Toothipeg pain (me, not Owen!)

Well, I have not been well now! Owen seems fully recovered and is back to chomping his way through anything and everything I put in front of him, thank goodness. But then I started getting a poorly tummy again, diaorrhea and nausea, and general ill and listless feeling. It’s horrible.

I’ve also been getting jaw ache and very sore, sensitive teeth which I thought was related to grinding or clenching my teeth, which I know I do when I get stressed. But now the tooth ache has started to get worse and I think it might be another abscess – worst luck in the world! Just before Christmas too. So this morning I phoned the dentist to try and get an emergency appointment. I’m very sorry said the  bored and not in the least sorry-sounding receptionist, but we don’t have a dentist in today. So what exactly are they doing there then? Filing their nails and reading Heat magazine? Or practising their telephone skills (would be time well spent). So I phoned the doctor instead, and got a prescription for antibiotics. This may or may not help the tooth, it may or may not also help what may or may not be a bladder infection that I suspect might be lingering around, and it may or may not make my diaorrhea and nausea worse. Oh well. I’ve got to do something, I can’t spend the whole Christmas feeling this dreadful. In my experience, toothache is one thing that doesn’t clear up if left alone, it just gets worse and worse until you want to chop your own head off.

I kind of sympathise with babies and their sore little toothipegs now. Roll on the day when I can have false teeth. No more toothache, and I will be able to gross out young  people with them… ha.

Tummy bugs and empathy aches

Owen has not been very well. I suspected that his tummy wasn’t well last weekend, and then on Tuesday night he vomited again, and Wednesday he was absolutely terrible. His nappies were horrid! Poor little thing – I’ve never seen him so lethargic and miserable. He woke early and then fell asleep all curled up on my shoulder in bed. He slept till about 9am, then we got up and he was really miserable, cried and cried. I sat on the sofa, holding him, feeling very upset, didn’t know what to do. Phoned the doctor and they said to give him bland foods, and maybe some of his milk, diluted. He did manage to eat some toast and mashed banana for breakfast, refused milk and then almost immediately fell asleep for 2 hours.

He ate some lunch, and then I put him in his recliner and put children’s TV on and he just lay there, gazing at the screen – he would never do that normally! Mum came round and by this time he seemed a lot better. I wanted to go to Brighton to pick up his new car seat – forward facing, big boy car seat! I thought that we could all go, but Mum didn’t fancy it so she stayed at home with Owen, and he slept in the afternoon for 2 hours.

By evening he was starting to look a bit perkier and the next day he was almost back on form again – a bit off his food but much, much better than the day before, thank goodness. I was so worried about him. I think in a way, as a mummy, you feel their pain almost as keenly as they feel it – maybe even more so! I definitely get an empathy ache whenever he has something wrong. I just wanted to hold him and comfort him, and it was so hard because he really didn’t want to be put down but I needed to make his breakfast and do things but I didn’t want to just plonk him on the floor or in his cot.

That was Wednesday. It’s now Sunday and he is eating much better. For a while, he decided her preferred me to spoon feed him than pick it up himself. This morning he was much better, and ate pretty much everything I gave him – and picked it up himself. And he took the spoon from me to feed, didn’t just open his mouth and let me shovel it in!

Hurrah, he’s back to his old cheeky self again!

Parties and projectile vomiting!

Owen meets Santa - the real one, of course!

Busy weekend. Saturday night was night out with the mums (and dads) from the mother and baby group. I had three small wines and felt absolultey dreadful the next morning. We stayed the night at mums, and Owen was a bit more wakeful than he has been of late, but I put that down to being in a strange place. Sunday was the babies’ Christmas party, which was brilliant, but tiring. I made jellies and two loaves of ham sarnies. Felt somehow like a proper mum, making jelly! Owen seemed to enjoy himself, so much so that he projectile vomited on me later that night, before bed! Six ounces of milk, mixed up with bits of cocktail sausage, strawberry and mandarin orange segments – lovely! I had to change him and me completely, plus the duvet on the bed. Poor little chap! But he then slept well till about 4am, and then again till 7.20, which is virtually a lie in!

His eating has been a bit off in the last few days so maybe he did have a funny tummy. Basically on Saturday morning he started very deliberately dropping bits of toast on the floor, and refusing to hold the spoon when I offered it but opening his mouth and allowing me to spoon feed him. Then at tea time he absolutely refused to eat anything and cried. On Sunday he didn’t really want his breakfast and again threw toast off the tray, and took some cereal but only if I fed him. He ate quite a decent lunch but spoon fed, then had quite a bit of party food. He had a light tea, and wasn’t that interested. I suppose if he hadn’t in recent weeks started eating really well, virtually everything I give him, I wouldn’t really have noticed. But it was such a noticeable drop in interest that I was a bit worried. But today he had a good lunch, and started taking the spoon again so maybe it was just a little tummy upset and now he’s over it. Heres hoping, anyway. I hate it when he gets ill, I feel so powerless to help him. We’ve been lucky, he hasn’t really had that much (crossing everything now!). Unlike mummy, who has picked up virtually everything there is going since the birth. But who is feeling quite well and chipper today!

Tomorrow I am doing a full day’s work for my company, for the first time since having Owen, and I am not going to be seeing Owen for a whole day because he will be at my mums, am feeling a bit nervous about this and know that I will miss him dreadfully.

Allergies confirmed, dairy and egg white.

Caught in the act of trying to topple the Christmas tree!

I am pleased to be writing that Owen slept through again last night, the night before he woke once and I gave him a small amount and then put him back in the cot awake and he self-settled eventually, after playing with a toy for 20 minutes or so. But the general trend is definitely going the right way! Also for his day naps the last couple of days I have put him down awake and he has self-settled – and I haven’t even had to sit in with him, just give him a kiss and say ’see you soon’ and leave the room – today he whinged a few times but it must have taken 3 minutes, if that, for him to drop off.

I finally got his blood test (RAST) results today, after nearly two months! And they confirm that he does have a dairy allergy and egg white allergy. I knew he was allergic to cow’s milk, but wasn’t sure about the egg one – he had such a mild reaction, and barely ate any of the egg. But I’m glad now that I haven’t tried him with egg again. In a way the results are not particularly useful since I’ve learned how to manage his diet anyway. I’m still a bit worried that he’ll react to other things, and he does sometimes react to something in a meal but often it’s hard to work out what it is. I think he might be allergic to cherry tomatoes, but not all tomatoes since he has spag bog and chilli and things like that and doesn’t have a problem with them. Is it even possible to be allergic to one type of tomato?! It would be a massive shame if he was allergic to tomato because they are one of his favourite foods.

I have been feeling a bit crap again on and off the last few days. One day in particular I felt very sicky all day, fuzzy headed and kind of despondent, had a bit of a cry and couldn’t really even work out why I felt so bad. Bad thoughts raced through my head, about being terminally ill and dying and what would happen to Owen. It’s stupid, I know and even when I’m thinking them I realise how pointless it is to get bogged down by these doom-laden thoughts, but it just seems impossible to stop at the time. I’m sure that this is something hormonal. As quickly as it hits me, it lifts again and I feel back to normal again. At breakfast this morning I was slapped in the face by the most sudden and intense wave of what felt like adrenalin, it knocked me for six, then passed as suddenly. My teeth and jaw hurt too. I’m just a bag of ailments, constantly. It feels like there’s always something wrong with me at the moment.

Sleeping through, finally…?

Have we cracked it, finally? Last night, for the third night in a row, Owen slept through! I am so happy, I feel like a big weight has lifted from me and I know that there is some hope – I CAN have a full nights sleep again and wake up feeling refreshed and ready for action!

I realise that he is probably not going to sleep through every night, and that I should not get my hopes up for this too much because it is so much harder to deal with night waking when you’ve had a few good nights. I have to keep remembering that this is a slow process, and that patience is the key to dealing with night wakings. Calm and relaxed mummy = calm and relaxed baby. But it is so fantastic that this sleep training seems to have finally paid off!

To be honest, the past three nights he has actually fed to sleep, and not gone down awake. But the first night he woke after about half an hour screaming, I went in to him, soothed him, laid him back down and left the room. He cried in a rather half-hearted way for about five minutes before going back to sleep again, and slept through till about six thirty. The second night he did a similar thing, and this time he didn’t go back to sleep so I went back in and gave him the rest of the bottle he had at bedtime. This time he went in to the cot awake, but I didn’t hear a peep out of him till about quarter to seven in the morning! Last night he went down at 7.15pm and didn’t wake up till 6am, except for a teeny whinge at about 2pm but I think it must have been in his sleep or something.

So why has he suddenly decided to sleep through? I suspect that it is a combination of factors. First - I have been phasing out breastfeeding over the last month, and we are now down to one feed – the early morning feed. I think he was waking in the night wanting the comfort of a breastfeed, lying in bed next to mummy. Once I started giving him a bottle sitting upright in the chair in the nursery he wasn’t getting the comfort so it wasn’t worth waking up for.

Second – the sleep training was helping him to realise that it is possible to fall asleep without having a nipple in his mouth (breast OR bottle). So now when he wakes up in the night, most of the time anyway, he can get himself back off to sleep.

Third – I’ve now given him a duvet and pillow. Much more comfy, and he can’t wrap himself up in the duvet quite as much as he did with the sheet and blanket, or even with the sleeping bags.

Fourth – He’s eating loads more now, and although he’s having fewer feeds he is having bigger bottles. His bedtime bottle is now 7 oz, which gives him a nice full tummy to fall asleep on.

Finally, maybe it’s all of these things or none of them! Maybe he is just developmentally ready now to sleep through the night, and nothing I’ve done has made any difference, he would have started doing it anyway! Impossible ever to know, I guess.

This morning he actually went into the cot for his nap awake, and I haven’t heard a peep from him so he’s now starting to self settle in the day too, my clever little boy!

Spoon cleverness.

Have to be quick, I need sleep! Last night was an odd one… Owen fed to sleep at 7.30 but then woke again at 9.15, whinging. I left him for 10 minutes or so, but he showed no signs of stopping so I went in. Usually I would give him a feed, but tonight I decided not to and boy was it tough! He gave me a really hard time. I tried shushing, stroking, giving water, sitting by cot with hand in cot, taking him out and walking him around, sitting down cuddling (this was the worst!), singing, reading…. finally I was so stressed that I decided to leave the room and make a cup of tea, and if he was still crying after that then I would give a bottle. And guess what – he fell asleep within five minutes of me leaving the room. So in future I think I will stay no longer than five minutes, give water, give some gentle reassurance then leave, and see how that goes. It will probably not work since every night seems different, but it’s worth a try!

The good thing was that he then stayed asleep until 5.30 am, and then I suspect he only woke up because he heard me creeping past to go to the loo – there’s a step right outside his room and it creaks badly. I’ve tried every which way of getting round it but however careful I am, at some point there will be a horribly loud creak and Owen has eagle ears (I know eagles don’t have ears but can’t be bothered to think of an animal with big ears right now).

This evening he fed to sleep at 7.30 and I’ve not heard hide nor hair from him… yet… crossing my fingers for another good night.

On other matters, Owen is learning how to give me the spoon at mealtimes. At some point during the meal, usually dessert, I give him loaded spoons with, for example, soya yoghurt or jelly. Usually he slurps up what’s on the spoon, then hurls the spoon on the floor. More recently he’s been more careful, laying the spoon on the tray. Yesterday I started asking him for the spoon, and holding my hand out. I think at first he was accidentally putting the spoon on my hand, but every time he did it I practically screamed with delight and said ‘thank you thank you thank you!!’ and kissed him on the nose. It only took about 10 minutes of this before he was actually holding the spoon out to me to take. What a very clever little man I have!

One small step for a baby…

We interrupt the sleep training news to bring you an important developmental milestone update – Owen walked his first step on his own today! We were at Tina and Freddie’s house and the babies were playing, crawling in and out of the tunnel and clambering over it. We were sitting on the floor with them and all of a sudden Owen stopped playing with something and just stood up on his own! He stood there for quite a while, just looking a bit confused, then grinned at me and stepped towards me before sinking back down to the floor. I had just been saying to Tina a few minutes before that I thought Owen preferred crawling to walking and hadn’t shown any signs of wanting to walk on his own. He cruises around the furniture, and has walked with his walker, but I thought because he is such a fast crawler that maybe he would be a late walker. But now I think not! I’m so proud of him, he’s only 10 months and he’s already starting to walk.

Sleep training continues… he was very lively tonight when I put him in the cot, and he literally was trying to chew his way out, I think. Lucky I got the teething rails! He was bouncing off the cot bars, rolling, sticking his arms and legs through the bars, burying his face in his teddies… I just sat very quiet in the semi-dark and tried not to look at him at all – very difficult when out of the corner of your eye you could swear your baby is doing a handstand.

He finally dropped off at about 8.30, which is later than I would like, and about 20 minutes later than he has been doing which isn’t great. However, he did get up later today. I think we should try to get up earlier tomorrow, but it’s difficult when he’s still asleep – I feel like I really ought to take advantage of the lie in! He has squeaked a couple of times since he went down, once at 9.30 and then again not that long ago, but I haven’t had to go in to him yet… now I’m tempting fate…

Sleep training: Day 9 (I think I’ve lost track!)

Sunday. Today was an odd day for Owen because he stayed at nana’s while I went to Ikea with Kelly and spent a small fortune on strangely named cuddly toys. He fell asleep in the car on the way home, at about half past six, and I knew this might mess him up a bit. Sure enough, he took a lot longer to go down tonight, but he did, eventually, to his credit! I fed him, about four minutes on the breast and then transferred him to bottle.  He was awake when he went into the cot and I gave him his toys. Then I started reading. He was very sleepy at first, and I thought maybe he would go down quickly – but then he seemed to liven up and soon was standing and biting the cot rail. I had actually bought some toothguards but had forgotten to put them on so I had to say ‘no’ and sit him back down. He didn’t like this one little bit, and then did it again – then we had some histrionics. I had to take him out of the cot and give him the rest of the bottle.

He calmed down, so I put him back in the cot, still awake. This time he seemed much more passive and kept putting his head down. I sang ‘Ten Little Monkeys’ and then ‘Ten Green Bottles’ to him, as I wasn’t sure the reading was helping. This seemed to calm him down quite a lot. Finally, he lay down and stayed down. After a couple of minutes I furtively looked at him and he was asleep. I put a blanket over him and left. It had taken about an hour to get him down, from when I first put him in the cot.

Then he woke again, an hour later, with a heart-rending scream, and carried on crying – it was the proper full on crying that you can’t ignore. I went in and tried to soothe him through the cot bars, putting my hand in and stroking him and shushing, but he wouldn’t  be soothed that way. I thought, maybe he had a nightmare, maybe because I’d been away from him all day he had a nightmare that I had not come back. So I took him out of the cot and cuddled him, standing up. He was still frantic so I sat down and continued to cuddle and talk softly. He finally calmed down and drifted back to sleep in my arms. I put him back in the cot and he let out one little angry cry but then went back to sleep immediately.

I know I probably shouldn’t have taken him out of the cot, but I think that in the circumstances, since I had left him with nana all day and he may have had a nightmare, I just wanted to reassure him that mummy is still here and loves him. I am very pleased with myself that I didn’t immediately offer a breastfeed or a bottle, as that was what I would have done a few weeks ago. Self-settling is going to happen, but it’s going to take a little while and I have to do what I feel is right at the time.

Sleep training: Day 5: Back on track

Last night we were back on track with the sleep. I gave him half breast feed, then put him onto the bottle and he took about 4 oz. He was awake but relaxed so I read to him in my bed first, then transferred him, sitting, to the cot. I gave him his two favourite toys and sat down to read. I moved the chair away from the cot after 15 minutes or so and carried on reading. When I could see that he was starting to lie down more, I stopped reading. He fell asleep at 8.10, forty minutes or so from when I put him in the cot.

He then woke at 3.20am, and took a whole bottle (diluted milk, 5oz water to 4 scoops) and still wanted feeding after that so I gave him a breastfeed too. Wondering if this was because it was diluted. I wanted to gradually increase the amount of water to milk powder so that eventually he will take water only, but I’m not sure this is going to work now! I think he’s wise to that game!

Tonight we’ve already had a couple of hiccups. Bedtime was a little chaotic. I don’t really know why but I forgot this, that and the other and I overheated the milk which meant I had to add more cold water, and again he didn’t seem satisfied with the bottle so I had to offer breast. Then he woke up about 1 hour after he went down, which is a little worrying – I just hope it was a minor blip and he now sleeps for a nice long stretch.

Sleep is the main obsession of my life now… from birth to around 3 months it was breastfeeding, when I started weaning it was food (well, it still is to a certain extent) but now all my energy is focussed on getting this sleep thing right. I think the key is slowly, slowly, catchee monkee (please excuse the terrible un-PCness of that phrase!). I have to introduce new things gradually, and be aware that it’s not going to be easy every night, and allow him to also let me know what he’s happy or not happy about. I never realised that sleep could be such a difficult thing for a baby! Mind you, it’s not him that has an issue with sleep, of course. It’s me!

Sleep training: Day 4. One little step back.

I’m cross with myself tonight. Owen didn’t do what I wanted him to do at bedtime, and I got stressed and I took him out of the cot and fed him. Although I didn’t really feed him to sleep because he was awake when he went back down, I did feed him to get him to sleep. And that’s totally not the point of this. I should have taken him out of the cot, calmed him with cuddles and then put him straight back in again. It is so hard though, when you know that a feed will almost certainly calm him down.

He had two good daytime naps today, which maybe meant that he wasn’t very tired. But I think the main problem was that I started expecting too much too soon. I breastfed him after his bath, as usual, but he only took a very short feed and I think maybe I was too quick to take him into his bedroom. Usually I’d read him a bit of a story in my bed before taking him to bed but I thought I’d skip that and just start reading in his room. That was the first mistake I think. Then I was too quick to take his toys out of the cot, because I thought they might be keeping him awake. He started crying when I took one of them, and that was the start of the crying really. I also read with a torch, which fascinated him. The phone rang halfway through, which disrupted the process. Everything kind of went wrong, basically! Bedtime was 8.12pm, forty two minutes from when he first went into the cot. A little step back. But maybe tomorrow we’ll have two little steps forward!

I think this sleep training is training for me as much as for him, it’s about me knowing what makes my baby tick and what makes him tock, what his limits are, what my limits are, what he needs from me in order to get to sleep and how I can help him do it on his own. We’ll get there in the end.