Brain power shortage

In pregnancy, occasional flakiness is brushed aside as 'Baby Brain', as if somehow being pregnant messes with your brain waves and slows you down. I didn't find this - I was just as forgetful and slow as usual. I did make use of the excuse, however.

What I want to know though is why no one talks about Mum Brain, because since having W my ability to hold down a conversation has diminished dramatically. And I don't just mean because I'm forever having to run off to stop him launching himself off/into/under hazards or being interrupted by screaming. I mean my brain moves so slowly that minutes pass by before I remember that conversations depend on two participants or that responses are required to questions. 

Similarly the number of times I have caught myself trying to make coffee by putting the grounds in the kettle or the cold water in the mug or - once - the hot water into the coffee grounds container is more than a little disconcerting. And I find myself stopping mid sentence to search around the echoing cavern of my brain to find the word for sponge or frying pan or something else equally mundane and presumably difficult to forget. 

I write all of this under the assumption that this is common to all Mums - particularly the co-sleeping, night nursing Mums out there - and not that I have early onset something-or-other. 

And, writing this, I've realised why no one talks about Mum Brain...

...They don't dare. 

wonder week my arse*

Figuring out what's going on with a baby - why they're being so darn fussy or why they're waking up every 20 minutes or why they categorically refuse to be put down (and yes that includes the baby carrier because clearly if your hands are free you're not trying hard enough) - is a bit like attempting to play pictionary with someone trying to draw a cat. Only they're blindfolded, using their left hand and have never seen or heard of a cat. You wind up just guessing all the guesses in the world. Where the simile breaks down is that at some point, the pictionary guesser will be correct whereas the baby guesser (aka me) might never be right because the answer may be 'all of the above' or 'just because'.

Apparently one of the reasons he might be being fussy and waking every 20 minutes and demanding to be held by my aching arms is that we're in a "wonder week" and he's secretly making some developmental leap which he's going to surprise us with when the crying aching fog lifts.

He better be able to speak in full sentences is all I have to say. 

*let the record show that this has been typed one handed while the other hand/arm supports a sleeping yet-still-nursing baby.

Giving up

There was a moment, when W was maybe 36 hours old, when I realised I had to stop waiting for sleep. Up until then, any time in my life where I'd been tired, sleep was just a wait away. True deep long uninterrupted sleep. I sat in the hospital room and felt this dawning realisation seep into me. He was ours. We had to take him home. Sleep as I knew it was a thing of the past.

Later, there was a moment when Jeremy left the house - to go to work or to see friends or maybe just to take the trash out - but I understood with a searing jealousy that when he leaves the house he really leaves. That he's actually able to just walk out of the house without a care. That his autonomy and independence is still wholly intact. I missed being solitary singular Me with an acuteness that felt physical. And I kind of hated my husband a little. 

At four or five months I had to accept that W was not a baby who suddenly slept through the night. People had told me it would change at four months - that it would get better - and I believed them. I was stupid. So we started co-sleeping because it was the only way I could get enough sleep to function during the day. And that is how we live now. 

I haven't eaten cheese since May. If you know me, you know that I alone do not have the will power to forgo cheese (or butter or cream or cake or curry or chocolate or ice-cream) for 24 hours. But W has a dairy sensitivity. I'm thinner than I've ever been, which is the one and only upside and I think I prefer eating cheese and having an arse. 

I've never been super well-kempt. But I'm down to maybe two showers a week and I let Jeremy cut my hair. And if you can't see the baby sick on my jumper, it was never there.

New mum hair

Nothing to fear but fear (and Donald Trump)

I have always been a worrier. I self diagnose myself with at least one fatal disease a week. I see peril wherever I go and have to get Jeremy to watch me unplug the iron because there's no way I'll believe my own memory. Sometimes thinking about the future and all its infinite unknowns gives me vertigo and I have to breathe myself back into the present.

Having a baby has not helped.

Here are a few things I am now afraid of (and a few that I've always been afraid of):

Walls
Gravity
Donald Trump
Stairs
People who think Donald Trump should be a presidential candidate
Lonely sad men with access to guns
Electricity
Blind cords
People who are more afraid of terrorists than the lonely sad men
Elmo
Isolationism
NRA
Furniture
ISIS
Grapes
Fox News
Water
Compassion Fatigue
Cars
People who get their news from Fox News
Ben Carson
People who think Ben Carson should be a presidential candidate
Flying

With most of these things, I swallow down my terror and smile. I make sure there are no fatal hazards around and let him explore the world in the presence of walls and gravity. When we fly and it's turbulent and I imagine us all plunging to our deaths, I don't let him see my fear. I don't want him to be afraid of flying, or of grapes or of water. Or even of Elmo, although that high pitched third person thing is crazy creepy. I want W to toddle out into the world and to feel safe and confident doing so.

I'm perfectly fine with him being terrified of Trump though. That's just common sense.

Wholemeal Paper

W made a beeline across the kitchen floor. I looked to see what he was aiming for (he only moves that fast when it's something illegal) and saw I'd left a brown paper Trader Joe's bag in the corner. He's got a bit of a thing for paper. Junk mail is his favourite - the glossy finish perhaps, or maybe he likes bargains. He pretends he's just flapping it around, inspecting the artwork, and then I spend the next five minutes trying to fish out a wad of paper from his cheek while avoiding losing a finger to those new teeth we were so excited about.

So the approaching fate of this brown paper Trader Joe's bag was fairly obvious. However my first thought was not that I should move the bag he was about to gum into chokeable mush, but instead that 'brown paper has to be better for him than white...'

Human Pacifier

Our next child, assuming we have a next child, is going to have a pacifier thrust upon them pretty much the second they emerge (that seems too gentle a word... erupt? eject?) and henceforth will have it offered to them on every possible occasion.

They cry? Pacifier.

They breathe? Pacifier.

Yes it will become a sleep crutch and yes we'll probably curse the thing once it's decided that 'we don't use pacifiers during the day' but that's OK.

Our next child is going to love their pacifier.

Our firstborn - love of my life, dear of my heart, loves his pacifier too. But his pacifier has legs, a head and a Master's degree in International Relations. The next child's pacifier is going to be a lot less educated and a lot more bought from Babies-R-Us.

Accidental Parenting

I didn't go into this with any particular parenting philosophy. I knew I wanted to breastfeed and that I didn't want to do 'Cry It Out' and that was it. I figured we'd figure it out as we went along. I did not think that at 9 months I'd be co sleeping with my baby on a futon mattress on the floor in his room, or that his nap times would be spent with me sitting close by, ready to stick a boob in his mouth when he stirs.

And yet...