Newborn Nuggets

Some good friends of ours have just had their first baby. News which has left me all gooey and sentimental.

So I am writing today’s blog post for all those new mothers out there – and if you know anyone who’s just given birth or is about to, be sure to pass it on. The following is actually taken from a card I wrote to a very good friend of mine (she knows who she is), when she had her first baby:

I still have days when I’m not entirely sure what I’m doing with this motherhood lark, but here are ten little things I’ve learnt along the way, which might be of some help to you and your little one.

1. Always carry a spare pair of breast pads in your handbag (believe me, you don’t want to get caught short in public….I’m speaking from experience)
2. You can never have too many muslins.
3. Don’t be alarmed by a sudden onset of emotion around day five. I was pretty much inconsolable during an entire two hour Christmas final of X Factor. Luckily, the midwife had warned The Husband.
4. Gripe water is brilliant.
5. Avoid ‘Smug Mothers’ (there were babies allegedly learning French before mine could even walk).
6. Always ensure you’re in possession of some expensive foundation and truck loads of Touche Eclat. Within two minutes you can look vaguely human, possibly even radiant, despite two hours sleep.
7. Just when you start getting a little tired of giving out unconditional love and not getting a great deal back, your baby will smile at you for the first time and it’ll instantly recharge your batteries.
8. If in doubt, feed (the baby, not the father).
9. Sometimes you may cry for no reason, or eat an entire packet of chocolate Hobnobs in one day. Both are entirely normal.
10. You start to see your mum in a whole new light, because you suddenly ‘get it’.

And now for the soppy and sentimental bit….despite some of the more challenging times, and moments in the middle of the night when you feel like you’re the only one in the world awake, being a mother is the most wonderful, fulfilling, incredible privilege. Don’t worry about what’s ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, or what other parents are doing. Follow your instincts, love your baby, and look after him/her as well as you possibly can. And that’s the best you can do.

Most of all enjoy it. These days go so quickly and are so, so special.

Smiley Face Time (FREE GIVEAWAY ALERT!)

It's that time of year: Autumn's around the corner, X Factor's back on TV (OMG Gary Barlow) and the nights will soon be drawing in.

To me, this means hot Radox baths and going to bed at 9pm to devour a good book or to pick out AW/11 essentials in Grazia.

To The Husband, it means one thing. More sex.

There is one time when you can guarantee our libidos are entirely in balance, and that's when we're trying for a baby. On both occasions we conceived, I vowed to be relaxed and Zen about the whole thing but in fact my style was more military than missionary. Before too long I was taking my temperature and weeing on sticks at every opportunity, then demanding The Husband comes to bed in the middle of Top Gear.

Recognising how the 'trying for a baby' process may wrestle with my impatient gene, The Husband bought me a job lot of ovulation and pregnancy tests from eBay (TOP TIP - they are super cheap, you can buy stacks at once and they work just fine). Which meant I could test for eggs or babies pretty much daily and the only cost was the complete Mind F**k it was causing me.

So, for all you Autumnal baby-bonkers out there, I've got some freebies to give away:

10 boxes of First Response Easy-Read Ovulation Tests (each box contains 5 tests plus a free pregnancy test)

Plus

A Positive Pregnancy relaxation CD by Andrew Johnson http://www.withandrewjohnson.com/

To win, just mention me on Twitter @NPMother or leave a comment here. The best comment will win the CD as well as a box of the tests. Good luck!

As for me, I'll just be watching X Factor and having an early night with a good book.

Go the F**k to Sleep

The baby monitor is showing me a single, serene, green light. My favourite light. The light that denotes successful routine management by me and obedient sleeping by my child.

As someone who lived my professional pre-children life with (mostly) highly-perfected control, how to ‘Manage’ sleep became my number one agenda point when my newborn arrived. I naively expected my baby's sleep patterns to fall beautifully into line like cascading numbers on an Excel spreadsheet. Ahhh...that pre-motherhood naivety.

For the two weeks after we brought him home from hospital, the ONLY place my son would sleep was in his Moses basket. What’s wrong with that you might ask? Well, nothing – except that said Moses basket had to be placed on our bed in between us before he would even consider dropping off. This left me and The Husband approximately six inches of mattress each either side. And as if this wasn’t enough, the boy would only settle after being given a sort of Indian head massage from my side of the 12 inch bed. I was torn between admiration that he had the self-confidence to enter the world making such demands from the off, and a sense of bewilderment that my child could be so imperious at less than a week old.

When he was around four months old and still in the sort of non-routine-Routine that would have Gina Ford in a cold sweat, I was invited out to some birthday drinks. The Husband was gallivanting somewhere in Wales on a Stag Do, so I decided to go anyway and just take the boy with me. At around 9pm he took one look at me from his car seat, nestled amongst Mulberrys and Chloes on the floor of the bar, as if to say ‘Why are you nursing that glass of Sauvignon instead of putting me to bed with some warm milk and a story?’ I left immediately and decided from that moment it was time to introduce a proper bedtime routine, like the ones I’d read about.

Surely it couldn’t be that hard – after all, I was in control (wasn’t I?) So the next night I gave him a warm bath, a little massage, read him The Very Hungry Caterpillar, sang him a lullaby in my best X Factor-auditions-style voice, gently laid him in his cot and tiptoed out of the room. Easy.

In spite of my best text-book efforts, the story I’d chosen served only to stir in him a deep feeling of empathy with the caterpillar and so he woke hourly claiming he was STILL hungry. The Husband and I persevered with the nightly routine and yo-yoed up and down the landing for weeks, tiptoeing out of the nursery like a bizarre version of backwards Grandmother’s footsteps.

Battle-scarred from the experiences of our son's sleeping habits, we were armed and dangerous when our second child arrived, and quickly jostled her into a routine of sorts. Which means at least I know she's going to sleep in the day for a couple of hours, allowing me to try and re-discover my brain or just stare blankly at a wall for a bit. But is it me or is there a cruel irony to this napping lark? When I need her to wake up because I’ve planned to do something, she sleeps for three hours leaving me pacing around the house - all surfaces cleaned, two washing loads done and hung up, dishwasher empty, emails answered - feeling like the embodiment of the Power Mum, but with no one to show off to. When I really want her to sleep, she decides she only needs an hour, rudely awaking in the middle of Loose Women.

Talking of which, you’ll have to excuse me, my monitor has replaced its serene green with the flickering Lights of Doom...