It’s beginning to look a lot like chaos!

For the past few nights just as I’m falling to sleep I’ve had that horrible stomach churning, unsettled feeling. The one that is a mixture of nausea, fear, anxiety and even excitement. I was trying to identify why it’s happening, looking for a specific thing to blame it on. I started running through the list of things I was worrying about. It was when I’d managed to mentally list about a dozen things including, impending Botox (Mojo not me!!), impending Gastro Surgery, baby’s first immunisations and development checks, 3rd birthday plans, nursery induction and even Christmas shopping that I realised that perhaps, just perhaps it was a culmination of all of the above!

So first things first, I’ve discovered a silver lining that I never knew existed which is always nice. When one is dealing with a conventional baby there is a genuinely mind blowing amount of advice, methods, routines, plans and books to follow. I remember being so envious of my friend who had a book called ‘what to expect in the first year’. I felt hard done by that with Mojo nobody could tell me what to expect in the coming days, let alone the coming year. Imagine having a book which will tell you what to expect and what to do and how to get it right I thought. Lucky bloody ‘normal’ mums. Well, not so much it turns out. In fact it turns out that being able to disregard all baby advice and competitive parenting because your baby is not expected to behave conventionally is very liberating and in fact not having a book to beat myself up with first time around was a huge blessing in disguise. Admittedly it was a very convincing disguise but now with hindsight and a conventional baby on my knee I can see it clearly. So it is with huge self discipline that I am attempting to shelve the books and do exactly what we did the first time around and baby number two like a tiny unpredictable human without worrying too much about ‘what to expect’. (I reserve the right to ignore this high horse approach when I’m googling ‘baby cross eyed normal?’ at 3am)

Adjusting to life with newborn aside we’ve had a month of anti-climactic stress and diary juggling caused primarily by Mojo not being well enough to have her scheduled surgery this month. We spent three hours waiting to ‘check in’ to hospital only to be told by the anaesthetist that Mojo’s cold would mean that if he had to put her under he would ‘almost certainly put her in intensive care’. Urmmm yeah, okay, lets not then!!! So after lots of preparing both her and I for it we now have to wait until days before her 3rd birthday for the rescheduled operation. In the meantime tomorrow brings her first Botox injection to try and help her hip movement. The side effects list includes a ‘flu like’ illness. Excuse me while I bang my head repeatedly against this wall. Can one buy shares in Calpol??

It was Children in Need last week and once again I found it very surreal to find myself associating so closely with the appeal films, you know the ones that make you cry because of how hard life must be for these children and their parents. Despite directly benefitting from fabulous projects which are funded by the charity I find it very difficult to reconcile her as a ‘disadvantaged child’. Not least because we have done so much fun stuff amidst all the medical chaos. Seaside mini breaks, parties, Halloween fun, swimming and cycling with Wheels for Wellbeing. As ever no amount of illness or procedures can dampen her mood or compromise her beaming smile.

Wheels for Wellbeing!

There’s a lot going on. my memory is shot and despite baby being an amazing sleeper the sleep deprivation of night feeding does take it’s toll. As always at this time of year the weeks seem to be flying by and the to-do list of jobs that I usually enjoy such as Christmas shopping or birthday cake baking feel a bit heavy. That’s the best word for it, heavy. Hopefully once the operations and procedures are completed and we can focus on the nice elements of December things will seem easier.

Have you ever read a more melodramatic excuse for not bothering with Christmas cards this year! Honestly, I don’t know what I do with my time.

Strawberry fun!

 

 

Leave a comment