Exploding Boobs And A Vocal Popster

It was a momentous weekend.  The time had finally arrived for me to be apart from The Popster for a whole 24 hours, (It turned out, due to engineering works by Southeastern, that it was actually closer to 26 hours, but who's counting).  Since the end of October I have been hand cuffed to The Popster - we do not part.  We have to be together as she is totally dependent on me.  If Jon had a boob full of milk then the last 4.5 months would have been different, but he doesn't and I do - two in fact!  The Popster had been in training for this day for the last few weeks.  Training consisted of me feeding Poppy as usual, minus one feed, as well as pumping two full feeds a day - 1 for the freezer and 1 for a training bottle. 

The results of the training, pre-separation, was as follows:  The Popster still hated drinking from a bottle so would have, at most, half a feed on one feed each day we attempted it - almost every day.  Secondly, my boobs were on overdrive!!  If you are not already aware, the way breastfeeding works is on a supply and demand system.  The boobs produce the milk to the demand - between The Popster and I, there was great demand.  This meant I spent most of the time with very full boobs that would become painful and start to leak after a couple of hours of not being "relieved".  A few days before the separation I had to get up at 1am to go downstairs and attach myself to the pump to relieve some of the pressure as I felt I was about to explode!  Jon was asleep and I'm pretty sure he would think exploding boobs was not the best wake up call.  About 2 mins into the "expressing" The Popster woke for a feed so she took over from the pump, although it is difficult for her when the boob is that full and hard.  (Maybe this is too much information now - but there is something about having a baby that makes you want to share this kind of intimate detail with all and sundry!)

So training didn't really look as though it was working and it was making my life extremely uncomfortable.  The reason for the planned separation was my soon-to-be-sister-in-laws hen weekend.  How could I miss that?  Despite the uncertainty surrounding how hungry The Popster would go, Jon told me to go away for the hen night and he would cope.  I think he had a lot more faith than I did.  I imagined it would be absolute hell for him.  I also realised it would be hell for him and not me, so off I went to London on Saturday morning with my electric breast pump packed in my shoulder bag.  That was my first mistake.  Why on earth was I carrying a really heavy shoulder bag instead of the small wheelie suitcase that has been sat in our hallway for the last month waiting to be put back in the loft?  I used to catch a train to London Mon-Fri every week.  I was a seasoned commuter.  I knew what to do, I didn't dawdle and get in peoples way.  I didn't stop suddenly at the top of escalators so that people would walk into me.  I knew what to do when my Oyster card didn't work first time.  I knew that the ticket machines were upstairs at Victoria and not down stairs where they are supposed to be.  I knew simple tube journeys without having to consult the map.  I knew how to amuse myself on the commute and how to avoid the gaze of every other person travelling.  However, I had not travelled to London at all so far this year and I had not regularly travelled for almost 5 months.  I was rusty.

I sat down on the train and realised I didn't have my iPod.  I also didn't have a book.  Not even a newspaper.  I had to endure the journey to Victoria with only looking out the window to amuse me.  Mistake number one.  Mistake number two: I had got on a slow train.  I didn't check when I checked train times.  Usually, the train stops at Bromley South and is then direct to Victoria.  This one was destined to stop at many stations.  Boring.  I finally made it to Victoria.  I met my already-sister-in-law and set of for the hotel.  The hotel is a two minute walk from the station, but we managed to go the long way round and take 10mins.  Everyone was waiting for us.  We had to be somewhere by 12pm and we were the last two to arrive.  It didn't matter we had plenty of time to get to Picaddily for 12pm.  We set off for the tube, people had to get tickets and I stopped them from entering the tube, telling them instead that the ticket machines are upstairs.  They're not - they have moved since I was last there and are back downstairs.  It was at this moment I realised that right now I'm not a Londoner and I don't know what I'm doing.  I did manage to avoid stopping abruptly at the top of an escalator though - I'm not that bad.  (Damn tourists).

We reached Tiger Tiger in Picadilly ready for our "Strictly Come Dancing" experience.  We were led upstairs and given waiver forms to fill in.  My mum wasn't going to partake in the dancing due to a bad back and appalling sense of rhythm and was therefore the designated bag/coat looker after and photographer.  (Incidentally, choosing my mum to be official photographer for an embarrassing dance experience is a genius idea as it means it is likely there will be few usable photos!).  Whilst we were signing forms declaring ourselves not on drugs, intoxicated or pregnant, (what kind of dancing was this??), my mum was putting out fires.  Literally.  The big pile of coats etc had been pushed and my scarf had fallen onto a candle.  That would have a been a great start to the weekend!  Setting off the sprinkler system at a major London night club causing an evacuation would certainly be a story to tell!  But my soon-to-be-sister-in-law was quick to notice the sizzling scarf and my mum made a noisy commotion, stamping it out.  It was then that we discovered we were in the wrong place and had the wrong teacher.  Our dance class was downstairs with a much less intense instructor and no need to sign anything.  Apparently we are allowed to do our class high on drugs if we wanted.

We had a quick photo session where we had to prance about on a pretend catwalk and also carry my soon-to-be-sister-in-law in varioous poses putting her right at the centre of all the attention.  Her idea of absolute hell.  It was then into the warm up.  By then it had been roughly 3 hours since I had fed The Popster.  That meant my boob was preparing for an explosion so I had to excuse myself from the warm up and do something in Tiger Tiger that has probably never been done before.  I suctioned milk from my breast!!!  I'm pretty sure Tiger Tiger isn't that kind of club - maybe there is somewhere in SoHo for that kind of thing!  We then spent a couple of hours learning a routine to Wham's Wake Me Up Before You Go Go.  There is video evidence but due to all of us lacking timing and any kind of actual ability I won't be sharing it with you.   

After a couple of hours at the roof bar in Waterstones we made our way back to the hotel where once again I had to "relieve the pressure".  This was definitely a different hen weekend experience to any I have had before!  We all met for dinner and once again I had to leave - this time before the desserts.  I'm so glad the pump takes batteries!  This would have been much harder if I had to find a plug.  

Off to the theatre to watch Wicked.  It was a similar experience to the previous week when I went to see The Kings Speech.  i.e. my enjoyment was slightly marred by the big, throbbing, leaking boob.  When you tell people you're going to have a baby they all like to mention some kind of bad thing about it - "Oh say good bye to sleeping", "no more exotic holidays for you then", "have fun not drinking" etc etc.  No one ever says anything about throbbing boobs everytime you leave your baby for more than 3 hours!  When I told people I was going to go away for the weekend, everyones concern was about me missing my daughter.  To be perfectly honest I didn't really miss her.  I was distracted from missing her by the physical pain.  Actually, not really pain, it was just really uncomfortable.  I feel a bit guilty for saying I didn't miss her, but it was just so nice to have a tiny bit of normaility.   My life has been one way for a very long time and the last 4.5 months has been so far removed from that it was nice to go back to my old life for a brief amount of time - or as close to my old life as my boobs allowed.  There was another "relieving" session at 4am and then another pre breakfast before I set off home to be with my baby again.  All that "relieving" and nothing to show for it!  I couldn't keep any of the milk as it wasn't sterile.  It all went down the drain.  Literally.  Such a waste.

After a rubbish journey home due to engineering works I finally got back home to my baby girl.  She was in the middle of a feed so I wasn't sure if I should interrupt or not.  She had almost finished her bottle but I stopped her so I could get a huge smile and a cuddle.  YAY!!! She was happy to see me.  An improvement on the previous week.  I rewarded her with a proper feed.  Or was I just "relieving" myself again!  She had just had a whole bottle but then she took a whole feed from me!  Greedy girl.  It turns out her day and night with her Dad had gone really well.  By then end of the day she had become a bottle pro.  Jon and Poppy had had a brilliant chance to have some father/daughter bonding time and they had made the most of it.  

Now, I was only away for 24 hours but amazingly in that time she really had changed.  All of a sudden she had found her voice.  The Popster used to make me laugh as in the mornings she was always silent.  I couldn't get a peep out of her.  As the day would progress she would start to have crying sessions and by the time we would get to bed time she would be full on hysterical.  But basically, silence or crying.  In the time I had away she found her voice and boy does she now use it!  She now wails.  It is sort of a whining but not really - although it can quickly progress to that so you have to be careful.  I know that at her age she is supposed to start making noises, but I was expecting happy, baby, gurgling type noises. I was expecting it to be cute.  Instead, she sounds as though she is stuck in the bottom of a well and has been there for years.  She has been calling for help for so long she hasn't got that urgentness to her wail.  She has a tired wail - she has given up any chance of  rescue but can't quite stop all together.  It really doesn't sound good does it?  I hope she sounds happier soon!

Separation - Who Suffers The Most?

I'll tell you now the answer is me, but I'll come to the reasons why shortly.

Next month my big brother will be getting married.  He is pretty much already married as he has been with his future wife for a long time now and they have two kids - the oldest is nearly 11 and the youngest will be 7 in the summer.  Next week is the hen weekend.  Something I have been fretting over for a long time now.  Not fretting in a bad way - just questioning whether or not I'll actually be able to go.  Due to The Popster being breast fed and having an intense dislike for bottles it looked as though the only way I could go was to take her and hubby with me.  They would hang out in the hotel room and I would pop back every 3 hours, sober, to feed her.  Not an exciting hen weekend!!  For this reason we put The Popster into training.

Training did not work.  It consisted of regularly trying to give The Popster a feed via the bottle, (using expressed breast milk).  We tried everything.  Different people feeding her, different bottles, different teats, a cup, trying to trick her by substituting her dummy for a bottle and then quickly switching back again before she noticed.  Feeding her when hungry, feeding her when not hungry.  Warming the milk, not warming the milk.  Everything.  She did not want that bottle.  She had standards.  She would only take her food from the source.  This was heartbreaking for me.  The worst part was pouring the perfectly good milk I had produced down the sink after The Popster had a tantrum when offered it.  I don't really know how to describe the feelings you have when expressing milk, but I'll give it a go.

First of all I'll describe to you the first conversation I ever had about expressing milk and therefore my first knowledge of what it was all about.  I promise you the start/set up of this story is not what you are expecting right now.  Here goes.....

I was around 6 months pregnant and at work.  I had a very important meeting about ROI, (Return On Investment).  I was in the process of a complicated piece of work that was incredibly important and would result in steering our companies strategy for the following year.  The meeting involved the Director Of Music, the Programming Controller and the Managing Director.  Just to give you a little more info so you can really picture this, they were all men, the Programming Controller was newly married and childless, the Director of Music is gay and disliked children and the MD was married with 2 kids.  Somehow, during the course of this meeting the conversation turned to expressing breast milk and I swear it was not me that went there!!  My MD decided to steer half the meeting to giving me advice about making sure I spent the money and bought a decent electric breast pump.  Manual was a stupid idea - it had to be electric and not the cheapest.  I also had to pump milk to freeze after I had a drink or two and label it as drunk milk.  If my baby was playing up at all, I could feed her the drunk milk and that would help her sleep.  I did question his daughters progress at school and was assured she was very bright and doing well - the drunk milk was not harmful.  Now you may be thinking - all good advice.  But then just try and picture the circumstances of this conversation!!!  You should have seen the faces of the two guys without children!! Priceless.  Never in a million years when I went to work that day did I think I would be sat in a meeting with 3 guys talking about pumping milk out of my breasts!!

Much as you talk about pumping milk out of your breasts nothing can prepare you for the reality of actually doing it.  It is weird!  Until you have done it yourself you just won't understand.  Breastfeeding isn't weird - it's nice, and most importantly it's mostly invisible.  Pumping is a mechanical version of that but without the baby - and you can SEE IT!  It spurts out all over the place - it doesn't matter how many times I do it, it always amazes me. Now having knowledge of what is involved in expressing milk, that conversation at work with 3 senior, male colleagues feels even weirder!!

A couple of weeks ago I randomly decided to try a bottle of milk on The Popster again - this was after giving up for a few weeks.  It was only a small amount as it was depressing throwing it away all the time.  Miraculously, she didn't scream, she didn't make a fuss and she drank it.  She was slow - very very slow, but she did drink it!!  Weirdly this was the same day that she slept with her head turned left for the first time.  A truly miraculous day - see previous blog.  This small step meant the Hen Weekend was back on and I may actually make it and it also meant The Popsters training would start again and would hopefully progress at pace.  It also meant a serious amount of time on the electric breast pump as I had to stock the freezer for a whole 24 hour period and also a supply of training bottles to give every day until D-Day.  It also meant we had to do a bit of a practice run.

The Hen Weekend is next week, so today I had to leave the house and The Popster for a period sufficient for a decent trial run.  How would The Popster and get her through 2 whole feeds!  He also had a Liverpool vs Man Utd match to suffer.  As it turned out, the football side of things worked out with Liverpool winning 3-1.  The Popster side of things wasn't quite as perfect but they weren't bad and it has given us encouragement for next week.  How were things for me?  Well, I mooched around the shops and then went to see The Kings Speech at the cinema. I also ate my first Maccie D's in a long, long time.  I don't recommend it - I have now relegated Maccie D's for times of drunkeness only.  It was very disappointing - but mostly bland.  Anyway, yet again I digress.  Mooching all good.  Maccie D's bland.  Film, very enjoyable but slightly marred by the throbbing, right breast that was ready to explode!  I was fearful for the person sat in front of me.  Exploding breasts whacking you on the back of the head can't be good when you're trying to watch an incredibly English film about a stammering King.  God Save The King!  Seriously, that boob was bursting!!!!  It had been something like 7 hours of milk slowly seeping into that breast - as it turns out that is a lot of milk.  The left was fine - I was looking very wonky!

The Popster was fine.  She was playing and hanging out with her Dad.  She wasn't missing me.  When I got home, all excited to see her, she barely even looked at me.  She gave me a cursory glance when I put her face right up to mine, but that was about it.  "Oh right - that woman with the boobs is back.  Now help me put this rattle in my mouth.".  No the person who suffered in this first separation was me.  Squeezing a pint of milk into a boob that can only contain half a pint does not make a happy separation.  Next week at the Hen Weekend, I will be excusing myself from the party every few hours in order to attach myself to an electric pump and relieve that pressure.  Putting it in the freezer and labeling it "drunk milk" will not be happening though!

Sleeping Is A Team Effort

My two favourite things are sleeping and watching films.  Unfortunately I went through a period which lasted 2-3 years which actually combined the two.  I love the cinema and I love sleeping but in no way do I recommend mixing the two together.  I would see trailers for films I really, really wanted to see.  I would pay the money to go to the cinema.  I would spend the extortionately marked up prices on bags of M&M's or Minstrels and the even higher marked up drink prices -for drinks that really don't taste good, (syrup mixed with carbonated water is not the same as an actual tasty, refreshing drink, although it still rots your teeth.).  I would get roughly half way into the film and then the sleep would attempt to descend.  I say "attempt" because it really was only the initial, testing attack.  An exploration to see what kind of enemy it was up against before launching the full attack.  I fought this with all my power.  I would have many uncontrollable head nods, (this also happened to me once in a meeting with a client - not surprised I didn't stay in that job long!).  I would shift in my seat, I would take a sip of the sickly fake Fanta, I would shake my head, I would do everything I could to show that threatening sleep that it's attempted attack was pointless and it should try someone else.   Ultimately though I would fail and I would fall asleep.  Now, it is difficult to say how long I would sleep for - after all I was asleep, not clock watching. I would soon discover though, once the film had finished and the post film discussion would leave me confused.  The problem was, most of the time lost was actually during the initial attack and not the victory.  I would actually only sleep for probably 10 mins but would fight it for at least half hour.  If I just laid down and let the sleep monster take me straight away I would have only lost a brief amount of the film going experience.  Once I learnt that I was completely cured.  It has now been a long time since I fell asleep at the cinema.

What has this got to do with being a new mum?  Well, sleep is a hot topic among all with babies.  Those little "bundles of joy" seriously know how to mess with your sleep.  Margaret Thatcher famously boasted that she only needed 5 hours when she was Prime Minister.  I, on the other hand, am at the opposite end of the scale.  I need a minimum of 8 hours.  I could easily sleep for 12 hours and have been known to go for 14.  I'm a professional sleeper.  Jon is rubbish at it.  He'll wake up at the weekend around 7.30am - so slightly later than a working day - and he'll have to get up.  He can't doze.  Amazing isn't it?  How can you not doze?!?  In some ways dozing is better than sleeping.  When you're dozing you are consciously aware that you're in bed asleep, you can actually appreciate the act of sleeping and you can influence your dreams.  I will become aware that I'm in the middle of a dream and start to really enjoy it. Yep, I've decided, dozing is better than sleeping.  But sleeping is still pretty damn good!

When you have a baby, everyone says you have to sleep when they sleep.  I don't do that.  When The Popster is asleep that is my time to do the dishes, tidy up, shower, do the laundry etc etc.  If I slept when she was asleep the house would be a mess, I would really smell and most of all, I would keep getting woken up by The Popster.  She doesn't know that I'm asleep and should stay quiet, when she wants to get up she yells.  When she wants to eat she yells.  When she wants anything she yells.  A screaming baby is not my favourite alarm clock, so I sleep at night.  And every night, I hope that The Popster is going to sleep that little bit longer than the previous night.

As you all know The Popster is breast fed. It is commonly said that formula fed babies sleep better at night than breast fed babies.  The reason for this is formula is harder to digest than breast milk so stays in them longer and they are therefore less likely to wake up in the middle of the night hungry.  I get many a young mother look at me with sympathetic eyes when I talk about The Popster waking for a feed at 4am.  Formula babies sleep though the night and breast fed babies don't.  That's the myth.  Yes you heard me correctly.  It is a myth.  Or more accurately it is a very misleading statement that has resulted in a myth.

First of all, "Sleeping through the night" officially constitutes a baby that sleeps for a 5 hour stretch.  So Margaret Thatcher would have a baby that really does sleep through the night, but for me, someone who likes 8 hours minimum and preferably 12 hours, "sleeping through the night" is a bit of a stretch.  In actual fact,  The Popster has been "sleeping through the night" since she was roughly 6 weeks old.  She can do 5 hours.  Breastfed babies are just as able to "sleep through the night" as formula fed babies.  In no way would I ever call sleeping for 5 hours, sleeping through the night.  Until The Popster goes to bed at 6.30pm and stays there until I want to get up the following morning - say 9am, then she is not "sleeping through the night" .  Now there's a dream!

I have to get out of bed 2-3 times in the night to feed The Popster slept in the day.  Then we watch TV - very important as Sky Plus can only record so much, and we have a lot to get through.  I tell you, miss a couple of days of catching up on TV and we run the risk of filling the hard drive up.  She then tends to wake around 4am and then again between 7 and 8am.  At that final feed, I'm still counting that as night.  I don't want to get up then so I put her back to sleep and she goes to sleep for me.  So 3 feeds in the night but most people would call that 2.  I just need to phase out the 4am one.  She is capable of it, a few times we've succeeded, but more often that not she wants a 4am feed.  That one is probably the hardest as I'm fast asleep then.  At least it only takes 10mins.  So I don't think her sleep patterns are that different to the babies that mothers boast about.  I'm pretty happy.

The Popsters feeds take around 10mins - longer if she decides to fall asleep half way through but not let go.  In this 10 mins I put my head back and doze - often writing in my head a much better blog than I'm managing to do now.    When The Popster slept in our bedroom with us and was new the feeds were much more frequent.  Invariably, when she woke and cried, I would wake with a jump in a panic.  Almost always I would wake thinking I was in the middle of a feed and had fallen asleep and dropped her.  Her cry was because she was laying injured, shocked on the floor.  I would jump awake and look around for her, before realising I had finished that feed, put her back in her basket and been back to sleep.  In those days I never knew what was going on or where I was.  I was getting sleep, but I spent a lot of the time slightly delirious.  For the record, I did fall asleep whilst feeding many times, but I always managed to keep a grip.

So, I said earlier I'm pretty happy with how The Popster sleeps, and it's true.  However, recently she hasn't been sleeping well at all.  She wakes in between feeds.  She appears to be having problems with wind.  She'll wake a couple of hours after a feed crying real tears, drawing her legs up to her chest and farting loudly.  Apparently I gave birth to a teenage boy!!  This is really hard on us.  I say us, most of the time Jon just snores through it all.  It does disturb him sometimes though and it makes him very grumpy.  When this is happening there is very little we can do.  I rub her tummy and give her, her dummy.  This works.  For somewhere between 10mins and 30mins.  The length of time it works for has a direct link to how long it takes me to get back to sleep.  If I manage to fall asleep straight away than she'll wake straight away.  If I take half an hour than she'll last 31mins.  Her timing is impeccable.

So recently my nights have been very disturbed - but no where near the extent to which they were in the early days.  The Popster is now back on the Infacol in a desperate attempt to resolve the current problem.  If it works I sleep better, if it doesn't, I don't and it's back to the drawing board.  I got over the sleeping in the cinema debacle and I can get over this.  Unfortunately though, this time I'm not alone.  This time I'm in a team with The Popster and I'm not sure she knows the plan.  Time for a team talk.

Clothes Designers From Mamas & Papas Need To Hang Out With Some Babies Sometime. Idiots!

Today we were supposed to sort out the mass of clothes The Popster has managed to already grow out of - see photo below.  Before she was even born she owned more clothes than me and Jon combined and definitely more than most high st charity shops.  The mound of clothes was monumental - we considered buying a new house.  Just for her clothes.  The main reason we had so many was due to two very generous couples.  The same reason I had more maternity clothes than normal clothes - never has my wardrobe been so crammed.  I couldn't cope - how do you keep things tidy when your wardrobe and drawers are bulging?  How do shopaholics cope?  Where do they put it all?  

Anyway, I digress.  Two very generous couples gave us sack loads of clothes for The Popster.  All girls clothes.  At the time of the donations we did not know what gender The Popster was going to be.  At that stage The Popster was The Ricicle - a genderless lifeform with no need of clothes.  If The Popster ended up being a boy we would be hiring a van to take all the girls clothes to a charity shop - or maybe we could have clothed all the girl babies of Africa?  Actually, to be fair.  There were a lot of unisex clothes.  My brother and sister-in-law included in their gigantic sack of cast-offs 32 white baby grows and around 40 white vests.  Surely that alone is enough clothes?  It would be pretty boring, The Popster would wear white every single day for a few months, but we could just say she was making some kind of fashion statement.  She wouldn't care.  She had bigger things to consider than the colour of her clothes.

So pre-birth she had a ridiculous amount of clothes. More than more than enough, plenty, an abundance, many many, a plethora etc etc.  And then she was born, and the delivery men did come.  Day after day after day.  It was so exciting, every single day, excluding Sundays, for three weeks at least one parcel was delivered for The Popster and most contained more clothes.  First of all I have to say thank you to every one for knowing me well.  We did a pretty good job of avoiding pink.  The worst culprit for the pink was  my mum - thanks mum, glad you know me so well!!  Just because you're a girl it doesn't me everything you wear should be pink.  Other colours exist.  I haven't eliminated pink completely from The Popsters wardrobe - I've even bought some myself, but it has to be the right kind of pink and not too much.  Anyway, pre-birth many many clothes.  Post birth many many more. 

When you have that many clothes you have to work hard at rotating it so that everything does get at least one wear.  People were so generous I wanted to make sure she wore everything but it was tricky.  It is so eay to just put your favourites on her again and again.  I set up a system to ensure good rotation and I reckon I did a pretty good job, but there were some that didn't make it into the final line-up.  With that amount of clothes it was easy to miss things.  Sometimes I would pray that she would poo herself and have it leak as I needed to change her.  One set of clothes in a day was not going to cut it.  We needed to up that change rate to get through them all.  Five outfit changes for Lady GaGa at the Grammy's?  Pah!!  Pathetic, The Popster could do 8 changes in a day.

Having such a vast amount of clothes from a variety of sources meant I became a bit of an expert - as I'm sure all mums are.  Actually, not such a baby clothes expert, more a Mama & Papa's hater!  Mama's & Papa's are a bit like DFS.  The sofas in DFS, (Hurry - their sale is due to end soon!), look really nice, but are probably the most uncomfortable things to sit on ever.  What is the purpose of a sofa? Is it to look nice or is it to be a nice comfy place to park your bum?  Ding, ding, yes you're right, it is to be comfortable.  Mama's & Papa's sell baby clothes. That means babies are going to wear them.  They do everything in their power to make them as awkward as possible to put onto babies.  A lot of the time when I'm dressing The Popster, she is crying, often even screaming, (I don't know why she hates getting dressed).  Speed is what you need when it comes to dressing or undressing a baby - something Mama's & Papa's idiot designers do not understand.  The other thing they don't understand is that new born babies aren't great fans of being put face down and pushed  into the floor.  Funny that.

So what do the M&P idiots do wrong?

1.  They make babygro's that button at the back.

2.  The poppers they use are very small and difficult to "pop"

3.  They don't always use poppers, deciding fiddly little buttons would be better

And they do all this for you at prices far higher than anyone else.  The one thing they do right is the clothes definitely look good.  If you want a fashionable baby then shop at Mama's & Papa's.  If you want to give money to idiots, then shop at Mama's & Papa's.  How on earth did they decide buttons at the back was a good idea?  Did they ever try it out on a real live baby?  Did that baby stay alive for long?  I tried it once, but after hearing The Popsters muffled screams and having flashbacks of every single pillow suffacating murder scene from film and TV I decided to never try it again.

I know that good fashion means you have to suffer a little bit but does that really start at 1 week old?  Besides, I haven't really every subscribed to the whole "suffering to look good" thing.  You'll never see me in stilletos. Apart from the fact I would break an ankle within minutes of putting them on, if I did manage to keep them on for any length of time my feet would ache.  And why would I want aching feet? I'll take pain when it is worth it - for example, giving birth.  But why take pain just to look taller?  Maybe one day The Popster will be happy to suffer in order to look good but I'm not going to make her start now.  For now, reasonable sized poppers and velcro is all she needs. In fact, I wouldn't mind that myself!

The Popsters Magic Friday!!

Two great things happened last week.  One of them truly brilliant and a dream come true and the other really promising.  This is a quick blog post to share the news with you all.

For those of you that don't know, The Popster attends physio to help correct a neck problem called Torticollis.  The neck problem has led to Plagiocephaly.  Is that enough big words for you?  Basically, since birth The Popster has had a problem with her neck.  She has a tight muscle on the left side which makes it difficult for her to move her head.  The neck problem is called Torticollis.  A consequence of the neck issue meant that since birth The Popster has always turned her head to the right.  When she was lying down on her back, (which equates to about 99% of the time!), her head would be turned to the right which would mean her right side of her head would be against a flat surface -mostly a mattress.  This meant her head went flat on the right side - it's really noticeable, and not something we want to last.  Lot's of babies get some kind of flat head, mostly the back, and it sorts itself out as they get stronger and can hold their heads up.  Due to The Popsters neck problem she has big problems in holding her head up and is therefore behind other babies in terms of development.  We go to Physio to help strengthen her neck and get to the stage where she is able to turn to the left when laying down.  We can then encourage her to turn that way and slowly her head should start to round out again.  So that's it in a nutshell.  So what is the good news?

The good news is, on Wednesday I went to physio with the news that The Popster had started to turn her head slightly left of centre but I was unable to do her exercise as she fought it too much and was too strong for me.  I was given new exercises and reassurances that she was definitely getting stronger and showing improvements.  Then the brilliant news happened.  On Thursday, she started turning her head properly to the left when on her back, and Friday morning she actually went to sleep lying with he head turned left!!  Eureka!!!  She can do it!  We'll have a normal looking baby in no time!!!  Although, the only potential problem we may now have is she loves the left so much, it is all about the left.  Right is out of favour!!  What if she spends the next 4 months only ever looking left and never looks right again?  She'll end up with a flat head both sides, that's what.  Not a good look!  Anyway, all joking aside, it is a great breakthrough and I'm very proud of her.  I feel like it is her 1st major achievement in life.  You all might take turning your head to the left for granted, but for The Popster this was a big step.  Now I have no fears for her ability at learning the Green Cross Code - she'll be crossing roads like a pro!

The other great news is that on Friday, (Friday was a great day!), she drank expressed breast milk from a bottle!!!   Another really easy thing I hear you say.  What kind of backwards baby is this that can't move her head or drink from a bottle?  Well, it is The Popster that's who, so back off!

The Popster is breast fed.  When we were trying to establish breastfeeding in the early days there was no way she would survive on breast alone so we topped up with expressed breast milk from bottles.  She loved those bottles.  I would start by putting her to the breast where she would mostly lick, and probably fall asleep.  I would then put a bottle in her mouth which she would guzzle down as fast as possible.  I would then put her back to the breast where she would likely bite and then fall asleep.  As time went on, her time at the breast would involve more and more actual feeding which meant she used the bottle less and less.  Seeing as behaving like a cow and having a pump attached to your boobs is really not that much fun I slowly stopped expressing until I wasn't at all.  Great - breast feeding successfully established.

It felt good, until breast feeding wasn't that convenient one day and I tried giving her a bottle.  It must have been only 2-3 weeks since she had last had a bottle but in that time it seems she had developed a massive aversion to bottles.  There was no way she was accepting milk from anything but the source.  This was not good news - this tied me to The Popster 24/7.  The longest break I could safely have was just under 3 hours.  Much as I love The Popster I really wanted the ability to not be with her!  She may not have existed for long, but I've got her forever and quite frankly I need a break now and again.  Every other person in the universe gets to leave her for a bit, I want to too!  That meant we had to train her in the way of the bottle again.  As it turned out it also meant I had to pour pints of breast milk down the drain as we encountered failure after failure.

The reason I was pouring milk away was because The Popster was defiant.  She hasn't had milk from a bottle for at least 12 weeks.  In that time we tried everything.

We tried me hiding and Jon feeding it to her.

We tried different bottles.

We tried different teats.

We tried waiting for her to be really hungry.

We tried feeding her early.

We tried tricking her by swapping her dummy for a bottle and quickly switching back before she got too upset.

We tried different positions.

We tried a cup.

We tried warming the milk.

We tried filling a teat with milk and putting over my nipple -messy failure.

We tried it all.

We listened politely when people made suggestions - we had always already tried. 

Nothing worked.  The results were either uncontrollable hysterical crying, or she would just play with the teat, or she would suck but not swallow and allow it to all just dribble down her chin.

It was very disheartening so we had a break from trying for a couple of weeks.  I have a hen weekend to go to which is rapidly approaching - if she doesn't take the bottle I'm not going.  This means we have a time limit on this training, so I decided I needed to start up again.  With not a great deal of hope, on Friday I stuck a bottle in her mouth and amazingly she didn't cry and appeared to be drinking - there was actual swallowing going on.  I couldn't believe it!  Where did this come from?  After 5 mins I couldn't contain myself and removed the bottle from her mouth to see how much she had drunk.  5mls.  Big deal!! She was being really slow, but she was drinking.  She did get a bit faster, and she finished the whole bottle!!  I only had 40ml in there as I hate throwing it away.  I can't tell you how happy I was, but I knew this didn't mean we had cracked it.  But it did mean we had made progress and it was promising.  We had to keep up momentum.  We had to give her a bottle every day, if she took it we would slowly increase the amount until it was actually a full feed.  Progress since then has been slow.  Saturday no chance - scream.  Sunday, success.  Monday - uh uh, no thank you.  Let's see what tomorrow brings.  We don't have a lot of time, but if this is successful I have a lot of cow imitating to do - hook me up to that pump!!

So Friday was a great day.  She slept with her head turned to the left and she drank from a bottle.  You don't get days better than that.

The Popster On Tour

This weekend The Popster went on tour.  She's a popular gal and had many places to go and many people to see.  Saturday was a bit of a whirlwind, but Sunday was slightly more relaxed.  Saturday, The Popster toured, whizzing from place to place, in the car seat, out the car seat, in the car seat, out the car seat, in the car seat, out the car seat, etc etc.  It's exhausting for the adults, never mind a 16 week old baby.  Sunday was much more sensible.  She stayed in residence and people came to her.

In total, over the weekend she saw:  2 friends and their cat, 2 of her 3 sets of grandparents,  2 friends with their baby daughter and 2 cats, her great aunt and uncle and her uncle and his girlfriend.  No cats were invloved on the Sunday - they were a Saturday treat only.

The following is the tour debrief....

On Saturday, after getting up, dressed, fed etc we loaded up the car with a ridiculous amount of stuff - The Popster really needs her own tour bus!  There was barely enough room for us.  We left just as The Popster was dropping off for her first nap of the day, she had been up a whole hour after all.  The first stop was a special secret, for the fans only, venue.  She woke up just as we arrived, ready to greet her fans.  She was being a little bit of a diva though and refused to sleep during the gorgeous 3 course lunch that had been prepared.  This meant I ate my lunch with The Popster on my lap.  The delicious soup wasn't too much of a problem but the next course was a little trickier.  Fear not though, Jon cut my food up for me and I didn't miss out - all good practice for when he has to cut up The Popsters.  After The Popster felt she had been suitably cooed over, and there was a lot of cooing, and declarations of love, she fell alseep lying down in the corner of the sofa.  Brilliant! This allowed me to eat the 3rd and final course with two hands - a delicious, gooey chocolate cake.

As soon as she woke up she was put back in the car seat and whizzed of for a flying visit to her grand parents.  She fell asleep about 2 mins from the grandparents house which meant the side of The Popster the grandparents got to see was the very grumpy one.  We weren't there for a long and she didn't cry for the whole visit but she wasn't exactly smily and full of joy!

It really was a flying visit and after getting a grisly Popster back into the car seat we drove the 3 mins journey round the corner to see our friends Jo & Pab and their gorgeous 9 month old daughter Amelie,(is that right? 9 months?).  Despite the journey only being 3 mins it was enough to send The Popster to sleep.  We left her in her seat and started to play with Amelie.  After a short period of time, she suddenly screamed - this seemed to have a domino effect and Amelie also started crying.  The Popster had done her job though and instantly stopped - it's a trick she has played a few times before.  She likes to cry in order to get the other babies crying and then sit back and watch the chaos unfold before her happy in her work - is she going to be an evil bully when she grows up?  It is looking that way at the moment, she really does enjoy making other babies cry.  Although, the manner in which she carries out that dastardly deed shows that she definitely knows how to make use of her strengths - in this case being a baby.  When she is a gorgeous young woman is she going to have men wrapped around her little finger?  I hope she finds different strengths to use to achieve her aims!


Anyway, it was great fun at Jo & Pab's.  The Popster was a bit clingy and grisly but not too bad.  Despite the high octane energy in the room that is Amelie she still managed to fall asleep - mind you, so did Amelie.  Poppy lay sparko on the floor while Amelie had the luxury of her own bed.  Once again, The Popster awoke with a scream.  I think it is because she fell asleep so many times that day and every time she woke she was in a different place - it confused her a lot!  Amelie was great fun and I can't wait for The Popster to be that active and smiley.  Fun times are ahead!  (And exhausting times).


It felt like, just as she woke up we shoved her back in the car seat and whizzed her off to another set of grandparents - this time, Jon's mum and step dad.  It was unfortunate that she falls alseep the car all the time and all the journeys were really short.  This time however, she stayed asleep on arrival long enough for Jon and I to unpack the tour bus and set up her living quarters for the night, i.e. travel cot and toys.  Brilliant! She woke up shortly after we had finished, a quick cuddle with her nan and then off to bed she goes.  It had been an exhausting day and The Popster was ready for her bed - even if it did look a bit odd compared to what she is used to.  As she can't stand, roll etc she usually sleeps up high.  This has the advantage that I don't have to bend over much for lifting etc.  The travel cot, however, is low down, with walls.  As I put The Popster down into it, she looked up at me wide eyed with confusion.  "What are these things surrounding me?" she asked with her quizzical look.  "Walls Poppy - you're in a little baby prison.  Don't worry though, I'll let you out in the morning."

Sunday arrived and we planned to stay in all day.  The Popster woke full of smiles and ready to play.  Off to her play mat and an hour of hitting the bug!  Good times.  She was looking very tired so off to the walled prison for another sleep.  Just over an hour later when I went to get her out she looked so excited!!  As I opened the door and looked down at her she had a HUGE smile, her legs went wild and her arms flapped about.  She couldn't wait to get back to that play mat.  Her aunt and uncle arrived shortly afterwards and not long after them her great aunt and uncle.  The Popster had a play mat to enjoy so wasn't being massively social, but allowed the obligatory cooing and cuddles from the newbies.


The plan was for The Popster to need a nap just before we all sat down for a delicious Sunday Roast.  Unfortunately I had forgotten to tell her the plan so she insisted on carrying on playing, despite signs of agitation.  I knew she was tired but I also knew she wouldn't go down in her prison.  She remained on the playmat and I did the dummy dance with her for most of my lunch.  However, before I started my 2nds and 3rds she fell asleep on the mat.  Sparko again!


All that playing and smiling meant we finally got her gorgeous grin on film.  To commerorate her 1st tour the photo is being used for tour t-shirts.  Get your orders in now!

Can Singing Drive You Insane? My Song Can!

It is amazing how quickly you forget the problems you had with your baby.  The Popster is 16 weeks old now but I only really think about her behaviour and routines in recent weeks - and they were good, in fact great, but now they're changing.  She is returning to bad old ways and this has prompted me to remember what it used to be like.  

In the early days there was no sleep and it was difficult to eat food.  We had "fall asleep on our bed and then attempt transference to the basket weeks".  To make sure transference would go smoothly and she wouldn't wake, we would let her sleep for about 20mins before the attempt to move her to the basket.  It rarely worked though - as soon as her head touched the basket mattress she would start screaming and we would then have 20mins of calming down and getting her to sleep again.  I'm sure she just pretended to be asleep just to toy with us.

Then there was Colic week!  Hysterical crying for hours on end - and that wasn't just Poppy!  One night after hours and hours of hysterical crying at 9pm I stuck her in the pram and went for a walk round and round the block.  We had 15mins of screaming whilst I pushed and watched my breath in the icy air and then silence.  Bliss.  I couldn't just go straight home though, I had to make sure she was asleep so I wandered the streets for another 15 mins.  Not a peep for 15mins so homeward bound I went.  We got the pram up the steps and into the house.  Shut the front door and then the screaming started again.  Her timing is impeccable.

Then we had dummy watch.  The Colic meant the Popster finally started taking the dummy, (mostly because I shoved it in her face every chance I got - and I got many!).  It only took roughly 3 weeks of ramming a dummy in her gob before she started to realise it was good.  In those 3 weeks she would have a look on her face that suggested "what the hell is that?!?!?!  how dare you stick such a disgusting item in my mouth.  Due to your outrageous decision to defile my mouth with such vermin I'll now scream for 1 hour precisely".  Her acceptance of the dummy was both good and bad.  Good as it was great at calming her down and helping her to settle.  Bad, because she would constantly drop it when she fell asleep and get it trapped under her cheek.  This would then wake her up and prompt crying.  Either Jon or me would then have to run upstairs and reinsert said dummy, only to then repeat the process 10 mins later.  This incredibly fun dummy dance would then continue for at least a couple of hours.

It all got good when we moved the Popster out of the basket into her own bed in her own room.  The difference in size of her sleeping habitat increased immensely and she loved it!  Plus her new bed had toys on.  She had something interesting to look at instead of a basket wall.  This is when The Popster metamorphosed into "The Amazing Popster".  Her miracle super power was sleeping.  She was so good at sleeping that I even asked the Health Visitor if it was a problem if a baby slept as much as The Popster.  Her answer was the stock health visitor answer: "If she is feeding well and gaining weight than it is fine".  Health Visitors are like IT guys.  There is just one response in the training manual that covers all queries.  For IT guys it is "Have you tried turning it off and on again?".  For health visitors it is what mine told me.  So I stopped worrying about The Popster sleeping almost all the time and shifted my emotion to smug.  I would listen to the problems other parents were having and just felt smug - very proud of the little Popster and her sleeping super power.  I would listen to stories of people rocking their babies to sleep for an hour, people taking it in turns with their partners to sleep in the babies bedroom, people never getting the chance to eat meals with their partners, people staying up all night.  It all sounded so "inconvenient".

This was my experience:  In the daytime, The Popster would indicate she was tired by rubbing her eyes and being a little bit grumpy.  I would respond by picking her up and putting her in her bed.  That was that.  Easy.  At night it was slightly more involved.  Her bedtime was somewhere between 6.30pm and 7.30pm depending on the timetable of her feeds.  I would do Bath, Boob, Book, Bed on one night and Boob, Book, Bed on other nights.  This involved exactly what it sounds like.  After the book I would put her in bed and walk out the room.  We then wouldn't hear a peep from her until midnight at the earliest and 2am at the latest.  This meant, Jon and I got an evening together.  I could still cook and we could sit down and eat dinner together at the dining room table before retiring to the lounge and watch TV until bedtime.  None of the horror stories I had heard from others.

Our lives appeared to have changed again now though.  The Amazing Popster has left the building and irritable non-sleeping Popster has replaced her.  Now it is taking up to an hour to settle her at night and return visits are inevitable.  She is then waking frequently throughout the night.  AAAARRRGGGHHHH!!!  The only way I have been able to get her to sleep at night recently is after the 3 or 4 B's to then hold her facing outwards and dance around the room until I can't do it anymore.  I then get to sit, holding her the same was, and rock her.  Throughout all of this I sing - hence the title of this blog, (I bet you were wondering when I was going to get to the point!).

Now, I can't sing.  I also have a terrible memory for lyrics.  The only song I know from beginning to end is the theme tune to Home & Away.  How embarrassing is that?? Very.  (I haven't watched it for about 20 years either!).  So what do I sing to The Popster?  I need to have about 30-40mins of song material to get her to sleep.  I have made up my own song, although not my own tune.  There aren't many words in my song.  It is basically a combination of the following:  Pop, Rock, Poppy, Rocky, Poppity and Rockity.  For some reason every time I sing songs to The Popster, never mind what tune I use, I always substitute the real words for variations on her name.  For example, "What shall we do with the drunken Poppy...." or "Poppy, Poppy, Pop, Pop, Poppy"

So my questions is: "How long before singing the same song over and over for half hour at a time before I lose my mind completely?"

My other question is: "Where has The Amazing Popster disappeared to and will she ever return?"  

With the absence of the superhero baby I'm just like every other poor sleep deprived mother.  Please come back.