My thoughts on maternity leave

Posted in Being a mum, Motherhood by

Yes I know this blog has turned into a “mummy blog” as of late but to be honest being a mummy has become a massive part of my life, I am trying to not let it take over completely but when you are breastfeeding and your baby refuses to take a bottle you can’t really leave them for long. Every 2 weeks on a Saturday I religiously go and have my nails done and enjoy an hour of peace. Also the minute she is bed at night, I try not to think about her. Tonight a lady is coming to give me a massage, I am so excited and so grateful to my dear friend Coralie for giving me this gift! Talking of which Coralie has an amazing company http://www.macocobox.com/  that creates arts and crafts boxes for children on a monthly basis, they deliver to England so please have a look round her website (it’s in French but it’s amazing!)  And when she naps in the morning ( I could write a whole post about bloody naps!) I sometimes don’t know what to do with the free time! I tried not to waste those precious minutes doing boring household stuff, the gossip pages of dailymail.com are much exciting, as are writing blog posts!

Back to maternity leave…the first thing I have to say is I pity women who don’t get a choice to spend more than a few weeks or months on maternity leave. I know some women could take a year off and don’t out of choice but many women don’t have this choice either for job security reasons (US women for example) or financial women. We are very lucky in the UK to be able to have a year off and go back to your job, some women are lucky to get more than the statutory pay (if I worked for my husband’s company for example I would have 9 months off on full pay! Sadly I don’t work for the biggest asset manager in the world, not to name them…) I think it s a privilege to be able to spend the first year of your child’s life with them, many women dream of this. I thought I would be bored, I thought I would go back after less than a year but there is no way I would now (I know I might change my mind in a few months). I love being with her, I can’t imagine having to give her to somebody else all day every day, once in awhile would be nice though! She makes me laugh so much, she’s such a happy baby. I didn’t realize the pleasure you can get through them. For example she loves our baby sensory classes and it makes me so happy to see her so happy. I know how sad my husband is to not see her in the week and I could not cope with that, not yet anyway.

People said I would feel like this but I wasn’t sure.. Also one of the best things about being on maternity leave is being able to see your friends a lot more than usual and being able to spend time with family.I am really grateful for that. Not just having the weekends makes a massive difference. All this time doesn’t mean I have become a perfect housewife, I still have a cleaner and the fridge is still regularly empty!

These first few months are so precious and I would not have missed them for the world. I do have moments of “I can’t just eat cake and go for coffee for a year” and I really miss going out for dinner and impromptu trips etc.. And nothing really exciting happens, no trips to NYC, no nights out etc. I really need to organise some nights out (the one good thing is once she is asleep at night, she never wakes up before midnight so it’s safe to go out!). On the other hand I am really excited about our first holiday abroad, I cant wait to see her in a pool even though I am scared of the 4.5 hour flight! I can’t believe we might be “those people” with a screaming baby!

All in all I have adapted very well to not working! I have lost some freedom but gained some in other ways. I am grateful to live in a country that permits a long maternity leave and gives women the choice to be with their babies or not.

What I would tell my pregnant self

Posted in Uncategorized by

Lots of pregnant women tend to focus on the birth when what you should really be informing yourself on is breastfeeding and how to cope the first month.

Here are a few things I wish I had known and some tips:

  1. Breastfeeding does not come naturally to everyone, it is actually quite technical and can be really hard. It is really worth paying for a lactation consultant to come over in the first few days if you are having any issues. If the feeding is a mess then everything else is chaos. Read the “womanly art of breastfeeding” from cover to cover before the baby arrives
  2. Tongue tie is a nightmare and ruins everything (see https://myaalife.wordpress.com/2015/03/24/tongue-tie-blo…with-your-baby/)
  3. Don’t worry about getting your baby “addicted” to anything the first 6 weeks, do what you need to do to get it to sleep. After that, it’s different but really don’t worry at the beginning, it’s more important they sleep and don’t get overtired rather than how they get to sleep
  4. Try not to survive on sugar and caffeine as you will never nap in the day when the baby is asleep (this is something I never managed to do but wish I had as a nap can make you feel human again). I starting eating a lot of sugar and I think this contributed to nipple thrush, which is not good!
  5. Do one thing a day to make you feel normal, I had a shower no matter what (baby screaming etc…) it made a massive difference, if you can also manage a walk with the buggy outside then you will really feel A LOT better
  6. Buggies are magic, I repeat: buggies are magic! Babies fall asleep in buggies and sleep for hours in the fresh air. Whoever invents a buggy treadmill you can put on a balcony or in a garden will be an overnight billionaire.
  7. NCT and the friends I made through NCT is invaluable and one of the best things we spent “baby” money on
  8. Buy a Cocoonababy, she slept in it for 3 months, I even perfected the technique of feeding her into the Cocoonababy by leaning over (only works with big floppy boobs I’m afraid), she would fall asleep eating and I didn’t have to move her at night, saved HOURS of rocking, shushing etc..
  9. If you think you will just feed the baby then put it back in its bed at night and it will fall asleep then YOU ARE WRONG. This is why before the cocoonababy feeding technique I co-slept with A, she would fall asleep and I would just roll over to the other side of the bed, i.e. NO DRAMA and MORE SLEEP
  10. At the beginning when people ask you “are you enjoying it?”, you will wonder what the hell they are talking about and what there is to enjoy, don’t feel guilty, 3 months later, you will know what they mean.

That’s all folks

Tongue Tie Bloody Tongue Tie or How to Ruin the First Weeks With Your Baby

Posted in baby, Being a mum, Life, Motherhood by

When baby A was born last November, things were not quite right and I knew it after only a few hours. She didn’t latch properly in the delivery room, when she finally did latch it was very painful and just got worse and worse. In hospital I asked every midwife I saw if they could help me with breastfeeding. Some were more helpful than others, they all showed me the same position: the rugby hold (apparently the best position when you have big boobs…) and said it was normal to hurt at the beginning. Funny that, our NCT class on breastfeeding told us the opposite! They teacher talked about laid back breastfeeding and it all seemed so natural and easy.

A never seemed satisfied on the first day, she wanted to breastfeed for hours (red flag number 1), would fall asleep feeding (red flag number 2), would scream when taken off the breast and not sleep (red flag number 3), my nipples were starting to really hurt (red flag number 4). The first night after feeding her nonstop from 1 to 3 AM, in desperation I went to ask the midwives for help. One of them (the only one) looked in her mouth but couldn’t see anything (if only she had looked a bit harder or was better trained, the first month with our baby would have been a whole different story) so she told me I could give her a bottle if I wanted and so the chaos of mixed feeding began at 3AM in the dark on a hospital bed with me crying because I didn’t know what to do and felt like I had failed after less than 24 hours of being a mum.

Here is a picture of her asleep mid-feed in the hospital:

IMG_6314

The next day, I asked a breastfeeding consultant to have a look at the latch, apparently it was the ‘perfect latch”, the fact it was excruciating didn’t seem to matter. That evening when we were finally discharged at 8.30PM, we left with one baby and one bottle of Cow and Gate, we were too scared to leave without the milk. How would we manage that night? Needless to say we didn’t manage very well and went straight to the shops the next day to buy some more milk because I wasn’t making any. I didn’t make any for a week. My stitches got badly infected which didn’t help, I was exhausted and totally sleep deprived which didn’t help, I was stressed and upset which didn’t help, we were supplementing with formula which didn’t help…

Midwives came and didn’t think anything was wrong, despite bleeding and cracked nipples. I will never forget seeing her mouth covered in blood after feeding, I knew this was not right. My mum, who was staying with us was confused as well, she never had these issues so spent a lot of time googling and mentioned there was a thing called “posterior tongue tie”, which is harder to diagnose so the midwife in the hospital could have missed it.

Every time I would put A to the breast, I would scream and cry and so she developed a reflex to tense her shoulders, it looked like she was hiding or scared of me, it would take her 6 weeks to get out of the habit, needless to say remembering this breaks my heart.

And so, one week after she was born, after a week of utter chaos: “is she hungry?”, “is she tired?”, “has she had enough?”, I called a lactation consultant to come over. Sometimes you have to throw money at a problem.  Within a few minutes she diagnosed tongue tie and everything made sense. She offered to snip it there and there but I was scared, I wanted a second opinion, one of the biggest regrets of motherhood I have.

Talking of regrets, mum I want to apologise for something. You saw I was having issues and said ” I am more than happy to show you how I used to breastfeed”, meaning show me another position that this stupid rugby hold. In my sleep deprived crazy state, for some reason, I thought you meant you wanted to put A to your breast and show me, which of course you didn’t so I said no. I’m sorry, I should have listened to you and let you show me the cradle hold. Every single midwife in hospital had showed me the rugby hold position so I thought that’s what I had to do. I have some unexplained unreasonable respect for authority and didn’t question them. I did wonder how I was ever going to feed in that position in public and why nobody else was feeding like that but when you haven’t slept for days and are in pain, you lose the plot basically.

After a month of pain, stress, sleepless night and chaos (feeding, pumping, formula and repeat), on December 23rd 2014 her tongue tie was snipped and …. I couldn’t feel a difference. The disappointment was pretty big but my nipples were in such a bad state and so cracked that until they healed it still hurt me to feed her. It took about 10 days to become pain free, just in time for a growth spurt and extreme feeding that I would not have survived had she still been tongue tied. We would go back to the tongue tie clinic to have it done AGAIN 3 months later but that was just unlucky and the pain was never as bad the second time.

3 days after it was snipped, she was excited to discover her tongue could move!

IMG_4428

On the nights when I used to sit up in bed crying and saying to myself ” I hate breastfeeding”, the only thing that kept me going was knowing something was wrong and there was a solution. How I kept on feeding every day for that month until the clinic I don’t know but I sure am happy I did. I knew I could regret moving over to formula but I would never regret exclusively breastfeeding.

Bella-Roo, I did it for you and wouldn’t be able to go through that much pain for anybody else

For more information, please see:
http://tonguetieuk.org/links-and-resources/

Also trying to link to Honest mum’s #brilliantblogposts
<a href=”http://Brilliant blog posts on HonestMum.com“>Brilliant blog posts on HonestMum.com

My first letter to my first daughter

Posted in Uncategorized by

Dear Arabella,

also known as: Bella-roo, boo, mini-B, crime dog junior, my love, ma cherie; this is the first letter I am writing to you. I will write many more I promise. I want you to know how you made me feel and I want to make sure I remember how you made me feel.

In a few weeks you will  be 3 months old, that’s the first thing “they say” that is true, babies grow up so fast. It’s hard to believe nearly 3 months ago I was waiting for you to come out and here’s the first thing I want you to know: the minute you were born it was like I had known you for ever. My mini-B was here and I really felt like I knew you, they had definitely handed me the right baby. Your chubby cheeks were unmistakable, definitely my baby! One of the first things I thought were “she’s so big and has so much hair”. I have to admit, your hair is legendary, a proper mohawk, you now have dreadlocks too from rubbing your head when you’re falling asleep. Yes it looks like you’re a homeless ragged dog but it’s okay, I love you anyway.

Talking of love, I love you Arabella and I always will. Here are some of the things I love about you:

-how alert and observant you are (hence “crime dog junior” as daddy likes to call you, I’m the other crime dog in case you’re wondering). I have the feeling it’s going to be hard to hide things from you. You’re definitely not one of those sleepy babies where “the lights are on but nobody is home”. You love watching TV, following people around the room, staring at lights and have recently noticed my phone. Let me make one thing clear: you will never be allowed to touch mummy’s phone because it’s nearly as precious as you, like seriously.

-your crazy spiky hair, I love the fact you have lots of hair, it adds a whole other level of cuteness

-our chats, indeed you already like chatting, I will never forget how you woke up on your 2 month birthday and had found your voice. I would love to know what you’re saying. Sometimes you try and cry and chat at the same time which creates some funny noises, it’s called multi-tasking, daddy (and most men) is not very good at it, mummy is.

-your smiles, no wonder we call you “smiley”. The first time you smiled, you were 3 weeks old and we were in the midwife’s office. I was crying because breastfeeding was so painful at the time and it upset me a lot. That smile made my day, it made all the pain go away, it made it all worth it and dried my tears. It always make laugh how sometimes you can be crying in your bed (resisting napping as usual) and then you see me and stop and smile. You know me and I know you.

-the fact  you trust me. Now I’m not sure many people would believe this bit but boo I am sure you trust me and that’s why you are a settled baby. You know I won’t let you starve (if you didn’t starve the first weeks you sure ain’t going to starve now!), you know I will always come back to get you, you know I am your mummy and will always love you.

And when you love someone this much you do things you wouldn’t do for anybody else. I would never have survived the agony of breastfeeding through tongue tie if I didn’t love you so profoundly nor would I have coped with sleep deprivation, I also managed to push you out through pure love and determination to meet you and make sure you were safe and healthy.

You are the cutest thing and have already taught me some valuable lessons. For example, I sometimes had a tendency to give up easily. I’ve learnt not to do that anymore and that through determination and love amazing things can happen. I could have given up on breastfeeding but am so glad I didn’t. I could go and pick you up when you are crying but I know you’re tired and leave you there and you always fall asleep, yes this is one of mummy’s tricks! I will admit I hated the first weeks of your life because of the feeding pain, which created chaos but you kept me going.

Thank you for knowing what to do when mummy didn’t, thank you for smiling at me when I needed it the most, thank you for challenging me, thank you for pushing me over my limits, thank you for showing me what unconditional all consuming love feels like, thank you for being mine.

IMG_4567

 

The highs and lows of early motherhood

Posted in Uncategorized by

I wrote this 2.5 weeks after Arabella was born, in the middle of the night whilst struggling to breastfed. Things have definitely improved since then but that’s another post….

Lows: bleeding nipples after 2 days Crying daily

Seeing your baby hungry

Your instinct telling you something is not right, it’s supposed to be hard but probably not this hard

People asking “is she feeding every 3 hours?”

Realising big boobs are actually a nightmare to feed from because you can’t see what’s going on and they are heavy

The pain of infected stitches and not being able to stand

The dilemma of topping up with bottles or not and what type of bottle

Spending 3 nights in hospital surrounded by people either listening loudly to the tv or with such bad life problems it was depressing to listen to

Being shown only one not very good breastfeeding position in hospital

Feeling like you’re failing despite all the preparation

Highs: some very very supportive non judgmental family and friends

Doing it my way for example being against co-sleeping and then realising that’s what works for now

Hearing your husband talk to her in the other room

Feeling like a family

Touching her cute little toes

Seeing her relax in the bath and knowing it’s not all bad, there is something you can do that she enjoys

Looking at her and thinking she’s perfect

Going out alone with the baby for the first time in a carrier and feeling proud

Losing 10 kilos in 10 days

Knowing you have an excuse for a boob job after this http://honestmum.honestmum.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/brill-blog-posts-BIG-1.jpg

<a href=”Brilliant blog posts on HonestMum.com” target=”_blank”>

Let’s get physical…

Posted in Uncategorized by

I was quite naïve about how physical pregnancy could be, I basically thought that you can have morning sickness (I was so lucky to not have been sick once!) and be really tired…I had no idea about the rest! I am not a doctor so none of this is a scientific fact just my experience.

Here are some of the aches and pains I had and some tips to try and get through it.

Insomnia: this has been the worse for me, it has gotten better and then bad again but basically I am awake for at least 2 hours a night, usually what happens is that I have to get up to go to the loo and then I can’t get back to sleep. I’m lucky that I only get up once or twice to go to the loo but being awake between 2 and 4AM is common. My mind just goes wild thinking of all sorts of things, not all baby related, it’s very annoying! TIP: make lists before you go to sleep, this can help calm the mind, get a pregnancy pillow, I was given one that is basically a boomerang shaped bean bag and it really does making sleeping easier. Getting comfortable really helps but for me, it’s more of a mental issue rather than physical and I haven’t found a solution! What does help is being on maternity leave because I usually manage to go back to sleep in the morning.

TIredness: need I say more…TIP: don’t be ashamed to nap when you can, eat as healthily as possible and keep hydrated. Coffee is not really recommended but when its that or falling asleep at your desk then have a cuppa!

Pelvic Girdle Pain: I had never heard of this but boy can it be painful! I am lucky that it got better over time but when it started I could not walk easily without it being agonizing. I went to a physio class at the hospital and they had loads of good tips on how to stand, sit up etc. TIP: go to one of these classes, wear shoes that ARE NOT FLAT, like trainers, I am convinced  the wrong shoes can make it much worse. Pre-natal pilates has helped and I am sure yoga would too. Even if it’s painful, I would recommend trying to keep moving, sitting for hours and hours is bound to make it worse. Now I still get the pain when I get up from sitting on the sofa but I am very grateful it has improved, someone women end up in wheelchairs it can be that bad.

Boob pain: I am one of the few women who doesn’t get breast pain around period time and breast pain was one of the first pregnancy symptoms I had. To be honest the only thing that I think works is taking pain killers, I cant think of anything else!

Last but not least INDIGESTION: thank god for Rennies is all I can say! I had not idea it could be so constant and painful, it also makes you feel sick. TIP: don’t eat spicy foods, don’t hesitate to medicate with Rennies and Gaviscon, drink mint tea!

Who knows what post labour pains and aches await….

Maternity Leave Day 1

Posted in Uncategorized by

I’m back! After not blogging since May, I am now determined to at least stick to my “Monday night blogging” routine if not blog more frequently (this might not be very realistic for once the baby is here…).

A lot has happened since my last blog post. Here is a recap:

-We moved into our very own flat in May, we now live happily in Walthamstow

-We went through some pregnancy ups and downs and I am now 36.5 weeks pregnant, the big day is approaching!

-We had a great holiday in the US

-We went to an amazing wedding in Sweden

-Mister B passed the CFA

-We did our NCT classes

-a few friends got pregnant too

-Saturday was my baby shower, it was amazing and deserves its own blog post just like most of the above topics.

Since I have been pregnant I have put on 12.8 kilos and wonder how many more I will put on over the coming weeks, I’m totally happy with this and would be even if I had put on 20! There is so much to say about pregnancy and how Mini B already entertains me a lot, I am convinced she is trying to escape so I don’t think we will have to wait until her due date of November 12th to meet her, to be honest I don’t want to wait until then! I wait to see her, cuddle her, kiss her, dress her in all the extremely cute clothes she already owns etc.

 

Anyway back to today…on Friday it was my 10 year anniversary at work and my last day, I was very happy to leave 🙂 For me it’s too tiring mentally and physically to work full time the past few weeks and I definitely could not do ONE MORE DAY!

I did wake up this morning thinking, what am I going to do…I ended up spending hours on the internet looking for nursery décor stuff, having  a nap and then a quick trip to the supermarket. I have things planned for the coming days so it was good to relax. I had a sneaky peak at my emails once or twice and realized I still had quite a few things to unsubscribe from and that was that Work will survive without me. I just hope the baby is not late because I think I might get quite bored (or bankrupt due to internet shopping) if I have to wait for more than a few weeks.

I do wonder what I will come back to, how the company will have changed and how I will have changed, who knows how I will feel in months to come. It’s crazy how unpredictable pregnancy and becoming a parent is so I am not making any bets on what will happen next year, who even knows how the birth will go!

I have one last pilates class to go to tonight  then Monday nights will definitely be blogging nights.

In the meantime, here is a pic of me + bump from Saturday:

1016471_10154741408380475_982391017668531949_n

 

I need to blog about…

Posted in Uncategorized by

I’ve been so bad at blogging lately and will make up for it soon with following topics:
The power of Twitter and a little bomb scare
Realising I need a bucket list and to stick more to my “carpe diem” motto
How during our flat move I realised I am crazy and need to learn to chill and few lessons learnt
First trimester of pregnancy 🙂

In the meantime I’m missing out on the nicest day of the year with some super bad planning and being on a Eurostar

From Walthamstow to Barcelona

Posted in Uncategorized by

Last week we finally went inside our new flat, this  must not be confused with moving in, still a few weeks until that happens, all I can say is scaffolding and balconies are the culprits…

Normally, I am very positive person but for some reason, I was really worried the flat would be small despite knowing the room dimensions, it made no sense, maybe I was trying to keep my expectations low so as not to be disappointed….classic trick of the mind that worked! The kitchen is lovely and the living room quite big, so now I can relax and look forward to having a double oven! I know it’s very sad to be that excited about about a double oven but try roasting meat and making roast potatoes (in goose fat obviously) at the same time, not so easy my friends, so here is my future domestic goddess room:

image

The next day, we jumped on a Ryanair flight, oh how I love them, the hard cramped seats, the stag and hen dos, the spirits that come in by one get one free packets (yes not bottles), the stewardess’ uniforms that are so chic and clearly made from a very high quality material and best of all the lovely little song they play at the end when you land on time of course. At least you now get an assigned seat…

We stayed at the W Hotel in Barcelona, I am obsessed with W hotels since we stayed at the one in Bali, they have a way of making you feel cool, even when you’re not. They also make for amazing people watching, I think I spotted an international escort, I even stalked her on Instagram and she she stays in suspiciously high end hotels all around the world but does not mention her profession, yes she could have countless highly paid jobs that enable her to afford to fly in private jets and sit by the pool of the W Barcelona with 60 year old men…

The W does views and pools:

image

image

image

 

We had to go and see this:

image

 

The best thing we did was a Spanish Civil War walking tour, it was super interesting and made me quite ashamed to have a degree in European Studies as I hardly knew anything about the subject, this Church was bombed and dozens of children died, one of the more moving parts of the tour:

image

 

I intend on reading more about it and reading more about history in General, the amount of knowledge that has left my brain and replaced with knowledge about benchmark data and celebrity gossip is VERY SAD.

It was a lovely few days, however you can take the girl out of Bank but…

image