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2005-08-30 - 3.00pm previous entry next entry
Professional photos :)
Ohhhhhhhh I have so neglected this diary!!! I feel bad. If you read my pregnancy diary you'll know that there were huge shenanigans with my cycle, so that was rather a large distraction for a while. I didn't mean to get distracted, but I had mega pregnancy symptoms, and ended up with a super faint positive pregnancy test followed by my period on the same day. Blah. I don't need to talk about my feelings about it here - I will keep that for my other diary. But I wanted to make note of why I haven't written here in a WEEK!! Tsk. Thank you so much to everyone who was sweet enough to leave me supportive and encouraging messages throughout. I know most of you read here too, so I'm saying it here as well. You guys rock! I felt less "all at sea" for your support :)
Okay, back to the usual! I have my period, and I napped like 3 times yesterday (soooooo tired) but today I'm feeling a lot better. Arthur is napping, though I think he may wake soon, so I'm just getting this entry started, so that I can add to it throughout the day when I get the chance. Otherwise I might never get it done! And I should have plenty to write about, with a week to catch up on!
On Saturday we went to have our photographs taken again. It was the 3rd session of four this year. The last one will be around Arthur's birthday, or shortly after. I can't believe he's going to actually have a BIRTHDAY!! Wow. And in only about 10 weeks too. Anyway the photos came out pretty crap. The first time we went there, we had a crappy photographer who seemed to have a talent for bringing out the WORST in each of us, when we saw the photos! We came away with one awful free photo of the three of us. The second session, we had a really talented photographer and bought several photos. This time it's probably good for our finances that we had a crap photographer! Again we all looked really weird and not like ourselves at all. I looked dull and chubby (of which I am neither!), Neil looked manic and scary (!) and Arthur looked totally unlike himself. Blah. But there was one nice photo of just Arthur with more of his usual spark in it, so we got that as the free photo and left it at that! Yay, no extra money spent! :) I'll scan it in and post it here when it arrives.
Our other professional photos (the expensive ones!) came back this week! We got them home yesterday. They are so lovely! I forgot how nice they were. They are presented in light wood frames with like a white mounting area and an inner wooden frame too. That doesn't sound very clear! I wanted to scan those too, but they are permanently fixed into the mounting and the frames. I took a photo of each one, so obviously there is a little reflection in the glass and that, but it's the best I can do. I can't wait to get them up on the wall! Here they are - I trimmed the photos so that you can't see the outer frame, just the inner bit and the start of the white moulding. But you get the gist. I will take a photo of them all on the wall when they're up! :)
They will go in this order, side by side - this first one will go on the left:
Then this one (my absolute favourite of all the fantastic shots we had taken!) in the centre:
And this one to finish it off, on the right:
I LOVE them!!! Isn't that one just so lovely, where we are kissing Arthur?! I just love his expression there! I love how his vibrant little personality shows so clearly in these photos, especially the kissy one! I also love how the photos were so spontaneous. We just did our normal thing with Arthur and the photographer snapped away. The session was an hour long so she had lots of opportunities. There were more, but these three are so nice together, that's why we chose them as our prints. We got a free framed desk photo too, and I chose one of Neil holding Arthur, as I liked it so much. I was able to scan this one in as it's just flat in a normal frame - my boys :)
Okay Arthur woke as I posted that last photo, and now it's 4 hours later and he's having his afternoon nap, so I'm back!
I am back to feeling desperate about his sleep again. Ugh. He is currently waking HOURLY at night again, and cries like his heart is broken if Neil goes to pick him up. He wants me, and more specifically, he wants to nurse. But I am so tired out, and I feel like I'm barely getting back to sleep and dozing before he's awake again, and I look at the clock and it's an hour after he last woke. I just feel at the moment like my whole night's sleep is an on-off doze, rather than any sort of sleep. The only time I get chance to sleep deeply enough to dream is when Neil takes him downstairs at 6am when he wakes for the day, and I get to sleep uninterrupted until 7.30. I say uninterrupted, but usually (like today) I wake maybe twice in that time because he will screech or bang toys or whatnot, and those things wake me up.
This morning's nap was okay. He woke after 30 minutes and I nursed him till he went back to sleep for another 30 minutes. He greeted me cheerfully sitting upright on the bed with a big smile. This afternoon it got to 2pm before I put him to bed, because he didn't seem tired enough before then. As soon as he showed me he was tired, I took him to bed. 2pm is late for him though. Anyway it is now nearly 3pm and he just went to sleep. It was a nightmare to get him to sleep. He nursed till he had had enough milk and then kept on getting up and climbing on me or crawling around the bed (heading off it at every opportunity!). After I let him roam a bit, I started to lay him back down when he got up, and this always makes him SO angry and sad almost immediately. So I don't know what to do. He needed a nap. I just kept putting him down and sitting close by him patting him or shh-ing, but he cried and SCREAMED and sobbed and went purple and made choking sounds and tears ran onto the sheets and I felt like the WORST mother in the world. I spoke all quiet and soothing, but it didn't make any difference. After a while I tried offering him the breast again, and every time I put him back down I would offer it to him. He still cried. Eventually he nursed to sleep. Why is it this hard to get him to sleep, day and night? He is 10 months old next week! I remember thinking how I couldn't take another week of it at 3 months, and people saying oh it will probably improve between 4 and 6 months, and I just felt dreadful because I did not see how I would last that long. That seemed so old to still be having such major issues with sleep. And here we are at nearly 10 months, and no real change. He has better patches and worse patches, but basically I have not had a single night of solid sleep since before he was born. I know that for many parents, this is part of the job! But I don't remember what it is like to have more than 2 or 3 hours sleep in one go, or more than 5 hours broken sleep for a whole night. I don't even REMEMBER what it's like. I can't imagine the bliss of going to bed at 10.30 and waking up at like 8am. Or even midnight till 6am. Even that would be bliss! But I never get anything like it.
I just want to sleeeeeeeeeeep. Why does almost everybody else with a baby get sleep most of the time and I don't?! I find myself praying rather desperately at night sometimes, "God please, just let him stay asleep, please, please..." But he doesn't, ever, really. Sometimes when I have nursed him back to sleep at night, he wakes after a few minutes and Neil tries to settle him. Just hearing him getting more and more awake and cross makes my heart sink. I really hate having any sort of resentment over his night wakings, but with them happening this frequently, I am really starting to. But I don't know what to do about it - if anything. I can't bear to let him cry. Even just now it felt absolutely wrong, but I had run out of ideas.
Nursing is more difficult at night at the moment, because my nipples are KILLING me. Nursing is as painful as it was when I first started, right now. Arthur's top teeth are hurting me. He doesn't bite, but his teeth press into me as he nurses, and they graze me as he pulls off the breast. If I break the latch and take him off, it's not so bad, but it wakes him more easily. Mainly it's the action of his jaw when nursing that hurts the most though. I have little grazes and scabs and blisters around my nipples. Owch. Also bruises where the indents happen over and over in the same place. I tried nursing in slightly different positions but it doesn't seem to be making much difference. Somebody told me to just ride it out because nipples can toughen up. I hope so, because it is almost unbearable now, and I have no intention of weaning him because of it, so I don't know what I'd do if it didn't ease off soon! So that doesn't help the night miseries.
Well, I'm cheerful aren't I?! It's hot and humid and too bright outside and I'm just in a flump about things INSIDE. So yeah.
But I do love my little man soooo much.
He is waking again. I will post this and write again another time, with the other photos I still have to post, and whatever else I had planned to waffle on about. I need to write about what Arthur has been up to in the past week too, just to catch up. But Arthur calls! So I will go to him :)
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