Prior to Nixon’s pull-through operation to help his Hirschspungs Disease we were using cloth nappies. I invested the money, got my little system sorted and felt good about what we were doing. I was soon to realise that cloth diapering is very, very easy when you …
I AM IN AWE OF THE MANY INCREDIBLE MUM’S OUT THERE, DOING A FAB JOB OF RUNNING THEIR OWN SUCCESSFUL BUSINESSES WHILST SIMULTANEOUSLY HOLDING DOWN THE FORT AT HOME. I’M FORTUNATE ENOUGH TO HAVE ‘MET’ MANY OF THESE LADIES ONLINE AND CAN’T WAIT TO INTRODUCE YOU TO SOME NEW …
So here’s a ranty post. Things were getting strangely nice around here but luckily FB came to my rescue with an annoying item in my feed which got me riled up enough to get the creative juices flowing.
See, I just read another (there are millions of these right?) post from a blogger discussing her multiple cesarean sections. She was discussing the social repercussions of non-vaginal birth, the ‘stigma’ and patronising glances she was subjected to. The disappointment of long labour that didn’t bear fruit through the birth canal as one would hope.
Can I ask you something? Is this really a thing? Have you ever stooped so low as to judge a woman by how she gave birth?
I guess I’m just a bit over the ‘poor me, I had a cesarean and find myself a victim of an un-empowered birth’ line.
Some births, I imagine, are empowering, wondrous moments, filled with a feeling of innate physical prowess and accomplishment – a real “we knocked the bastard off” moment of satisfaction. But let me set the record straight, having a birth without intervention is no guarantee you are going to conquer your own vaginal Mt Everest.
I have never written my birth stories because I personally don’t need to. Dwelling or reminiscing on details immediately prior to the MOST important events in my life serve no purpose for me and don’t really need to be rehashed, especially in the case of Nixon’s birth.
You see, Ethan arrived in a very textbook way I suppose. 18 hours of labour, epidural, epidural wore off, I screamed and pushed and he was born. 7 lb 12 Oz of sweet baby Ethan. Did I feel super proud of delivering him vaginally? Hell no. I was just glad I survived it and have never given it too much thought since.
Two of my oldest and dearest friends gave birth within the next year or two, both enduring such traumatic vaginal births that they were visibly uncomfortable talking about them, I’m pretty sure one of them was brought to tears when we were discussing future siblings. They did not feel like the empowered, magical super heroes oft imagined by other women who have had cesarean sections.
8.5 years later I experienced my own horrendous, nightmare of a vaginal birth. I WISH I had been offered a c-section. You don’t hear that often do you? 10.4lb of Nixon showed up on D-day posterior and uncooperative.
We had plenty of warning that he was large. I had insisted throughout the pregnancy that this baby was big. The scans showed he was big and continually tracked above the 97th percentile. My midwife paid no heed to my warnings, confident in her profound knowledge that every third trimester mother insists her baby is huge.
With every fibre of my being I wish I had a team of professionals that noticed he was posterior well before the 11th hour and said, “lets cut our losses here and deliver your 10.4lb baby via c-section? Hmmm? How about that? We can save you the excruciating pain of having that jumbo head stuck upside down in your pelvis FOR HOURS, save your baby the trauma of being ripped out via forceps and save you the intense recovery and utterly demoralising consequences of literally being ripped in two – from your VAGINA onwards and inwards”.
Fuck, that sounds like a plan. I would have said. Spare me a week in hospital and countless breakdowns at home wondering if feeling in my lower spine and continence would ever return? Hit me with that c-section I would have said.
I guess what I’m saying is, when you’re flat on your back and the doctors are looking at each other with their Holy Shit faces on; when the surgeon on duty the day your son was born comes to your room to repeatedly apologise for what happened in theatre, you really, really do not care one iota that you can claim victory over an ‘empowering, vaginal birth‘. Pffft.
All that you should be doing is counting your blessings that your baby was born healthy, full term and full of fatty delicious chub to help him recover from the horror of his hugely violent and undignified entry into the world.
Because, it’s not about me anymore anyway.
This post is sponsored by Nurofen for Children. Nixon has had to deal with more pain in his short life than I can even imagine. Before his diagnosis with Hirschprungs Disease, the first year of his life must have been so uncomfortable. His inability to …
It’s pretty hard to deny that everything is generally a-ok in your world when you have sun shining on this little corner of love in your lounge x
Thanks so much to Sovereign for sponsoring this post. As part of their #lifetakecharge campaign Sovereign have identified sleep, along with eating well, exercise and happiness, as four essential pillars to well being and I couldn’t agree more!
Sleep (and in many cases, the lack thereof) can be all consuming, markedly more so when you are juggling your own sleep requirements with those of a baby or toddler! Being awake {usually multiple times} in those strange, dead hours of the night is weird, it wrecks havoc on your brain and body which desperately needs rest and recovery after the physical, emotional and mental strain of welcoming your new baby. Tending to your child with some degree of parental prowess after being screamed awake at 3am is surely one of humanities most under-rated tasks, though new parents are blessed {?} with that instant hyper-alert awakeness that only your crying child can evoke. I’m 10 years deep in this parenting gig, and the sound of my eldest son stirring in the night can still wake me from twenty paces I kid you not.
When I think back 16 short months to Nixon’s hazy newborn days, the one thing I regret is stressing so much about how much sleep he was getting, or not getting. With some hindsight, and a slightly less foggy brain, I have realized that his wee micro-naps of half an hour here and there suited him perfectly in that transitional first three months. He has always been an excellent sleeper at night (except for the first month post-op) and a hyper-vigilant somewhat rubbish sleeper during the day. Obsessing and counting the minutes he slept did nothing to help either of us move past each difficult sleep regression and milestone.
What did help in the early days was a pencil and notebook.
I started recording the basic details of his day; wake up times, feeding times, alert times, sleep times. What emerged was a pattern that I recognised immediately as our eldest son had blissfully nursed himself to sleep for the best part of his first 6 months, every nap and every bedtime. This worked beautifully for Ethan and I but it wasn’t working with Nixon. I switched things around to a pattern of wake, feed, play, sleep – with only a small comfort nurse before naps and bedtimes. This ensured that Nix went to bed awake and quickly settled himself to sleep. Previously his hyper-vigilance would result in him waking after around 15 minutes if I popped him to bed after falling asleep while nursing.
Figuring out a daytime schedule that worked for us set us up for wonderful sleep patterns at night – mostly. I fully believe that sleep encourages more sleep. To this day Nix will have a disturbed, unsettled sleep at night if he has not slept well during the day. We definitely went through some rough patches where Nixon would wake every two hours wanting to nurse back to sleep, and these nights were the l o n g e s t and hardest of my life. I cried and I totally bitched at Dave because he couldn’t do a damn thing for a baby that only wanted me and my milk.
By 9 months I knew Nixon was old enough (and I was brave enough!) to start cutting down those dreaded night feeds. Dave and I made a plan, we woke together, watched the clock, knew how long we would let Nix attempt to settle himself and we knew what we would do if things weren’t going to plan. Four days later and we had a baby sleeping through the night.
This all went out the window after multiple hospital stays and Nixon’s pull-through operation, but we revisited our night-time strategy and within a week, bub was back on track and we were once again getting an acceptable amount of sleep.
As I mentioned previously, getting Nix to sleep during the day used to cause me so much anxiety. It’s taken 16 months but I’ve pretty much got it under control, this week anyway! Before naptime we read a book, change Nixon’s nappy, get the cot and sleep sac ready, pull the blind and settle down for a quick breast-feed in the same spot. Every. Single. Time. Nixon knows what’s going on, there are no surprises and sleep usually follows.
Finding a good routine is hard, and trying to adhere to one can sometimes make you feel like a big, boring stickler, but I truly believe that a consistent routine helps babies, toddlers and big kids sleep and sleep well.
Bon nuit xx
Instagram is bad news brown for little love-to-shop Mamas like myself. I can’t remember how I stumbled upon Little Noggi but I’m SO glad I did. I purchased Nixie’s first, reversible Little Noggi hat in an Instagram sale and I won this beautiful lined …
It’s a fact. I can’t resist mystery packs that arrive in the mail.
I spied these gorgeous Care Packs around and about on various social media over the past few weeks so when Little & Loved posted a coupon code on their FB page I had to jump on the bandwagon and get amongst the goodness.
Care Pack is a monthly subscription service, delivering a box of curated product to your door for a flat rate including shipping. Choose between the Care Pack, The Little Ones Pack or The Mum to Be Pack, starting from $30 per month {subscriptions can be cancelled at any time}.
The Little Ones’s Pack was tailored to Nixie’s age and gender and I was stoked to see a pair of Lamington Merino Socks (RRP$15.95) included, I have been wanting a pair of these for the Little General for ages! The Rainbow Ribbon book is a wonderfully sweet board book and the Kiwigarden Yoghurt Drops are a hit with both my 1 year old and 9 year old – will be buying these again for sure.
So looking forward to trying out the other products in the days to come – how cute is that little wooden Hape boat?
PS. NOT a sponsored post, just wanted to share x
Wowsers. That was a hard month boy {hence post is 20 days late, pic was on time though!}. No lie. We have both been sick, you have another tooth {and more on the way} and you somehow managed to sleep through and IN your first …
