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2005-11-05 - 9.50pm previous entry next entry
Due-date-iversary, and monkey man...
"Remember, remember the 5th of November!"
It's Fireworks Night, yay! The noise outside is unbelievable! It has been constant for hours now. Arthur is amazingly sleeping through it, and he even fell asleep while enormous explosions rocked the house from right outside our window! Amazing. He is sleeping sooooooo badly otherwise, so I'm surprised at how well he's taking the fireworks!
The thing I most remember about November the 5th, though, is that it was my due date this time last year! Arthur was due on Fireworks Night. He didn't show up till 4 days later, of course! Only four days till his birthday. That's just craaazy. I have been reading my pregnancy diary to relive those last few days of pregnancy, at this time last year. I feel so nostalgic remembering it all again! I am still so caught up in reliving Arthur's birth in my mind. All this time since he was born, I still daydream about it. It was so wonderful! So painful and soooo hard, but so so so wonderful!! I know I can never have it again, even if I have other births and future children. ARTHUR'S birth will never happen again. My firstborn. The first time I ever gave birth, or experienced labour, or held my own child for the first time. The first time I was ever a mummy. It's such a precious thing. I try to keep the memories alive and kicking, and anyway, I love to think about it!
Sooooo now I have an almost-one-year-old! He is doing lots of walking. He tries to run on his tiptoes and falls easily when he does that. I took him to get fitted for proper walking shoes, like the physio suggested. I figured it must be time, since he is definitely walking now. He still cruises and crawls a lot, but he's definitely a walker at last. Shoe-fitting went fine! I was worried that there might be trouble fitting him after what the physio said, with his wide curly feet and all. But it was fine. I asked for a stiff flat shoe. Ugh. They were tempting me with flexible cruising shoes, but I told them about his feet and that the physiotherapist said he must go into stiff non-flexible shoes. But thankfully they had some nice ones :) He is a size 3H - really wide! But at least they make H widths in normal baby shoes. He walks fine in them, though he turns his feet in just a bit, and sometimes falls over his toes when he does that, and he fits them well. They are so easy to put on his feet - what a difference when you actually have shoes that fit him! They cost a bomb though, ugh. I need to get him refitted in January, as he'll probably be a size bigger by then. Wow, their feet grow so fast! I think next time I will get him fitted to find out his size, but somehow NOT buy any shoes, and then find some next-to-new ones in the right size at eBay. I wish I had done that this time.
Arthur is behaving.... differently, lately. I don't know what to make of it, it is really perplexing me. He pushes all my buttons and watches for my reaction. I am so tired and hormonal lately and I find it hard. I guess I snap at him more, and feel dreadful about that. Maybe he is picking up on that? How awful :( He waits till I am indisposed (a rare thing, since I spend nearly every waking second doing stuff with Arthur, not my own thing or the housework), like maybe I am so nauseated that I HAVE to sit down and eat a meal. Or I need to fill in a form to get it in the post asap. While I am doing these things, he immediately starts doing every single thing that he knows we would rather he didn't do. He climbs around the sofa to pull videos off the shelves. He opens the glass cabinet doors and rummages in the video machine. He pushes the button on the TV to switch it on and off, on and off, on and off. He cruises to the door to the porch and opens it and closes it and opens it and closes it and opens it and closes it, etc. He finds outdoor shoes and tries to eat them. He tries to push the barrier out of the stairway so he can climb them. He opens all the drawers in the merchants chest and pulls out the financial paperwork, watching me to see my reaction with every individual sheet pulled. He cruises to the big mirror which he isn't allowed near as I'm worried it could fall if he touches it (I think I'm over-worrying, but anyhoo), and bangs the flat of his palm on it over and over, watching me all the while. If he can find any piles of clean clothing, he pulls them down, watching me of course.
I have to get up fifty million times while I am trying to eat a simple baked potato, and take him away from things or redirect him. He does not listen to anything I say, though I know he understands "no" and various other redirections that I use instead of "no". He is just really testing his mummy and daddy out at the moment! Little monkey! I hope this is just a phase!
Also he is super clingy and whiney. This is sooooooooo out of character for Arthur, I don't understand it. He wants to breastfeed ALL. DAY. LONG. I let him, because I don't want to restrict him if he wants to nurse. It's easier if we go out, because then he's distracted and doesn't ask. We should go out more - maybe he's bored? - but I just can't do it. I feel too awful all the time, and too tired. He is a busy boy in the house and stays very active, but maybe I am falling short because I should be doing more for/with him? Urgh. Some mornings his longest gap where he ISN'T breastfeeding is literally 10 minutes. He is off and on between playing and things, but he wants me close all the time, and preferably topless, hehe! He hates to see clothing covering my - correction, HIS! - breasts. He even hates my bras. Anything in the way gets pulled and frowned at, usually with some degree of whining.
It's so strange because he has never been a whiney boy. He is a happy, cheerful, laid-back boy! But he isn't being much of that lately. He still smiles and laughs a lot, but he is ultra grumpy the rest of the time. I keep thinking something must be wrong, as it's so odd for him, but I don't know what.
Also, he is waking like CRAZY at night at the moment. Every 2 hours or MORE. Uggggggggh. I can't, CAN'T do that. But suddenly he is completely intolerant of anything other than me and my breasts at night. He is also like this at nap times in the day. I don't know what to do! I can't nurse him till he falls asleep any more because it just hurts too much now that I'm this pregnant. I don't really WANT to anyway, as I think it is definitely time he learnt to sleep without going off on the breast. So I stop when he's sleepy, or before then if I can't bear the pain any longer. And he gets hysterical. Really hysterical. I stay with him. I sometimes cuddle him if he's really upset, but otherwise I play "asleep" - that seems to work best - or pat his back a little. That used to work, but now he just sobs and screams (REALLY screams, angrily) until he is nearly sick. He can keep this up for over an hour. If he starts retching I put a stop to it. I nurse him or I get him up, so sometimes he has no nap. Lately he is sometimes taking one nap a day and sometimes two, depending on whether he will let me put him down for a morning nap or not.
Ugh. I just don't know. He seems so.... like he is fighting me all the time at the moment. I don't understand why. He has plenty of lovely times when he is just like himself, but SO many times when he isn't now, and I feel kind of upset about it, in case it's my fault or it's getting worse because I am neglecting him in some parenting area, or something. Am I doing something wrong?
I took him to the doctor yesterday in case he had an ear infection or something wrong with his tummy, etc. Once or twice at night he has screamed and cried even when I offered him the breast, which is just totally all-out WEIRD for Arthur. But he was given a thorough check-up and seems perfectly healthy. His ears are fine, his chest is fine, his tummy is soft and fine. I don't see any changes in his gums, though he drools all the time anyway.
He is having serious problems with constipation. I finally got some advice from the health visitor and after a long discussion she said he has a really good healthy diet (yay!) but nowhere NEAR enough fluids. He has breastmilk all the time, and I still have plenty, but it's not enough with all his solids now. He simply refuses to drink though. He will take sips of water at mealtimes and when we offer him a drink throughout the day (which I try to do ALL the time to get him to drink), but after a tiny sip or two he pushes the drink away and refuses to let it near him again. We fill a sippy cup with water each morning and it never seems to have gone down at all by the end of the day.
The HV suggested diluted fruit juice - apple was her suggestion, partly in case it made him want to drink it more, and partly because she has seen fruit juice help sometimes with constipation in babies. So we did that for a few days. He makes a face but still sips it. But the level doesn't go down any more than it did for water. When we saw the doctor yesterday, she said she didn't like the idea of giving him fruit juice as it can cause cavities in babies' teeth. So we switched back to water. She prescribed him lactulose, but said that it needs to be taken with plenty of fluids - um, hello?!!! So I'm not giving that to him. It will make matters worse if he isn't getting enough fluids. Urrrrgh! So frustrating!
Today we happened to discover a new absolute favourite food for Arthur - we gave him baked beans on toast for tea, and he LOVED it!!! He ate the whole lot eagerly, and the BEST thing is that this meal makes you very thirsty! So we offered him water after every 2 or 3 mouthfuls and he took more water than he ever has before! Yay! I think it was because the food was thirst-making though. The water went down a centimetre!!!! Woohoo! But that is still pretty bad for a whole day's fluid. Poor Arthur. It is making his poo very difficult for him. He sweats and shakes and cries when he poos :( Sometimes he bleeds. Often we have to rescue him if it's a bad one, by actually applying OIL to the completely stuck poo so that it will come out without making him scream in pain. Poor poor baby :( Sometimes he has a normal poo, and I don't know why because he never has much fluid to drink. I know it's really important to fix it because apparently untreated constipation in young children and babies leads to them losing the urge to poo, and they can need professional help to start again. Yikes. I don't know what to do though, because he just WON'T drink. And it's the fluids that are the whole issue.
If anyone knows what to do, please let me know!!! Otherwise please pray that he suddenly LOVES to drink and it all gets better :)
I have a TON to write about moving and stuff, because it's all up in the air at the moment. But I can't now, I am feeling really sick. I think I will go and eat something. It's too noisy outside for an early night, but that is fine with me because I am just longing for a snuggly evening reading in bed by some cosy lamplight!
I'm sure there were millions of other things I meant to say.... oh well. I can't remember them now anyway. I will try my best to update a little more over the coming week, as I want to get some of my thoughts down about Arthur before he turns one, and of course to write about his birthday and the family stuff afterwards!
I do just want to say that I LOVE my lil precious Boo. I hope I didn't come across too complaining about him. I just love him to bits. But I feel so worn and strained by stuff lately with Arthur. I wish it would all just get better and not be a problem, because I hate having any time at all where I don't feel wonderful about him at every moment. But I love him, love him, love him.
Here are some photos of the mischievious monkey man himself!...
Love him. To bits :)
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