Trying to be a green parent

Alexander has had several more bad nights since my last post – 4 in a row now. Sunday to Monday was the worst – he was awake from 11 pm until nearly 3 am. I went to bed really early myself yesterday and that helped a bit. He’s slept a lot in our bed too – he sleeps better there – but I’m just hoping that he’ll go back into his own bed without too many problems once his cold gets better. Peter and I have caught the cold too. Ah well…

Two opposite parenting ideas – but I’m one for doing a bit of everything! One is that I’ve bought myself a ring sling! After the success at getting Alexander up a mountain using a sheet, I thought I’d get something designed for that purpose (he’s getting too heavy for the Bjorn baby carrier that I’ve used up to now). So far so good – I’ve tried it on this morning and after a few different attempts got something pretty comfortable. He’s even gone to sleep on my hip and I am typing away with him asleep on me. I like babywearing - he enjoys seeing what’s going on from an adult height, it makes it easy to keep an eye on him, it’s easier to go places that are cramped or have steps and I think it helps him feel safe. I’m not quite as obsessed as some people though – there are those who carry their babies all the time, but I do think baby and mum need some separation.

Those very keen on baby carrying will probably disapprove of another excellent thing I’ve got – a playpen, or more specifically Alexander has inherited the playpen his Dad played in as a baby. But far from seeing it as a prison, Alexander has taken to it really well and is clearly very happy in there. I’ve put some foam tiles on the base and with that surface he can actually slide around the pen on his belly – pulling himself along with his arms (usually backwards at the moment though). This gives him far more freedom than the carpet – which he gets stuck on and frustrated.  Before I got the foam base, I held him up on the outside – and he grabbed the rails and held on tight – keeping himself on his legs for more than 5 minutes!

So – baby close in a sling, or baby behind bars – my darling Alexander is a happy adaptable chap.

Wet grass between bare toes. The still silence of 7 am on a Sunday morning – broken by bird song and the noise of a shop shutter being opened. The hint of perfume in the air from the flowers. The weak sun straining to break from the puffy white clouds. The smile of the most beautiful baby in the world.

It’s a wonderful feeling to hang out laundry in the garden wearing your dressing gown with bare feet and with Alexander in the bumbo watching you early on a Sunday morning. A peaceful scene that’s relaxing.

5 minutes earlier I was lying in bed with Alexander wriggling, crying, kicking and showing no signs of going back to sleep. I was stressed, frustrated and absolutely exhausted. So I did a “deal” with Peter – he gets to sleep now and then later he’ll take Alexander for a long walk in the pram and I’ll go back to bed. You see – Alexander has a cold. He’s sniffly – very blocked up, he probably has a head ache (well he keeps banging the side of his head above his eye) and he’s got terrible nappy rash. We tried giving him medicine last night, but he spat it all out. At least last night he slept in his own bed until 2 am – having woken “only” at 10, midnight and 2. From 2 until 5:15 he slept in our bed. Then he woke up.  It’s not easy changing a nappy at 5:45 am either, but with the rash it had to be done… The previous night he woke at 8, 9, 10, 11, midnight and 1 – at which point he came into our bed and slept until 6.

I don’t know how I cope. In my previous existance I slept 9 or more hours every night. The things I hated most were the repetitive chores – the washing up, paperwork – the jobs that never ended. Now I consider 7 broken hours of sleep a “good night” and my life is almost entirely filled with repetitive jobs – laundry, feeding, nappy changing, tidying up (arrghhh…) – and yet, as at 7 am this morning, I feel very peacefully happy (most of the time).

We’re in Wales having a holiday. Today we went up The Hill (Garth). It apparently is the hill in the film “The Englishman who went up a hill but came down a mountain“. In our case we went up the straightforward “hill” route – with a road and then relatively broad path, and came down the more mountainous way.

There was some discussion amongst the group about how to transport Alexander up and down this hill/mountain. We hadn’t brought our normal carrier – although we got a car lift to Wales, we’re likely to return by train and we were trying to reduce packing – and there were those of us who thought we should use the pushchair and those who thought we should make a sling. In the end we went for both – we did make a sling from a sheet (!) and we pushed the empty pushchair up the hill – just in case the sling failed. But it didn’t – amazingly Alexander fell asleep in the sling and seemed quite content. On the return route we pushed him in the pushchair until it got far too steep, then put him back in the sling – where he fell asleep again.

A successful journey up and down!

(Actually we also went up yesterday – but there we went half way up by car and then went up the easy route – hence the variety of people and clothes in these pictures)

Well, Alexander has begun to eat. It’s extremely exciting – if a little messy! In his first week he had pear, apple, broccoli, banana, courgette, cheese, sweet potato, carrot, rice cakes – and has eaten the lot.

 I studied the ‘traditional’ puree based approach and the ‘baby led weaning’ approach – the latter based on giving them pieces of solid food from the start – and to be honest after all my reading I still wasn’t sure about either approach: so I decided to do both!

So, each evening he’s had a different vegetable or fruit and I’ve simultaneously given him a few spoonfuls of it in pureed form, with a ‘real’ version of the steamed or cooked food to ‘play’ with. I’ve also let him eat banana, rice cakes and cheese ’straight’. The approach has gone well so far – he has been eating quantities of both the pureed and the ‘real’ foods. He is quite independent and likes to hold his own spoon too.

 We’d bought him an ‘untippable’ bowl – and on the first evening he got it upside down on the floor. Fortunately we’ve got a mat on the floor too.