top tips for heavily pregnant women (jan 2013)

Tuesday, 1 January 2013

top tips for heavily pregnant women

      Having previously written a food blog – mainly for my own amusement really as I am not aware of very many actual followers – I have singularly failed to post anything for more than a year.  Initially this was because of 9 months of full-on morning sickness.  Even if I had been physically capable of eating anything that wasn’t beige, then I would have had to post it from the vomitorium and you wouldn’t have enjoyed the photos.  Then, baby chaos descended. So my first post in a year digresses from food to briefly download my top tips for anyone about to pop their first sprog.  This isn’t exactly an exhaustive list but just some things that I wish someone had told me, or perhaps that I had actually listened when they did.·     

Firstly, congratulations!  Welcome to the most brilliant thing ever.  Your baby is of course gorgeous (even if you realise in three years time that it was a bit squashy and odd looking). It’s also a massive problem-solving exercise that will consume every ounce of your brainpower for the coming weeks and months.

·      Your pace of life. This may sound either basic or patronising, but SLOW DOWN.  If you have been hard at work for more than a decade, don’t feel guilty about being at home and compensate by trying to get all the housework and baby admin done.  This especially applies in those early days when you could be so exhausted that you are hallucinating. The washing up will wait a few days, but the time to stare at your baby endlessly cannot be brought back.  You need to watch and listen to understand how they are trying to communicate with you and what their habits are. Plus, you need to become a health and safety nerd now which is incompatible with extreme housework.

·      If you have stairs, they are top of the health and safety list.  It will suddenly become apparent how many inanimate objects end up in precisely the wrong side of the flat/house but don’t be tempted to carry the baby in one arm and something else in the other on the stairs. Keep a changing station on each floor and if possible a moses basket, or a safe place to keep the baby while you go to the loo/grab your phone from upstairs/go to the door. 

·      Kit 

·      Buy or borrow a baby carrier EARLY – you may think of these as the tool that hipster modern men deploy when showing off their baby while buying Sunday papers, but in reality they will liberate you inside the home more than outside.  You will be able to walk into a room, forget what you came in for, walk out, and back again, etc ad nauseam, and carry whatever it is back again afterwards without juggling the baby.  Plus babies love being close to their mothers a lot, and it makes them happy. Some are not suitable for newborns, so do check. The Ergo is good, has a newborn insert that looks like a folded duvet, although after more than an hour in it your baby may look a bit squashed like a traveller on the Japanese underground.  You can also get slings like the Kari-me which are very versatile and easily transportable.

·      You may find yourself not wearing a watch after having a near-nasty scratching incident in the early days.  If so, thishttp://www.johnlewis.com/231470616/Product.aspx may be one of the most useful things that you can have..it lives by the feeding station, and tells the temperature of the room (blanket decisions) and the time for how long your feed lasts.

·      For bath time, sew (or you can staple) a ribbon to two corners of a towel so that you can have it hanging off your front like an apron, pick the baby out of the bath and into your betowelled arms.  Also, kneel on a cushion by the side of the bath or you will probably need knee surgery before too long.

·      Visitors.  You will have a deluge of visitors – tell them that however far they have travelled from, you can only entertain them for an hour max (an hour and a half if they have actually come from abroad).  That’s about the stage when you keel over exhausted and start wishing they would leave, but because you are British you can’t actually bring yourself to say “really sorry I have to get my boobs out now/go and deal with some sort of unsavoury postnatal medical issue”

·      Food. Enjoy cooking? Ha. Unless you can find a baby carrier with a heat/splash guard, start thinking of recipes that take under 2 minutes from walking into your kitchen to picking up the fork, or dishes that aren’t ruined by a series of punctuations of 20 minutes.  However much of a food snob you are, load up the freezer with pre prepared meals that you can oven bake or nuke*.

·      Colic.  Defined as crying for no reason but common shorthand for your poor little tyke storing up burps and farts but not being able to do them.  Babies do cry and you will hear the classic tick list – is it hunger, nappy, tired, discomfort or bored.  But they can also just cry, a lot, and usually in the late afternoon/early evening.  If this happens, I recommend (from personal experience but everyone is different) trying these. Naturally you won’t be able to tell which one helped but if all together they do, you can try reintroducing one at a time (these mainly assume you are breastfeeding):

o   Worship at the shrine of infacol.  This magic stuff (and other brands work in a similar way, ask the pharmacist) – joins the miniature fartburp bubbles to bigger ones, making it easier for junior to serenade you.

o   If it gives you wind, it will give the baby wind. So, don’t order baked beans on high-fibre toast with a side order of Jerusalem artichokes and a brussel sprout and prune jus.

o   Stop eating dairy.  It turns out that this is almost impossible to do unless you follow a south east asian diet, which contains most of the other things you are not meant to eat when breastfeeding. But try it for a week and then have a large glass of milk and see what happens, if it doesn’t make any difference you might be ok.

o   Also avoid: fizzy water, soft fruit/other acidic food, caffeine

o   Drink Fennel tea. It may be ick but it might distract you from your coffee addiction

o   Do the Bradley Wiggins.  Bring your baby’s legs up to its chest and in a cycling motion to help the wind come out.  Warning: this can be amusing.

o   If they have been crying a LONG time and you are fully 100% exasperated, its ok to put them in the moses basket, leave the room, take a deep breath and then go back in, or give to someone who can do the soothing for a while.

o   Don’t be scared of asking your health visitor of Dr if you think there is something else wrong – they are very good at not making you feel like an idiot for asking about stuff that turns out to be fine.
If at a few weeks you still have the baby up with you in the evening and it is crying a lot, it might be trying to say "PLEASE can I go to bed, you've had every bloody remote aunt in today to pat me on the head, I discovered the colour red today and triangles, I'm bloody knackered, please put me somewhere nice and quiet and shove the baby monitor on - besides you guys might actually get to have a conversation if you do that."

·      Breastfeeding.  Invest in a six pack of large bottles of water and keep a full one in each room at all times, obv you can refill from the tap.  Being well hydrated really does power your production. 

·      Memories.  There is no such thing as too many photos or videos.  If people want to give you gifts get an extra large memory card for your smartphone or even a flip recorder. In the early days, take a moment to take what you now think is excruciatingly boring footage of your newborn doing absolutely nothing, as when they are 3 months old you will look back and think ‘wow’.  Back up your computer.

I’m sure I will think of more, so may be back soon but my new years resolution is to resume (a) cooking and (b) blogging on it.

*microwave. not sure if this is my family nickname or a universal one.

Alternative developmental checklist for a two year old

I would like to share the questionnaire that we recently received from our NHS Trust to check that our just-turned-two-year-old’s development is on track. Now, don’t get me wrong, I think this is the right thing to do. If a child is lagging* in one area and can be helped that’s a Good Thing.  But many children have individual ways of expressing their development and so I would like to propose an alternative questionnaire as follows:

Official version (not all are included as some are necessarily dull)	Proposed alternative	Bonus points
General
Can your child drink from a beaker/cup	Can your child keep a cup of water on the table unspilt for more then 14 seconds?	Can your child fit a spoon, fork, banana, hand and baked bean in their cup?
Can your child feed himself/herself	Can your child also decide to eat NOTHING when it is just the two of you and you are desperate for them to eat?	Can your child extract a sharp knife, can opener, eggs and hammer from locked cupboards to assemble a floormelette?
Does your child attempt to dress/undress	Can your child fully undress in the supermarket, while riding in the trolley, in the time it takes to reach a cauliflower?	Can your child select and dress in a full outfit consisting of one flip flop, one high heel, another pair of high heels as gloves, lipstick and Daddy’s best work shirt?
Gross Motor
Is he/she steady on their feet, do they run, climb, walk up stairs	Can your child walk up the stairs of a public building while you are looking the other way? Bonus points for blagging their way through security doors.	Can your child climb a stepladder (unsupervised)
Can he/she throw/kick a ball without falling over	Can your child kick another child’s ball out of the playground into the road?	Can your child save a goal using the ‘fishtail’ manoevre?
Fine motor
Can your child hold a pencil using thumb and two fingers and scribble?	Can your child hold a permanent marker and scribble on the white cupboards?	Can your child hold a can of spray paint and decorate the library wall?
Can your child build a tower of 6-7 blocks?	Can your child build a tower of 4 blocks, a radio, a rusty nail and the baby?	Can your child cement their tower together with mouldy banana from the bin?
Speech
Does your child have a vocabulary of 35 words or more.	Did the first ten words include: fart, ouch, beer, telly, calpol, shit? Is their most frequently used word:  1) thank you 2) poo  3) mine	Can your child say multi-syllable words, eg scalextric, competition, ambulance, hospital
Are they attempting to put two words together eg ‘more juice’, ‘daddy car’	Are they attempting to put two words together eg ‘more sugar’, ‘mummy wine’, ‘no. no. no. no’	Are they using short sentences eg ‘my finger stuck in tap’, ‘that lady is a monster’
Does your child understand two part instructions eg ‘put the car in the box’ without you pointing or showing them?	Does your child understand two part instructions eg ‘don’t touch Daddy’s Playstation’,  ‘be nice to your sister’ or 'stop licking the pavement' without you shouting or going to the pub?	Can your child manipulate you to extract treats in return for obeying certain (desperate) two part instructions?
Does your child like to sing rhymes with you?	Can your child recognise the entry of the guitar solo in Queen’s ‘we will rock you’	Can your child perform the Led Zep John Bonham drum solo from Moby Dick, after a lot of plays from youtube
Does your child name and point to everyday objects such as car, dog, apple and body parts eg arm, nose, foot?	Does your child name and point to everyday objects such as iphone, washing-up, fox poo and body parts eg bottom, bogey
General Does your child use pretend play eg pretending to feed their toys or put them to bed, or do they copy domestic chores such as sweeping or dusting	Does your child use pretend play eg trying to breastfeed their toys or posting toast into the DVD player? Do they copy domestic chores such as turning on the gas hob, running a bath or starting the washing machine on megaspin mode?
Do you brush your child’s teeth in the morning and before going to bed?	Twice a day, do you use fruit toothpaste as a method of inserting their toothbrush into their mouth, wiggling it around and removing it.
Have you taken your child to the dentist?	Do you have too much time on your hands?
*lagging - a word used with a pinch of salt.  Children just do things at different speeds, mostly?