Friday 2 March 2012

Desperate measures

8 months, 8 months old and my baby girl has gone from being a baby to being a little Girl, an animated, interactive miniature person with a mouth full of teeth and an iron will. I can't believe the new baby stage passes so quickly. She is clapping hands, lip smacking in an attempt to blow kisses, along with the obligatory hair pulling and perhaps more original, teeth grinding.

She is now finally in her own room, This selfish new mum wanted her near me while she slept, my excuse was seeing to her when she woke was quicker and easier if she was in the same room, but alas I realised it was time. There were tears the first night (mine) and again the second nights (hers) I even relented and put my wriggling, coo-ing gro bag wearing early riser in our bed, which resulted in me sleeping horizontally on the end like an old dog, such is my fear of suffocating her. Do all babies take up so much room? Do they not understand the art of spooning to conserve space? Tilly doesn't, she prefers the star fish position, ensuring maximum mattress coverage for her and minimum parental comfort, this co - sleeping is not for me , unless we forsake all other bedroom furniture and replace it with a room sided mattress and several duvets.

It's amazing what you will do to encourage them to sleep, last week after a particularly eventful day which resulted in Tilly wanting virtually no sleep and thus buzzing with tiredness we were driving home and bam off she went into the land of nod, a peaceful nap which I had no intention of disturbing, on arrival on our driveway I left the engine running, radio on and sat there, unsure of how long she would sleep for I made myself comfortable, seat reclined, iPad out. This may sound crackers but moving her inside would have definitely have woken her, it was only when the boyfriend brought me a cup of tea out and i considered the possibility of catching up on some zzzz's myself, I knew I was on rocky ground. But this wasn't the point i realised I had descended in parental psychosis, this came earlier. On a recent day trip we (baby, boyfriend and I) were sat in traffic, baby has the patience of her father which in metric terms converts to absolutely none and on this particular occasion she was being very vocal about it, screaming at the top of her lungs to be exact, so her dad and I decided to divert her attantion by launching into a competitive animal noise sparring match, back and forth we went baaaaaaaaaa, hissssssss, rooooooooooooaaaaaah, chirp chirp, chirp chirp. The point being no one animal could be repeated (I have to give him credit his mooooooooooooooo was pretty impressive, very life like) clearly we were amusing her selves more than we were amusing Tilly as it took a few minutes to even notice that Tilly had completely stopped crying and was gazing out of the window, probably pretending she didnt know us.

I am now facing the challenge of returning to work. Getting ready for a trip to the shops takes planning for me, getting ready for work with Tilly in tow is going to take military precision. I have takes steps to prepare myself, a very kind friend accepted my request for a written run down of her morning itinerary, she has 2 children and a full time Job, so i was very grateful, she has better things to do. I almost broke into a sweat when I read it, mornings are never going to be the same again. I found myself feeling sorry for Victoria Beckham last week when the media were giving her a hard time about looking tired, she is a working mother with a young baby after all, and apparently she doesn't have a nanny, which is refreshing to hear. But what she must have is someone to watch baby Harper while she gets dressed and has hair, nails and make-up done before she faces the day, plus she doesn't have to clean her own house, and it's unlikely she cooks her own food...and that is worth a dozen nannies!

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