And yet she's managed to make something by hand for every baby she knows that was born in 2013.

One of them has just moved house and I cannot believe the speed at which she and her husband have tweaked the decoration to be just to their liking.  (Also, I'm jealous of her table-setting arrangements, it's a gift, I swear!)

One of them is a babywearer; I (and my back) salute her.  She gets herself and her two girls out of the house every day (weather permitting).

There are more examples.  Examples of how doing what comes naturally is creating a beautiful lives for them and their children.  Of choosing the best thing for them, at that time and place.

That's the positives.  So here comes the balance.  My confessions.

• I love to cook, especially savoury food but in some seasons, the idea of deciding what to feed my family every night wears on me.  And the children have chicken nuggets again.
• I don't see the point of children's crafts.  It seems like a waste of materials to me.  So I also can't throw away anything that the children have made.
• I don't clean.  I vacuum only when the carpet is crunchy.  I recently cleaned my sink for the first time in months.  I wiped down some mirrors about a month ago and was astonished at how clear the reflections could be.
• I don't exercise.  Really, honestly.  I walk around at work, I push a buggy around the shops and I occasionally go swimming with my family.  But I live in a village so I jump in the car for almost every trip we make, including taking my son to pre-school.
• I have piles of organised chaos all over my house and garage.  They never quite make it all the way to wherever it is that they are supposed to be going.
• I wash our clothes when we start running out of things to wear.  And then take 3 days to get things folded and another day to actually put them back into drawers.

I could go on.  And on.  And on.

The reality is that I cannot do everything and that actually I don't want to.  So I choose the essentials (for example getting carbs, protein and vegetables into my children, having clean clothes to put on them most days) and the things that make my heart sing (taking photos, documenting our lives, reading, laughing with my children, sitting quietly with my husband) and I try my hardest to let the rest of it go.  That's the limit of my abilities right now.  And every single person I know is doing exactly the same.

Supermum doesn't exist.  She's a myth.  She has no special powers or abilities.  She's a mirage.

Reality is a lot more reassuring.  Supermum is me and you and your friend next door and your work colleague and your sister.  She loves her children and tries her best.  At the end of the day, that's all anyone could or should ask.

On New Year's Eve

Some traditions are intentional while others just evolve over time until it's natural that they occur when they do.  Our New Year's Eve celebrations are the latter; it only occurred to me this year that we have one at all.

Early on in our relationship, I had some major medical school exams in the first week of January and was studying hard.  Instead of heading out on the town or getting drunk with friends, we stayed home in my student house and ate dinner together.  I know, we were rock and roll back then.

This year, I'm heavily pregnant, we have 2 small children and we had just got back from our time away.  We needed to get the children back into their normal routines and organising a babysitter seemed like more trouble than it was worth.  Instead, we had our usual quiet evening at home.  We bought ready-prepared food from Mark & Spencers (real food that you just have to chuck in the oven for the prescribed time? Yes please!) and settled down with the Homeland season 3 finale.  I had a 'mocktail' and Andy had a glass of wine.  We were in bed by 11pm and fast asleep for the New Year.  Which was fortunate given that the children were awake, as usual, at 7am.

Life changes when you have children.  Your priorities shift and you have to streamline activities to those that really do bring value to your life.  And for me, a quiet evening with good food, good tv and a good man is the perfect way to end the year.

On New Year's Resolutions

I wish I could say I was resolving to blog more, but I've got a busy year ahead of me.  I've learned over the last few years that there's a natural ebb and flow to motherhood so I hope there'll be time for blogging some of the topics floating through my brain.  Going back to having just one baby at home for three days a week is going to be an interesting change for me!

Home

I love our house; coming home after 10 days away over Christmas reminded me just how much.  Unfortunately, some parts of it just aren't working for us right now.  We have a couple of big projects planned but it's the little ones and all the decluttering I have planned that are going to make the biggest difference I think.

• Finish decorating the nursery
• Replace bathroom
• Decorate hallway and staircase
• Mammoth decluttering project!

Craft

I have an assortment of unfinished yarn projects hanging around our living room.  I'd like to say I'm going to complete them all before starting anything new, but that's never going to happen.  So instead I'm going to be realistic; finish those I love and junk those that I don't.  I'm carrying on my Project Life approach into 2014.  I've enjoyed completing a side a week, usually working in retrospect over about a month.  I also want to get more 'proper' scrapbook pages into my albums.  I also need to finish the blind for our kitchen (started the last time I was on maternity leave!) and make a quilt out of the fabric I bought for the purpose before I had Isaac.

• Rationalise yarn projects
• Project Life 2014
• Scrapbooking
• Finish kitchen blind
• Make patchwork quilt.

Family

I'm so pleased and proud of my family; I honestly believe I married the best man I've ever met and that we made the most wonderful children in the world together.  I've learned a lot about prioritising and structure over the last few years.  Children like predictability and, it turns out, so do I.  We have some concrete routines in our home that work really well and we've been able to adapt them to our needs as time has passed.  These simple sequences of activity performed daily (e.g. our bedtime routine) or weekly (e.g. attending the same toddler group every Thursday morning) make life happier and smoother round here.  Another real positive is our approach to discipline; we aim to be calm, consistent and developmentally appropriate.  I've realised lately that I've been letting Anna off the hook too easily, not noticing that she's growing up so fast.  We've entered a defiant phase and she needs firm boundaries with consistent consequences.  The thing that surprises me it how often I'm able to avoid taking their misbehaviour personally.  I'm a short-tempered and grumpy person by nature, especially when I'm tired or hungry.  You'd think I would lose my temper often with the children but actually, I find it reasonably easy to understand where their behaviour is coming from and how best to deal with it.  Enough self-congratulations, there has to be a cloud, right?  Well, we're in the trenches of child-raising right now.  Neither of us has the time or energy that we would like to devote to our marriage.  So my aim for the year is to strengthen our marriage, making sure we purposefully spend time together without our children.

• Continue to build a strong and long-lasting marriage; regular time together, without the children!
• Continue to consider the children's temperaments, developmental stages and natural tendencies 
• Continue with our daily and weekly routines
• Provide consistent discipline for the children
• Go on a family holiday
• Spend time with our extended families.

Work

You'd be forgiven for thinking I could let this one slide for most of the year.  Actually, I really enjoy my career and recently I've become more aware of my responsbilities both to my patients and my colleagues.  I've become involved in a management group, which will mean some meetings and maybe some email-based work.  I've also been given some data for a project by my educational supervisor and the direction to "make of it what you like".  Added to professional development activities, that makes for a pretty full list.

• Attend trainees committee meetings
• Read Archives monthly
• Complete allergy data project

Self

Maybe this should have been higher up?  These items are going to seem slightly frivolous, but I'm ok with that.  I was looking back at photos of me when I was pregnant with Isaac, goodness how I've aged since then!  I'm still following the beauty regimes I had when I was a teenager (i.e. none!) and I think it's time to accept that I'm now in my thirties.  So the first step is an anti-ageing face moisturiser and then, woah, maybe some eye cream?  The main thing for this year is remembering the importance of seasons.  I remember the enforced inactivity of the newborn days, the frustration of the nearly mobile baby and the constant watchfulness when they finally do start to move.  Some days I'll get a lot done, some days it'll be enough that we're all alive and fed at the end of the day.  So taking it easy on myself is going to be key for 2014, which I guess puts everything above it in perspective.  It's good to have a to-do list but it's also go to let it go from time to time.

• Use an anti-ageing moisturiser and consider an eye cream
• Moderate my expectations to fit the season.

Negativity

I seem to spend a lot of my time saying "no!" these days.  It comes from having a 3-year-old and nearly 2-year-old in the house.  Some days it seems like all that comes out of my mouth is negative.

"Don't do that!"
"How many times do I have to tell you?"
"What did I just say?!"
"Am I talking to myself?"

That last one is my favourite.  I sound like my mother (sorry Mum!)  It's that old chestnut, all the things you promised you'd never say to your own children because it drove you up the wall when you were young.

When Isaac was a baby, I read something that has stuck with me ever since.  My mum has commented on it a couple of times.  And it really makes a difference to how I feel about my children and about myself.

Catch them doing something good.

It's easy to let them get on with it when they're eating their dinner nicely.  And so easy to get on their case when they're climbing the tv shelf again.  Or brushing their teeth independently, smearing toothpaste all over the bathroom.  Or playing hide & seek under the table instead of eating their dinner.  (All examples just from today.  Just so you know.)

But then I sound like a nag.  And I start to get frustrated with myself and with them.  Why do I have to say the same things over and over?  Why do they seem to do things designed to wind me up?  Why can't I be more gentle and patient with them?

So I make a conscious effort to find them doing something positive.  And then tell them about it.  "You're doing great eating tonight."  "What good sharing you're doing!"  "You're such a great big brother, that was a really kind thing to do."  And after a while, it became a habit.  I think it makes us all feel better.  The more you draw attention to something, the more that's what you see.  So if all I do is comment on the negative, I leave the day with a negative impression of it.  When actually, the day has been average (in most cases) and the children are just that: children.  They don't do it on purpose, they're learning.  They try to please me and to get my attention and if I don't give it to them in positive ways, they'll settle for the negative.  And I feel less like a harpy and more like a mum who enjoys her children.  Good things all round.

On documenting my pregnancy

I had an Anne Geddes pregnancy journal with each of my first two children.  I haven't filled in all of either of them but it's nice to have some thoughts and memories written down for the future.  And to keep the different pregnancies clear in my mind!  With Isaac, we also took a belly photo every week from about 20 weeks onwards but I still haven't done anything with them yet!  A friend of mine had The Belly Book by Amy Krouse Rosenthal for her pregnancy and it seemed a great choice for my next time round.

There's a page for each week (up to 39 weeks so this baby better not be late!) with a little bit of writing and a space for a belly photo.  So I'm taking photos with my phone (almost every week) and printing them at home to stick right in.  It's fun seeing how my belly shot out so quickly and has kept growing since.

There are also pages for food cravings and aversions, scans, midwife/hospital visits, maternity clothing and lots more.  The book is split in to trimesters and has a longer writing space at the end of each one to record your thoughts and feelings.  And of course, there's a labour and delivery section at the end with space for baby's vital statistics and first photo.

On my desk

***This post might strike the perfect balance for my blog - it's about a scrapbook page about a mummy story.  So I hope it appeals to the mummies, the scrappers and my family, who are only really interested in my children these days! (I'm completely joking, they're a little bit interested in Andy as well!)***

 

I've had this page on my desk for a couple of months now.  I pulled the photo out to go with some bright and cheerful MME My Girl papers - they pull out the colours of Anna's dress beautifully.  I was in the first flush of love with my new corner rounder, can you tell?  It's a simple design, just the photo and 2 blocks of patterned paper on a kraft background.  It took ages to get the title just right - 'view' is some recent AC thickers (Boardwalk) and 'my' are some really old DCWV rub-ons from my stash.  And then it sat there, waiting for the heartfelt journalling.  Because you can't write heartfelt journalling while you're watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer or listening to Paperclipping Roundtable podcasts.  A little glimpse into my scrapbooking process there!  But the story isn't fully told by just the photo.  And it needs to get into a book before it gets damaged (little feet have already left some crinkles!).  So here goes;

We're sitting on the leather sofa in Mum & Dad's sunroom, midway through a visit for my birthday.  It's you and me, baby.  Our time.  Our quiet space in the midst of family chaos.  Love and laughter, food and friendship, play and prayers.  This is my space, my time, my view.  No one else gets this time with you.  No one else nourishes you like I can, in these small, quiet moments. This is mine.  A perfect reflection of the side of you no one else sees.  Our shared peace, just to be together.  Even when our breast-feeding adventure ends, we'll still have this.  Touch, hold, quiet.  You can be yourself and I'll be me.  And we'll be together, just us.  And I will love you.  For who you are, not who I want you to be.  Forever.  And you can always come back here.  When the world leaves you bruised and broken, I will be here.  In our quiet space.  Where you are you and I am me and that is enough.

On a little bit of mummy-guilt

Last November, we were getting in the car to come home from our Thursday morning toddler group when I shut Isaac's hand in the car door.  There was a split second of silence and stillness as we both realised what I'd just done before I wrenched it open again and he began to wail.  He'd put his hand between the front and rear doors as I was putting Anna in her seat and as I'd slammed the rear door shut, it had trapped his fingers in the small gap.

I've never heard him cry so much or so long.  We sat for a second on the pavement beside the car, just having a cuddle.  But his hand was dirty, the wound was bleeding and starting to swell and I couldn't see how badly he was injured.  I ended up popping him into his seat and driving the 200m down the road to go back into toddler group.  I left Anna in the car (she's so amiable!) and dashed in to wash his hand up with cool, clean water.  He was still crying at this point.

He'd cut one finger quite badly and the two around it were also swollen and bruised.  I couldn't make a decision about how bad it was or whether he'd broken anything.  I just couldn't do it.  I worried that I was over-reacting but we had a 40 minute drive ahead of us before I could give him any pain relief and the children's A&E department was a 2 minute walk away.  But on the other hand, he was moving his fingers, albeit reluctantly.  I chatted it over with another parent (who happens to be a GP) and decided it was better to get it checked out now than get all the way home and have to come back again.

So I bundled them both into the buggy and walked down to the hospital.  The receptionist took our details and asked how it had happened.  When I explained, she smiled sympathetically and asked if I was ok.  We were called into see the triage nurse almost immediately.  She gave Isaac a good dose of paracetamol and ibuprofen and had a quick look at his hand.  Then we went back into the waiting room to wait for the doctor.  It was obviously a busy day, with lots of families coming into the department while we were there and frequent calls over the tannoy for people to go here or there.  There wasn't much movement out of the waiting area though, most people came in and were just sitting waiting to be called.  Over the time that we were there, Isaac perked up a bit and started using his hand more and more.  He also found a little playmate to build towers with.  By the end, he was playing almost normally and only seemed to remember his hand was hurt from time to time.

We waited a couple of hours in total; it was a drag to be there after toddler group, when we should have been at home eating lunch and napping.  There were plenty of toys for the children to play with and clean, accessible toilets with baby-changing facilities.  The only real problem was that I hadn't brought much food - I had a couple of oaty bars that the children shared.  When they started getting twitchy, I went to the reception desk to ask if I had time to get some food from the cafe before we saw the doctor.  A nurse overheard me asking and went to check their computer system to see how long we had to wait.  She said that we were next in the queue and apologised for the delay.  Shortly afterwards, a doctor came out and called three children at once.  We went into the examination area and she popped Isaac up on a trolley to examine him.  She was friendly and kind and quickly told us that he was fine, he hadn't broken anything and to leave the cut uncovered.  Truth be told, I felt like a bit of an idiot by then - it was the pain relief that made the big difference.  And time for the swelling to subside.

I had an appointment for Anna's one year check-up with our health visitor that afternoon.  I had to ring her from A&E to move it back a bit.  Thankfully, she's great and completely understood when the children turned up with chicken nugget Happy Meals.  So it was a busy old day!  Isaac thought the whole experience was great fun, after his hand started to feel better, obviously!  He had regular paracetamol for a couple of days and it's healed nicely.  Of course for the next month, he told anyone who'd listen that he had a poorly hand and that Mummy did it!

On the Mumstop blog

I'm guesting over at the Mumstop blog today, hop on over and check out all they do!

On bedtime for baby

Isaac starting sleeping through the night at about 6 weeks old, but getting him down in the first place continues to vex and distress all of us.  I can clearly remember sitting on the floor in his darkened nursery, sobbing, bouncing him wildly up and down while he screamed and screamed and screamed.  And I did this every night.  For at least 45 minutes.  Until he was so exhausted he fell asleep in my arms.  I can remember giving him his last feed of the day, as he fell asleep on my lap, then lifting him gently into his cot so he wouldn't wake.  I can remember giving him milk in a cup, reading a story then slowly rocking back and forth while he drifted off and moving him into his cot just on the verge of sleep.  And I can remember the nights we tried controlled crying.  The hysterical child, standing in his cot, quietened each time one of us went in to comfort him, only to lay him down again and start the screaming all over again.  He used to stand, swaying with impending sleep, fighting it until he could finally lay his head on my shoulder and fall asleep from exhaustion.  Each night was as bad as the last, my heart being torn in two as my confused and frightened child wailed.

I'd forgotten what I knew of my beautiful, independent and determined son.  I had trained him to fall asleep on one of his parents.  And now I was ripping away that comforting presence.

From birth, Isaac never wanted to bed-share, he's too independent for that.  He decided his Moses basket was too small at 3 months, moved into his cot in his nursery and slept through for nearly 12 hours.  He moved on from breast-feeding without a second glance.  I've left him in creche at church from the day they would take him, without a single tear.  I think we had a period of stranger fear, I might have blinked and missed it.  He loves his mum and dad, prefers us to everyone else, but we have done an excellent job of fostering his innate self-confidence, providing him a secure platform to reach out into the world.

I missed every single cue that my independent, determined infant was screaming at me.

I truly believe that babies cannot manipulate their parents.  That when a newborn cries it is to express a need.  That you cannot spoil a child by giving them love.  And in my inexperience, I thought that meant that every cry was a request for me to intervene.  We're pretty laid-back parents; we trust our children to explore the world around them, that it is a safe place for them to be and that our job as parents is to provide safe boundaries that they can grow within.  So if you come to our home, you will see Isaac climbing on the sofa, wandering the garden while I stay in the kitchen and climbing the stairs unsupervised.  But for some reason, that didn't extend to bedtime.  So from birth, I trained Isaac to need someone to fall asleep.  And then I forgot that I knew him better than anyone else and followed advice from a book, from an online forum, from my friends.  Instead of trusting my instincts and doing what was best for my son.

On a typical morning at home

I mentally started this post yesterday morning in a cloud of smugness.  We were stuck at home after Andy got a puncture in his car on Wednesday evening.  As I meandered through my lazy morning with the children, I was musing about the fact that it's been a while since we were just at home, with no timetable and nowhere to be.  I'd forgotten how lovely it can be to do things at a slower speed.  I was planning a short post on the importance of taking time at home to relax.  And then it all went to pieces.

It started with an accidental head-butt during a fake sneeze (that's toddlers for you) and escalated when he wouldn't come back to finished getting dressed.  Isaac's going through a particularly irritating and uncooperative phase at the moment, characterised by his tendency to answer every question with a definite "no"!  With my nose throbbing, (seriously it still hurts now, I thought it was going to bleed!) I lost my temper with him.  There was shouting, forced removal to his bedroom and a mummy-delivered dressing, followed by lots of crying, an apology from the boy and from the mummy and a rational explanation of exactly what he'd done wrong (the opposition, not the head-butt).

And isn't that exactly how parenthood works?  The moment you're thinking how lovely things are, they throw something else at you.

As it happened, the rest of our day pretty much followed the same pattern.  Once we were all dressed, we headed out in the buggy to pick up some icing sugar and had a lovely time at the park on our way home.  But before we left, someone ended up on the naughty step for refusing to put his coat and shoes on.  We ate lunch together and Anna tootled happily off to bed.  Isaac followed a little while later, kicking and screaming all the way.

We had a noisy, chaotic, fabulous afternoon when my mummies and their babies came over to celebrate one little boy's birthday.  I love these women; the only thing we had in common when we met was our health visiting team.  But over the last 2 years, we've spent so much time together that we used to joke about co-parenting our children.  Now most of us are back at work, things have changed again but we still get together once or twice a month on a Friday afternoon to drink coffee, eat cake and enjoy each other's company.  And that's the answer to the unpredictability of raising children.  Good friends doing the same things you are. People you trust with your worries and frustrations as well as the achievements and delights.  I'm so grateful for my little tribe.

On the end of breastfeeding

After just over a year, we're done.  Just like that, over the course of two days, she's passed me over in favour of a brightly coloured cup filled with cow juice.  I blame her brother; he's the eldest, a bad influence.  He's been weaned for more than eighteen months.

I've been so blessed; I found breast-feeding incredibly easy.  I meet women every week for whom that isn't the case and my heart goes out to them.  And to you, if breast-feeding was your desire and it didn't work out how you had hoped.  I know there are a myriad reasons why you might not breast-feed, including the reasoned and informed choice not to.  I'm privileged that I have so much contact with new mums and babies, that I've been trained in the teaching and supporting of breast-feeding, that the idea of getting your baps out in front of strangers wasn't that big a step for me, that I knew what to expect and what to do if it went wrong.  As it happened, both my children fed easily shortly after they were born.  I even called someone in to watch me feed Isaac that second day, convinced it couldn't be as easy as all that.

The best advice I've ever been given about breast-feeding (and one I pass on regularly) is that it will hurt, even if you're doing everything right.  The first ten day are the worst, if you can grit your teeth at each latch and hold on until the feed is established and the pain recedes, and you can do that eight to ten times a day for a week and a half, you'll be ok.

I had mastitis when Anna was a couple of months old.  I thought I was hungover but as the paracetamol wore off, I realised I had a fever.  I've never been so grateful to the NHS and modern antibiotics.  A day later, I was back to normal.  Though I completed the full course, naturally.

I've felt my way through this breast-feeding journey.  Letting the babies tell me when they were hungry, ignoring the clock completely after the first weeks with Isaac.  Both children grew well, quickly, losing little or no weight in their first days.  So I've never faced the challenge of being the sole source of nutrition for a baby who's failing to grow.  I can't imagine the guilt or the pain.

Each of them dropped their feeds as they wanted.  But I stopped Isaac, at the end.  I was in my first trimester with Anna, working 48 hour weeks in a busy neonatal unit.  So when evening came, I was so tired, I couldn't sit up to nurse him.  His warm little body combined with my hormone-fueled hot flushes left me overheated and woozy.  So at around ten months of age, we moved him onto a sippy cup of cow's milk before bed.  I expected to have to leave the room, to escape his fits of screaming.  I expected him to refuse, desperate for his mummy.  I expected him to hold out for the good stuff.  I should have known him better.  He tasted his beaker, did a double-take then sat happily on his daddy's lap to down the lot.  Ungrateful little sod.  Daddy always was his favourite.  (We ended our morning feeds two weeks later when a run of nights meant I wouldn't be home until 10am for three days in a row.  He didn't look back.)

But I was pregnant again so it wasn't so much stopping as an extended hiatus.  And then lady Anna arrived - and she's mine, all mine.  Only mummy will do.  Which is occasionally annoying, but mostly very very gratifying.  She loves her daddy, she'll settle with people she knows, she'll even stay somewhere unfamiliar but when it all comes down to it, she wants her mummy.

The first time she latched on, the pain was short but sharp.  I swore.  This after 5 hours of intense labour, nearly 3 of them pushing, without a single impolite word.  (Andy will tell you I bit him, it's a dreadful lie.  Sort of.)  And then we were off.  With a toddler underfoot, it's easier to go with the flow and I had a tendency to forget about Anna's feeds, only realising when she wouldn't stop crying that I'd last fed her nearly five hours before.  She took to eating quickly and easily and shortly after, dropped her daytime milk.

Unlike Isaac, she continued to feed in the night from time to time, even after she started solids.  As recently as last month, we were up a couple of times in the early hours for a feed and a snuggle before she returned to bed without complaint.

I started back to work and she took a sippy cup of milk without complaint each time I was working late or overnight.  She likes to drink from Isaac's cups; water, squash, juice, milk, whatever she finds.

The night of her first birthday, she went to sleep without any milk, having refused to settle down and feed.  To be honest, I expected her to wake up complaining but when she didn't, I gave her a dream-feed before I went to bed around 10.  She fed well in the morning, as usual, and I went off to work a long day.  Daddy gave her a beaker as usual that evening.  She settled well.  Then last night, she refused me.  Point-blank.  Giggling, smiling, playing games with me.  And I'm no fool, I know when I'm being passed over.  She drank a full beaker of cow's milk last night.  And I cried a little.

Dropping the evening feed is slightly inconvenient to be perfectly honest.  Our mornings are rushed and busy, it would be easier not to have to feed her then.  But that's the way parenting goes, very often the convenient is not the reality.

So her refusal to feed this morning knocked me off my feet.  She stole Isaac's cup actually, before I got her one of her own.  So you can see why I blame his influence, he's shown her the way the big kids do it.  And she very much wants to be like her big brother.

I wasn't ready for this period of dependence to end.  It's a recurring theme in my parenting journey; for me to be happy with the status quo and my child to be moving on, as children should.  I encourage their growing independence.  That is, after all, my job; to love them and guide them and help them to be all God made them to be.  To be apart from me, dependent on Him.  It starts when they cut the cord, as you lie in your hospital bed, looking at your sleeping baby, not feeling those breaths inside you as you were just hours before.  And now, uncertain if this is to be my last baby, I struggle with the loss of something intangible.  I define myself by my relationships and now one of the most important things in my life involves constant change, in the direction of away, of separate.  (I'm going to be a really annoying mother-in-law, I can tell already.)

And I've lost a part of myself.  The part that proclaims proudly, I'm still breast-feeding my daughter.  Even though I work full-time, and have a toddler, and keep a house.  (It's an annoyingly superior part - I think she needs a bit of losing, to be honest).  That period of my life is over, perhaps forever, before I was ready for it.  So I weep a little.  I remind myself that I am still needed, still loved.  I consider the positives (goodbye nursing bras, sore boobs and leakage!).  I sit in my sadness for a bit, grieving my loss, and then I get up and get on again.  I'm a busy mum, don't you know!

On a more serious note

I've had this post percolating through my brain for a little while now.  It's a bit of a departure from my usual fare of crafts and cute children.  I feel really strongly about these issues and I hope I can express my thoughts clearly.

I read a few mummy blogs (actually, they're mommy blogs mostly!) and I've started to become aware of "the mommy wars" taking place in the US recently.  It seems that everyone has an opinion on every aspect of child-raising, whether they've had their own children or not.  And the result of this overload of information and opinion is that individual mummies feel overwhelmed and under-prepared to mother their children the 'right' way.

Children are just like adults, but smaller and with much poorer impulse control - you can see their personalities from the moment they're born.  Some babies come out screaming, shocked and angry.  Some cry from fear or discomfort; it's cold and bright out here in the world. Some are silent, regarding us with wide eyes and prompting their parents to ask if they're ok.  Some reach for food, some just want a cuddle.  Every baby is different, from the moment they are born.  And if I could give a new mother just one piece of advice, it would be that no one will know that baby better than you.

That knowledge should bring confidence, a positive place from which to meet the world.  It should make the challenges of parenting less unsettling, more reachable.

From time to time since I became a mother, I've forgotten that the person who knows my children best is me.  (My husband is a full-time, hands-on dad who loves his children wholeheartedly and knows them better than anyone else but you can't deny the effects of being with your children all day everyday.)  Isaac has been a mostly straight-forward baby and a mildly challenging toddler.  Anna has fitted into our lives beautifully.  I'm so thankful for the blessings we've received in our children!  But every child comes with their challenges.  Anyone who tells you their child is a complete angel is lying, or hasn't hit that challenge yet.

Our challenge with Isaac has been bedtimes; I was planning to give you a bit more detail but it's turning into a post all of its own.  Suffice to say that I knew my baby but I ignored his cues to follow my beliefs about 'proper parenting' and it was a huge failure.  These days, we've evolved a style that suits all of us and we're making forward progress.  And that's enough.  Parenting is about the long term after all and this too shall pass.

It's ok to share your problems.  It's ok to ask for advice.  It's ok to admit that you feel overwhelmed and out of your depth.  It's ok to ask if this is normal, if that is healthy, if other children do it too.  Talking about things makes them smaller, reminds you that you're not alone and encourages and strengthens you.

But know this; you are enough.  God brought you this child, at this time, to parent as only you know how.  You will make mistakes, everyone does.  But no one else knows your child like you and no one else can be the mother (or father) that you are.  And that's enough.