In my head, I expected to be a very organized mother by 8 months. I thought baby will not have many ways of surprising me. I was wrong.
Apparently, even 8 months old have troubles. If they are not teething (have 6 good teeth, lets take a break), they may suffer from separation anxiety or have a disturbed sleep due to their fast development. I don't know which one it is in our case but we are not sleeping. Again. Up at 1, 3, 5 am and feeds are very much expected.
We are co-sleeping. It is the only way to get baby to sleep. It started sometimes in September, during the teething times. Suddenly, my child developed a radar which made it aware of its body approaching the cot while fast asleep in our arms. Baby screamed murder. The only way to get it to sleep at night (and I mean at night 10 - 11 pm, we don't do early bedtimes in our house) was to breastfeed or hold half sleeping child after the hopefully last feed. So I wasn't very keen on yet another feed and negotiation over lying in cot. I slipped baby next to me in our bed. And baby slept. It was supposed to be temporary. But nobody has the energy to persist with the cot, it is still a big enemy of our darling child.
We pretty much don't do naps unless on top of me or in a pram - maybe. When I have no chance to go out due to mountain of house work or bad weather, there is no chance. During the day even our bed is making sleeping child to wake up and get hysterical.
Baby is very mobile, practices all fours, but who needs crawling when it is possible to roll all over the place and grab everything and anything that is not suitable for children. I am so busy....
I had to swallow my pride and ask a health visitor to give me some advice. Dinner, bath and story don't work. Baby is manic till 11, expects company and entertainment, there is no calming down. I am still seriously lacking me time and relationship with husband is taking its toll. We are tired, don't manage to do all we want to and need to do and tiredness makes us argue. In one way, we are great team, in the other way, we hate each others' guts.
So after being mother for 8 months, I am not sure I know what I am doing. But I manage to do much more than I could some 6 or 7 months ago, I am physically back where I was before pregnancy and I have a baby that is healthy, strong, beautiful and developing nicely. So all is not bad in the house of terror.
I am thinking a lot about my past, my life that was and I think I should go back and reflect, to stretch my creativity a little. Lets hope I will be able to do this in the following weeks. Also, I should make more effort to keep in touch with other mums, talk to people and tweet some amazing words.
This month, my challenge is much simpler. I decided to look after myself more. I style my hair and try to do a little bit of make up, take more care about my appearance. In my head, I would do something different every day and take a selfie. Reality: I do what I can, as usually, I don't do much when I don't really sleep and tracksuit is still the outfit of choice. But my beauty regime is much better and my skin is thankful.
Anyway, enough for today, somebody is getting impatient while busy trying to soil the carpet. Where are the times baby would lie on the changing mat giving me a break?
