One Orbit of the Sun Completed!

MIRANDA IS ONE YEAR OLD!!!

Really find that hard to believe! This time last year, I was just allowed out of hospital, and we wrapped her up in her minute car seat for the first ever trip home. She was very slightly orange (jaundiced) and had loads of spikey dark hair.
One year on, and she is currently rocking about on a large wooden snail, (thanks to Aunty Tattoo-Jo), swigging orange juice from her bottle, and singing "doobu-doobu-doobu ayaayuu" to herself in the play corner in my cafe (which also didn't exist a year ago!). She is very much a little person now, but even so, this year has just flown by.

Miri is more or less blond now, her hair seems to lighten in the sun just like her Dad's does. She is 74cm tall (at least, she was last time she kept still long enough to measure!), weighs just under 12kg, has size 5 feet (!!!) and four teeth.

Development-wise, she is walking!!!!! Well almost. We know she can do it, and we even have video evidence of this, but she still prefers not to because she is still quite wobbly, and crawling is still the faster, most efficient option. Nevertheless, the cafe is no longer my own and we have had to construct the Miranda Containment Facility to stop her getting in the kitchen in there! She is also saying "Mum" "Dada" and named her new doll "Diedre" (by holding it going "Deedree!). Unfortunately these words are applied indescriminately, so anyone she wants something from becomes "Mum" and anyone who picks her up for any reason other than food, becomes Dada. Otherwise, she is very chatty, and sings or talks to her toys quite happily in Miriese.

She's still having the occasional boob feed too. I am trying to stop this just because she has been known to BITE with her sharp new teeth, which is excrutiating. We have yet to find any sort of food that she won't eat too, so she doesn't really need breatmilk any more anyway. She regularly has a bottle of milky tea in the cafe with me. However, the other week I had a run in with an idiot doctor. I went to the doctors because I've been having migraines, he prescribed me something, but I asked if I could take it and still breastfeed. He was genuinely incredulous that I was "still" breastfeeding!! He already knew exactly how old Miranda was, but I was quite offended by his reaction. It may not be that common to be breastfeeding at a year old, but it is not unheard of, not abnormal or freakish and certainly not doing her any harm! Surely doctors should be encouraging me and supporting me, not practically ridiculing it? NOT IMPRESSED.

AAaaaaaaaaaaaaaanyway, on her actual birthday yesterday, we had a party in the cafe, and I invited all my friends with children, and also some of the customers that come in with kids. We had SO MANY show up!! Miri was spoilt rotten, as even people I didn't know very well brought presents for her. At one point we had 10 kids in the cafe, all under 6. I fed them all jelly and icecream and they raced around and played with all the toys in the cafe and blew party poppers at each other and made a glorious mess. Needless to say I am completely shattered today!!! Miranda managed a 20 minute sleep all day, the rest of the time she was too excited to even contemplate the idea of a nap. I don't get why she is so awake and boisterous today now! Granny and Grandad came up over the weekend too, and we went to a big play park which she loved, and they took her out while I was working in the cafe on Saturday, and I pedalled her about in the new seat (from the grandparents) on my new trike... all in all, a very exciting few days for a small girl!

Now, she has a rocking snail, a 'scramble bug' (ride on cute thing), lots of new clothes and books, a cuddly springbok from Auntie Karen in South Africa, various plastic noisy things, and Auntie Jopo had the sense to buy her two large toy boxes to put it all in! Carl decided she needed something Big to play in outside, so we got her a swing and slide set for the garden - she loves it!

The party was brilliant, and it was lovely that so many of our friends showed up to celebrate with Miranda. I don't think she actually understands the concept of "birthday" yet but she really enjoyed herself!! I am so proud of my "toddler"!! 

New Experiences

Yesterday we saw hippos! Shaun took us down to the river ('Crocodile River') that runs through the farm, and there were 17 hippos in a big family group, splopping about in the water and occasionally surfacing to bask in the sun. Magnificently ugly beasts. They definitely knew we were there, and kept eyeballing us from a respectful distance, but were otherwise unbothered. Miranda glowered at them for a while and then decided she wanted feeding. Milk is still far more interesting! This is why I am taking thousands of photos and writing these blog posts - sadly Miri won't remember any of these experiences. It may well be a good thing; the other morning we nearly ran over a huge black mumba snake lying in the road and it reared up at the car!! Freaked me out totally but fortunately Miri remained completely oblivious.

One new experience she is getting to try though is solid food, specifically, South African solid(ish) food. Karen seems to think, at four months, I shouldn't be breastfeeding as much as I do and we should be weaning her. I have noticed that Miranda takes an interest in what we are eating and everything she grabs goes straight in her mouth anyway. And she needs to cut this first tooth that is growing on something, I guess. I think my milk maybe tasting slightly different too: the South African diet is basically meat, meat, more meat, a bit more meat for extras and a portion of meat on the side. All red meat, too though Shaun graciously allowed some chicken (well marinated, of course) on the most recent braai. We are not giving Miranda any meat besides braai-flavoured milk, but we are giving her little bits of our food to try. She liked bits of potato and mayonnaise from potato salad, tiny pieces of tomato, baked beans, banana and yellow rice from when I tried babotie (a Cape Malay dish of a sort of spiced meatloaf with raisins in, topped with an egg custard and served with yellow rice and plaintain - odd but delish!). Of course I know these things aren't good for her, but we gave her such tiny amounts it couldn't do any harm. She seemed VERY keen though!

In the cause of being sensible and healthy, we bought her some 'Purity' first baby foods, as recommended by Lindsay, a vegetable one and a fruit one, and bravely tried to feed her with her favourite green rubber spoon. At first, she was more interested in the spoon and tried to chew it, meaning the orange goo just went straight down her front. But little by little, the vegetable one disappeared over three feeds. The fruit one was not a success, but she still ate a bit of fresh banana too.
Karen took us to the nut factory, where they process all the locally grown nuts and some fruits. The factory shop sells huge bags of the things very cheaply, so we stocked up. I got a big bag of dried fruit - apricots, apple slices, peach halves etc to try Miranda with. A few pieces of apple disappeared and then she got very very attached to a slice of peach, just sucking on it and producing copious amounts of orange drool. We wandered round this little place with lots of craft shops and a winery, and I bought her a handmade cuddly warthog. We sat down to have some lunch and the floodgates suddenly opened. Too much dried fruit and vegetable goo on a little stomach adapted to a milk-only diet does not produce pretty results!! Two explosive, brown lumpy nappies in quick succession... Ew ew ewww. Worse, the apple appeared to have gone straight through her, whole and undigested. Sign enough, we think, that maybe poor baby isn't quite ready for solid foods. However, the look of pride and satisfaction on her face after filling those nappies was priceless!

Primark and The Daily Mail

Miranda has a few new words in Miri-Speak:
Eeh-Goo - "Ooh shiny thing!"
Uuneng! - "I've got farts!"
Ehgaah - "Yum" or possibly "I'm full!" after feeding....
Iyurl - "I'm bored."

She seems to be using the last one rather a lot at the moment. She is so alert nowadays and the downside of her sleeping through the night is that she is VERY awake, all day. This means I have to devote more attention to her (even writing this is extremely difficult) and I'm constantly trying to find new ways to amuse her. Granny found her a bouncer - as in, a swing on a spring that you clip on to the door frame, not a security guard - she is not to sure about it yet, but it amuses me no end!

With the aim of Entertaining Miranda, I head into town every day with no real purpose other than getting out of the house. Fortunately Miri is still interested in most of the shops in Darlington, so we traipse round for hours window shopping. The other day, however, we had a specific aim: Primark. I know you may grooooooan at this, dear reader, but I am aware that most of their clothes are chavvy and very probably made by Asian kids not much bigger than Miri... (though pretty much every high street clothes shop is guilty of that!) - but it is cheap. Since Miranda grows so quickly and needs new ones every other week, I can't afford to spend more than a few quid on Tiny Jeans.
Plus, Auntie Jo informed me of this:


Primark tells breastfeeding woman to use changing room or leave store

Ridiculous!!! 
Of course, I had to test our local branch but unfortunately for this groundbreaking research, Miranda was, miraculously, not hungry. According to Beryl from Coventry (see the comments on that article), getting your breasts out in public to feed is just attention seeking, anyway. This reinforces my already pretty negative view of Daily Mail readers, as you may imagine. Which actually attracts more attention? a) someone breastfeeding a baby, b) a hungry baby yelling it's head off, or even c) women wandering round with huge boobs popping out of Primark's cheap vest tops? Answers on a postcard....
Anyway, I left with a pair of very tiny grey jeans for Miranda for £4, and promptly disposed of the hideous pink belt that came with them. Babies do not need belts and my baby does not need pink! Actually, this is something else the Daily  Mail, or at least, it's bloggers, disapprove of: babies wearing jeans. Apparently I am making Miranda into a mini-adult by dressing her in jeans. On the other hand, they are warm, practical and generally Not Pastel....

I don't do all my shopping in Primark, by the way. Most of my clothes, and now Miranda's too, come from all over the place. She was so exhausted here, I couldn't get her out of the sling!

Miranda wears jeans by Primark, "My Mum Rocks" t-shirt from Pandemonium in Whitby, Poncho from Some Efnic Stall Outside Sheffield Student Union, and sling by Infantino for Boots. Socks, model's own. Styling by Mum at Caffe Nero.

Coffee and Cheese

I'm not sure which blog this ought to go on!

We went to Sheffield yesterday, where my friends still firmly refer to Miranda as "the Cheese", or at least, Cheeeeeeeeeeeeeezey!!! For nine months I was thinking about nothing else except the Cheese, setting up this blog, writing letters addressed to Dear Tiny Cheese, even trying to scab freebies from the Babybel company. But now she is actually here, it is very very hard for me to think of her as anything but Miranda.

She is very much her own person now, determined to stand up, very alert and wanting to know exactly what is going on all the time. So determined was she to take as much in during our day out that she refused to sleep at all during the day, and got so tired she started going cross-eyed on the way home! She also has developed a liking of being upside down, hanging off my knee eyeballing the world, and drooling at everything (methinks there is a Tooth brewing in there and making her a bit uncomfy, poor baby.) Definitely my little Miranda, but not just a Baby-Bel any more.

We were in Sheffield to taste coffee. With the help of Simon at Pollards coffee company, I managed to get a unique blend of coffee together for our new coffee shop. I am going to call it Miranda's Blend. I would love to make it a Family Mission to take Miri to all the coffee-producing countries whose beans are included in the blend! I couldn't actually take her in to see it being roasted unfortunately, but she did get to stare at a lot of shiny espresso machines, shout at Simon when we dared to start talking to each other instead of giving her undivided attention, and I gave her some latte foam to try - I think she approved. That experience, along with riding on a train, a tram and in the back of Simon's car, and then being cooed over by Anna, Viv, Ol and Zara at uni made for a very exciting day for her! I was pretty exhausted too...

Coffee shop plans are slowly getting there. We found a new venue, and although very busy and frequently unwilling to answer his phone, the estate agent does at least return our calls, eventually. The unit is a good size, is in a great location, and is fairly affordable. There are several ready-made customer bases we can tap into, hopefully, including the local breastfeeding groups and mother-and-toddler groups, which I want to encourage so Miranda gets some company in there. We just have to negotiate the length of the lease. We should be in a strong position at the moment; the economy is such that there are very few others mad enough to try and start a business in Darlington at the moment, so we are not competing against anyone for the lease!

However, the agency's standard is a three or five year lease. For the same reasons I touched on in the last post, this is a very daunting prospect. That is an awfully long time to sign up for, especially from Miranda's point of view. She is going to change so, so much in three years that I don't feel capable of making decisions over that length of time. I especially don't want to be tied to Darlington by the time Miri reaches school-going age. Is it even practical to try and bring her up in a coffee shop? Will I end up neglecting her? Can I really juggle her, the cafe and the phd at the same time? aaaaaaaaaaargh. I just want her to grow up Happy.

I also have an uncomfortable feeling that if I carry on like this, she is going to turn out to be a tea-drinker. Bah.

With Auntie Tattoo-Jo in the unit we really really want!

And sporting a very sophisticated Peruvian (coffeeland!) poncho.

DO IT!!!

Little Brain at 12 weeks.

When I had twelve weeks left of my pregnancy, I was already fed up with it and very impatient, and another three months seemed an impossibly long time to wait to meet our baby. Now, however, the twelve weeks that have passed since giving birth have just vanished! Miranda has changed and grown so much in that time but I still haven't got used to it all yet
We took her to see her Great-GrandNan (Big Nan) yesterday as she was vaguely in the vicinity for once. Of course, to her, Miri has grown enormously, as she wasn't quite a month old last time we did a great-grandparent visit. Nan had been a little optimistic though, knitting Miri a new outfit with a hat big enough to fit me! Never mind, it is incredibly cute all the same!

With Great-GrandNanny

The little brain in Miranda's head is now working overtime at the moment. She is sleeping through the night (Woohoo!!) and what's more, sleeping in her own room in her lovely tram cot, while I lay awake all night anxiously and obsessively listening to the baby monitor. This means, of course, that she is now awake for the majority of the day, and I struggle to find new ways to entertain her. I have been investigating the library again (during the Competitive Parenting classes, sorry I mean, Under 5s Rhymetime!) and we now have books in Spanish and English. Leo the naughty kitten and Lucia la Gatita are great fun, and Lucia learns a valuable lesson; if you save the little children from a TIBURON ENORME (huge shark), then Mama buys you a Helado Grande (a big icecream). Every child should know this. 'Augusto y su sonrisa' - about a tiger losing his smile is a bit beyond my level of Spanish, however but I remain confident in the fact that Miranda is not going to correct me. Yet.
I also envy Miranda's ability to be entertained for hours by her own feet. She has got the hang of reaching out and grasping things very well indeed now and grabs, glares at and bashes the rattly things hanging above her chair, and when she gets bored of them, she reaches for her feet and kicks the about. I've invested in an interesting array of brightly coloured socks just for this purpose.
Her motor skills, or lack of them, are beginning to frustrate her, however. She is so close to crawling! she can lift her head and shoulders with her arms, and lft her bum and wriggle with her legs, but she just can't get the hang of doing both at the same time. And she gets cross about it and shouts. She loves standing and walking though (with on of us holding her up, obviously) and showing off how tall she is. Babyzilla!!




***

At the twelve week mark I think I am just about qualified to hand out a bit of advice now too. Ahem. Well one friend of mine has she announced she's pregnant with her first, and another friend is now training to be a midwife. So to these at least, I suggest the following:

1. Breastfeed. Even if you think you can't, you probably can, despite what the companies who sell formula milk would have you believe. And stick at it - it really does get easier!

2. Do Not Read Parenting Books, especially NOT Gina Ford. The woman is draconian and utterly delusional! Babies, like everyone else, do not fit into nice neat little boxes, and find routines that suit themselves. Reading parenting books only leads to making comparisons between your baby and The Ideal, which doesn't actually exist, and then you just end up feeling crap and guilty and inadequate and worried. Trust in your own common sense and baby will be fine.

3. Set up a spam email account and then sign up for every single thing you can - it is possible to get tons of freebies this way!

4. Never be more than 3ft from a Yuk Cloth.

5. Buy a baby sling. Provided you tie it right, they are comfy, perfectly safe and infinitely easier than lugging round a pushchair, plus being so close to you is very comforting for the baby and will probably send her to sleep. Think "hands-free buggy".

6. Be prepared for Lochia. That is, the utterly humungous, disgusting flood of a period you get after giving birth. None of the midwives told me about this!!!! It is a period, basically, it's just huge and heavy because instead of all the lining that has built up over the course of a month coming out, it is what built up around baby for the entire nine months, and it goes on for weeks. Unless you are very brave and very quick to heal, you can't use tampons either, so you need the startlingly unattractive, mahoosive sanitary towels designed to be worn all night. I told Miri I had to go change Mummy's nappy too at times. I bled for ELEVEN WEEKS AND THREE DAYS.  It is soul destroying after a while, more so because I was never warned about it and worried constantly that it wasn't normal. Unfortunately, it is.

Any other Mums want to dispense advice that I haven't mentioned?

Being Female

Our baby is 11 weeks old! We have been to visit the grandparents AGAIN this weekend, a flying visit but they were insistent and I know it will be quite a while before we can see them again. The visit did incorporate Miri's first swim however. I armed myself with waterproof nappies and mentally prepared for Miranda to scream the place down. But she didn't! She was very well behaved; a little unsure at first but certainly happy to try and she kicked her legs about enthusiastically enough that we took her again the next day. Actually I think she just liked the excuse to rid herself of her clothes and nappy, she does love being naked!

As usual, she got admired wherever she went but fortunately no-one thought she was a boy this time - possibly because she was wearing the little purple dress I got her in Guatemala. I was ranting on Facebook the other day about this and sparked a bit of a debate. It annoys me that people assume that Miri is a boy, not because I have any objection to her being masculine in character if that is the way she turns out, but because I know that assumption is based solely on my refusal to dress her in pink, and preference for comfy, practical baby trousers. The lack of pink isn't even a feminist statement, I just can't stand the colour. But people see her wearing baby jeans or black t-shirts and ask "how old is he?" This winds me up no end.

I have even been advised to put a ribbon in her hair "just so you know". Now, which is more infuriating, the fact that ribbons in hair must denote gender, or the idea that babies MUST be seen to be one gender or the other? She is 11 weeks old! Surely we shouldn't be inflicting constructed social dichotomies on her just yet? I don't think of her as being feminine yet, or masculine for that matter. She's just my baby, and she's beautiful. And until she can choose her own clothes, she can wear what I think is cute, which is predominantly purple and black. Her gender isn't really part of her personality yet. Of course, her name gives it away, but really that is a social norm that it would be too cruel to break. A little girl going off to school named Donald or Keith or something will be teased even more than if she were called Ophelia or Esperanza or any of the other names I loved but we decided were to weird to inflict on her.

A comfy baby, with pink socks on "just so you know"!

I don't wear pink, and I rarely wear dresses, I do wear giant boots though and I am very tall, and yet few mistake me for a bloke. (I did however once convince people I was a very passable transvestite, just so I could use the men's loo in a oub and avoid the queue...but that is a different story!!). Pre-pregnancy, I didn't even feel very female, although I have never been sure exactly what that is supposed to feel like anyway. I did a project for a gender studies class years ago about transexualism and gender identities. One friend in an interview put her views very succinctly: "I am Me, my body is female. That's about it.". I almost subscribe to that view myself although I am dimly aware that it is never that simple.

At the moment, I am feeling more female than I ever have, and it's all to do with being Mum. Ooo and now I can hear my more feminist friends howling in the background.... Miri's Uncle Ol already accuses me of being anti-feminist, I am never quite sure where he gets that impression from. I am not anti-feminist; most of the time I am just apathetic to the whole issue because it's never been an issue in my life. Selfish, I know, but there we go. Now, though, it throws up a whole new set of dillemmas. I am suddenly feeling Female, because I am a mother and I am breastfeeding my child, which is something you have to be a woman to do and really understand. And I really, really love it. According to some branches of feminist argument though, it is breastfeeding and child-rearing that 'holds women back' and is used as a justification of female oppression. Instead, I should be striving at least for equality (read: getting Carl to share half of the Miri-minding - which I have no problem with if it wasn't for more pragmatic things like the fact Carl has a job and I don't)  - if not matriarchal dominance. And feeding her would obviously have to be done with formula milk and a bottle, thus 'empowering' mother to go back to work, of course....

Caca del toro!

This is another idea that annoys me intensely. I can't think of anything more empowering than being indispensible to your child, able to provide her with everything she needs, adapting as she grows, for free and on demand, particularly when men are incapable of doing the same! If that does not fit in to the routine of the (male-dominated) workplace, then it is the workplace that needs changing. Or better still, I'll just invent myself a job that I can take Miranda along to!

"If a multnational company developed a product that was a nutritionally balanced and delicious food, a wonder drug that both prevented and treated disease, cost nothing to produce and could be delivered in quantities controlled by consumers' needs, the annoucement of this find would send its shares rocketing to the top of the stock market. The scientists who developed the product would win prizes and the wealth of everyone involved would increase dramatically. Women have been producing such a miraculous substance, breastmilk, since the beginning of human existence, yet they form the least wealthy and least powerful half of humanity."
(from "The Politics of Breastfeeding" by Gabrielle Palmer.)

Elah

We are slowly learning to speak Miri-language, that is, recognising her different cries. The noise that sounds like an indignant duck being sat on, for instance, roughly translates as "I am seriously pissed off now!" There is also the rhythmic, monotone and repetitive "A-yaar", which means "Give me attention!" or more often, "Why am I in this chair when you are doing something interesting?" The first word we learnt however, the one repeated most often is "Elah".

Elah means FOOD, or more precisely, Boob. At just under 3 weeks old, Miranda is having a growth spurt. She has put on nearly half a kilo in a week, and I swear her feet have got even bigger. This all means that she is eating constantly at the moment, demanding food every hour when she is awake, and disrupting our nights even more than "usual". (nothing as yet is usual or normal!). It is completely exhausting!

I am breastfeeding exclusively at the moment, which has earned whole-hearted approval from the midwife. It wasn't really a conscious decision as Miranda  found the milk bar and latched on within an hour of being born! However, I have no problem with this really. In purely practical terms, it is easier than faffing around with bottles and powder and mixing formula at 3am, I know it is all she needs, and I am never going to run out. And why pay for something when you can get it free?

It hurt like hell to begin with though. Rachel helpfully advised me: "It's fine once the first layer of skin has come off!". Seems to be true actually, it as actually a lot easier now than it was. Nevertheless, as if the episiotomy wasn't bad enough, getting blisters on your nipples is quite high up my list of Things You Should Never Have To Endure. Miranda's suction power is astonishing for one so small! At the moment it is only sore for the first few sucks - and Miri has a habit of lunging at me from a distance. Unfortunately that few seconds of intense pain is enough to render me wide awake meaning it is impossible to sleep through middle-of-the-night feeds. Also, she needs extra fluids at the moment because of the hot weather, so coupled with the growth spurt, she is feeding little but often and my nipples never get the chance to recover!

The hormones associated with breastfeeding are highly weird too. It is very bonding, which I suppose is a survival technique from baby's point of view as Mums wouldn't put up with it otherwise! Carl actually gets a bit jealous so I've started expressing milk so he can have a go at bottlefeeding her. It took a few days for the amount of milk to settle down though, and at first my boobs just swelled up enormously to the point of looking fake and cartoonish, and then promptly leaked everywhere. They have settled now though, leaving me having to panic-buy nursing bras in a ridiculous size 36J!

Sometimes I am quite proud of being able to breastfeed, I do love the time with her and it makes me feel 'capable' somehow, especially since parenthood is so new and there are so many things we need to learn and get used to. I don't have a problem with feeding Miri in public either, most of the time, and I've not had any discouraging comments yet either, not that I should nowadays anyway. I am sure our local pub has seen plenty of women get their boobs out in it in far less respectable circumstances.

At other times, however, I get frustrated with it all. I don't like just being The Milk Bar. Whenever I hold her, she smells food and immediately demands some. This means I don't get cuddles in the way Carl does, I can't just sit and talk to her or play with her like he can because she just hunts for Elah. More annoyingly I can't settle her to sleep in the middle of the night because the food supply is so distracting. When I am really tired, I feel completely useless; sometimes she has actually drained me dry, I can't give her what she really wants, and I can't cuddle her and calm her down either. Aaargh!

I do know this will pass and when she is older I will get to be Mummy properly rather than just Provider of Sustinance. I also know that it is not always going to hurt - though I am dreading when she gets teeth. The benefits of Elah outweigh its annoyances, so I will persevere. And I do love the newfound enormity. To Boobs! *chinks glass*