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2005-07-22 - 11.07pm previous entry next entry
Blah.
I know a secret! :) Yay, it's a fabby one! But also I feel a bit deflated for some crappy reason. Will not talk about that for now.
I got my period today. Six day luteal phase. That is not good. But oh well. If Arthur wasn't nursing then I'm sure I would be all nice and fertile again, but obviously I want him to keep nursing more than I want to be nice and fertile again. It's hard because my feelings are going to clash more and more as time goes by and I want to have another baby. I will NEVER wean him so that I can get pregnant (at least, I say that now, but I HOPE I don't resort to that). But what if he nurses so much that my periods don't go back to normal enough for a pregnancy to occur for aaaaaages to come? I don't want to have any conflict in my head about it. I just want it to all happen nice and easily and naturally without the need for any stress. Ugh. I am nervous that trying to conceive again will = stress, because last time it was sooooooo stressful, and I don't want it to be that way again. It was hard. But here Arthur is! That should encourage me, right? It just feels like each new baby is a clean slate and I'm nervous. Not that I need to even THINK about it now, so I don't know why I'm writing about it. Also it should be in my other diary. Oh well.
I should have put "WARNING" at the top of this entry. I am feeling so down tonight. I should not write diary entries when I am feeling this way, but in the past I used to feel so much better by the end of them. I used to "write" it all out of my system or something. I don't really think that will happen tonight though.
Blah.
I hate writing depressed diary entries, because I LOVE reading cheerful entries or diaries written by people who are upbeat or optimistic, or who always have positive things to say about life. They are infectious people. I wish I was more like Robbi. There is just something so positive about her diary entries, even when she is having a bad day or writing about stuff she finds difficult. She is like a lil sunbeam :) I always wish I was that kind of person, but I just don't seem to be. I wish I was.
Last night we had a bad night's sleep. Well, it was okay at first, but I did not get to sleep till after midnight and then I was super crampy and couldn't sleep for a while. Then Arthur woke his normal once or twice around midnight and maybe 2 or 3am ish. But then he woke at 4am and nursed. And again at 4.30am and nursed. And 5am. And 5.30am. And then he was up for the day at 6am. He was restless between all those times. And then I got my period at like 6.05am! Heh. I was soooooo crampy so I knew I had it. I had to get up and take painkillers and get my hot water bottle. Definitely back to the old pre-pregnancy style periods. Yuck. Then Neil took Arthur downstairs so I could get some more sleep, which was lovely of him. But I was too crampy and then too awake, so no sleep for me.
I did not know what to do with Arthur today. Nor yesterday. He seems to no longer be interested in playing with his toys and stuff or being on his tummy on the floor for any length of time. He is crawling but only like a few brief times in each day, and even then it's only a few little crawls to get a couple of feet ahead and then he flops down to play with whatever he's crawled to. He doesn't seem that excited about crawling yet. In fact he seems way more interested in using a sort of hybrid movement he's developed since starting to crawl, which I call "The Seal Flop"! It looks exactly like a seal's movements, and it kind of resembles the butterfly swimming stroke without the arms over the top. He pushes up on his arms, does a quick raise-and-shove with his knees and flops back onto his tummy, about a foot ahead of where he was before. He can cover a bigger distance FAR quicker like this than when he crawls, so he seems keen to use it. He is very fast with it now, and can seal-flop several times over in a second or two to get a few feet ahead. He does still try to crawl but he uses this seal-flop thing much more at the moment.
Anyway, he seems bored and frustrated lately and it's like all of a sudden he has gone up a gear in what he needs to stay interested and stimulated. Today I am just exhausted and crampy and irritable and dizzy and yuck, so I did not feel up to doing ANYTHING with him! But a mummy does not get a day off, even a day off sick (not that I'm sick)!
Soooo I phoned my own wonderful mother again, and she suggested a few things. As I described his new ways, she said, "Ohhhh he sounds EXACTLY like you used to be!" Uh-oh. My mum was an absolute SUPER-MUM with me. I know I was a handful. Well, a challenge. Not in a bad way, but wow, I'm not sure I have the energy for a child like me! Mummy says I will have exactly what it takes, because I am genetically made to parent a child with my own genes :) She always knows just the right things to say. I love my mummy.
Anyway, basically I was an active toddler. All toddlers are active, but yeah. I would be a nightmare if I did not go out somewhere each day, and I needed to see different people each day too. Also every day we did cooking, crafts, housework together, garden play, etc. If I didn't have all those activities on every day I would be bored and restless. I am really looking forward to doing those activities with Arthur, but he is at an age where there's not a whole lot I can do with him but he's getting that bored and restless thing going.
Mummy said I should take him out for a walk. I did that yesterday and he got antsy by the time we had been out for 45 minutes. We came home about 15 minutes later, but I was knnnnnnackered and had absolutely no energy whatsoever to even play with him on the floor after that. I know I had my period coming and I do get absolutely wiped out in the couple of days before that, but still. Not good. I could be fitter, I think. Maybe I should work on that. It's just too humid and muggy for walking and pushing a pushchair up and down hills, however small the hills are!
So she also suggested we do water play some days, and try the wastepaper basket filled with interesting things for him to empty and play with again. Also she suggested I offer him some food as a different activity.
Soooo I got off the phone and since he was gnawing his fist again, I put a slice of frozen organic melon in the baby safe feeder, and handed it to him. He liked it!! He chewed and chewed - I've noticed that chewing is a new thing for Arthur. He chews everything he eats now, and mashes food against the roof of his mouth with his tongue. Before now, he was always just so aghast with having food in his mouth that he would either let it drop out again or hurriedly shove it to the back of his mouth to gag on and swallow! Anyway, he chewed almost all of the melon out of the bag after it had melted. Then I offered him a baby apple rice cake, and he took it eagerly. Last night I gave him one after our walk and he ate the whole thing up!!!! That is another first. He has never eaten something all up before. He enjoys feeding himself so rice cakes work well for him. But he did shove too large a piece in his mouth and I had to scoop it out. I keep a close eye on him when he is eating, especially when it's something solid that he's feeding himself, like rice cake. I broke the last bit into little pieces and held them out to him, and he used a very deliberate and perfect pincer grip to pick up every bit, even tiny crumbs, and put them straight in his mouth to chew and swallow!!! My clever boy :) I had no idea he had perfected his pincer grip, as the last time I saw him use it, he was still missing his aim on very tiny things like a little piece of thread on the carpet, etc. But it's great now!
Anyway. It's so cute to see him have a crumb on his lip and to see him take such pains over slowly putting his finger to his lip and pushing the crumb soooo slowly till it's over the lip and in his mouth! He's such a sweetie :)
Okay, gap for dinner there! I need to finish this now, as it's late and I need sleep.
Well I was just going to say that after the melon I gave him a rice cake, and he put a whole half in his mouth and shoved it to the back before I could grab it! I could see it on the back of his tongue in two bits, but I knew if I reached in there I would probably push it further back rather than being able to grab it. Urgh. He was not choking at all, but I knew he would deal with it and probably bring it forward by gagging and retching on it. The sad thing was, I knew I couldn't get it for him safely and that retching would be the only way to really bring it forward, so I sat with him and watched the rice cake in there while he gagged on it. Poor love. I felt so inadequate! It was stubborn and he retched enough times to start throwing up :( :( He lost his nice melon and the rest of his rice cake, poor Boo. But he didn't seem at all put off. He got wide eyes and looked at me for reassurance, and I told him good boy and kept calm and stroked his back. It's so silly how I STILL get shaky when anything to do with vomiting occurs. Even though that incident had absolutely no threat to me, I still got kind of panicky inside.
Oh, he's waking for a feed. Okay I will have to finish this another time.
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