Reflux and home admin

'Why don't you just...?'


Please don't start any sentences addressed to me with these words. 


Because being a full-time mother of young children is all about the small things. None of them on their own are a big deal, but they all add up. Your life is ruled by minutiae. All it consists of are loads and loads of small things. 


They might seem small to you, but it's insulting to imply that they're easy - you don't live in my world. So adding 'just' another thing to my To Do list is a bigger burden than it might seem at face value. 


I can't just do some extra hippy dippy relaxation shit every time I feed Felix, or hook myself up to the breast pump. Don't insist on my switching off all the lights every time I leave a room. It's okay to leave the telly on standby during the day. I don't want to spend ten minutes dealing calmly with Logie every time he has a tantrum about getting in the car. Time is precious. 


I can't carve out a special chunk once a day to do the exercises for my bad back, or just once a week to jot down features ideas, my blog, and hilarious things the boys have said and done. I'm a mum. I'm on the front line here. If everyone's been fed, washed and only sustained minor injuries in any given day, that's a victory. 


I can't just sleep if their lunchtime naps coincide, because I've got to book everyone's dentist and GP appointments (and argue with BUPA) while I can make phonecalls uninterrupted, then get a birthday card in the post by 5pm. I can't just ignore the mess in the house because I've got to sterilise the bottles and sort out the laundry before the cleaner gets here. I can't just chuck it all in the tumble drier because some of it would shrink. 


I want to be thinner but just 500 calories just two days a week isn't a good idea when you're breastfeeding. It is against my religion to have just one biscuit. 


Once the boys are down for the evening, I can't just have a bath with stupid candles and the thoughtful gift of bath oil that was actually from someone's present drawer, or exfoliate like single people do, because I've got to finish Ocado, package up two parcels and dig out the paperwork for my tax return before I go to sleep. 


One day I'd like to sort out which clothes I can actually fit into, which ones I like and which ones ought to go to a charity shop. Instead of wearing whatever is at the top of the pile and clean. I'd love to just organise the boys' clothes so that I don't come across something brand new and really nice which they'll never wear because it's now too small, having been hiding at the back of a drawer I haven't had time to sort out. 


I can't just fire back an e-mail about which date works best for you because I have three older e-mails that I owe diary management to first.  Don't blather on to me about any recipes that start "just chop an onion" because most nights I can't start cooking til they're both asleep and I like to eat before 9pm.  


I don't want to have just one glass of wine in the evening, because I'm gagging for it by 6pm and it's the only moment of the day where I feel the stress fall away from my shoulders. Letting a baby just cry for a bit isn't an option when you're fraught and tired, unless they are taken completely out of earshot.  


I know that this is what I signed up for. Being everyone's PA, housekeeper and carer. It comes as no surprise and I love my children madly. All three of those jobs get little enough respect (or pay) in the real world, but when you do all three as a 'housewife' you get even less. Because my 'job' consists of tasks that we all do every now and then, some people think it's okay to make suggestions about how I could do them more efficiently. I was prepared for domestic life, but not to be patronised.


I can't just rest on the two days Logie is in nursery when I only have Lix because I've got to go to the post office, get Lix's passport photos taken, wash and dry Logie's smelly animals before picking him up, get a new battery in my watch, pack everything up for the weekend, find a babysitter for next Thursday, order a new chequebook and collect the dry cleaning. Don't you dare use the fucking word 'just' in my presence.


ps Felix definitely has reflux, and the paediatrician thinks that was the primary cause of the rhinitis as well. He's on Gaviscon four times a day, and a new nasal spray. Since a visit to a paediatric osteopath around the same time he's been sleeping almost through the night, most nights. Halleluja! Maybe a bit more sleep will stop me being such a bitch.

Rhinitis and wheezing

Felix has had a cold all his life.

Or so we thought. 

Every night, without fail, he would be bunged up beyond belief. Thick, crusty bogeys, sometimes runny snot too, the sheet on his cot revolting. He snuffled, he snored, he snorted. 

But only at night. Or during the occasional long sleep during the day. Or when I was breastfeeding him - I was always using that as an excuse for why it wasn't a very good feed, because he couldn't breathe through his nose properly. Because he had a cold.

(Babies are 'obligate nose breathers' until around six months. A description which makes them sound like creatures out of Harry Potter. But actually means breathing through the mouth is possible but not preferred.)

Until, at twelve weeks, I started thinking - what if it's something else? And why is he otherwise pretty happy during the day; if it was a cold, wouldn't he have it all the time? 

And if he wasn't like this at night, would he be waking up so much in the small hours? Maybe he's not waking up cos he's hungry, maybe it's because he's as congested as the M4 out of London on a Friday evening.

Then we had a night nanny for the night for only the second time ever. She was disturbingly pretty - almost enough to make you forget how expensive she was. Oops, that sounds like I'm implying something else. I didn't mean to - she was a genuinely experienced maternity nurse.

And in the morning she said "He's not just blocked up. He's wheezing. You need to take him to the doctor."

A shower of guilt poured over my body.

The GP listened to his chest. He wasn't even doing his noisy breathing, cos it was daytime - I didn't think there would be anything for her to hear. But she said he did have a significant wheeze, especially on the right-hand side.

The shower increased to a waterfall.

The options, she explained, were to prescribe an inhaler or to send us up to the hospital to see a paediatrician. Or both. I pocketed the prescription, and booked in to see a private paediatrician. Thank you Bupa.

Thank goodness I had remembered to ring Bupa to add him to our policy the week before though. Apparently if you do it before they're three months, they're free until your annual renewal comes up. Three months and one day and you have to pay. That's a nice, caring rule.

In the meantime, I gave free rein to my tidal wave of guilt, declaring dramatically to anyone who asked after him "I thought he just had a cold, and was a noisy sleeper, but all this time he's been STRUGGLING TO BREATHE!"

The paediatrician took a detailed history, examined him thoroughly and asked lots of questions, eg "Does he have carpet and curtains in his bedroom?" "No, we keep him in the cellar."  Then said it was either a nasal infection from the soft nose prongs on his tubes in the neo-natal unit (which is apparently quite common), an allergy or silent reflux. Or a combo.

So now he has his puffer three times a day (ipatroprium bromide) and some steroid/antibiotic drops for his nose twice a day (not the intended ones, cos they're so rarely prescribed the pharmacy didn't have them, so some other ones usually for eyes or ears) and he's a different boy. At least in terms of his breathing at night. He's quiet. And though he still needs a night feed, he doesn't wake ON AVERAGE, PLEASE DON'T JINX IT quite so early, and he settles more easily, for a longer stretch.

He also had a chest x-ray while we were at the Portland, to check whether he's been inhaling milk. The results were normal. In the waiting room beforehand, the radiographer, looking at Felix in his buggy right in front of me, asked "Have you brought Felix with you today?" "No, I brought a different baby. I thought that would be a help."

We go back to the doc on Wednesday, in his lovely spacious consulting room, with its reassuring leather armchairs and pictures of his own grandchildren, to whittle down the diagnosis. 

In the meantime, here is a pic of of my boys. Felix Webster Tallon French, having taken good note of his initials, is doing what we call his 'Felix WTF?' face

Sleep deprivation

I've got a new bag. As fashion is all about reinventing the 90s at the moment, I'm rocking a bum bag. 

Yep, I'm so on trend, people can't take their eyes off it. I wear it all the time. It's useful for keeping things (mainly food) in. But because I'm such a fashionista - hell, sometimes I go mad and shop at Gap when the White Company and Boden don't have anything matronly, voluminous and low-cut enough for breastfeeding - I'm doing it with an ironic twist. I wear it under my clothes.

That's right. Under my lovely, drapey, jersey maxidresses can clearly be seen my bum bag, hanging off my waist, low over my bikini line. It's like a gentle loop of thick rope. 

But of course, I didn't actually buy it. I didn't even ask for it. It's not a real bag - it's my belly. 

Forget saddlebags, bingo wings and muffin tops. After you've had a baby, for a while it's all about the bum bag. And it's very difficult to disguise. Today I wore a pair of spanx-type shorts to try and smooth it out (added bonus - stopped my thunder thighs chafing together in the heat) but I'm not sure they did much good. If anything, they made me look mildly pregnant again because they sort of redistributed and vacuum packed the excess flesh over the whole tummy area, in a tight but wide mound.

The trouble is, anyone who knows you've recently had a baby understands its presence, but passers by in the street I can tell are judging me very harshly. If I'm out without the baby, I feel I need a version of the 'Baby on board' badge to explain. Or a couple of glow sticks, so I might just pass myself off as a hip, bum-bag-wearing clubber on the way home from an all-nighter.

Sometimes, after a testing night shift with Felix, I do feel like I've been clubbing. You're so exhausted, you're almost tripping with tiredness. You feel quite 'other worldly', as my friend Fiona so accurately put it the other day.

Sleep deprivation colours everything. It makes you forget things, move slowly and be vile to your nearest and dearest. You're trapped in a slow-motion horror film. You crave sleep, every minute of the day. Your body sort of quietly buzzes with the deficiency.

Even worse, when your other half is similarly short of shut-eye, you get horribly competitive about who is tireder. Woe betide the spouse who dares to complain of feeling weary if they had a whole hour or two more sleep than you last night. Or lets slip a tactless comment like "I don't understand why you're so tired - you slept through the night last Friday!".

But in the graveyard hours, when I'm burping Felix after a feed or cuddling him after a chilly nappy change, I sometimes fast forward in my head to him being 19. I imagine myself looking at my big, strapping son, who doesn't really need me any more, and think that I would sacrifice all the sleep I have for just one more hour of him sleeping on my chest as a small delicious baby like this.

Because having a healthy, happy baby is a blessing, and I know that we are incredibly lucky to have two. Some great friends of ours had a terribly traumatic time when their son was born almost three years ago. Becky, Felix's godmother, wrote about it so eloquently that I bet you can't read this article without welling up.

Thankfully, their story has a happy ending. But those early days when their beautiful boy was desperately ill were awful for them. So they have never forgotten the care and support they received from the Winnicott Foundation, which supports the neo-natal units at St Mary's and Queen Charlotte's hospitals. 

Therefore Lardy is undertaking an epic bike ride to Paris on Wednesday to raise money for this charity. You can read more about it and see how blond Arthur has become here. I wonder if Lardy will be wearing a bum bag while he's cycling.

Sinusitis and bogeys

Here's what I've learnt in weeks 5-9 of my secondborn's life. 

It's in list form. Because I tend to think in lists at the moment, if at all. I am constantly adding things to my To Do list, though sadly I cross them off much less often. I am fanatical about my Packing list when we go away for a weekend, though it didn't stop me failing to pack any pants for myself last time.

• The corner of a business card is the ideal implement for fishing bogeys out of a small baby's nose. Pointy but soft, can't go in too far. This discovery is thanks to my husband, who takes even more pleasure than your average parent in extracting them. He bites his nails, so til this breakthrough would often summon me with the words "Bring me your little fingernail - there's a really good one I think we could get". NB he uses other people's cards, not his own, so don't worry about accepting one in future.

• Some babies much prefer to sleep on their fronts. In fact, once you've got over your fear and guilt about putting them down on their tummies, they will pretty much stop sleeping on their backs for more than half an hour at a time. Ever. Unless you're pushing them in a buggy or holding them at an uncomfortable angle (for you) in your arms.

• Everything our NCT breastfeeding evangelist - sorry, teacher - told us was wrong. I didn't trust her anyway given that her first words were "Do you know what they put in formula? FISH EYES!" but I did believe her about hindmilk only being right at the 'back' of the milk that comes out of each breast, and that it's better to line up your baby's nose with your nipple, rather than their mouth. Now, thanks to Clare Byam-Cook, I understand why that's bollocks.

• The guilt that you feel about STILL not having written most of your baby present thank-you cards when he is two months old is always there, like a low-level headache, however far up your To Do list it is. It is exacerbated by the fact that you can't actually remember who gave you what.

• Sinusitis really hurts and sometimes takes two lots of antibiotics to nuke.

• If you order a bright pink shirt and wear it all day when it arrives in the morning post, you will feel significantly less cool in it when you switch on the telly in the evening and see Margaret Mountford from The Apprentice wearing one almost exactly the same.

• Having two children in nappies drives you to drink. You'd think that doing the graveyard shift with a mild hangover would be enough to stop you, but it isn't. Fino sherry and tonic, as recommended by Esther Walker, is particularly delicious.

• Cold pressed grapeseed oil is really good at clearing up the dry, crusty, flaky patches on your baby's face. If you want to add to your high levels of guilt, don't actually apply it regularly til he is 8 weeks old. The speed at which it clears up is quite shameful, especially if the bottle has been sitting in his room pretty much unused for 6 weeks.

• You need a present drawer of biscuits when you are doing full-time childcare with small kids, for visits to friends. You must not reveal its location to your husband.

• Sleep deprivation defines so many aspects of your life that it requires a whole separate blog post. Stay tuned.

Mastitis

"What's mastitis?" my brother asked at the weekend. "Infected breasts, bloody painful, feel like shit," I explained. Realisation dawned on his face: "Ah, you've got boob rot!"

Much better name for it.

Conjunctivitis, cold sores and costochondritis

I'm better!

Ha - bet you weren't expecting that, from the title of this post.

But I am. I am not depressed. I'm laughing, listening to music and marvelling at how sweet my baby is (even if he does show signs of turning a bit ginger). I can't tell you what a relief it is. NB I'm not doing those three things at once, they're just examples of things I wasn't doing up until quite recently.

But fear not, there will always be plenty of material for this blog in our household. We are frigging ill all the frigging time, and our strike rate's only going to increase now that we have another infant to catch things.

Let's start with the cold sores that I have at both corners of my mouth. Just to make me look like a leper, and feel as popular as Boris Johnson. But ha ha, I don't care - I'm better!

Lix has had conjunctivitis. Because that's pretty much de rigeur for any baby, every six weeks, isn't? Poor boy, he's got months, if not years, to go before starting nursery, but swinging through when depositing/collecting Logie a couple of times has been enough for him to catch it. Okay, it's a bit unfair to blame it on nursery - but I don't care what people think now, I'm better!

I've got a brilliant thing that is not only an itis, it ticks all sorts of other favourite boxes:

• It's painful, and is likely to be so for a while, so I should get good whinging mileage from it.
• It's related to my bad back, a subject which I know every single one of you feels they haven't really heard enough detail about.
• It requires me to go to the osteopath for treatment, which gets rid of regular amounts of pesky money clogging up my bank account. And means I get to spend lots of time in the car closely inspecting the roadworks on the Hammersmith roundabout.
• It's normally eased by taking non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, which I'm not allowed to take, because they make my stomach bleed. So that gives me more opportunity to behave like eeyore. (One can't complain. One has one's friends. Somebody spoke to me only yesterday. And it was last week, or the week before, that Rabbit bumped into me and said Bother.)

But my poor-me touchpaper is refusing to light, because I'm better!

Anyway, it's called costochondritis, which is an inflammation of the cartilage that attaches the ribs to the breastbone. Basically, I have pain in my chest, and in my upper back. And the osteo says I've also popped a rib out as well, for good measure.

It's probably not unrelated to the position that I breastfeed in - holding Felix under my arm like a rugby ball. But I struggle with the orthodox way, and now he refuses to even try it. Carrying my nemesis the Maxicosi car seat doesn't help either.

But the only thing that's really a cause for concern in our family right now is Logie's behaviour. It is, how can I put it? Diabolical.

Everything is a battle. Every request or suggestion from me or Jon provokes a tantrum or a refusal. Nothing is achieved without several minutes of bribery or threats. 

Of course a certain amount of this is to be expected from a terrible 2-year-old, especially one who's coming to terms with the arrival of a new sibling. And a certain amount's been going on for a while. But it's suddenly escalated to practically all the time - and for once I'm not exaggerating.

Twice he has pooed in the bath. Last night he spat in Jon's face. He doesn't hand me things any more, he throws them - especially if they're food that will spatter.

The only place he doesn't behave like West London's youngest ASBO is at nursery. Where he's been as good as normal, happily putting on his coat as soon as asked, going to sleep without a fuss and even, yesterday, eating no less than chicken curry for lunch. 

I'd happily agree to him having conjunctivitis too, if they could get this behaviour to extend to the rest of the week. But although I mind, I'm not spending much time worrying about it. Because. I. Am. Better.

ps Here's a puzzling incident with Logie that I'd like to share, in case anyone can decipher it. Answers on a postcard please. For days he's been asking for a Barbie. Not a baby-shaped doll, but specifically a Barbie, ie with boobs and blonde hair.

Yesterday Felix (well, I) bought him one from FARA Kids for £1.50 which had been seriously pre-loved - her toes had been chewed off and she was drastically in need of a deep conditioning treatment. He was thrilled. Played with her intently for over an hour, then spent half an hour insisting she'd done a poo, then snapped her head off. Huh?

ECT side effects

Far and away the most important thing to say is that I am getting better. The electro-convulsive therapy is working.

But I am experiencing some side effects. Stronger than I've felt for many years; maybe because I haven't had such a long period of depression for many years. I feel quite peculiar.

It's not quite as straightforward as short-term memory loss. Though it certainly includes that. But it's an absence of brain function in a less linear sense that I can't define.

For example, yesterday I told a teenage neighbour that she was walking the wrong way to her school (she wasn't, and even if I thought she was why on earth didn't I keep my gob shut?). I also wished my best friend happy birthday when it wasn't, and almost forgot the way to Logie's nursery, a route I drive four times a week.

I feel like I'm in a dream, or have pulled an all-nighter. Everything is disjointed and bizarre.  Of course, matters are slightly complicated by the fact that I am actually rather sleep deprived, so who knows what feeling I should be attributing to what cause.

Not my regular shrink, that's for sure. Yesterday he did his most blatant display ever of repeating back things I've literally just told him, but presenting them as conclusions of his own. It's quite a breathtaking habit, that leaves me looking round the room to see if anybody else witnessed it. Or maybe I am indeed mad.