Tag Archives: motherhood

Word of the Week: Out

Today the word that sums up the week that was is:

It could just as easily have been ‘door’ – both words in Arthur’s burgeoning vocabulary that he’s using to let me know he wants to be outdoors. Permanently, I reckon, if he got his way. Which definitely bodes well for all the camping trips we have planned for this summer!

This week, though, his need for fresh air and open space has definitely saved my sanity. I’ve been in the final throes of the novel: I started the week with about six thousand words left to write, and part of me just wanted to get it done. I was impatient, and excited to see how the details would pan out. I mean, I vaguely knew what was going to happen in the end, but not until it was written would I know for sure.

But combining writing with motherhood means I’m not entirely in charge of my schedule. Writing happens when Arthur naps, and in between – well, I have no doubt it did me good to get out and about.

On Monday the grey drizzle of the weekend lingered, yet still at lunchtime Arthur had his face up against the glass doors, longing to escape. I managed to distract him till after the post lunch writing session when miraculously the cloud began to clear and we went to let off some steam around Shoalstone pool.

On Tuesday it was glorious out, and it was all I could do to force myself to sit down at my computer. The story quickly captured me of course, but once Arthur had woken up I was very glad of the lunchtime picnic we’d planned with friends at Breakwater beach.

On Wednesday I woke up knowing that today was the day: I was on the final chapter, and as I’d been drifting off to sleep the night before the closing paragraph had come to me, so all I had to do was fill in the gaps. The words flowed as soon as Arthur drifted off for his morning nap, and I finished just as he was waking up so we could both enjoy a celebratory stroll to Berry Head in the afternoon.

Yesterday the celebrations continued when we spent pretty much the whole day outdoors with some friends at Paignton Zoo. Arthur was in his element – especially when we found an area we’d not discovered before where he could get up close and personal with some friendly goats.

All in all this week’s been a bit of a whirlwind really. My brain has been on overdrive – first with the challenge of pulling the ninety thousand words of novel I’ve been writing to a satisfying close, then with the realisation that this thing that’s been giving me purpose for the last three months has ended. Having Arthur to shift my focus away from myself has been, as it always is, fantastic. And the fact that he’s wanted that focus to be on going OUT has been even better.

Becoming a mum: babywearing

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Alongside breastfeeding, I think the most significant choice I’ve made as a mother is to wear my baby. A lot. Getting to grips with babywearing transformed my experience of motherhood, and it continues to give us a special combination of closeness and freedom that I’m not sure how I would have otherwise achieved.

One of the first books I read as a new mother, once I’d decided that actually some informed advice would be useful before I scared myself silly on internet forums, was ‘The Baby Book’ by William and Martha Sears. I had a hunch that I might be leaning towards an attachment parenting approach – not something I’d really considered before Arthur was born – and reading this book seemed to help everything fall into place.

Of course in the early days I didn’t have much choice but to be attached to my baby. Our struggles to get breastfeeding established meant spending an awful lot of time snuggled up in bed, and even when Arthur wasn’t feeding I found I rarely wanted to put him down. We’d bought a Babasling before he was born having been recommended one by some friends, but though I used it for our first family stroll when Arthur was only a few days old neither of us really got comfortable with it.

I figured I’d maybe try again when he was a bit bigger, and consigned myself to spending my days stuck on the sofa. The turning point came when I had a visit from a neighbour. She’d just come across to check up on me really – make sure I wasn’t struggling on my own. I remember saying that I was fine, that I was loving being a mum, but just couldn’t imagine how I’d ever get anything done when I was permanently attached to Arthur on the sofa. And she asked whether I’d tried wearing him.

I felt a bit silly when she’d gone – of course that was the solution, everything I’d read about attachment parenting indicated that babywearing was the answer. But after those tricky first experiences I’d just put the whole thing out of my mind. I certainly wasn’t ready to give the Babasling another go, but then I remembered the Moby Wrap. I’d ordered it, taken one look at the intimidating length of material, and put it back in its bag. Maybe now was the time to put my nerves to one side, read the instructions, and see what all the fuss was about.

By the time Leigh got home that evening I’d already been wearing Arthur for a few hours and was loving my new found freedom! It’s safe to say we never looked back.

At home, I wore Arthur to settle him and to reduce the wind he suffered after feeds. It soon became apparent that it was the best place for him to nap, too, leaving me free to get on with things round the house. It was soon after my babywearing revelation that I got started on my first novel. With Arthur safely strapped to me I didn’t need to worry about him – we were physically attached, so for a little while at least I could allow my mind to wander elsewhere. Leigh got in on the game too: it was a lovely way for them to develop their bond, even when he had work to do.

It also gave us the freedom to get out and about. Our local terrain is not best suited to prams, but wearing Arthur meant we could go for walks on the beaches and up to Berry Head – even just going into town was easier without needing to negotiate a pram up steps and round cafes.

The first big test though came when we took a trip to see my brother in Paris when Arthur was three months old. We were travelling by Eurostar, and as well as the usual sightseeing we would be taking Arthur to his first gig. We decided that babywearing was the way to go, and it made everything so easy.

As summer approached we were looking forward to lots more adventures, but it became clear that the Moby might no longer be up to the job. Arthur was growing fast, and I found his weight made the stretchy wrap sag after I’d been wearing him for a while. It was time to find a new solution, and the best solution we could find was the ERGObaby. Leigh tried it out first, and both him and Arthur loved it.

I was a little bit disappointed with how utilitarian it looked, but I couldn’t deny it worked well. Easy to slip on and off, and its handy pocket particularly useful for when we were on the go. We used it to take Arthur to festivals, and even on an epic journey from New York to Toronto and Halifax by train. It made his first plane trips a breeze too.

But despite the convenience of the Ergo, I was longing for something a bit – well, prettier. Arthur and his carrier had become my most commonly worn accessory, and I was getting a bit bored of sensible khaki. I thought about dabbling with woven wraps, lusted after some online in beautiful fabrics, but after the ease of the buckles it seemed like such a hassle. And then I came across the Connecta.

We were actually asked to do some modelling shots for them through a friend and were given a couple of carriers in return. I was sceptical at first, not having heard of Connecta before, but they soon won me over.

The Connecta shared the ease of the Ergo with its simple straps and buckles, and was just as comfy if not more so despite using much less padding. I find now that Arthur’s getting heavier by the day that the way the Connecta holds him high and close really helps protect my back – I can wear him for hours at a time without so much as a twinge. The Connecta is really easy to breastfeed in too, which is definitely a bonus. And, even better, the Connecta is available in a huge array of fabrics! From funky prints to wrap conversions, from gorgeous silks to warm tweed: my yearning for something stylish and practical as a new mum was more than satisfied.

What my adventures in babywearing have taught me so far is that the key thing is finding a way to do it that suits you. I never would have imagined that I would still be wearing Arthur so regularly at fifteen months, but now I’m on the verge of upgrading to a toddler Connecta so I can continue for, hopefully, a good while longer yet. Arthur is of course walking now, but he’s not confident or strong enough to walk for any length of time. Even when he is I imagine I’ll have my carrier in my bag ready for when he’s tired or needs a cuddle.

I honestly believe that babywearing has been key to the relationship I’ve developed with Arthur. Studies have shown that it has a whole raft of benefits for both mother and child – and in fact for developing closeness with other carers, as Arthur has done with his dad and my mum. For me, though, it’s really just helped me maintain my independence and sense of self whilst navigating this new territory of becoming a mum. It might seem like a contradiction in terms as that independence has been won whilst having a little person strapped to me, but if he wasn’t I doubt I would have managed to write or travel or just hang out quite as freely as I have.

I’d love to hear your babywearing experiences so please feel free to add them in the comments. I’m also happy to answer any questions you might have about babywearing – and if I can’t answer them myself I’m sure I can point you in the direction of someone who can!

Word of the Week: Separation

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Today the word that sums up the week that was is:

I took quite an important step this week in my journey as a mum. It’s taken fourteen and a half months, but this week I had an evening out on my own. No Arthur, no Leigh. It was the first solo night out I’ve had since I was about eight months pregnant: even then Arthur was with me really. I haven’t really felt any inclination to go out on my own since, but on Tuesday I’d been invited to read from my first novel at a writer’s salon in London. You can read about my evening as an author here, but it was also a very important evening for me as a mum. My instinct on first hearing about the night was that I’d just take Arthur along in the sling: I soon realised that this was something I had to do on my own.

I can almost count the number of times I’ve been separated from Arthur on one hand. Leigh and I have been on two dates: one last summer when my brother’s girlfriend babysat for us in our hotel in New York whilst we went to the restaurant for our wedding anniversary dinner, the second time only a fortnight ago when my parents looked after Arthur whilst we went for dinner again, this time to celebrate the anniversary of our first date. Both times we were gone for only a couple of hours. Then there have been a few governors meetings where Leigh or my mum have looked after him. And that’s about it!

Neither Leigh or I would have predicted that this was how things would work out. And it’s not like we haven’t been out at all – we’ve done plenty of things as a family, including restaurant meals, gigs, festivals, parties. We have just always wanted to keep Arthur close. I guess breastfeeding’s been a major factor – with everything being so challenging in the early days we never taught Arthur to take a bottle so it’s been hard for me to be too far away. But to be honest we haven’t wanted to leave him either – we have all, as a family, become decidedly attached.

But this time I really couldn’t take Arthur with me. I am intent on building a successful career as a writer, one which in the long term will hopefully be much more conducive to spending time with my son than teaching could ever be, and I needed people to take me seriously. I needed me to take me seriously.

Leigh couldn’t join us in London – another first, being separated from Daddy for so long – so on Tuesday evening Arthur was looked after by my parents. I filled him up on breast milk before I left, knowing that he was unlikely to take much water let alone milk from his cup, and made sure they were preparing a dinner he would like (mild Thai curry with lots of veg and rice seems to be his current favourite). He sat with my mum as she began to make the dinner and I made myself presentable, and then trying not to turn it into too much of a drama I slipped out into the streets, alone.

It was a bit odd. I felt very light on my feet without my usual accessory strapped to my front, and I noticed rather more of the world around me. I read over my chosen extract from my novel on the tube journey – I hadn’t had much time to practise, and my run through the previous evening had been punctuated by Arthur’s cries. Any pangs of missing him were soon overcome by nervousness and excitement, and when I got there the pleasure of catching up with friends over a drink and being just myself for a change. The evening went brilliantly, and though thoughts of whether Arthur was hungry or thirsty or had been able to go to sleep occasionally intruded I had an awesome time.

I made it back to the flat soon after eleven, about five hours after I’d left, and despite all my trepidation Arthur was of course fine. He was asleep, in fact – my mum snuggled up to him in bed. He hadn’t drunk much, but he’d eaten. And he was fine. There’d been a bit of a whimper apparently, and at one point he’d toddled purposefully towards the door, but all in all they’d had a lovely evening too. I swapped places with my mum, Arthur had a sleepy feed without even really waking up, then rolled away and slept better than he has done in ages.

He was most definitely pleased to see me in the morning, snuggling up and being even more super cute than usual. But we had both survived our first proper separation.

I’d genuinely been worried that with our very attached approach to parenting it was going to be a real wrench for Arthur to be without us, even just for one evening. So I was definitely relieved to find that in fact he is secure enough to cope. I’m not in any massive rush to make a habit of going out on my own, but it’s strangely liberating to know I can if I want to. I expected a part of me to be sad – sad that my baby is taking little steps towards independence, that he doesn’t need me quite as intensely as he once did. But I suppose by waiting I was finally ready for that separation too – to take my own steps towards the new person I am becoming since he made me a mum.

Thanks to Jocelyn at The Reading Residence for the brilliant Word of the Week linky.

Becoming a mum: breastfeeding

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Arthur is feeding in the sling as I write this – as he does most mornings in fact before drifting off to sleep giving me the time to get some writing done. He’s fourteen months old now. If you had asked my pre-baby self whether we’d still be breastfeeding at this point I would have thought it highly unlikely. My goal was a year, at the very least six months – though at the beginning of our breastfeeding journey even that seemed insanely ambitious.

I knew I wanted to breastfeed even before I got pregnant. My mum had breastfed me and my three brothers so it seemed like the obvious thing to do. Add to that my preference for food that is local, organic and unprocessed wherever possible and my aversion to washing up which made the endless sterilising and preparation associated with formula feeding particularly unappealing and it seemed a no brainer. What I had no idea about was just how difficult it could be.

At the breastfeeding class Leigh and I attended, diligently focusing on how to get the correct latch and marvelling over the video of the newborn baby crawling up its mother’s belly to help itself to milk, I asked what problems we might face and if the class leader had any tips to overcome them. My concerns were brushed off though – breastfeeding was the most natural thing in the world, we were told, just follow the guidelines we were given and we’d be fine. Retrospectively, having faced considerable challenges myself and heard all of the different problems faced by my mummy friends, I think we were being fobbed off. There was such a focus on persuading us to breastfeed – though no-one in that room really needed persuading – that the class leader didn’t want to say anything that might put us off. It’s a shame she couldn’t have treated us a bit more like adults really – it certainly would have made me feel like less of a failure in those first few weeks, and might have helped me identify what was going wrong sooner.

I had no idea anything was wrong at first. We had a near perfect home birth (you can read about my birth story here), and though it was past the end of her shift the midwife stayed to make sure Arthur latched on for his first feed. She was happy he was doing ok, and I was floating on a wave of exhaustion and oxytocin, just relieved he was finally there. We all settled to sleep soon after midnight, and we were grateful that he chose to sleep through until eight the next morning.

In fact I think I had to wake him then. I felt a little guilty as we’d been told to make sure he fed every three hours – but we were also told our baby would let us know when he was hungry. Advice about waking sleeping babies varied enormously – and as, by my mum’s account, I had been a very sleepy baby too, I wasn’t all that worried about it. It makes me shudder slightly thinking about it now – no-one had been able to explain to me previously why it was so important that babies were fed every three hours, even if they seemed to want to sleep, but my subsequent research taught me that his blood sugars had probably been dropping dangerously low, and if I’d left him to rouse himself he may not have woken up at all.

The next couple of days passed in a blur. Midwives came and checked on us all, asked about the feeding. I said I thought everything was going ok but I couldn’t really be sure: I had no idea what it felt like to have a successfully feeding baby attached to my breast, so I had to accept their reassurances that the latch looked fine, that it would be easier for me to feel what was going on when my milk came in. I remember feeling very out of my depth, had the sense that something wasn’t quite right but didn’t know what. Arthur was so sleepy, would spend hours at a time at the breast but never seemed to be satisfied. But I just put this down to him – to both of us – needing to learn how to do this breastfeeding thing properly. Clearly it wasn’t going to be quite as natural and easy as people made out.

The first sign that there really might be something wrong was on day three – New Year’s Eve, and Arthur’s due date. After the midwife had weighed him she looked concerned, and said she was really sorry but she was going to have to call the Special Care Baby Unit and we should get ready to go in. He’d lost fourteen percent of his body weight – nearly half a kilo – and this had set alarm bells ringing.

Our families were beginning to gather at our house to see in the New Year as we left for the hospital that afternoon. Even in my worry I was well aware of the irony – we’d had a successful home birth three days early and now, on Arthur’s due date, we were heading to the hospital anyway. I remember shouting instructions at my sister in law to sterilise the brand new breast pump as we left – the midwife had said we’d almost definitely need it on our return if I wanted to continue breastfeeding.

I was hooked up to an industrial breast pump as soon as we arrived at the hospital – we didn’t even make it out of the waiting room. The doctor and nurses we met were surprised to see that I had ample supply – apparently the usual result of that initial test in our circumstances would be little or no milk being produced. A nurse came and sat with us and cup fed Arthur with my milk, the rest being labelled and put into a fridge for later. Next came a barrage of tests for him, during which we were transferred to a bed. I started getting ridiculously antsy at this point – I really don’t like hospitals. Even my relief when the results of the tests came back showing no major underlying concerns was short lived when they said Arthur and I would need to stay in overnight. I know I should just have been grateful he was ok, but I really, really wanted to go home! In the end, after Arthur had consumed enough of my expressed milk to bring his blood sugars up, a combination of my tears and Leigh’s persuasive powers meant they taught him how to cup feed and let us go. We were under strict instructions to feed Arthur every three hours, topping up after each feed with expressed milk in a cup, and to come back in the morning to get him checked over again.

The check on New Year’s day showed that the new approach was beginning to work – he’d gained a little weight overnight, and they were happy for us to continue with regular home visits. So began a gruelling regime of breastfeeding, expressing and cup feeding every three hours. The whole process took at least two hours, so none of us were getting any sleep, and whilst Arthur was very slowly beginning to put on weight this was clearly not sustainable. When my milk properly came in it just seemed to make things worse: my breasts were so painfully engorged no matter how many cold compresses and cabbage leaves I applied, and Arthur would just cry and fuss when I tried to feed him, pushing me away but at the same time not wanting to be anywhere else. He made a clicking sound when he tried to feed, and was very colicky indicating he was taking in too much air.

The midwives were at a loss as to what was going wrong – they were convinced my latch was effective, and just said I should persevere. I’d begun to spend every spare minute researching our symptoms online, and ordered a book which was to become our bible – ‘The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding‘ from La Leche League. From this I deduced that there were two possible causes for Arthur’s inability to feed – oversupply, or maybe a posterior tongue tie. He’d been checked for the latter twice already, but it still seemed a very likely explanation. I followed the advice for mitigating the difficulties of oversupply, and went to an appointment with the hospital’s breastfeeding specialist armed with my new knowledge.

She listened, and agreed that a tongue tie was likely. And in fact was able to attempt a frenulotomy then and there: we’re lucky that our local hospital has been a centre of research for tongue tie and its impact on breastfeeding. She warned us that Arthur’s frenulum was tricky to reach so she many not be entirely successful – and in the end referred us to a Max Fax specialist to complete the procedure the following week.

Even once the problem had been identified and dealt with it took us some time to get breastfeeding comfortably established. Arthur was clearly able to latch better after the second frenulotomy, but he was still taking in air and still needed supplementing with cup feeds to get the milk he needed. I decided to try to improve his latch with nipple shields. Several people had warned me off them, but I figured it was that or nothing. Feeding was starting to get incredibly painful, and the shields protected me as well as giving Arthur something he could quite literally latch onto more easily. We ended up using the nipple shields for a couple of months, and at several points I despaired of ever being able to just breastfeed naturally. We no longer needed to supplement though, and gradually we used the shields less and less, until one day I realised we hadn’t had to use them at all.

For me, breastfeeding has been a really important part of becoming a mum. I understand now how difficult it is, and feel very strongly about women needing accurate information and honest advice before and after birth. With the issue of tongue-tie being in the news a lot recently I hope people will be quicker to diagnose and treat it – I know that on the scale of things Arthur and I were lucky to get the help we needed so early on, but even those couple of weeks felt like an eternity, and had a huge impact on our ability to get breastfeeding established. If I hadn’t have been so stubborn I think I probably would have given up. And whilst I totally respect the choices of women who decide not to breastfeed, I think it’s very sad if our society can’t support those who want to nurse their baby to follow through on that decision.

Looking at Arthur today it’s hard to believe that we ever had a problem at all. By the time he was six months old his weight had shot up from the seventh to the ninety-first centile. Breastfeeding finally did feel like the most natural thing in the world: no faffing around with bottles and formula, and I had the ability not only to feed him with my body but also to comfort him and soothe him whenever he was upset or in pain.

Now Arthur enjoys a wide range of solid foods, but shows no sign of being ready to give up nursing. It frustrates me occasionally – he won’t take milk or even water really from any other source – but I only have to think back to how close we came to not being able to breastfeed at all to be grateful that I’ve been able to nurture him for this long and to hope we’ll continue on this breastfeeding journey for a while longer yet.

Becoming a mum: a birth story

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As it finally begins to sink in that my baby is now well over a year old and fast growing into a little boy, I have been thinking a lot about how much my life has changed over the past fourteen months. This feels even more pertinent at the moment as two good friends are just embarking on this journey: one gave birth in the early hours of Friday morning, and the other is due any day now. I don’t want to forget any of the seismic shifts I’ve gone through this year – neither the joy nor the pain that becoming a mum has brought.

And so with this in mind I’ve decided to put together a little series to document my journey. From birth to breastfeeding, from babywearing to sleep, these posts over the next few weeks will attempt to capture at least some of what Arthur has taught me in the days and nights we’ve spent together so far.

The story begins with an account I wrote in January last year to share my birth experience with my new friends from the NCT course Leigh and I attended in an attempt to prepare ourselves for what was to come. Reading it back now it’s a little clinical in parts, which is ironic as I definitely don’t remember it that way at all. I suspect I was still a little shell-shocked when I wrote it – and considering how exhausted I must have been am just glad I managed to get anything down at all.

My waters broke in the middle of an extended family outing on the Dartmouth-Paignton steam train at twelve thirty on the afternoon of the 28^th December, and contractions started soon afterwards. We were home by about two, and decided that we definitely wanted to stay there if at all possible! The initial call to the midwife was met with a request to stay calm and call back when things were more established – which ended up being less than an hour later as things progressed pretty quickly. The tens machine was great at this stage, and in between pretty intense contractions I managed to wolf down some pasta to give me some energy.

By the time the midwife (Helen) arrived soon after three I was 4cm dilated, progressing to 9cm over the next three hours. I continued to use the tens machine over this time, taking it off to get into the bath – somewhere I’d imagined spending much of my labour – but found that I was actually much happier on dry land. The birthing ball was invaluable as a support for different positions, and there were also periods when I just wanted to sprawl out on my bed – the whole process was pretty exhausting.

About halfway through the first stage I started on the entonox – and that was amazing. It left me very spaced out initially, but really helped ease the pain as things progressed. The second stage started around six thirty, and Helen began trying to get a second midwife. It was a very busy night at Torbay hospital as we later found out, and it was two hours before Rachel, the second midwife, turned up. All in all the pushing stage lasted for about two and a half hours and there were various points when I really didn’t think I could do it, but Leigh and my mum were an amazing support, physically holding me up, pushing and breathing with me and generally keeping me strong. I ended up having to have an episiotomy as things were taking so long and I was at risk of tearing – and literally one minute later, at nine fifteen pm, Arthur arrived weighing 3460g.

I kept the cord pulsing for a while whilst Leigh and I marveled over this tiny human we’d brought into the world – I’d fully intended to go for a natural third stage, but the contractions were pretty painful and, especially after I realised the entonox had run out, I asked for the syntometrine – which got the placenta out straight away once Leigh had cut the cord.

Then followed a couple of blissed out hours of skin to skin as we got to know our new baby, broken only by the need to stitch up the episiotomy which Helen did under local anaesthetic using Leigh’s head torch and two kitchen chairs for my legs! Helen left at midnight, and we enjoyed a glass of champagne whilst introducing Arthur to his uncles and aunts, grandparents and even his great Grampa who’d all been waiting in the pub getting updates from my mum.

We’ve had a wonderful week and a bit since the birth, spending very little time out of our bedroom which has become overrun with nappies and breast milk. We have had a bit of trouble with getting breastfeeding established, with a stressful couple of visits to the special care baby unit when we found out that Arthur had lost 14% of his birth weight in his first three days – and his weight has been hovering around 3000g since, though he’s otherwise perfectly healthy. We’re now supplementing him with cup feeds of my expressed milk on top of three hourly breast feeds, and have an appointment with the breast feeding consultant tomorrow at Torbay hospital. The likely diagnosis is a posterior tongue tie which is making it very difficult for him to suckle properly. Hopefully if this is the case we can get it sorted quickly as it’s not much fun for any of us at the moment!

Overall the whole experience has been amazing, and we’re now left with this gorgeous little man who we’re falling more in love with every day.

What’s in a name?

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There’s something Arthur’s started doing recently that is melting my heart.

He’s been saying ‘Mama’ for a few months now. Leigh and I spoke about it when it first started, a couple of weeks after he began to say ‘Dada’, and he asked me whether it wasn’t the most magical, heart rending thing to hear our son say those words. I hummed and harred and ‘sort of’ed, but in truth it wasn’t really hitting me like it was Leigh. Even when ‘Mama’ started evolving from just a sound Arthur made into a name which he clearly associated with me I didn’t feel more than the odd pang – I mean, it’s just what babies do, right?

But now, now he’s started doing this totally adorable gorgeous thing that absolutely is some kind of magic. He looks at me with this expression of total love and, in the calmest, sweetest voice repeats ‘mama mama mama mama mama’. As he says it his little face begins to break into a smile. And I become utterly at his mercy.

It’s almost like he’s trying it on for size. He’s definitely at a stage now where he’s aware of his ability to communicate, and he gets great pleasure from attaching his few words to things and realising that we understand, that our words are the same. I’ve surprised myself (again) by just how deeply I’ve felt this stage in his development – the beginning of naming.

And it’s brought to the surface a niggling naming issue that is as yet unresolved in Arthur’s world.

My Mum – one of his two Grandmothers – has a major aversion to any of the traditional grandparent names she could be called and so still, a year in, remains nameless.

I don’t entirely blame her – she’s still so full of vitality that I can’t quite see her as a Granny, or even a Nanny as her Mum has always been to me. And she’s in good company – many a glamorous grandmother has taken pains to avoid a moniker that will prematurely age them in their own eyes or those of others.

The niggle for me comes in her reluctance to take any name at all and rather to wait for Arthur to name her. I’m not an expert in early language development, but from what I do know I understand that words are acquired by mimicry. It is by hearing a word attached to a thing that a child begins to understand that that’s its name. I mean, obviously my son is a genius but I’m not sure he’s going to be able to pluck a name out of the ether.

It’s proving a little tricky for us too in referring to her. For a while she was ‘the woman who has no name’, but that joke’s wearing a little thin. I found myself addressing a thank you card earlier to ‘Grampa and…’, but the ellipsis doesn’t work so well verbally. When I pushed her on it, Mum’s response was “I’m just me!”, but I think it might confuse things grammatically if that’s how I refer to her for Arthur.

As I type that, I’m wondering if actually she’s pushing for Mimi. Which could work. It has an air of glamour about it…

So what do you reckon? Have you had any experience of babies inventing names for grandparents? Am I underestimating Arthur’s linguistic powers or should we come up with something to fall back on? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

P.S.

Now you are One

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Dear Arthur,

Today you are one year, one week and one day old. This time last year we were spending most of our time in the bed where you were born, surviving on leftover Christmas cake and trying to work out how to master breastfeeding so you could start growing like you were supposed to. We were still some weeks away from taking down the tree that glowed in the corner of the living room.

This year, the tree came down on the 4^th January, along with all the other decorations we’d put up for Christmas and your birthday. I think you were a bit confused. You liked the decorations – that tree, the star which sparkled above the kitchen table, the bunting with your gorgeous face printed on its triangles, and of course the balloons. Your eagerness to tell us how much you liked them even led to you vocalising some of your first words: ‘star’ and ‘balloon’ (or ‘bloon’ really). I know there’s lots more you want to tell us but there’s so much we don’t understand yet. I’m not sure if you understood us when we explained that the decorations would be going up again at the end of the year, that it was time to move on and look forward now and that you shouldn’t be sad.

I’m excited about this year. I’ve always found January a bit miserable, but it’s pretty much impossible to be miserable when you’re around. Even when you were only a few days old and we saw the world through a blur of exhaustion we could feel the magic your arrival had brought. You were our world, those first few weeks. Everything else ceased to exist and we had to learn how to live all over again. Gradually as time has passed the world has expanded so we can sense ourselves as a family within it – you, me and Daddy, at the beginning of a great big adventure.

I say the beginning, but there have been lots of adventures so far! Everyone always tells us how quickly time passes and in some ways this year has raced by. But it also feels like forever – and on the days when it’s just me and you, when I allow myself to see things through your eyes and make the most of every single second, the world seems filled with infinite possibility. I hope it always feels like that – for us but more importantly for you. I want you to know that you can do anything you want to do, be anything you want to be. It’s a cliché but its true.

You’ve already grown so much. Not just physically, though that’s pretty amazing. You’ve almost quadrupled in size since this time last year. You’re still getting a lot of your sustenance from my milk – after those tricky first few weeks we went from strength to strength and now I reckon we’re an expert breastfeeding partnership. I actually thought we would have been ready to move on by now, but like so much else I was wrong about that. You are clearly thriving on my milk, and it brings you so much comfort. It brings me comfort too.

I love to be able to hold you close, to nurture you as I did for nine long months when you were growing inside me. It keeps me strong as I let you go to get on with all that growing. Your body has got so strong and agile. You’re not quite walking yet, but I reckon that’s mainly because your peculiar one footed crawl is so efficient you’re not quite ready to let it go. I’ve seen the look in your eyes when you find yourself standing, just for a few seconds. Your legs are strong enough to hold you but you don’t quite trust them yet. That cautiousness is emerging as a part of your developing personality. We reckon you probably get it from your Dad, and it’s no bad thing.

I think you’re enjoying the increasing control you have over your body and what it can do. There is glee on your face as you manipulate the stacking rings onto their post and choose exactly which toy you want to play with, and how.

Watching you play is one of my favourite things to do. You’re so thoughtful and considered, whether you’re brmming one of your cars around the rug or turning the pages in a book. You got some awesome new toys for Christmas and your birthday. You’re starting to get interested in puzzles and slowly making progress with the sorting blocks, though you seem to get terribly frustrated sometimes. I hope your frustration won’t stop you trying new things. You will master them all if you give yourself time.

One thing that really makes you happy is making music. We love listening to music at home and sing songs to calm and entertain you. And you’ve already been to lots of gigs and festivals. You quickly learnt how to make sounds from the xylophone, and as soon as you could you began to pull yourself up on the piano to bash out a tune. Not forgetting drumming on pans with wooden spoons and tables with your hands. It makes me smile watching the pleasure you get from the noise you make. I hope you continue to enjoy making music this year, and I hope I keep enjoying it too!

If there’s one thing that’s made this past year particularly amazing it’s just how much I’ve enjoyed everything about being your mum. I mean, I’ve known I wanted to be a mum for years, but actually in the last few months before you arrived I began to worry that perhaps I wasn’t ready, that I needed more time for myself.

Turns out I really didn’t need to worry. You are such completely delightful company that even in the middle of the night I cherish the time we get to hang out. I’m not saying there isn’t a part of me that longs for a full night’s sleep, but you make it more than worth my while. And in the daytime I never want to leave your side! That’s something I didn’t anticipate for sure. I think my mum (who’s still waiting for you to name her) is a bit disappointed there aren’t more babysitting opportunities. But I have become well and truly attached to you. Whether you’re napping in the sling whilst I write as you are now, playing at my feet whilst I embark on my latest craft project, cosied up under our special babywearing coat as we mission around Brixham or sleeping beside me in the bed we all share, I wouldn’t have you anywhere else.

Thank you for an incredible first year little man. I cannot wait to see what this one holds.

All my love for always, Mummy xxx

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Sophie is…

on a journey of (re)discovery in a brave new world.