Today, I'm a Shit Mum

This week, I'm a shit mum. Don't get me wrong, for the most part I'm killing this, but this week, I'm not. I'm so bloody tired and angry. I have no patience. Will has perfected his mum's frown and growl in a way no little kid should. I feel like every second word out of my mouth is 'no,' or 'don't,' or 'stop,' or 'down.' And the others all seem to be swear words. I have this wonderful sweet, smart,  inquisitive little boy, but I keep shutting him down cause I can't keep my shit together.

My house is a wreak. As I'm writing this, the table is covered with card making stuff because a, I like making my own cards and b, I own hundreds of dollars worth of card making stuff, so it feels stupid buying them. The floors are filthy. The sink is covered in dishes, as well as leftovers from both lunch and breakfast. I have managed to turn on the washing machine, but not to hang anything out yet.

Anyway, I know we all have days when we feel like everyone else is doing a better job than us. This week, I'm having a couple of those days. So next week, I'm making some time for me. Because like this, I'm not a good mum. I don't like me today. 

A year later...

This post is going to bring me pretty much up to date. I know there has been so much more happen over this last year, but unfortunately, I was very slack at taking notes, so from now on, you'll just get random bits as I remember them! There have been many notable occasions since Will was born, but we will start with...

Worms. My 4-month-old got worms. At an age where he wasn't even crawling yet, he managed to catch worms. At that age, you can't just pick something up at the chemist to treat them, you have to go to the doctor. That resulted in an awkward conversation as to how my infant managed to pick up a parasite (to be honest, I think his love of trying to use my tires as a teething toy probably had something to do with it) and how I knew he had them (that would be the wriggling masses of them in his nappy). Interestingly enough, now that he is mobile, he hasn't actually got them again, despite me having caught him chewing on some really revolting things, including bones the dog has finished with. I just try to remind myself he is going to have a good immune system. 

Will is certainly on the move now. We are in fact on the verge of walking. He can crawl as fast as most people walk and I'm doing well to outpace him in the house if he wants to be where I am going. He is coasting around the furniture and is standing and balancing with ease. We have had the odd step here and there, so it won't be long before he is running. He also loves being outside. Over summer I could leave the door opened and he would take himself out on the back lawn and crawl around in the grass for ages exploring. I have had to go looking for him a couple of times when he has hidden in the bushes.  

I found it took me about 4 or 5 weeks after Will was born to stop bleeding. Then I got my period at 6 weeks. Whoever said breastfeeding will hold it off, was not talking about my body, clearly! I've found that my periods now are a bit irregular and very heavy. I'm not sure if that is down to any huge post-pregnancy change, or just my body sorting itself out, since I'm not taking the pill at the moment. I went on the mini-pill at about 10 weeks, but I have since gone off it. I don't know if I was imagining things, or if it actually was making me moody. I have also found my weight and body shape fluctuating a bit and I didn't know if that was affecting it too. I can't go back to the normal pill as long as I'm breastfeeding. I've managed another 9 months since we first started having issues! (I still consider quitting every day). 

Will popped his first tooth through right on 6 months, a few days after Christmas. He had made it to 8 teeth within a couple of months and is now working on getting the first of the big ones through. We have a lot more dribbling when he is teething, but he managed his first ones without too much trouble. The current ones are hurting him a bit though. 

Tim has had a few issues of his own since Will was born. We finally got his shoulder operated on in October. Fortunately, it was the quick healing problem, so he was back at work after a few weeks. With the pain from his shoulder gone though, he soon noticed he was having trouble with his hand. In April he was back to theatre to have his carpel tunnel corrected, resulting in another couple of weeks off work. His second recovery also coincided with my return to the basketball court. 

I was lucky enough this year to get a spot on my old team, the Kilsyth Cobras, in the Women's National Wheelchair Basketball League (WNWBL). So a good portion of this year has involved balancing parenting with basketball training. My first trip away was to Perth, so Tim (recovering from surgery) and Will came over with me. 

Wills first flight

It was Wills first trip on a plane, so we threw him in the deep end. We had probably the worst days travel I have ever had and he handled it really well considering. Between delayed flights, missed connections and broken equipment we eventually made it there. We spent three days with my team, then another three days catching up with Tim's family. Will got to meet his great grandparents on Tim's side, which was pretty special. 

We hired a car for the week and hired a car seat from the car company, instead of traveling with ours. We did take our pram with us, but made the rookie error of checking it in. It would have been really handy to have been able to lay Will down for a sleep in the three hour delay we had before leaving Launceston. 

Since that trip, Will and my mum has done one round in Melbourne with me, and Tim and Will did another. We found that while Will doesn't sleep as well as normal in strange places, he still sleeps really well in the car, so we used that to get his naps in. Unfortunately, my team didn't qualify for finals, so we won't be going to Brisbane this month. 

We have started Will in swimming lessons. Swimming's not my strong point, so Tim takes a morning off one day a week and that is their time. Some weeks I go along too, but most weeks it's my 'morning off' and I will have a few hours to myself.

I found a lot of girls I know had babies around the same time as me, so we have kind of made our own little mothers group. It started as a walk then lunch thing, but as our babies are getting bigger, we have gone more for lunching with playgrounds. They have been really important for me, especially since I'm out of town a bit. I am a pretty social person, so having them around has helped keep me connected (thanks girls). 

The first few months I was okay, things were constantly changing and I was kept on my toes a bit. As Will gets a bit bigger though, and I've been longer at home, I'm finding I need more stimulation. I'm doing more writing, baking, sewing and card making. (I sound like a grandma, I just need to take up knitting). I find having a creative outlet helps keep me sane. I just feel like I've become really boring. I struggle finding things to talk to Tim about when he comes home from work because I do literally the same thing, every day. So, I'm trying to be more interesting. For me and the people around me.

I'm at the stage now where I'd also like to go back to work. Just a couple of days a week, enough to get me out of the house. I know I tire easily (I still have naps during the day sometimes) and I like being around Will, but I need to wake my brain up. 

I think it's a good thing to miss your kids a bit. You can't miss them when you're always there with them. It is time for me to miss him, just a little.

Breastfeeding issues

About the time I took Will for his two month check up, I was starting to get a feeling something wasn't quite right. He had gone from sleeping and settling really reliably, to being very restless throughout the day. By this stage we were down to one night feed, then waking about 5am for his first morning feed. Will had gone from really happy and settled to really... not. One of the things they tell you to look for is enough wet and dirty nappies. He was over the line, but not by a lot. I felt like he was looking a bit lean. He had been measuring up around the 85th percentile, so he had always been quite chubby. He was certainly growing, but he was a stretched out string bean. I had mentioned it at his last check up, but they weren't concerned, particularly as he was still sleeping through. 

Then he stopped settling at night. I'd give him his feed, put him to bed and half an hour later he'd be awake, hungry again. I'd give him a top up and he'd go to sleep and stay asleep until morning. I'd been hand expressing and storing the milk in the freezer. Over a week these top ups went from 60ml to 120ml and I was convinced I wasn't imagining things. 

We went off to see the lactation nurse I'd seen while we were in hospital still. She listened to me and my list of things that weren't quite right, yet weren't glaringly wrong either. Guess what? In the two weeks since our last check up, Will had gone from 85th percentile, to 15th! He had actually lost weight!

It took her about 2 minutes to work out the problem. When I was discharged, my medications had all been checked for safety during breastfeeding. What hadn't been checked, was the long term effects. It turns out ditropan (oxybutynin) suppresses breast milk supply when it's used for prolonged periods. My happy baby was grumpy because he was starving. 

Side note for those of you who don't have SCI- a para of my level has a reflex bladder. That means that when my bladder fills to about 200ml, instead of stretching like most peoples, it just empties right away. Ditropan allows my bladder to relax and stretch as normal. This means I don't have to spend my whole day racing to the toilet and I have far, far less bladder leakage issues!

Since I kind of need my ditropan, we had to find another solution. More drugs! I was prescribed domperidone, which is an anti-nausea medication with the happy side effect of stimulating the pituitary gland, responsible for milk production. I started on 30mg a day, and could increase (up to 60mg) or decrease to see how much I needed. It turns out 30mg is about right. It starts to kick in within a couple of days and settles after a week or so. So in the meantime, my starving baby got to have a go at some formula. Within days Will was settled and happy again. 

Skinny baby gets a top up!

When I went to get my script renewed, I had the doctor weigh Will to see if we were making any progress. He had put back on the weight he had lost, meaning, at 12 weeks old, he now weighed the same as he had at 6 weeks! But at least we were on the right track!

The other way to increase milk supply, is to increase demand. So, after every feed, I was also expressing. At first it was only 20 or 30ml, but that quickly increased as the domperidone began to work. Will was sleeping overnight, but I didn't want my body to know that, so for a good month or so, I was getting up overnight to express. I'd express before bed then get up about 2am and again about 5am. 

There are dozens of pumps on the market to help with this. I tried several, manual and electric before I gave up and just went back to hand expressing. I just found for me it was much more effective. I do really have to make sure I don't let my hands get dry though, because I will give myself sores. 

  

It is quite common for babies who bottle feed to reject the breast completely, but Will has managed to continue with a combination. I found as he got bigger that he got distracted feeding very quickly, so we switched to bottle feeding breast milk through the day, to make sure he was getting enough. We still have a breastfeed and cuddle in bed to start our day, but all his other feeds are now from the bottle. I think about quitting expressing every day, but I haven't yet. 

2 months

After two months, things are starting to settle down a bit. I'm feeling a bit more in control, I've worked out how to pick Will up without dropping him. I feel like I've sort of, maybe, a little bit, kind of, got this under control. 

We have changed things around a little bit in the bedroom. Furniture. We moved the furniture. We have moved out my bedside table and put the bassinet beside my head and I park (9 years in and I still don't know if that's the right word) my chair facing the bassinet. It means I have to turn around on the bed, but I'm closer to where I need to be. 

I learned pretty quickly to always bring a spare nappy or two and wipes to bed. I also bring some of my chair cover/waterproof mats, which are the perfect size for a small baby, so when he wees from a cold bum in the middle of the night, it doesn't go all over the doona! 

The original plan was that I'd feed, then Tim would do the nappy changes overnight. After a couple of weeks though, he was become harder and harder to wake, so I just do the changes too. 

Remember how I had had to borrow a truck-sized wheelchair to get me through my last few weeks? Well a couple of weeks post-birth we were able to return that and I was able to get into my farm chair. My farm chair is my original post-rehab chair and 5.5cm wider than my usual chair. Still wide, but only a small, short truck. I don't think I've been so happy to see that chair since I first got it! It was like a zippy little sports car! It also means that I can drive again (after my 6 weeks post Caesarean of course) because I can get that one in and out of the car myself. 

Driving means getting Will in and out of the car by myself too. We have a capsule, which weighs a couple of kilograms, plus the 4kg he weighs... Well it has taken a bit of practice, but I think I've worked it out. most of the time I can get him in and out without much trouble. It looks awful and I wouldn't try it without him strapped in properly, but I can do it! Freedom!!!! 

The first time I went into town by myself, it took me six minutes to get us both out of the car. Well, that gave us something to improve on, and we did. I played around to start with, to see if it was easier to get him out of the car in the capsule, or to get into the back seat, then get him out with me, then me into my chair, then pick him up. It was a long-winded as it sounds. Once I worked out the right technique for the capsule, it was heaps quicker and easier. The other great thing about the capsule is that he will stay asleep when I'm getting him in and out of the car. 

Most of the time I use the pram, but I do use the baby bjorn carrier sometimes, like if I'm doing a big shop at the supermarket. All those trips with my basketball chair has prepared me for pushing a pram though- I find it so easy! We zoom around! 

All rugged up, ready to go see the cows

One of the logistics I hadn't quite worked out in my head, was my morning bathroom routine. At this stage, it has been really easy, I just go while he sleeps. So while that lasts, I'll take it!