Not so much fun

I’m covered in hickeys!!

The purple blotches are on my arms, neck and chest.

It’s not from a passionate night with himself (sigh).

Nor is it from an illicit tryst with a stranger (eew).

Tinyelf is the culprit.

My little leech baby likes to suck. When she’s finished feeding it’s bye bye boobie and hello nearest piece of exposed mummy.

When she’s happy she sucks, when she’s tired she sucks, when she’s bored she sucks.

Maybe it’s about marking her property.

Boobs, boobs,,,,

It’s been mostly about boobs this week.

Tinyelf has her first cold and so is a total boobie monster. The trick to sleeping which we discovered when crazypixie got her first cold is working a treat again. She lies on her side snuggled into me with her head on my arm to elevate it. When she gets congested I offer her the boob and this helps her to swallow the snot (gross, but effective). She gets sleep and isn’t distressed and I get a little bit of sleep too!!

Crazypixie has moved from saying ‘beeboo’ to ‘boobie’ and now directs me whenever tinyelf cries, ‘Baba boobie.’ Bizarrely she is better at telling when tinyelf is hungry than I am.

Later in the week I had the following conversation with my 6 ¾ year old neighbour who was ‘helping’ me by ‘babysitting’ crazypixie.

Me: I’m just going to feed tinyelf
Mr man: Again! She sure feeds a lot.
Me: Well, I just feed her when she’s hungry.
Mr man: Bottles are very handy.
Me: But I don’t have to worry about measuring, sterilising or anything.
Mr man: The thing about bottles is, if she doesn’t finish a bottle you can keep it til later.
Me: Well, I can even feed tinyelf when I’m asleep.
Mr man: That is handy. So she could start feeding and then you could fall asleep.
Me: Exactly.
Mr man: Wow, that’s very handy!!!

How sad am I?

Tandem Feeding

Yesterday I tandem breastfed for the first time. It wasn’t planned and was quite a surprising development.

Crazypixie had weaned three months ago and had shown no interest in what lay beneath mummies bra (‘bwa’ in pixie speak) until tinyelf began spending her days attached to the ‘beeboos’.
When tinyelf feeds, crazypixie wants to be involved to, ‘beeboo’ she points excitedly and I nod, yes, ‘boobie.’ ‘Bwa’ she exclaims as she pulls down the cup on my elf free boob. Then begins a weird kind of peekaboo game with beeboo and bwa. Thankfully this game has been confined to our own home and hasn’t happened in front of visitors yet!
Peekaboo is usually followed by the pretending to breastfeed game. Much like sipping a cup of pretend tea at a kids tea party crazypixie ‘feeds’ without ever actually making contact. I humour her as it means tinyelf can guzzle away in peace without having her ears pulled/fingers inserted up her nose/her hair ’brushed’ with a plastic pig.

Two weeks ago when dealing with the joys of blocked ducts, I had to express quite a bit into bottles I hadn’t had time to sterilise. Instead of wasting my milk I chucked it into crazypixies sippycup and she was delighted. My friends warned me I was living dangerously, but I didn’t see the harm.

Then yesterday…….

I was feeding the elvin boobie monster when little pixie hands pulled down my bwa, pointed to beeboo and handed me her dolly.

Well, what could I do only humour her?

So I now tandem feed one baby and one doll.

And then there were two.

Almost two weeks in and I’m beginning to discover the realities of two under two.

Here is a taste of the parenting dilemmas I’ve faced to date:

Tinyelf is latched on and frantically trying to deal with my Niagara-like let down, crazypixie is happily rolling around on the ground when I notice a suspicious brown substance running down her leg.
Solution: Ignore suspicious brown substance as himself is due home and finish feeding tinyelf.

Tinyelf is screaming with wind while I rub her back, meanwhile crazypixie disappears briefly then reappears chewing something that she refuses to show me but I catch a glimpse of a lump of blue stuff. Bluetac?
Solution: Prop tinyelf up with cushion and chase crazypixie and pry her mouth open. Only blue paper – whew. Let her eat it and resume winding tinyelf.

Tinyelf is fretting a bit with her nappy off as I clean off a particularly explosive poo, crazy pixie picks this moment to climb up on the garden bench, then onto table, then she proceeds to stand up on table and totter around precariously close to the edge.
Solution: Grab naked tinyelf and run to intercept crazypixie before she does a header off the table. In the excitement tinyelf pees all over my t-shirt and my only nursing bra that is both clean and fits.

Tinyelf is nursing enthusiastically when crazypixie disappears from view in the garden (don’t call social services, it is an enclosed garden and I’m sitting at the French doors).
Solution: Attempt to keep tinyelf latched on as I run around the side of the house. Crazypixie is just attempting to get in the cat flap but the neighbours are now wondering why I’m running around with my boobs hanging out and spraying milk in all directions as tinyelf howls for more.


And I have a feeling the fun is only beginning…………..

Is that you mummy?

Crazypixie spent this morning pulling my top up and down, presumably trying to figure out where mummy’s sizable tummy has gone and what on earth has happened to mummy’s boobs.

Yes, I am now the proud owner of a pair of 40FF’s that I need a wheelbarrow to cart around. My milk has come in and the tinyelf and I are trying to adjust (think mouse trying to feed from geezer).

In the meantime my heart is breaking for my crazypixie (not helped by postpartum hormones) as I see her trying to figure out what’s going on. She alternates between kissing ‘baba’ to trying to pull baba off mummy. As we get her involved and try to show her what’s going on she is dealing it with it in her own 15 month old way. She’s climbing up to the pram to take a look and see our reactions and pointing out ‘baba’ to every guest . She’s also been very busy changing and winding her dolly, and only occasionally throwing dolly across the room.

We’re very lucky to have great family support and my in-laws have moved in for a few days to help (this is a good thing) so at least crazypixie is getting loads of attention and distraction.

Nonetheless, crazypixie is my baby and I’m finding it a little difficult to adjust too! I’m trying to make as much time as I can for just her but my darling tinyelf is quite demanding as she tries to train mummy and daddy in her ways.

I know we’ll find our balance and we’ll be just fine and crazypixie will soon come to accept tinyelf as part of our family and by this time next year my girls should be the best of buddies and gleefully wreaking havoc together.

Thoughts on birth and other stuff...

It’s the day before my due date and I’ve decided I want a home birth.

Or rather, I don’t want an over medicalised hospital birth. Yes, this may be last minute panic or those crazy pregnancy hormones again but it’s more likely a result of my recent reading material.

I’ve been collecting information for a new section on birthing choices for tinygreenpeople and it has been an eye opener. Mammydiaries sent me a collection of links before she had her own wonderful home birth and I have been perusing them today (I know, superb timing as always).

It probably doesn’t help that my current bedtime reading material is ‘The Politics of Breastfeeding: When Breasts are Bad for Business’ by Gabrielle Palmer. Instead of winding down with a novel and drifting blissfully to sleep, I find myself being outraged again and again and waking himself up so I can rant at someone (be grateful that I don't have a laptop by my bed).

I’ve also spent a lot of time the last few months visiting friends and family in the local maternity hospital. This is a brand new, purpose built, ‘centre of excellence’. Why then does it seem so unsuitable for babies and mothers? Surely there is no need for it to be such a ‘hospital’. There must have been a way to design things so mothers and babies could bond gently without having to contend without the noisy family of ten visiting next door, without outrageously early morning rounds, food of little nutritional value and staff that is too overworked to provide the emotional and practical support many first time mothers need.

I know most of these problems stem from our individuated society and lack of community. Oh for a place where women could be women and share their experiences without judgement and children could be raised by family and community as opposed to a sector of the workforce.

Oh to live in a society rather than an economy.

But, I digress………again.

We're done.......

At 13 ½ months my little girl is weaned. She hasn’t had a boobie feed since 7pm last Friday.

I must admit I have very mixed emotions about this. Part of me (lets call her Earthmum) is feeling the wrench of no longer having the same physical attachment to her offspring and is bursting into tears at every opportunity (not helped by the pregnancy hormones here). Another part (Foreveryoung) is dancing around the kitchen singing ‘my boobies are mine, mine, mine’ (to the tune of an old Michael Jackson song).
Earthmum was looking forward to the experience of tandem feeding and loving nursing her little darlings for as long as she could (probably calling a halt somewhere in their early teens).
Foreveryoung was feeling the toll of breastfeeding while seven months pregnant and wishing for two months of having purely decorative (if still monstrously large) boobs and getting more than three hours sleep at a time.
Ah, the conflicts of womanhood.


We hadn’t really planned to wean just yet even though for a while we had both been losing interest. In retrospect, I think my supply went about two weeks ago.
I had been hoping for night weaning so my exhausted pregnant self could catch up on some sleep. Last weekend himself settled her one night and my mum the next and she didn’t seem bothered or even look for a daytime feed (forgive the over justifications but I have a hyperactive guilt gland).
So it’s done…….
We’re finished…..
She’s growing up……
I’ll just have to deal with it…


Yesterday my GP, the doc who thinks I’m mad for breastfeeding during pregnancy and has serious issues around the whole tandem feeding thing, asked how the feeding was going.
‘Oh, fine,’ I replied……………..I don’t think I’ll give her the satisfaction just yet………

little did we know...

So there we were at midnight; himself, myself and the crazypixie, sitting in bed eating bananas and toast and laughing at how we’ve mellowed over the past year.

Pre-crazypixie we would look at other kids and parents and sagely (or so we thought) shake our heads, saying ‘we’ll never do that’. Our kids would only eat in the kitchen, have beautiful wooden toys (no plastic allowed) that would be passed down the generations, and they would never, never be snotty. Yes, I admit, himself and myself are both control freaks and perfectionists (who else would have us?)

Well, little did we know…

We’ve now learnt that a teething baby is a snotty baby and besides attaching a little snot catching trough under their nose there is no way to keep it under control.

We do have the wooden toys but we also have the plastic ones, but do seem to have avoided the worst of them – you know those that sing alphabets at you incessantly in an English or American accent. Guess which ones crazypixie prefers?
And, I admit, we have even, on occasion given her boxes of tissues and tubes of nappy cream (shock, horror) to keep her amused for a while.

As for eating in the kitchen, well that does happen most of the time but we have had a pizza picnic on the sitting room floor (the carpet will never be the same) and last nights midnight feast to lighten the tedium of another bout of teething was a welcome break from the norm - mind you sleeping in toast crumbs and banana mush is a tad uncomfortable so we may have to rethink future menus.

On the other hand I never thought I’d be breastfeeding a 13 month old, with the prospect of tandem feeding growing ever closer, not to mention carrying her in a sling while seven months pregnant. Nor had we imagined the strength of personality of our crazypixie and how we would have to work out ways to live together as opposed to us just imposing our ideas on her.
Yes, the past year has definitely been both a humbling and learning experience.

As a result, we so do not judge other parents anymore (well, a lot less any way). We know that they, mostly, are just some poor eejits like ourselves struggling to do their best for their little ones.