My Lockdown In One Vid

I have been on an inadvertent posting hiaitus during the (first) COVID-19 UK lockdown of 2020, for the following reasons:

1. Two toddlers, nowhere to take them, no childcare, no family nearby. We have been ON OUR KNEES EXHAUSTED
2. As a healthcare professional I have been going to work throughout. Work has been an ever-changing learning curve, both rewarding and intensely draining.
3. The toddlers’ push-back to all this change (and from their POV, inexplicable monotony) has been later and later bedtimes. 🙈

Hence, no writing. Or nothing of much coherence, anyway!

But now we’re well into the (first) easing of lockdown, my brain is starting to move out of survival mode, and I’m feeling a desire to jot down some of this strange brush with post-apocalyptic parenthood. So there may be a few more posts coming soon.

For now though, here’s my lockdown experience summarised in under 30 seconds:

Weaning ABC part 3. Compromise

Final chapter in my ABC of Weaning:

• A. Allergy
• B. Baby Led Weaning
• C. Compromise

[NOTE- written before coronavirus hit, and wow does it show! Stay safe you guys.]

I wrote the first two Weaning ABC posts for a friend with twins 3 months younger than mine, so I was trying to be encouraging that BLW is totally doable with two. Rereading now I’m out of the haze of the first year, I’m worried they come off somewhat preachy. If so, I AM SO SORRY.

I generally try not to be a knob, and contributing to the preachy parental one-upmanship (one-upmumship??) culture is a knobish thing to do. I certainly don’t want anyone to feel rubbish about their weaning choices: FFS we’ve all got to teach them to eat, and there really is no right way. Aspirational instagrams are all very well, but the reality is that time and energy are in short supply in most parents’ lives. There has to be a compromise between lovingly prepared and speedily convenient: and that is no bad thing.  

Boob Minefield: The Reality of Breastfeeding A Newborn

“Some women can breastfeed several children without ever feeling let-down, whereas others feel let-down every time they pick up their baby.”

They’re talking about the “let down”, ie the tingly feeling some women get when the milk starts flowing through their boobs in response to their baby sucking (or indeed, in response to a variety of stimuli eg clothes, a passing baby’s shriek, a particularly heartstring-tugging instagram…), and yet I can’t help but feel the statement stands for breastfeeding as a whole, really.

Eco recs

 

I remember someone once saying that having a dog was the carbon footprint equivalent of flying a jumbo jet multiple times per year, and then someone else chipping in: “yeah, but that’s nothing compared with having a baby!” and we all (none of us then parents) laughed.

Roll on umpteen years: we have two babies and a dog. Our carbon footprint is deep.

 

Here are 5 things we do to try minimise the ecological nightmare that is having offspring… and 1 thing that despite our best efforts didn’t work at all.

Weaning ABC, part 2. BLW twins (6-12 months)

 

ABC of Weaning:

• A. Allergy
• B. Baby Led Weaning
• C. Compromise

Dreamy

Posted for the Friendly Friday Photo Challenge, February 2019, hosted by The Snow Melts Somewhere. The prompt is Dreamy.

Throwback to my sleeping newborn twins shortly after they came out of hospital, wearing “Tiny Baby” white vests and snoozing in the hollow of their feeding pillow. You can still see the needle marks on A’s heel from her many blood tests. But by now we were all home safe. A very dreamy time. 💗

The State Of Us: March 2019

I keep starting a post and then abandoning it because the tone is wrong or the content is off or… basically because it doesn’t fit what my ever-helpful subconscious has defined as a good blog post! As a result, the last few months have whizzed by with much half-written but little finished.

So I thought I’d do a quick stream-of-consciousness update on where we are RN, because everything changes so rapidly. And then if I don’t post again for another 6 months, you’ll know why!

Play KX is our happy place at the moment

Review: Alva reusable nappies

Warning: unless you are currently invested in the nitty gritty of parenting a baby, or have a extraordinary interest in eco-products, absolutely skip this post! It is about nappies. The pre-baby me would have skipped it for sure! 😬

At least 1000 nappies per year per baby, apparently. That’s how many you get through. And I know that nappies are classically one of the things that parents-to-be dread the most about their upcoming offspring, but it wasn’t until we were a couple of weeks in and emptying the nappy bin practically every other day that it really started to get to me.

So. Much. Plastic.

Top 5 most irritating things about… breastfeeding

Breastfeeding is brilliant and all, full of benefits, but also undeniably hard work. Even once you’ve got through the first few gruelling weeks, when you’re confident it should be plain sailing, it often just… isn’t. Which is incredibly irritating, as on an evolutionary level this is the baby’s ONE JOB. And on a practical level, you’d think doing something approximately a million times per day since birth would make a 7-month old pretty damn good at it; and then something like a heatwave or a leap or weaning happens, and it’s back to square one.

Best Ever* Edible Fake Blood

* Safe for babies… unsafe for upholstery. Delicious for adults. Vegan!

I love dressing up, festivals and frippery, and most years I manage to attend a costume party or dance macabre to celebrate all that is gruesome, exciting and escapist at Halloween.

This year… not so much! I was home alone with two 7-month old babies, who are now in a fairly set routine of dinner, bath, PJs, feed to sleep (albeit with mighty protests at every transition). It’s a lot to do on one’s own and recently the monotony has been starting to get me down.

Social media was filling up with other people’s party pics, everyone and their gorgeous offspring seemed to be out Trick Or Treat-ing, and I was looking blankly into the fridge trying to plan a nutritious yet mutually-palatable meal for one adult and 2 babies… when a vacuum pack of beetroot caught my eye.

New plan!

ZOMBIE ATTACK!!! 🧟‍♀️

Featuring Sleep-Deprivation-Zombie Mummy & the Two Tiny Terrors

Zombie Mummy