Health visitors seem to come in two moulds. They are either evil devil’s spawn or nice people. I have seen one of each kind since Ellis arrived. The nice health visitor who has been coming round and helping me with breastfeeding has suggested a massage class she is running. It’s free which is awesome. I’ve never run into so much free stuff before. It’s great being a stay at home mum! I also get to use the massage oil I never used on my perineum. Ellis doesn’t seem to mind one little bit.
Ellis is incredible but I can’t believe how tired I am. I’m struggling with the breastfeeding. He seems to want to be drinking all the time. I’ve got a book that works on the Easy system. Eat, Activity, Sleep, You. This appears to be rubbish because he just wants to eat all the time. He cries all the time and I have no idea if what I am doing is right.
It all started off badly when he didn’t want to latch on in hospital. I couldn’t feed him straight away because he wasn’t interested immediately he was born and then I was whisked up for some needlework so I was out of the picture for a couple of hours. I thought we would be home that night but because I lost a lot of blood they wouldn’t let me go. The first night was a nightmare – poor little thing was bawling his eyes out and I got seriously manhandled by a couple of midwives trying to get the latch right. I was so tired I could have cried, so the fact that she was squishing my boob into his mouth seemed perfectly acceptable and normal. I was stuck in a ward for three days with three other mums and babies and they were all awake in rotation so there was no sleep to be had. In the end one of the midwives suggested a bottle and it seemed cruel not to feed him. I fear that was my first mistake. He never really got back into it and now he’s just desperate to be fed with a bottle and I’m just desperate to feed him myself.
It is truly overwhelming sometimes and it’s difficult to put into words how confusing, frustrating and uncontrollable this all is. There is conflicting advice. Not much help available for when you don’t know what to do and a lack of support from everyone who just thinks the baby should be on the bottle and done with it.
Clean, green energy is the holy grail for power suppliers at the moment and while the Bloom Box isn’t perfect, it certainly looks like a better bet.
It’s being financed by the guy who financed the Segue, eBay and Google and it uses wafers made of baked sand and painted with green and black inks to generate power (don’t ask me, I don’t work for NASA). The inventor did work for NASA and was trying to find ways to generate oxygen for the population of Mars project! When that plan was ditched, he wondered if he could use the technology in a different way and so the Bloom Box was born.
The idea of a home energy “server” that can power your home is exciting because it reduces the amount of electricity “lost” through transmission as well as meaning energy companies don’t need to spend as much on huge power stations (remember China is building LOADS of coal fuelled power stations). Although it still uses carbon based fuel, the amounts are reduced meaning what we have will last much longer.
Google have already bought into the idea and bought four of the big wahoonies to power their servers and talks are underway with giants like Coca Cola.
One thing we can be certain of though. Your bloom box won’t come labelled “Bloom” it will say Npower or Eon. We aren’t going to get rid of the power companies just yet!
You can read more for it here and against it here.
At the moment we are all looking for recycled stuff on eBay and Freecycle but this site is trying to combine everything in one place along with help and advice.
It looks to be run by passionate people. Lets hope it takes off.
My friend told me before Ellis arrived that I should impose limits on people visiting after the baby arrives. Her rules were:
you are welcome if you bring food
you are welcome if you clean when you get here
you are welcome so long as you don’t mind if I tell you I’m going to bed
you are welcome if you offer to take the baby for a walk
If any of the above will offend you – don’t come.
It turns out she is not as daft as she sounds. The thing is, babies bring visitors to your door and there have to be rules.
One of the things I’ve noticed is that Oh my God babies bring out the consumer in everyone. It’s amazing how much stuff you get when you bring your first baby home. I’m not sure if this lasts throughout your little one’s life but it’s pretty overwhelming. There has been a continual stream of visitors all wanting to meet the new man. They all bring gifts, kind words and some even bring food. We’ve had a stack of clothes for him and lots of other stuff, a footprint making kit, photoframes, blankets and if you are looking for a stuffed toy then look no further. I appear to have a world surplus of blue teddies in my baby’s room. It’s lovely that everyone cares so much. I was particularly impressed with my other half’s work – they sent a lovely basket of flowers that were growing and alive! Well until I forget to water it and it dies. In the meantime it’s giving back oxygen and humidifying the place.
We are home from hospital! I was stuck in there for three days in a room with three other women and their babies, one of which needed to be kept warm on the hottest day of the year so all the damn windows were kept closed and the fans off. I am SOOOO happy to be home. Apparently the only reason I was kept in there was because I lost a lot of blood during the birth and my iron levels were low. Except my normal iron levels are quite high so the fact that they were low for me meant they were normal for most other people. Three days over something I could’ve fixed at home with a supplement plus I had a nightmare with breast feeding. More on that another day when I can get up the energy to be cross again. Oh and I’ve done something to my sacro iliac joint so I can’t push the baby around in his pram and my back and hip hurt. Oh and I cry at adverts, not even the tv shows I’m not watching but the adverts – hormones suck – and don’t even get me start on this lochia business. When the shy muslim bloke doctor asked me “how is the lochia?” with a look that said DO NOT TELL ME, I knew it would be bad but this is gross.
Anyway we got the OK to go home and we dressed him up and put him into his car seat, they don’t let you out of hospital unless you can prove you have a car seat, and drove off into the sunset. It is the weirdest thing in the world coming home with a complete new person in the car. My other half showed him round his new house and we sat there looking at him going WHAT HAVE WE DONE!!! OH MY GOD!!! WHAT DO WE DO NOW!!!! They just let you take those babies home and then leave you alone with them.
I have been practicing the mum skills for years, I can cook, I can sew, I can knit, I can hug and offer guidance, I can cope with tantrums and bad behaviour (god knows I’ve had enough practice with radio people) I can do all sorts of things. I guess now I have to start stop practicing and start doing it for real.
Ellis arrived on July 28th,one week and a day late, at 5.37pm in a birthing pool. I was not expecting that, but it was actually very nice. For those of a nervous disposition, what follows is a full and honest report of the birth and there’s a pic of me and him in the birthing pool….. just in case you are squeamish. You have been warned! The hypnobirthing worked like a charm. I listened to the CDs and did my homework and I used the technique for the membrane sweep I had on the Saturday – just put the relaxation CD on and when I was suitably relaxed let the midwife get on with it. She was very impressed and said she wished everyone was as relaxed as I was.
Then when the surges started at 6.45am a couple of days later I pottered about sorting stuff out and cleaning (what a cliché!) until things got too regular to allow me to do anything else. So I used the hypnobirthing again as it got more painful and it was amazing. I was calm, relaxed and ready for the birth. I used my mobile phone to type in the times of the surges which helped me keep track of how things were going. At round 1pm things started to get a bit strong and a bit closer together so I called my other half to come home from work. He arrived at 2pm (I was ready to kill him because I couldn’t get the tens machine on) and as the surges were around 3-4 minutes apart we called the hospital. They said come in but don’t rush. We strapped on the tens machine and piled into the car. At the time they were still building the shopping mall in the centre of town so I remember getting stuck in traffic and clinging onto the dashboard growling as men in yellow vests sauntered by. I got to hospital at about 3pm. By the time we got there I was really getting ready to have the baby. I remember being on all fours in the waiting room making deliberately low noises like we practiced in yoga and asking Simon to “Go and find somewhere for me to have this baby”. They took one look at me, booked me into a room and I handed over the birth plan. It turns out I was in transition.
I had an internal exam lying on my back which showed I was 6cm dilated and was the most painful bit of the whole experience! The midwife noticed I had mentioned a water birth if I possible and I was whisked off to the pool. I got in there at around 4pm and it was very welcome, July 28th was the hottest day of the year. I kept listening to the hypnotic suggestions and my husband was good at giving me lots of positive affirmations. I remember my mind running through all the affirmations on the CD during the surges and I never once felt I couldn’t cope. I didn’t ask for pain relief until I had been in the pool a while. When I did finally ask the midwife said no! Apparently I was doing fine on my own. She did relent eventually and I had gas and air which is great stuff. Seriously it was fantastic.
Our little man just after he arrived
Things progressed pretty quickly after that and I don’t really remember much. I was asked if I wanted to feel the sack as my waters had not broken and I distinctly remember saying “No, why would I want to feel that?” Then they broke and his head was there and then Ellis was in the water, with the midwife scrabbling around trying to catch him. He was a slippery little fellow! He weighed 8lb 14oz and had all the requisite fingers and toes
I was the one in a state – I had a second degree tear that the midwife couldn’t find the end of so I had to go into theatre and have an epidural so they could fix me. Again I used the hypnobirthing to stay calm and relax. Ellis stayed with his daddy and got rid of all the meconium onto daddy’s arms and front – a situation that left daddy looking like James Herriot after a particularly intrusive bovine incident and forced a paternal clothes change. It seemed fair at the time. All in all it was a good birth, all over in 10 hours or so and nothing I couldn’t cope with – I wish everyone’s could be like that. I have to say thanks to Nerissa for the lessons in pregnancy yoga with low birth noises and Maria for the hypnobirthing lessons. Both made it a wonderful, less scary and easier thing than I ever imagined.
I’ve been surfing about recently due to an inability to move around much and come across some people who have the same idea as our family. Here are some links to useful sites.
This is a hard one. I want to try and tell people that we are trying to live greener and make green choices when it comes to our baby. The trouble is, I can’t imagine for one second that people are going to take any notice of us because I’m learning fast that babies are public property. The baby shower and any trip out with my mum brings this home to me in graphic detail. This one isn’t even born and already it’s gathering new stuff at an incredible rate. I don’t want to belittle people’s generosity but by the same token, I do want to let them know what we are trying to do. It’s a tough call. I don’t want to spoil their obvious enjoyment of the new baby but at the same time I’m trying to limit excess. Excess is easy to fall into, especially when there is an entire industry out there devoted to telling you that you HAVE to have new things for your baby, otherwise you are a bad parent and even worse, a bad consumer! Heaven forfend.
I think I’ll tell my friends but I fear telling family will be as much good as trying to stop the tide. Still, we’ll have a go and see what happens.
Well I thought I ought to give you a preview! This is the bean at 14 weeks. We are nearly at due date now so bean is considerably bigger and sitting on my bladder most of the time! TMI? Thought so.
