bovvered?

Saturday, September 29, 2007

This afternoon we're off on the first leg of the big trip north to introduce Maggie to the whanau: a couple of days on the Horowhenua coast, a night in Roto-Vegas, and arriving in Auckland on Tuesday to be reunited at long last with the firstborn. Not that I expect she'll be the least bit bothered by our sudden reappearance; from what I could gather from our brief phone conversation last night, her life for the last week and a bit has been a continuous whirl of lollipops and trips to the zoo. Homesick? You must be joking. She did utter a cry of joy when my mother asked her if she wanted to speak to me. I'll hold onto that cry – it's all I have...

Ahem. In the meantime, here are some adorable photos of both first and secondborn. Back in a couple of weeks.

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ain't no sunshine when she's gone

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Pissing, freezing rain all week and a southerly, putting paid to plans of long sunshiny walks with the pram, from which we had carelessly, and prematurely, swapped out the Co-Zee-Toze ™ for the cooler cover after a warm, bright weekend had lulled us into a false sense of security. But one again it's hunkering-down-inside-big-jerseys-with-the-heating-cranked-up weather, although we did venture out to the Pataka Centre yesterday to see the excellent Michel Tuffery exhibition, Maggie (who is good at art galleries) boggling out of her pram at the corned beef tin bulls.

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seven more sleeps

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Now I don't want to be maudlin. Indeed, one could veer towards a sort of self-aggrandizement over this sort of thing (motherhood is not the only important bond). But I do miss her a lot. Especially after hearing her chirpy little voice on the phone last night, after which her bedroom seemed very empty, and the house very quiet. Until Maggie started sqauwking at 11.00pm, that is.

Nevertheless, by all accounts, including hers, she's getting along splendidly up there without us: highlights of her visit so far include goslings, quadruptlets, a stuffed polar bear and as much chocolate as is a grandparent's perogative to bestow. And in the meantime we are making the best, and the most, of her absence, by doing the sorts of things that are difficult to schedule when you have a lively three-and-a-half-year-old as well as a four-monther to consider. Such as not doing very much at all. After all, as it turns out, taking things easy while you're nursing increases your milk supply. Who knew?

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permission for lower lip to wobble

Friday, September 21, 2007

Tonight Rebecca is in Auckland with the whanau – we saw her and her gran off at the airport this morning. Maternal stiff upper lip lasted until she'd skipped merrily through the security check and out of sight. Which is as long as it needed to, really. We'll see her again in ten days' time.

In the meantime we have more leisure to enjoy Maggie, who will be four months old tomorrow. When a friend suggested that the solution to the insatiability and consequent return of the dreaded night feed might be to introduce solids, I realised with a jolt that she's no longer a newborn. Rodger is right: it passes too quickly. And I won't be doing this again, so I am making the most of each fleeting stage. At the moment, I love how, when you bend over her bassinet first thing in the morning, she meets your adoring gaze and you can just see the facial recognition software working away until it hits a match: 'Big Hairy Person Who Changes My Bum at 4.00 am!' 'Keeper of the Boobie!'

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steeped

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Turns out that supply does, or at least can, keep pace with demand, so long as the breastfeeding mother doesn't mind feeling like a she has had half of her brains scooped out, finely diced, and then ladelled back in. After a blissful but all too fleeting stint of sleeping through the night, Maggie's diurnality has become a little less reliable of late as she wakes for feeds at various ungodly hours. Toss her sister's equally unreliable sleeping (and toileting) patterns into the mix (apparently this week is International Wet The Bed Week) and you'll see why for the past three weeks I have been lurching from lecture to lecture, my rhetorical powers drying up with each passing day. The other night at 2.00 am I found myself seriously questioning my commitment to exclusive breastfeeding. Or maybe that's just crazy sleep deprivation talk.

But breastfeeding is a bind; often, it can feel like a trap. Not least because for me at least, it's become a competition with myself: how long can I keep going this time? Can I beat my previous record (ha!) of 11 weeks' exclusive breastfeeding? This time, can I make it to six months before I start drying up? A year? By which time there will be no question of starting her on formula as by then cows milk is acceptable? More worryingly, I'm afraid that if I introduce formula now just so I don't feel so wrung-out by her need to feed, she'll develop the eczema that continues to afflict her combination-fed sister, and which I've always fretted was triggered by the formula in the first place.

(And yes of course you can pump, if you need to get away, or to supplement. Except at the end of a day dashing from pillar to post, it can be hard work to get much more than a dribble.)

In any case, the teaching finishes this afternoon, and tomorrow Rebecca's gran is taking her to Auckland for a spell so it will be just me, Jack and Maggie until the end of the month when we drive up and join them. As keenly as I'll miss the firstborn, with only one baby to look after, no paid work to worry about and not even Becca to pick up from daycare, I'm ideally placed to spend a week and a half sitting on the couch lactating. Bountifully, with any luck.

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single bound

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

When I get my new secret superhero identity, I'm going to be Overcommitment Woman.

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come, let me clutch thee

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Whaddyaknow, yesterday the university parking police came through with a parking spot for me, Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, from 2.30–4.30. Hurray for competent and persuasive admin persons!

My boundless delight at this concession may seem OTT, especially when it only gains me an extra 20-30 minutes per lecturing stint, but 20 minutes is a long time when you are clutching a thrashing miniature fell beast from whom the boobie has been taken away. And sure, yes, Just pump!, and then, tra-la-la! you can go out for as long as you like! (Incidentally, if you want to set my 'I'm trying really hard not to punch you in the face' hormones a-squirtin', any pronouncement beginning with 'Just' or 'All you do' should do the trick.) It ain't always that easy. Stress levels, generally exacerbated by such dumbass ideas as taking on lecturing contracts when you have an exclusively breastfed small baby, affect breastfeeding. As was brought home to me just before the last Rebs gig a few weeks back when, despite the fact that the girls were primed and ready to pump, I was unable to express more than a pitiful dribble, chiefly because it was Arsenic Hour and Becca was running on 'Sell me on Trademe' levels of hellhound. I went out anyway (I'm that kind of mother. And OK, we had reserves in the freezer) and when I got back at the end of the night, relaxed after a several hours of childfree fiddle-playing while jumping up and down sweating profusely and shouting 'Oy!', I was able to siphon off a brimming bottleful, despite being dehydrated from the aforementioned evening's activities. So in summary: don't stress me out because then you are starving my secondborn.

In other news, the secondborn has gone from boggling at the world to attempting to grab it and stuff it in her mouth.

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preverbal burble

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

You've heard, no doubt, of pleading the belly; well, this week we are pleading the boobie in an effort to garner me a temporary parking place on campus so I don't have to factor in 20 mins driving around chanting the Parkers' Prayer* into the increasingly relentless feeding/teaching schedule. Sent a plaintive email off to the lovely French dept admin lady, and she has put in a formal request to the university parking police. Let's hope Breastfeeding Awareness Week isn't too distant a memory (although I myself am buggered if I can remember when it was) and that political correctness will, if not go mad, at least prevail in my favour.

Had a weird imagining the other day at the washing line: a sort of flash-picture of myself in a lecture theatre crooning Who's a happy baby? Who's the world's happiest little Maggie Moo? Who's Mummy's gorgeous angel? over and over to rows of incredulous undergrads. Sort of like a very context-specific aphasia. God I need more sleep.

*Hail Mary, full of grace / Let me find a parking space...

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tell me about your day

Sunday, September 09, 2007

I am a techno-ignoramus, hence yesterday's inapt/inept technical metaphor: Jack points out that the beta version can be nearly as unstable as the alpha. Which may go some way to explaining last night, during which there was much screeching, and very little sleep. Oh, the screeching: shame she and her sister were born too late for Lord of the Rings as the sound fx folk need have looked no further for a very convincing pair of fell beasts.

No, I am not enjoying getting back to work: juggling lecturing around two-hourly feeds is, if you'll pardon me, a complete pain in the tits. Especially as there is no bloody parking on campus so I have to leave early to allow twenty minutes for driving around Kelburn swearing. I am not taking on any more work until she's weaned and in some sort of regular daycare.

Book of the week: Don't Let The Pigeon Stay Up Late, the latest in the pigeon series by Mo Willems. Recommend. Also recommended: Fleur Adcock's collected poems, which I've been ploughing through for weeks on end now, as poems are about the only things I have time to read any more.

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all about the boobie

Saturday, September 08, 2007

What's it like the second time around? I've been asked that a few times, generally by those entertaining the idea of a second one. Or, and with perhaps a nuance more edginess, those with a second already on the way. Well, so far for some reason it amounts to four times as much work in a quarter of the time – mathematically improbable, but doable. And Maggie is every bit as perky and personable a baby as her sister was, but without the terrible eczema and constant puking. In fact, the other day I jokingly referred to her as the beta version. Don't worry, I then promptly went and washed my mouth out with carbolic soap. Perhaps a better way of putting it is that I am the beta version of the mother I was when Becca first arrived.

The main difference is the boobie; in Maggie's case, the boobie, the whole boobie, and nothing but the boobie. For a number of well-rehearsed reasons I won't bore you with, breastfeeding Becca was tough. It hurt, and at eleven weeks in, much to my chagrin, I began to dry up. Maggie, at nearly sixteen weeks old, is still exclusively breastfed, and this time it doesn't hurt and supply is keeping pace with demand just like all the books say it's supposed to. What's more, Maggie is happy to accept bottled boobie if I need to go out, which is obliging of her as I'm teaching this month. Am I entitled to feel proud of this? To do so would be to disparage those mums who've had the same difficulties I had with Becca, or worse ones. Or are unable to breastfeed at all, for whatever reason. So relieved, and grateful, are mostly what I feel. Grateful especially to Maggie whose technique, unlike certain babies we could mention, does not entail mashing my nipples repeatedly between her gums like a rubbish truck gobbling its load. Comparisons are inevitable. But ultimately irrelevant.

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Wednesday, September 05, 2007

Unutterably cute photo update

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muahahahahaha!

Got home from Deep Water Aquarobics (no, really) last night to a phone call from my sister in Australia. 'I'm up the duff!' she announced, jubilantly. Joy! And many congrats to Ruth and Danny. The plan for Williams global domination proceeds apace...

Have some adorable photos of the Elder siblings to post, but it'll have to wait while I teach, shop, go to the doctor, dentist, optometrist. It's absolutely true that work expands to fit the time available: since my mother's been here helping out with the girls, my feet have barely touched the ground, not only during Deep Water Aquarobics but in general, as I exploit her utterly and shamelessly by legging it out of the door between each and every feed in order to whizz around Getting Stuff Done. Speaking of which...

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it takes a village, &c

Monday, September 03, 2007

It's obvious what to do, when you need to Get Stuff Done, with your lively and interactive baby, who sleeps through the night (more often than not) while demanding in exchange merely that you entertain and fuss her continuously during daylight hours. Ship in a grandmother. My mother, bless her, is back in town for three weeks while I teach first-year French and springclean. After which she is taking Becca on the plane back to Auckland with her for some quality whanau time; we'll drive up some ten days later with Maggie. Never having been apart from Becca for more than two nights, I predict that by then her dad and I will either be very twitchy, or preternaturally calm.

In the meantime I intend to make the very most of having a doting pair of arms to, er, hand, in which to deposit my secondborn while I shop, clean, teach, and 'pute. This morning I enjoyed a long hot shower without having to wipe the steam off the glass every ten seconds or thereabouts to peer at Maggie in her bouncy chair and carol 'Where's Mummy?? HERE SHE IS!!!' Tomorrow, I may shave my legs...

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