Pride Angel Journey - Christmas in Toddlerdom

Luna shakes broken crumbs out of the hollow Christmas tree chocolate on to her plate. “I’m shaking the seeds out.” This is a two-and-a-half-year-old who has eaten a lot more fruit than chocolate. I briefly ponder the idea of planting a chocolate seed and waiting for the tree to grow and fruit. Just briefly though: there’s not much time for pondering with two toddlers loose near a Christmas tree.
Usually it’s just the baubles they go for, or the lights, but I did have to peel half a dozen pine needles off Luna’s tongue on Christmas Day evening; apparently hunger returns relatively quickly after a three-course roast dinner, and hunger coupled with tiredness led not for the first time to eating plants rather than asking for food.
Willow meanwhile, at eighteen months old, spent Christmas Day using his new catchphrase every time a wrapped present appeared: “what’s in there?!” If the wrapping happened to be relatively quick and easy to remove, he would stay the course, but more often than not by the time his question could be answered, he was engaged in using a remote control as a phone, pilfering someone’s keys or hunting for long-lost raisins under furniture.
I have to admit that ‘Jingle Bells’ has really brought on their singing – both can make it right through the chorus if you allow for a sort of mumbly skipping over the awkward line ‘one-horse open sleigh’ and it’s easily taken over ‘Ba Ba Black Sheep’ as the favourite. I have a feeling that by April they’ll have it mastered and we’ll never want to hear any Christmas song ever again.
For both us and the children I think the whole festive period has been a muddle of chaos, bewilderment, excitement and exhaustion. And earlier today I bemoaned the fact that it would likely be years before we could reasonably be part of some sort of adult celebration of New Year.
But lying here in bed at 9pm on New Year’s Eve writing this with a sleeping two-year-old snuggled up against me – a two-year-old who when asked what she wanted for Christmas, replied “mushroom” and whose only wish when she stirred the Christmas pudding was to “eat it”, I know that such innocence is a precious thing and that one day, there’ll be nothing I want more than another Christmas in Toddlerdom.
Article: by Lindsey, West Yorkshire 2nd January 2016

Co-parenting journey - Parenting confidence by the short and curlies

As mentioned in ‘Nine weeks and blooming/ballooning’ the decision to take our three month old to America was obviously a tricky one – would the baby be ok travelling long haul? As it happens, our trip was pretty full on. America is a particular place. Air-con, malls, cars, shops, intimidating food portions, fat people and highways running through the city. Why on earth did I think that was just a stereotype? Combine this realisation with a heat wave, being without my partner for four out of seven days, our trip to the Children’s Hospital and hating Boston, Mummy moi was not a happy bunyana. Boston: B****cks to your paltry ‘history’, give me Europe any day of the week. Ahem…
So spurred on by the online community assuring the ease with which I’d travel with a three month old compared with an 18 month old, not having travelled anywhere with any baby, we packed our newly purchased trunk (big enough for the baby to sleep in if needed – weird criterion for a suitcase but that’s where we’d got to, dib dib). In it I put every item of quite considerable baby gubbins we own, a handful of mummy’s undies and off we went. The breast feeding pillow that by day two I’d decided was the embodiment of my ‘parenting confidence’ even had its own rucksack… Little Miss was an absolute ANGEL on the flight. British Airways were great, fast-tracking us and taking care of us on the flight. My partner’s colleague helped entertain Her Nibs on the daytime flight and through some desperate eye-contact / telepathy she suckled for most of the descent. Phew, big lezzo mummy cried with relief as we stepped off the plane that no mishap or sore ears had occurred. Does the good news end there? Kind of… After a positive start to the holiday with a trip to the baseball, the heatwave and realities of mothering in a foreign, oh and did I mention horrible, city unfolded.
The travel sterilizer failed us big time. It left a residue that I’d refuse and Babes wasn’t having it. The mini-bar + heatwave soured the pumped breastmilk. Oh no. So, like it or lump it we switched from combination feeding to breast only. Thank god Left Breast and Right Breast, two creatures quite different in temperament, were up to it. Heroes, frankly, as any mother’s worst fear is not being able to feed baby. Not that she was very interested in feeding – but I wouldn’t want to feed in extremes of heat / air con either.
Then came the afternoon she vomited bloody mucus. Oh did that strike living fear into Big Brave Travelling Mama. Temporarily becalmed by the level head of my (antithetical) partner and a quick google ‘It’s fine if it only happens once’, I persevered. Baby got through the night. Wishing to please my partner: “Why don’t you go to the aquarium?” we crossed town. Quick nappy change before we went in and lo and behold, clear mucus in her nappy. Already on edge from the vomit, BBTM dashed back across town like a bat out of hell running down old women in shopping malls and mentally composing conversations with airlines, insurance companies and emergency services to GET US HOME. Teary tantrum later (again my other half was calmer about the symptoms) we got to Boston Children’s Hospital.
Little One at this point perks up (to be fair, she never actually seemed off kilter in her behaviour). Attendant Doctor declares in his loudest have-a-nice-day-American: “What’s up, this baby looks like a million bucks??” And, actually, she did. She smiled through her examination, she even smiled having her temperature taken rectally. And there was my resplendently gorgeous, and as it turns out, tough, little girl boggling on the examination table without a care in the world and loving the attention. So with her vitals checked and all-clear our holiday continued.
Still very much on edge, I was thrilled to leave Boston behind in our all-American hire car. As a much needed respite we stayed with family friends next. Baby woke from her car journey to five children all clamouring to be in her face. Again, she smiled and took it in her stride. Most of the visit was spent with our ‘supermom’ friend telling me what a ‘first time mom’ I was being. Fine, I can take it. But it doesn’t exactly take the angst away. Without our little break in a real home (replete with baby weighing scales to reassure me that she was actually getting some milk) I wouldn’t have coped with New York. It did at least, have something about it as a place. A very lucky, wonderful Airbnb apartment made for an almost pleasurable stay; but boy is the Empire State building a scary place at dusk with the world and his dog up there and a baby in a sling. Every disaster scenario under the sun coursed through my mind.
Thoroughly exhausted in every respect we returned on the red eye flight. The lady next to us liked the look of Baby so much I concluded she actually wanted to eat her; still, they were supportive of our parenting needs and I ceased resenting them for booking a bulkhead seat and NOT having a baby. Back in Blighty, met by my dad, the sibilant rasp of whispered discussions betwixt two fraught parents abated; my rubbed raw nerves relaxed as we took in the now temperate climate… Ah home. An hour later my partner was asleep face down on the living room floor, and my heart-rate was almost normal. I glanced at my little travelling Babes, two weeks’ older than when we’d left. Calmly propped up on the sofa like a pig in poo she had her TV face on and was watching the Davis Cup. What a laid back girl she’d been in the face of my meltdown.
I’d fundamentally misconceived the question. It wasn’t a case of ‘would the baby handle the trip’, it was whether I would handle the trip. I hung in there, but boy did it test my mettle. I certainly wouldn’t do it again for America.

Co-parenting journey: Our beautiful baby arrives

Parenthood is… an all-consuming love-filled black hole of the life you once had
So I’ve crawled out from under my eventual baby for five minutes. And I’ve managed to do it without leaving my boob in her mouth so the respite won’t last long. I sit here with tense hunched shoulders waiting for her hunger cry as my partner stands guard over our sleeping babe. The less said about my labour the better. Suffice to say it did involve most of the interventions that modern medicine has to offer as my little sweatheart’s hands were up by her head making passage into this world a little challenging. We all got through it in one piece and she is a very healthy little girl, still with her hands stubbornly up by her head most of the time and boy is she strong.
I have formed many views about the treatment of pregnant and post-natal women and believe me, they are extreme. In a nutshell it is all rather barbaric at times and I can’t believe that any other group of people requiring medical attention due to a known condition would be expected to put up with so much pain, a smattering of avoidable mistakes and then be sent home still anaemic, mildly incontinent, unable to sit down or go to the toilet and with the scantest set of instructions. Follow up midwife visits have proved a lifeline but at one out of the three home visits I was meant to get, I am one of the lucky ones in my area. After that I was asked to travel two miles to a children’s centre and I’m sure it was that bus that gave my poor baby her first cold at a delicate two weeks old.
On the plus side the dedication, knowledge, experience and support of the midwives has been really touching. And guess what, they even seem to CARE!!?? Every midwife we had contact with throughout the entire journey came to visit once she was born. The Maternity Day Unit was a godsend and haven during our days of post-due date waiting. It was the one place we could turn whilst drifting on paper between the GP you rarely see and the nameless consultant in charge of your pregnancy that you’ve never even seen. The super-gentle cervical sweeps administered by those amazing midwives made it possible to avoid induction and I’ll be eternally grateful for that. They never made me feel like I shouldn’t be there asking for help and they went above and beyond the call of duty to care for me and for the baby in the way that I wanted. Even the Birthcentre midwife that sent us away with no pain relief and then made us ‘wait another hour’ throughout my night of contractions came to say hi and I realised, in a strange way, that she was trying to do us a favour.
Now our daughter is four weeks old she is really blossoming into an alert, thoughtful and determined mini-me. We’re starting to get something back after the initial weeks of feeding anxiety, general anxiety, endless nappies and loss of our former lives – oh, to go to the pub on a warm summer’s day for a care free pint – those were the days! To any would-be or expectant parents: do make the most of your remaining independence I’ve been stuck in the same armchair watching more Come Dine with Me and Homes Under the Hammer then I’d ever care for even in my wildest ‘duvet day’ fantasies of my former working life.
She listens when we sing to her; she spends periods of the day awake and looking round entertaining herself but NOT CRYING (OMG!); she looks up and smiles at us from the apocalyptic and multi-coloured scene of her changing station; she notices changes in light from room to room and from inside to out; she pulls through for us at the eleventh hour and does that poo/feed/sleep just at the right moment to enable us to get to an appointment or occasional social engagement; and she gives off an air of superiority and intelligence in the company of the legions of baby boys born at the same time as her (8/2 in our antenatal class alone – a pattern repeated across the south east from what I’ve heard!).* *Heh heh, not so unusual, women have been doing this since time immemorial I think it is the feminine ‘je ne sais quoi’ that we all know and love – I knew I wanted a girl!
The post-natal hormones are quite something; I’d like to say I’ve laughed and cried but it’s mostly been tears. And I mean proper meltdowns. Arguments with parents and partner, crying sessions in public over whether to attempt to eat in a restaurant or not – by now you may be able to taste the anxiety-tang, ‘what am I going to do if she wakes up screaming and disturbs the whole restaurant?’. Maternal angst by the bucket load: She’s been asleep for hours, do you think she’s ok? Vs. Omg she won’t sleep…! She won’t breastfeed properly vs. ‘can you just give her a bottle, my nipples hurt.’
Most of all, my partner and I have spent the last four weeks falling in love with our daughter. This is really the crux of it. The why, wherefore, what and how. It isn’t so easy for some mums and it doesn’t always come naturally but we’ve been incredibly blessed with the most wonderful, beautiful being who we’ve been able to get to know her and nurture even through the tough times. We’re a little team now. And just thinking about it in a sustained way makes me cry with joy (and maternal angst). It’s like having your heart in the vice-like grip of her little hand…
But darn it, my time’s up, I hear her summoning cry.

Pride Angel Journey - Milkies

It started when she was eighteen hours old. And ended when she was thirty hours old: a twelve-hour milky marathon. When I say it was just the start of things to come, I don’t mean it was often as extreme as that, but rather, Luna was always very keen for her milk – breastmilk that is – she never took to a bottle, even of expressed. In those early days when she woke or fussed and fretted, it was all about working out what she wanted…and we worked out gradually that all she really wanted was ‘milky’. So, feeling lucky with our smooth start to breastfeeding and a baby who wanted little else, I settled down with a book while she fed for hours and hours and hours…
Luna is two now – almost 26 months. She’s fast asleep next to me as I type; half an hour ago, I fed her to sleep. In place of the breasts I once had, I have ‘milkies’: the left one is (apparently) green and the right one purple. And these are some of the most common phrases I hear: “Milkies, want milkies.” “Two out. Get two out.” “Change sides. Want other side. Best turn around.”
It seems unthinkable that she will ever want to stop breastfeeding, which is a perturbing thought – but also, of course, not true; friends with older children assure me that it will just gradually not be her favourite thing any more, and then just not be her thing at all, by which point of course she might be around three or four years old.
So what is the huge advantage lesbian parents have over heterosexual parents? An extra pair of breasts and thus, potentially, a second lactating parent. Of course lactation isn’t essential for parenthood at all…but it is a very handy tool if you happen to have it.
It didn’t go down well with the nurse at my local GP practice last week when, asked how old the baby I as breastfeeding was, I answered, “well there’s my two-year-old and also my twelve-month-old – the biological child of my partner.” I’m not sure whether she disapproved of the LGBT family, the extended breastfeeding, or the combination. I don’t really care. I’m just glad that when one of our babies is a bit sleepy, or sad…or thirsty…or just wants mummy cuddles, there’s always plenty of milky to go around.
Article: by Lindsey, West Yorkshire 3rd July 2015
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