Growing

I don’t know about any other mums but every time I have to go through Hudson’s clothes to take out the current size and put in the next size up it makes me feel a little pang of sadness that he’s growing up so quickly! Over the weekend I bagged-up the 6-9 month clothes and filled his drawers with 9-12 month stuff. *Sniff* Not even two weeks ago I was having to roll up the bottom of his 9-12 size trousers, now they pretty much fit him perfectly so he must have had another growth spurt.

One of the best parts of both of my sisters also having boys is that I get bags of their old clothes for Hudson so I don’t have to do too much shopping. However I did enjoy doing some shopping for him this month to get him some more stuff in this size as I have been quite restrained since he was born. Sam probably wouldn’t agree with that statement! The little jumpers and woolly hats are just too cute to resist.

I need more zzz…

It has been another difficult few weeks in terms of Hudson’s sleeping…or lack thereof. I know every baby is different and Hudson is fairly “normal” for a breastfed baby by waking often during the night but it can still be quite frustrating at times. I don’t mind him stirring a few times and having to feed him quickly to get him back to sleep, I can cope with that. It’s the return of him being awake for one, two and even three hours in the middle of the night/early morning that I struggle with. He’ll stir, I’ll try and boob him but he won’t be interested and then seems to get pretty upset that he’s awake. He is so close to crawling and can suddenly bounce up and down in his jumparoo and I think babies do tend to wake up much more in the midst of so much development. I’ve resorted to rolling two towels up into a sausage to pop next to him to try and stop him from rolling over unintentionally and waking himself up and *fingers crossed* it seems to have worked so far!

Over the last few months I have turned to the breastfeeding Facebook groups I am part of for advice about his sleep or, admittedly, even just as a place to rant! The best advice I have been given is just to relax and go with it. It’s so simple yet it has really helped. I genuinely don’t think I can do anything to stop him waking so much or go back to sleep more quickly – I have spent some time feeling it is my fault that he doesn’t sleep for longer but all that has done is make me feel worse about everything. I don’t have to go back to work any time soon (I may need to find a new job first!) and there is nothing else I ever have to do any day of the week so if we do have a particularly wakeful night I can catch up on sleep or at least some down time the next day. He will sleep through/longer in his own time and I am not prepared to do any sleep “training” so I am just going to have to chill out a bit about it and go with Hudson’s flow. Sometimes this is easier said than done but I do feel less stressed about it all already.

I’ve said before how much I love The Milk Meg’s book Boobin’ All Day, Boobin’ All Night book and all of the stuff she writes on her website and Facebook page. She posted an article called My baby is not broken…so please f$&k off in September and I love it! It’s  exactly how I feel about Hudson and some of the “advice” or comments others have made about how frequently Hudson fed in the first few months and what to do “about his sleep”. The commenters have mostly been well meaning but it doesn’t help with the feeling that you’re doing something wrong or that there’s something wrong with Hudson. The article is a nice reminder that this is normal baby behaviour.

Trying times

We’ve had a bit of a difficult month anyway as Sam’s been off work due to a pretty nasty incident with one of his work colleagues (he was actually assaulted by this colleague) – he’s even been signed off sick due to the stress of it all. I would love to go into more detail but it’s all still very recent so maybe I’ll be able to at a later time. Luckily it’s all been resolved now, albeit not in the best way as he has now unfortunately left the job as he doesn’t feel he can continue to work there due to what happened.

There has been a silver lining though. It has been really nice that Sam has been able to have lots more time with Hudson and he has been taking him downstairs every morning for at least half an hour (until Hudson wants feeding again) to give me some time to myself. Mostly I’ve been reading my book which has been fantastic as I’ve really missed just being able to just sit and read! Even that is much harder to do with a baby. Yesterday morning Sam took him downstairs at 7ish and, as Hudson was up every hour the night before I decided to get my head down again. When he came back upstairs I was surprised and delighted to see it was 9am! Do you know what was even better than an extra two hours of sleep? That Sam had Hudson in the baby carrier! It made me feel so pleased as it seem that he finally understands the benefits of it and he gavee me another half an hour of rest after putting Hudson in it when he started fusssing. Hopefully he can carry on giving me that time when he’s at a new job!

Dunking debacle

We have started taking Hudson to swimming lessons in a nice warm hydrotherapy pool in Hull. The first lesssom went well, the teacher seemed lovely and we were looking forward to the second one last Monday. She had brought some mini water woggles into the pool for us to use under Hudson’s armpits/chest whilst holding him on his front as I was struggling to hold him with my hands in that position. She took Hudson to show us what to do and just as she started getting him on the woggle and held the ends of it *dunk* under he went. My stomach completely dropped but luckily she grabbed him straight away and got him out of the water really quickly and, surprisingly, he only cried for a few seconds and calmed down the second I held him. It turned out that the woggle actually snapped in half as she had seemingly bent it too far. It just a shame after we spoke to her during the first lesson about waiting until he was showing signs of being ready to go under water before trying and we weren’t keen on the idea of submerging him any time soon that this then happened. He continued the lesson and was perfectly happy so, luckily, it doesn’t seem to have put him off – just his mummy and daddy a little bit! I’m going to give some other nearby lessons a go too and then choose which ones to continue with I think.