Sleep when I am dead

The M word

2009-05-06T22:11:00.008+10:00

Louis is now almost 15 months old, and says words like "up", "hat", "bath", "cup", "dog", "brrrrm-brrrrm" for car, "keys", "bubble", "bor" for ball, that old kiddie staple "nana" for banana, "ba-oon" for balloon, and a few others I can't remember at the moment, and the vital "dadda", but there's one word missing .... and that's mumma.

Where's my name gone, goddammit?

He certainly knows it, because I chatter constantly about myself in the third person, as in "mummy wants the keys, can Louis give them to her?" etcetera.

In fact, that's a mild example of the way I carry on, because there's no way I'm going to admit how irritatingly sing-song I sound when I'm hanging out with Louis.

But hey, I'm the one who spends the most time with him by a long shot. So where's my name gone, baby boy, and how many swords do I have to swallow to hear you say it?

Because I hate organising photos...

2009-04-22T22:39:00.003+10:00

... Katja is still taking them for me.

I enjoy taking photos.

What I hate is transferring photos from the camera to the computer, opening them in Photoshop and renaming and filing them, fixing the levels, cropping the images, checking the saturation and hue, making sure I don't overwrite something ..... and .... zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Yeah. That's my excuse for why I'm pillaging Katja's photo collection.

Also, I take very ordinary photos compared to her. The above was taken in the Botanical Gardens on a golden autumn afternoon last week.

Everyone say awwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

Post-breastfeeding

2009-04-21T11:56:00.010+10:00

Another image courtesy of Katja. I keep telling her she should go into business as a photographer.

When I was breastfeeding, it felt perfectly normal and natural and I couldn't really remember not doing it.

Now, a few weeks have passed since I weaned, and I find I'm kind of icked out by breastfeeding, just like I was before I started.

I can't imagine putting a baby or toddler to my breast to feed, not even Louis. Yech! It seems impossible to me I was breastfeeding barely six weeks ago.

I wonder if this failure of imagination might be partly why some women become Judgey McJudgerson when it comes to breastfeeding - women who are breastfeeding can't truly imagine not doing it, and women who aren't find the physical reality of breastfeeding impossible to really picture, the same way it's impossible to truly imagine being cold when you're feeling hot, and vice versa.

I'm blaming the hormones. Totally bizarre.

13 months, belated

2009-04-14T22:57:00.002+10:00

Thanks to Katja for the image.

We're done

2009-03-26T19:43:00.005+11:00

We're fully weaned, as of March 24, which was Tuesday.

On the Monday morning, he woke as usual at 6amish, I put him to my breast and he sucked a little, is all, not particularly insistent about it. So I took him off, gave him some water and put him back to bed and he slept again.

The next morning, he woke at 6am so Justin went in and gave him water, and he went back to sleep, forgoing the breastfeed. Last night, just the same, so I guess we're done.

And I thought it was going to be traumatic! It's been so slow, I've barely noticed it.

Twice now on Monday and Tuesday, Louis got fussy and tugged at my top, but when distracted, he forgot about it. Now he drinks a cup of milk at night before bed.

Guess my little baby is really a toddler now.

Drama at the playground in five acts

2009-03-11T21:48:00.005+11:00

Don't take that big, pointy stick away from me!

Give me back MY STICK!

Stickstickstickstickstickstickstickstickstickstickstickstickstickstickstickstickstick!

OK yeah, I'll have that apple then.

Appleappleappleappleappleappleappleappleappleappleapple. Oh look, swings! Appleappleappleapple...

Weaning

2009-03-08T13:58:00.003+11:00

I wasn't prepared for it, I'd been ambivalent about it, I hadn't decided to do it for sure .... but Louis and I are weaning. At least, Louis seems to have decided he's going to wean.

It's been happening for some weeks now, although I've been pretending it hasn't.

Two months ago, Louis started to become less and less interested in his lunch-time breastfeed, and so it was easily dropped. Now he has a little cup of cow's milk before his big nap.

So we were left with the 6.30pm breastfeed before bed, and a morning breastfeed at about 5am, after which Louis would go back to sleep until 7am.

Well. For the last few nights, Louis has been waking at 5am but going back to sleep with a sip of water and a pat. Or, like he did last night, waking at 6am before crying for attention.

So I've simply got him up and started the day with a cup of cow's milk instead of the 5am breastfeed. He may want this morning breastfeed again soon, and I'm happy to reinstate it if necessary, but he doesn't seem to be missing it.

I thought it would be traumatic -but it's not traumatic for either of us*. It seems to be happening very easily. Anyone else weaning at the moment?

* At least, it's not traumatic from my point of view, in terms of feeling emotional and grieving the breastfeeding or whatever. It IS a little unsettling because Louis is skinny for his height - more on that next post - and I'd like to max him up on calories, but as far as I can tell, cow's milk has as many calories in it anyway.

One year

2009-02-16T21:30:00.014+11:00

Dozens of smiles and a half-dozen "mummy"s each day

An ability to ransack five drawers in one minute

Four and a half teeth, seen during three mini-tantrums each day particularly when confronted with play-dough or pizza dough. (What is it about dough that provokes this reaction in my child?)

One - make that two - unabashed camera addicts, and two green-iced birthday cupcakes to himself.

And following is a photo tribute to Louis' year, an idea plaigarised from Cork, mother of the gorgeous Nathan. Although my pics aren't nearly as amazing as hers.

11 months

10 months

9 months

8 months

7 months

6 months

5 months

4 months 3 months
2 months

1 month

Newborn

Tongue

2009-02-13T22:12:00.005+11:00

Louis has learnt where his tongue is. He can also point to his nose and ears and feet, but his tongue is by far the fave.

Hanging with ma

2009-02-06T20:25:00.038+11:00

For the last two days, Katja's been sick. I think she inherited the gastro Louis, Justin and I shared last weekend (sorry Katja). While she's been holed up at home bolting back and forth between her bedroom and bathroom, Louis and I have had a couple of full days to ourselves to hang out.

Initially, I was apprehensive. During the week, Katja takes Louis for three hours a morning while I work, while on the weekend, Justin and I share duties, and filling twelve solid hours with a toddler who likes to walk everywhere by himself at 0.5 kilometres per hour, and prefers to feed himself although he lacks the coordination to get two-thirds of the food in his mouth, can be tiring and frustrating.

In the end, I was pleasantly surprised and both of us had a ball.

(Sure, Louis looks downright pensive in the first pic, the one in my arms, but that's because he was calculating if he could make a lunge at the dangling camera strap for a quick chew. Guess if he got near it or not?)

The only way the full toddler day works for me is to accept I won't get any work done except a little at naps and in the evenings, and plan activities with other people so we're not stuck in the apartment all day staring at each other like shags on a rock. Then, it's a snap.

Yesterday, we escaped the 30 degree heat and hopped over to Westfield Eastgardens to do a little shopping and eating, and Louis played on the indoor playground where he followed three-year-olds around and flapped his hands in delight and shrieked at everyone.

In the afternoon after a respectable nap, we hoofed it with a mother friend and her son down to Cook and Phillip Park pool and splashed and wallowed (and had a mini-tantrum when it was time to go). Sweet.

This is a scintillating picture of the nap, since I forgot my camera in the afternoon.

This morning, we wandered over to the Holdsworth Community Centre in Woollahra for a music class in which Louis pretty much pattered around with his funny, zombie-style walk stealing the other kids' tambourines and maracas, while the nice lady sang and strummed her guitar and danced around in the background.

Then, we checked out their playgroup - it's a Rolls Royce of a playgroup, this one - with masses of games, rocking toys, mats to bounce on, shade, books, little bikes, balls, puzzles and an indoor and air-conditioned baby room.

The centre also boasted a swathe of sleek, Botoxed mums with manicures and Haviana thongs and lowlights and Blackberrys and serious designer purses (Louis stole one such purse and I just managed to snatch it before he clamped down with his teeth, feeling sick with how much I'd have to pay to replace genuine Prada) but also some very normal, down-to-earth chicks, too.

This afternoon post-nap, it was off to my parents for the celebrity treatment - attention and hugs every nanosecond - and a very pleasant dinner on the breezy balcony overlooking the ocean. Lots of spaghetti was tossed, plenty of Nutella bread was scoffed, much laughing with chocolate-coated teeth at the silly noises my mother made.

(Notice how I didn't mention a park visit? Yeah, it was too hot. I cannot tell a lie, and so the outdoor pics above are courtesy of Katja and were taken last week and earlier this week. I tried at again playgroup today, but as usual, my photos all sucked. I'm gonna practice.)

Parsley Bay, Sunday

2009-02-03T21:55:00.002+11:00

Eleven months and Louis is loving ....

2009-01-31T11:10:00.010+11:00

Water play.

Walking around and around and around and around playgrounds, pausing only to pick up pieces of dirt, leaves, dog shit, bark and old chewing gum and stick them into his mouth. The New York Times tells me this is adaptive behaviour.

Fish at the aquarium.

Patting anything fixed, carrying anything mobile.

The flash cards Katja got him for Christmas, particularly D for Dog.

Excuses

2009-01-16T20:46:00.004+11:00

Um .... I've been writing kid's tv? Lots of fun but means I spend my nights in the glow of my laptop.

I'm working on my next novel? Is that enough? No? OK, add to that, I have an 11-month-old son?

It's not good enough, right? Dedicated blogging will begin again. I promise. ASAP. Cross my heart.

Xmas 2008 with the Hewitts

2009-01-01T18:31:00.005+11:00

... and we have lift-off

2008-12-17T13:20:00.004+11:00

Pardon the sideways image. Someone forgot she was filming video and couldn't rotate the frame in Photoshop afterwards.

Retraction

2008-12-10T21:14:00.003+11:00

This just ain't walking. I think it's only fair to retract my previous post and admit that Louis is NOT walking and instead, has hit the oft-quoted milestone of standing and stumbling and falling down on one's arse repeatedly.

I'll let you know when the real walking show begins.

The baby walks...I think

2008-12-05T13:21:00.003+11:00

Louis has just started standing for a few seconds, planted there like each leg is made of a slab of inflexible steel, with a bemused expression on his face. Today, he launched his career as a biped by taking his first steps.

At least, the first steps I've seen. And admittedly, it's hard to know what to categorise as a "step". Katja said he took a few stumbles two days ago, and yesterday afternoon he sort of threw himself into my arms after his standing trick.

This afternoon, the steps sure looked more step-like to me.

I think it will take a few weeks before he's actually taking "steps" rather than "hurling himself into the air", but hey, I'm a mother. I've decided it counts.

How Louis gets his colds

2008-12-03T19:57:00.002+11:00

Friday, it rained, so Louis and I checked out a warehouse for kids in Waterloo with slides and jumping castles and a baby yard with an infamous ball pit, aka, the viral cesspool.

I think he sucked every single ball.

Books are the bomb

2008-11-17T09:56:00.018+11:00

As far as I can tell, Louis' favourite toys are books. Sure, he likes his activity table and his stacking cups are OK, but best of all, he likes to drag his books out of his little bookshelf and push them at me so I read aloud to him.

Snaps for us, right?

Now I can be one of those insufferable mothers who drop into conversation, "We've tried and tried to interest Louis in balls and soft toys, but he just adores books. We're a little worried about his gross motor skills lagging behind because he's so far ahead with his reading," infuriating mothers whose kids prefer to shove play-dough up their noses.

However - and this is a big however - the whole book thing has, in the last few weeks, become fraught.

The way it goes is this: Louis pulls out a book. (That's Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell, a narrative in which an amazingly patient zoo sends a kid a string of animals which are too scary or noisy or big or naughty, and the fussy kid sends them all back, until finally the zoo cottons on and saves their cash and sends the kid a simple puppy. Hope I didn't spoil the gripping climax for anyone.)

I - like the marvellous mother I am - read said book to him complete with funny voices and animated expressions. He lifts the flaps, pulls the levers, feels the textures, turns the pages.

I always read the climax of the book in a big, fun voice, i.e. "THAT's my monkey!" after ten gazallion pages of "that's not my monkey...".

He listens with a longer concentration span than I would have thought possible for a nine-month-old. Again, big chunderous back pats for us.

(The photo below is Mem Fox's Where is the Green Sheep? which is my favourite book to read aloud - and trust me, you work out quickly which ones you like when you have to read them a dozen times a day. Go here for a fantastic description by the author of how difficult this elegantly-simple baby's book was to write.)

But, for the last couple of weeks after Lou turns the last page of any book, he has a total meltdown (see first photo).

He whines, he cries, he kicks, he tosses the book across the floor.

He bashes at it and screams at the top of his lungs.

It's getting to the point where, whenever he lunges for a book, I find myself distracting him with remote controls and cartwheels and jingling keys, anything to avoid that meltdown.

At first I thought it was because he didn't want the book to be over, and I'd read it again, but the more I'd read it, the more worked up he'd get at the end. If he was upset because he didn't want the book to end, surely reading it repeatedly would habituate him to the book, to the point where it was boring? But no, that didn't happen.

Then, I wondered if reading might be too darn exciting for him (as a side-note, I wish I got excited by the things that thrill a nine-month-old. It's much cheaper to get your kicks banging measuring cups and sucking remote controls than whirling around the Mediterranean on a yacht).

This weekend, I discovered if I leave him to holler and kick for a while, and busy myself folding laundry or what-have-you and simply ignore him, soon, he quietens down and starts flipping through and staring at the book's pages again.

Now I get the feeling he's so upset because he can't make the stories happen himself.

Without someone reading out loud to him, the books are half-dead, particularly because he doesn't have enough coordination or savvy yet to turn the pages in the right order and recall the story from the pictures for himself.

With his clumsy hands, he's just as likely to turn two pages as one or knock the book closed, which also makes him holler.

In other words, I'm going to be practicing my reading out loud for some time yet, I suspect:

"I wrote to the zoo to send me a pet. They sent me ...... lift the flap, mate .... an ELEPHANT! Yes, an ELEPHANT! That's a big grey elephant, Lou. But he was too big. So I sent him back."

Repeat, ad nauseum.

Toddling?

2008-11-12T14:10:00.013+11:00

Is it possible? So many developments over the last two months, and I've been too busy to write about them. On Sunday, Louis is nine months old and oh, I'm so behind on this blog!

Over the last month, I feel as if we've seen the dawn of toddlerdom.

Louis is pulling up on furniture, shuffling along the sofa while he holds on, yanking the books out of the shelves, pinching the remote control relentlessly to suck on even though he knows what "no" means (trust me, he knows), babbling and yelling, having tantrums when he doesn't get said remote control, picking fluff off the floor with great concentration and sticking it in his mouth, refusing to eat unless he can feed himself, overturning his sippy cup and pouring water over the table then splashing his hands in it, refusing to sit down in the bath, raiding any drawer he can open and flinging the contents over the floor, and other toddlerish behaviour.

The photo above of Louis with his stacking cups is already about four weeks old. His favourite thing when we took this snapshot was to remove the cups from the stack one by one, crying and flapping his arms when he knocked the stack over.

Now, his attitude to the cups is more tough bikie then nerdy physicist. Lately when he sees the stack, he dashes across the room and bashes them over with delight.

This is only the beginning of the toddler Louis emerging from the infant. It's fantastic to watch, like the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion, but almost as scary.

Each night when he goes to bed, I pat myself on the back that he's not expired yet from eating an errant paperclip or pulling the bookshelf down on himself.

The most glorious part of this explosion is he's sleeping through the night.

I know, I'm going to jinx myself for the thousandth time, but suddenly, for no apparent reason after weeks of endless waking, Louis went down ten days ago at 7pm, whimpered at 1am, and then woke at 5am for a feed ... and then went back to sleep until 6.30am. That's good enough for me to call a night.

And he's kept on doing it. Caloo calay! If it goes on much longer, I'll be forced to change the name of my blog.

Welcoming his new president

2008-11-07T09:36:00.001+11:00

Time is racing

2008-10-20T12:20:00.002+11:00

Oh my golly, so, so sorry. I've been flat-chat with writing and Louis, while he grows up like a weed.

Eight months old, and his dragging has turned to real crawling, he's trying to pull up to standing, and managing solid food like a trouper.

We're still battling with sleeping from 7pm to 7am without a wakeup call, but what's new? More soon.

Louis versus the mango

2008-10-08T20:51:00.003+11:00

First mango of the season - in fact, first mango of Louis' life. Who will conquer?

Louis 1, mango, 0.

Swimming lesson

2008-10-02T19:25:00.007+10:00

I've been around, physically, but away in my own little world with only enough energy to expend on Louis, Justin and my book, which has to be rewritten by the end of October. And my book is as demanding as a baby, so I've had to neglect my blog. All I can say is sorry, and I'll return to regular programming in a few weeks' time.

Anyway, I've been relying on Katja to pick up the slack, in life, not online: for the last three weeks, she's been around three mornings a week, as well as one full day on Thursdays. This afternoon she took Louis down to the swimming pool in our building for his first swim, and so I took a break from work and snapped some pics.

When he saw the water, he panted in the way he does when he spots his squeaky panda or his favourite book of the moment, Dear Zoo. When he hit the water, he was shocked but in a stoic, worried, Louish kind of way, shooting me a look like, "Eh? Ma? This is COLD".

Still, he bore it with his usual quiet grace. A hell of a lot like his father.

Just before bed

2008-10-02T19:23:00.000+10:00

What's been popping up

2008-09-17T12:45:00.003+10:00

A snotty nose, some restless nights and two new teeth he's always running his fingers over, as if he's a fourteen-year-old boy and they're Angelina Jolie's breasts.

Things Louis is loving: seven months old

2008-09-13T20:40:00.009+10:00

Back by popular demand. Louis is seven months old next week, and this is what's taking his fancy.

Reading books to show he's an intellectual. Especially if they're upside down.

Adding his slobber to the slobber of hundreds of other babies in the playgroup ball pit. We're taking this as a sign of his community spirit.

Weekend brunch with friends (and the toy box) at Forbes and Burton cafe.

Taking work calls on his mobile phone.

Eating leaves and beetles, for their crispy, crunchy texture.

And finally, because he's political, casting his vote in the council elections (although as an American, he keeps insisting that voting should not be compulsory).

It's got a little -

2008-09-10T09:43:00.001+10:00

- busy, but I'll be back soon.

Katja and the carrot

2008-09-04T13:43:00.016+10:00

Katja's been with us four mornings this week for the first time, instead of our usual two so I can get some writing done. She arrives at 10am and leaves before 1pm, when Louis goes down for his afternoon nap.

And both Louis and I have loved it, despite my initial trepidation.

For the record, I was never worried about Katja. If you remember, she's the child care worker and photographer I've written about before. Louis adores her, she's clever and conscientious, and her calm, warm temperament fits him just right.

I guess I've been concerned about what it means for me to have child care for Louis when I'm pretty much a pampered Stay At Home Mum. I have to keep reminding myself that I'm doing rewrites.

Because I'm not earning any money, I have a nagging feeling that I don't deserve childcare and if I was a tougher woman, a more competent and effective multi-tasker, I could rewrite the hell out of this novel while taking Louis to mini-gym sessions, swimming lessons and doing educational flash cards for two hours a day.

And I've read some serious bile from working mothers on messageboards about mothers like me, who have the help and don't do the tough hours in the office.

This week, two of the mothers in our group have gone back to their jobs as partners in law firms, albeit part-time. The other mother, a technical writer, is working full-time. All three of these women are effective, competent mothers and employees, bringing home the proscuitto, so to speak. These working mothers, they're what child-care is for.

Me? I have the luxury to "work" on a whim and a prayer, and who knows where my writing career will go.

I spoke to my aunt this morning, who she reminded me that I'm not the kind of person who ever dreamed of being a mother. So true. I've never felt motherhood was something that would fulfil me, no matter how much I adore my son, and I'm not itching to pop out another child right away.
It's also easy to get over my guilt when I've had such a glorious week.

I can't say how satisfied I felt at the end of those four days, knowing not only had I worked through another ten pages, but I'd had a lazy afternoon with my little boy, going for walks, or playing with toys, or just lying on the bed, singing songs and reading books together while he sucks on my chin and tugs my hair.

And in the mornings, while I worked in the bedroom, sitting against pillows with my laptop propped up on my thighs, there was nothing nicer than hearing Louis shriek with laughter from the loungeroom while Katja read him a story with funny voices included. The only thing nicer was being able to look back at my laptop screen and get another few paragraphs done.

(The first two pics were snapped by Katja yesterday on my crappy camera.)

And he sleeps ....

2008-09-04T10:13:00.002+10:00

... last night from 6.30pm until 3am, quick feed and up again at 6.30am.

For no good reason I can fathom.

Reminding me to relax, as just when I think I've got it set in stone, it changes on me once again.

Sleeping like a baby. Not exactly.

2008-09-03T08:42:00.011+10:00

Last night was marginally better.

Because it was just me, sans the husband, I ended up calling the Karitane help line at about 10pm to get some ideas. I needed a plan, man, so that I didn't cave and go back to whipping out the magic boob four times a night. If you had something that instantly calmed a screaming baby, wouldn't you use it as often as possible?

Lovely Karitane lady told me I should walk in and out of his room every few minutes until he would "accept" my presence in the room - i.e. not start shrieking louder when I walked in - and then soothe him by sssshing and patting or singing. Just not to take him out of the crib.

She also assured me that two feeds between 7pm and 7am wasn't unusual for a baby this age, although one was preferable, and suggested he'd go back to his normal pattern soon if I just chilled.

He fed at 11am, so at 3am and I did the walk-in walk-out shuffle. And yes, after fifteen minutes, he fell back to sleep and I felt like a genius. For an hour.

Because at 4am he woke up baying again and took a second full feed.

I've been thrown because:
a) I'm the kind of person who gets thrown easily (no, really? you're all saying), and,
b) I thought we had a good sleeping thing going, Lou and I, so good I didn't write about it in case I jinx it. (Also because I appreciate it's getting dull reading my sleep whinges.)

That's a picture of him sleeping now, at about quarter to nine on Wednesday, just fallen asleep for his first nap and nothing, not even a camera with a red focus light trained on his face, can wake him now. Aaaaah. Magic.

And tonight Justin's home, so he can walk in and out at 3am waiting for his presence to be accepted by the infant prince.

Double magic.

Bad mummy mafia

2008-09-02T13:06:00.020+10:00

Hanging over all of us breeders of the female persuasion is the fear of being a Bad Mother.

On internet message boards around the globe, in mother's groups and baby health clinics behind backs, in parks and Gymboroo sessions and during baby swimming lessons, there are women muttering darkly about other women's mothering skills, pointing out that THEY, at least, would never parent like that.

Last night was a Bad Mummy night, the kind of night where, if you told other mothers about it, they would nod and say, "oh yes, it happens", but quietly Worry About The Future Of That Poor Child to each other behind my back.

Yesterday afternoon, Justin left for a high court case in Canberra, and, owing to a few diversions too dull to write about, Louis missed his last little nap, refusing to take it in the car as I'd hoped.

And after that, the evening turned into murder.

By 6pm, Louis was yelling that he wanted to go to sleep, but we were still in the car coming home from the airport. He cried and complained bitterly through my ultra-short version of dinner and bath-time, and collapsed into his bed at 6.45pm.

Cue dramas.

All was fine until 10.30pm when he woke, squalling, and I felt anxiety seep through my bones. For weeks now, he's never woken before midnight.

I waited while he grizzled, drinking tea through clenched lips, pressing the remote control buttons so hard I wore the labels off, and a few minutes later he fell asleep.

Thank God, I thought, my pulse slowing. Of course, he woke again and we repeated this until at 11pm I caved and fed him. He ate barely anything, just sucked for comfort and fell asleep.

(A note for the non-parents: this is no newborn. This is an almost seven-month-old baby who eats solidly during the day and has shown over and over again that he only needs one feed a night, maximum, or he won't eat during the day.)

He slept until 3am when he woke and, not knowing what else to do, I fed him again since he hadn't eaten much at 11pm.

Two hours after that, he woke howling with a wet nappy. I changed him - no feed - and he refused to go back to sleep although he was rubbing his eyes and yawning, still very tired.

So he screamed from 5am until 6.30am intermittently, with me going in and out of the room every few minutes for the first hour trying to console him. No wet nappy, he was not sick, and he couldn't be hungry - this was confirmed at 7.30am when he burped and refused to feed, already stuffed from the all-you-can-eat Vegas breakfast buffet at which he'd snacked at 3am.

But nothing would stop him. Not singing, not patting, not rocking, not Baby Panadol in case he was teething, and picking him up only worked until I put him back down again. He was simply inconsolable, for no reason I could discover.

(Just a question: do other mothers in apartments think of the poor neighbours grinding their teeth in bed at 5.30am, swearing about the breeders upstairs, or is it just me? Because we're in an inner-city, gay-friendly, not-many-kids-around apartment building, let me tell you.)

I ended up giving up trying to comfort him at 6am and went back to bed, letting him cry on and off for another twenty minutes or so, until finally both of us slept. At 7.15am he woke again, and reluctantly, we began our day.

Today, I definitely feel like one of those Bad Bad Mothers.

And I'm also waiting for DOCs to break down my door, after tip-offs from the neighbours.

Things Louis is loving: six months old

2008-08-27T22:28:00.010+10:00

The bucket swing in the playground on Little Surrey St in Darlinghurst.

Visiting the grandparents' house in Malabar.

Bouncing up and down with help from someone else.

The mindnumbing madness of administrivia

2008-08-25T13:05:00.002+10:00

Hmmm. After pondering my last post, I'm considering buying this:

http://www.perfectmadness.net/about.html

Manic organic

2008-08-24T20:39:00.017+10:00

When it comes to starting a baby on solids, the experts recommend beginning slowly with rice cereal, then adding one bland vegetable every four days to see the kid's reaction.

Here's the kind of thing that the books and websites recommend:

"Start with a teaspoon of infant rice cereal ... Increase the amount by a teaspoon each day until she’s eating a maximum of two tablespoons. Once she’s eating two tablespoons, you can give her solid food twice a day. The consistency of the cereal or vegetable can be thickened slightly as she eats more."

Bored yet? Yeah, me too. And also, I'm over the way these writers to be hyper-politically-correct always use "she".

So we've just skipped all of that, including the rice cereal which Louis never had at all, and gone straight to the hardcore food. It's become a bit like Kiddie Cordon Bleu here in Kings Cross with the eating of the solids.

For example, today for breakfast Louis had organic porridge with homemade berry and pear puree. For lunch, he dined on lentil and apple dahl with runny egg yolk, served with sides of mashed avocado touched with lemon and sweet potato mash swirled with garlic and olive oil.

His snack was biodynamic yoghurt and mashed blueberries, and dinner was cheesy chicken broccoli with a side of polenta with a drizzle of passata.

Note: these are meals for a six-month-old who still pours water over his lap when he tries to drink from a sippy cup. A. A. Gill my son is not.

(Reading back, I see this post has the reek of an underhanded boast, which shows I have gone slightly insane since I had this baby. Even when taking the piss out of myself, I am boasting. I think I need to work in an office two days a week to get my priorities realigned, and so I have someone to give me regular praise and performance reviews.)

My mania for meals has got to the point where Tanya, from our mother's group, said yesterday with a perplexed expression that Louis eats better than she does.

Can I say? Obviously this has to do with my ego rather than Louis's tastes. The kid opens his mouth for anything - he's the easiest eater I've ever met, apart from my husband. I haven't tried olive paste yet but I will soon, just to see what he does.

Obviously, I am a Trier.

Really. Try. Hard. Must. Do. Everything. Brilliantly. Or. Feel. Inadequate. Need. To. Be. Perfect. Mother.

So I'm dallying with the idea of an experiment.

Tomorrow - or maybe the day after if I can't bring myself to do it tomorrow - I will open some Heinz and feed the baby straight from the jar, since he's not the one who cares.

Just to give myself a mini-break from all the pressure I'm putting on myself, I'll feed the child some food that doesn't look like it belongs on the menu of a pretentious organic cafe. (Of course, I cracked and the Heinz is organic. Sorry.)

Anyway, the photo above. It's inner-city latte sipping at its finest.

It's Louis and Justin in our local (organic) cafe this morning, between naps in Louis' daily napping/eating/playing schedule that would make a military junta proud.

Louis' mouth is a mess from eating the foam off the top of my soy hot chocolate.

Note the books also recommend not introducing chocolate to the kids if possible, but we got over that one pretty quickly, too.

And awww. Doesn't the little baby fed on organic/70% cocoa/pulled-from-the-arse-of-a-unicorn chocolate look sweet?

And doesn't the husband look slightly out of it? I think the handpicked 100 percent organic coffee didn't have the kick of his usual stuff.

Aunts and uncles

2008-08-20T20:13:00.002+10:00

Lots of family lately. Above, my sister Bianca with her nephew in a local cafe. And below ...

Bianca again with our youngest brother, JJ, in Centennial dog park on Sunday.

The ultimate male accessory

2008-08-19T12:20:00.003+10:00

I've noticed a curious phenomenon on the streets of Sydney on the weekend, when our little family frequents a local cafe for a late breakfast.

(Every Saturday, at about 10.30am after Louis' first nap and before his second, we walk up the road for some poached eggs and avocado which the baby shares with me, as well as some muesli, coffee and a chat with friends. Our favourite friend for Saturday morning breakfasts is Mac. That's Mac below with Louis.)

Anyway, back to my original point. I've noticed that when Justin's pushing the pram, women flock like buzzards around carrion.

They stare. They coo, and not only at my baby. They smile and giggle. They stop at streetlights and forget which direction they were headed, their eyes glued to my men.

Astonishing, isn't it?

A bloke just has to push a pram, and he's suddenly George Clooney with an additional caring, nurturing, gushy side women can't resist.

And when I'm pushing a pram. Well.

That's me in the photo below pushing Louis in the pram.

Because when a woman pushes a pram, she's obviously invisible.

I say obviously because young guys texting on mobile phones regularly bump into me on the footpath and scowl as if it's my fault. Middle-aged males push past us in the supermarket, causing Louis to drop his toy and me to drop the bananas. Old men allow elevator doors to close before I reach them.

And so many men step down each kerb onto the ramp designed for wheelchairs and harrassed mothers pushing prams.

These men love to block oncoming mothers trying to hussle their kids off the road, so they're not smooshed by the Land Cruiser speeding down the street which is usually driven - not surprisingly - by a man.

Either that, or it's by a woman who hasn't got kids or doesn't like them much.

(Enjoying the bile? Great, because I am, too.)

The people who notice a woman behind a pram are other involved parents, or people who have contact with kids. And in Potts Point, there's not so many of them.

All mothers see other mothers, even if they're eighty and their kids are sixty. They still see us and say hello.

As do fathers behind prams, or fathers with young kids at home. They're always careful, steering around me, smiling, asking how old Louis is.

As do people with nephews and nieces they're close to, or grandchildren, or child carers, or people considering having kids.

Naturally, they all notice kids.

However, this post isn't purely vitriol, because I have a confession to make. I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I was one of those Potts Point-living, kerb-blocking Land Cruiser drivers.

Before I had kids, I was one of those women who never noticed kids and mums either.

So now I'm part of a new club. And as a new and rookie member, I extend my apologies to all those mothers I never saw, those prams I pushed past, that cursing I did when you blocked the fresh produce aisle in the supermarket.

Because now, well. I'm eating humble pie.

Yoga baby

2008-08-17T11:24:00.005+10:00

He's ascetically bald, happy in the nude, never touches alcohol, doesn't wear deodorant, and teaches classes at the Paddington community centre on Mondays and Thursdays.

Imodi-mum

2008-08-16T09:55:00.015+10:00

Today is Louis' six month birthday .... yes, we've made it to six months without me being carted off to the mental hospice, or Louis crawling out on us to find another family. Snaps to us, peeps!

And yesterday, Louis and I visited our doctor for the baby's six-month shots.

I have to digress here and just say how much we heart our doctor. She's great.

She specialised in paediatrics in England, before she came to Australia. She used to work with the mighty Robin Barker, author of the book Baby Love, as well as with Jann Zintgraff, two of the best known baby health nurses in the city, and she's just terrific with Louis and with a nervy first-time mum.

Anyway, the shots were fine, but I've managed to clog up my baby's arse.

A fortnight ago, I noticed he wasn't putting on much weight each week and so I went to my doc. She recommended feeding him more fat and not just fruit and veg. So I started him on a fattening diet. This baby has a mega-metabolism, I've realised, he's skinny and always bouncing about, so he burns off the calories like an athlete.

Anyway. My fattening diet meant I offered egg yolk, and started putting rice cereal and olive oil in all his veges to add extra carbs and fat. I also provided meat at lunch, which he loves.

But I think - as usual - I was trying too hard and went overboard on the rice cereal, as Louis has spent the last two mornings at breakfast going red in the face and grunting and getting distressed as he tries to do a dump.

And all that comes out are rabbit pellets.

So my doc said it was time to loosen him up. I offered him prune juice this morning in his sippy cup, and a slab of pureed fruit in his porridge.

Being such a diligent-to-the-point-of-insanity mother, this child's arse is bound to explode with a splatter soon.

Stay tuned.

Slept like a baby. He did. Not me.

2008-08-14T09:07:00.005+10:00

I'm going to have to change the name of my blog.

Last night, Louis went down at 6.45pmish, woke and fussed for a few minutes at 11pm which we ignored, and then snoozed happily until 4am.

He didn't wake then, though. My wakeful, rolling, creeping baby did not wake at 4am, people.

Oh no. It's me who woke at 4am, eyes wide open, breasts terribly engorged.

After staring out at the city for twenty minutes and willing myself back to sleep, I then schlepped to the kitchen to pump out one aching, concrete-y breast.

Then, I cursed a lot, and stomped into Louis' room to wake him to feed on the other breast. A large sleeping baby no-no, waking him and all. Still, he fed. And then fell back asleep.

So I guess the name of the blog still holds, because I had a terrible night's sleep.

Except this time, it's all my own fault.

Sleep boot camp

2008-08-13T09:08:00.008+10:00

Lately, I've gotten tough when it comes to sleep.

Louis is six months old on Saturday, and it's time for him to lace up his sleeping boots, so to speak. I'm not aiming for sleeping through the night yet, as I want to make sure he's properly fed, but I am clamping down.

Over the last ten days, we've started a few new things. First, we shut his bedroom door and stop checking in on him every hour or so before we go to bed. Stupid that we weren't doing this before, eh? I'm sure it's been disturbing his sleep.

Second, we've started allowing a maximum of two feeds between 7pm and 7am, letting him cry it out a little for anything that's too soon after a previous feed. If he cries and cries though, I'm going to assume he's truly hungry and just feed the little bugger.

Third, and most importantly, I've conscientiously shifted back his bedtime fifteen minutes or so. In general, I'd like to get him down by 6.30pm but it's more like 6.45pm, which is still OK.

And so far, it's working. For example, he had a little cry at 10.30pm last night, which stopped after three minutes. He woke again for a feed at 1.30am and then again at 6.30am. Fantastic.

And now, well, I've surely jinxed myself.

World citizens

2008-08-11T21:18:00.020+10:00

Emily and her husband Charles, and Louis' little mate Gus moved to Oregon today.

Sigh. Another cool lady leaving us.

Emily is sheer quality. What I admire most about her is not her charisma, verve or wit, of which she has truck-loads, but her fantastic way of letting people be who they are.

I see it best with her son Gus, who is three days younger than Louis.

When he's fussing or bleating, she stops, watches, listens to him and takes her time unravelling what he's trying to communicate. She respects him as a person, albeit a six-month-old person, and watching her mother Gus has taught me a lot about how I want to be with Louis.

Still, she's leaving us and we're sulking.

Although I and the rest of our mothers' group wish her well, we're kind of pissed off about her trans-Pacific exit. After all, we've got to find someone to replace her. One of the other mothers, the ebullient Tanya, suggested we interview Nicole who's back in the country with Keith and Sunday Rose.

But we all agreed that after Emily, Nicole just wouldn't cut it.

The family bed

2008-08-08T21:13:00.022+10:00

Up north at my aunt and uncle's Byron hinterland property, Louis and I stayed in the guest room, with a portable cot for the baby my uncle kindly found for me.

The guest room looks out onto palms and grass and the gum trees in which koalas live.

Inside, the room is painted the colour of clotted cream and has a gorgeous queen-sized bed with fresh white sheets. It's just beautiful - restful and simple at the same time.

Well, the baby had been unsettled by the plane so he spent most of the flight and half the afternoon breastfeeding. Naturally, his little bladder was full of liquid. So by midnight on that chilly night, Louis had pissed through his gro-bag and pyjamas in his portable cot.

"Aha!" I thought as I changed him, his little legs kicking in the air. "Clever me, I brought back-up."

Except by 2am, Louis was bleating again, and I discovered he'd pissed through a second set of pyjamas and a second gro-bag as well, and that was the end of the reserves.

It was cold by that time, about ten degrees according to the thermometer that came with his gro-bag, so I brought my little bebe into the big, warm queen-sized bed thinking "right, I'll go all tribal and earth-mother for the rest of the night and discover what this family bed biz is about".

(I just want to note for my aunt and uncle's sake, I've stayed in their guest room before and it's never 10 degrees at night unless you're stupid, like I was, and forget to close the windows. Oiks.)

So back to the family bed. Why not give it a whirl, I thought? I had a romantic vision of our faces close together, my nose nuzzling his downy hair, my breath warming his little face, his tiny hands brushing my neck in his sleep. Gorgeous, right?

But, after spending half the night sharing our bed as is common in many Asian and African cultures, I have to say, I have no idea how co-sleepers do it.

Perhaps I was trying too hard.

First, I made sure Louis was in his warmest sweater, trousers and socks. Then, remembering all the guidelines I've read about co-sleeping (which seem impossible to execute except in equatorial climates, by the way. No blankets and pillows AT ALL?) I put him on a flat, cleared area on the mattress with the blankets up to his waist and a low pillow buffering the drop on his side of the bed.

Yes, I know, no pillows allowed, but seriously, he rolls, this baby. He rolls and creeps around his crib, and because the room was so tar-black at night, I had no faith he wouldn't plunge off the bed onto the floorboards, which would be very bad indeed.

I also gave him a good margin of space, in case I'd flip and smother him - yes, everyone tells me mothers never roll onto their babies but I'm yet to be convinced I have that instinct.

Also, I tucked my trusty mobile phone under my armpit so, in the utter blackness, I could illuminate the bed to see where Louis had planted himself.

Well. After preparation worthy of the Marines, there wasn't much sleeping on my side of the bed, and not on Lou's either.

For the rest of the night, the baby chased my breasts around the bed like the CIA chasing Matt Damon through The Bourne Supremacy.

You'd think I was vending Belgian hot chocolate from my nipples, the persistence with which he wanted access to the buffet. Every hour or so, he'd bleat, and I'd feel him wiggle over towards me, his little hands swatting at my top, his legs giving me stroppy kicks in the belly.

Of course, I lifted my shirt and let him do his thing for the sake of sleep. Perhaps it was the scent of the milk, but sharing a bed with me seemed to disturb his sleep as much as it disturbed mine.

By the end of the night, my nipples were sore, my breasts like empty socks from the demand, and Louis was belching and whinging from an over-full belly.

Still, I reflected as I hauled myself out of bed, vowing never to co-sleep again. Still. At least I know I'm appreciated - no male has ever mauled my breasts so much as my baby son.

Journey through darkness

2008-08-08T20:14:00.012+10:00

Repeat performance

2008-08-05T14:19:00.002+10:00

I've just noticed I seem to be wearing the same turquoise shirt in every post.

Trust me. I'm not postnatally depressed, and I do have more clothes. I just wear this shirt as a pyjama top and I have no pride when it comes to being photographed.

Travelling north

2008-08-05T09:21:00.011+10:00

Tomorrow Louis and I are travelling north with my sister Bianca, for my cousin's funeral.

Two Moses women and one infant will be flying to the Gold Coast and driving back down the coast to Byron, after a bit of tussling over flights and prices.

I know it will be a gritty, emotionally-draining trip but it's one we have to take, much like the characters in the David Williamson play we were all forced to study in high school.

And in terms of logistics, I have no idea how Louis is going to take his messy meals on the run. He'll also have to be flexible and have his naps in the car and wherever-we-are, so we'll see how he'll manage when our now smooth routine is interrupted. But, as my mother likes to tell me, babies are adaptable and he'll cope just fine.

How I'll cope is more to the point.

At least as far as "stuff" goes, I've realised my son is as inflexible as his mother.

These little people, they're high maintenance when it comes to luggage. I'm an uber-packer, one of those smug types who likes to make everyone boggle when she walks onto a plane with just carry-on baggage for a ten-day trip, but now with a baby I have to suck up the sheer masses of necessary crap.

We've got to take pjs, nappies, gro-bags, clothes, extra clothes for when he pukes, organic commercial baby food as it's too hard to bring my own (I'm such an inner-city latte-sipping mum), a few toys, and the pram and the travel cot as Louis has never slept in a bed with me and we're not going to start now.

I've dug my heels in, and I refuse to take anything but my usual suitcase below, a small carry-on affair, into which I'm going to squeeze everything except the cot and the pram.

I AM DETERMINED to do this, even if it means I have to wear the same underwear for a few days.

Goodbye Raal

2008-08-04T09:09:00.021+10:00

My cousin Raal was 31 years old and for most of my life, she was like a second sister.

Even as a kid, she was dramatic, dictatorial, exasperating, funny, mercurial, a natural lead, and the eye of any party.

I remember as children, our favourite activity was putting on home-spun plays we would force our families to watch.

As soon as we hit each others' houses, we would raid the dress-up box and our mothers' wardrobes, and spend the day planning and rehearsing for that afternoon's curtain. Raal, being Raal, would necessarily direct, design and choreograph the works and then take the best roles .... and the plays were always a success because of her natural flair for performance.

In life, she dialled up the performances, too.

Stunning to look at, sarcastic, continual wearer of push-up bras, high-heeled sandals and snug, curve-revealing jeans even in the coldest weather, Raal's the one who - although she was two years younger - showed me how to put on liquid eyeliner and was always hassling me to wear my denim tighter.

Raal could shop a rack of clothes like a Sak's buyer, entering what looked like a junky St Vinnies and turning up gold. She was also warm and lavish in her affections, and had one of the sharpest senses of humour I've met.

When she was doing well, she was an artist, and painted vivid, sophisticated pictures which she never thought were good enough.

But, being dramatic by nature, her life was laced with dramas.

My cousin struggled with an eating disorder for fifteen years, and all the depression and self-loathing that accompanies it. She also warred with a sense she'd never achieved what she was capable of, having dropped out of school when she was 16 despite being a clever student.

A few weeks before Raal died, she won a government grant to run an eating disorders clinic in Lismore where she lives.

She was dizzy with her success after feeling like a failure for so long. She was meeting her first client, a girl with an eating disorder who needed to speak to someone who'd been through it. According to everyone around, Raal was at her most infectious and upbeat, starting a project at which she knew she could succeed.

My cousin leaves a 4-year-old son, a crushed mother and father, and a family unable to believe that this could happen to Raal.

On standby

2008-07-31T08:40:00.003+10:00

The news from up north is grim: my cousin isn't breathing when they've turned off her respirator, and the brain scans show extensive damage.

Even worse, she's not responding to anything and her heart rate goes through the roof when she's taken off support.

I may rush up there very soon with Louis for a few days. We're on standby over here, walking - sorry creeping - across the carpet and waiting, waiting, waiting, thinking, thinking, thinking.

Bad news

2008-07-25T09:49:00.008+10:00

Yesterday we got some bad news. My 31-year-old cousin, who I've always been close to, has been in a car accident near her home in Lismore and is in a coma.

At first, I just wouldn't believe it, and the shockwaves are reverberating up and down the generations.

Every few minutes, I keep hoping with every cell in my body that my cousin didn't feel any pain, see or feel any horror, and that she survives this.

That thought is swiftly followed by the one that goes: I can't imagine what it's like for something that awful to happen to your child. My poor aunt is understandably a husk of herself, sucked dry with dread and terror, waiting to see if her only child recovers.

To add to the tragedy, my cousin has a impish, bright, active four-year-old son whose life may soon be wrenched out from under him. He's a real mummy's boy, only falls asleep at night with his mother beside him, his fingers tangled in her long, dark hair.

Myself? If something happened to Louis, I would feel as if I wanted to find myself a damned, foul-smelling hole somewhere in which to disappear.

And if something happened to ME, I can't bear to think how Louis would cope in the world without his mother.

Even thinking about it brings tears to my eyes.

Obviously Louis wouldn't remember me, which makes me feel nauseous. Last night just before I fell asleep, I told Justin that if something did happen to me, he must, must, must let Louis know as he grew up how much his mother loved him.

When a terrible accident happens, it's almost as if it confirms all my worst fears as a parent.

As soon as Louis was born, I suddenly realised Justin and I had something fragile, more precious than anything else we'd ever held, to protect and fret about and feel sick over, something that could so easily be broken and never, ever replaced.

I also realised that before the birth, I hadn't appreciated how much anxiety - along with joy - that could bring.

After the initial shock yesterday, I spent the afternoon and evening forgetting and then remembering about my cousin in waves, being fidgety, anxious, stressed, checking and rechecking Louis was breathing, giving him lots more rocking and kisses and hugs than any baby expert would recommend.

Back to regular programming when my hands stop shaking.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

2008-07-23T10:57:00.005+10:00

So very tired. Am sick of getting up to rolling, fake coughing, wailing, trying-to-crawl, whinging baby.

Sooky babies

2008-07-22T16:25:00.012+10:00

This post, I'm going to try to stop myself talking about the sleeping - reading about it is getting tedious, even for me, but let's just say there's been a lot of daytime napping going on here in Chez Hewitt and it's not the baby who needs it.

Instead, I'm going to gird my emotional loins and talk about something else. (See? My negative sleeping thoughts will not control me. My negative sleeping thoughts will not control me. Repeat ad nauseum.)

Today, we had Kath Carmody and her son Jacob over.

Kath and I know each other from the Big Bad Newspaper world where I used to work, and she still does.

Like me, Kath is a fast talker, so we managed to update each other on the last year in the first ten minutes, but we still had things to say four hours later.

She's witty, is Kath, very funny and sharp and a real bright spark, with a wry honesty about what it's like to be a mother. Having said that, she also adores her little son and has a lovely way with him, letting him know when she's going to have lunch or disappear to the bathroom, without brooking too much whining.

Jacob is nine months old and very cute indeed, as well as extremely advanced. He's saying mama and dada and being insanely interactive.

Today, we noticed Jacob and Louis have a trait in common - they're both complete sooks. Very sensitive boys, our babies. Very sweet. See the photos?

I can't remember who started it, but both of them were fighting their naps so we gave it up as a bad joke and brought them out to the living room while we tried to eat lunch.

Soon, one of the boys started crying.

The second looked at the first and burst into tears, provoking the first to sob louder, which made the second cry even harder.

Unfortunately, I was laughing too hard to keep the camera still.

(And then of course I rushed to comfort my son.)

Flipping ?

2008-07-21T19:02:00.004+10:00

Hmmm. This flipping thing is a mixed blessing. The seven hours was a rare, rare beast which I'm hoping we'll have again once he's learnt to roll back.

He still hasn't worked it out. Last night I was up twice attending to a child who crept his way to the top of the bed and got stuck, and woke all bothered.

Still. Naps are better and there's something incredibly cute about his flipping, even at 5.30am when he's bawling and frustrated.

Flipping heaven

2008-07-19T10:16:00.008+10:00

I almost don't want to post this in case I jinx myself. But what the hell.

We went out last night and a babysitter fed Louis a bottle at 10pm. He went straight back down. We arrived home at midnight, went to bed and there was not a peep until after 5.20am.

That's over seven hours between wake-ups. Almost a night.

In fact, in "sleeping through the night terms", it actually is a night. My baby slept through the night last night.

It's because of the tummy sleeping. He's so much more settled on his belly. I've heard many babies are, but I never thought that might help Louis sleep. Though when I think about it, both Justin and I are devoted stomach sleepers, so why not our son?

After a little Googling, though, I'm worried about SIDs. He's still not six months and he can't roll back reliably.

Yet I can't stop him rolling. We always put him down on his back but an hour or so later, he just flips, puts his head to one side, his hand grasps a crib railing, and he falls asleep again.

I'm thinking perhaps I should get a sleep positioner. And yet .... am I being a Maud, overly worried? He's already five months. I'm in two minds about it.

Flipping hell

2008-07-18T10:43:00.004+10:00

Oh dear.

Every nap is broken as Louis flips and then howls to be turned back over.

As soon as he's turned onto his back, he flips back onto his stomach again. Ad nauseum. The more times he's turned, the more he gets worked up until he's hysterical and shrieking.

At night, we're putting him in his gro-bag AND a blanket at his waist-level well-tucked under the sides of the mattress to keep him on his back, but with some persistence, he still flips.

I was up three times last night flipping him back, and, each time, just as he's almost falling asleep, he flips over again, as if he's torturing himself.

I think we're just going to have to wait it out until he manages to get back by himself, but anyone, any other suggestions?

Edited to add: also, I've noticed today that Sir Crankius has red cheeks, is chewing on everything, and I think I can see lumps in his lower gums. Dear God, does this mean he's also teething?

Five months

2008-07-16T12:38:00.001+10:00

Today Louis turned five months old.

He's got some fascinating new behaviours. One is flipping from his back to his stomach, and looking very smug after he's done it.

Unfortunately, this morning he's decided to practice every time he naps, so I have to go into his room when I hear him fussing, and flip him back. I thought putting him in his gro-bag sleeping bag might work but no, no, he can still flip in the bag.

I'm expecting the next few nights to be long ones, with Justin and I each nudging the other to go flip Louis back over.

Also, he's become fascinated by his voice. At the moment, he's obsessed with fake-coughing and blowing raspberries. He makes these sound when he wakes up at night and in the morning to entertain himself.

At first it was adorable. We were all, "awww, our lil bebe's found his voice! He coughs! Ka-YOOT!"

Now, the charm is wearing thin.

This morning at 6.30am, I rolled over and faced Justin, who was, like me, half-awake trying to ignore the coughing and buzzing, and likened it to sleeping next door to a particularly childish emphysema sufferer.

Interminable as a Bergman flick

2008-07-15T21:27:00.000+10:00

Ach mein Gott! The frustration!

Breezy day

2008-07-15T20:25:00.001+10:00

An easy day. Blue sky, crisp air, shadows like cool water, the scent of jasmine around Rushcutters Bay.

In the morning, Louis was with Katja, his part-time nanny, meaning I got some writing done.

In the afternoon, Louis and I went for a walk with Emily and her son Gus, up to Oxford St, and then into the city to check out the pilgrims hanging about for World Youth Day. (I haven't discovered WHICH day is World Youth Day, as it seems to last more than a week, but that's likely because I'm a heathen.)

Here's Emily feeding dog treats to a dalmatian called Pablo who lives in the mechanic's shop on Roslyn St.

And here's Gus, peering out from his pram to watch. He looks suspicious, as if Pablo might eat his mother.

We saw Jesus Loves Me t-shirts, exuberant Brazilians playing fake-matador on the street with a red scarf, and a strange mix of religions which Emily and I both photographed. Hers was better.

A quick turn around the bookshop, and then home again in the darkening sky, under the face of a round, silver moon, to put a fussing Louis into the bath and against the breast.

As I lifted Louis into his crib, I couldn't help but think what fine little companions our sons are - both of them patient, inquisitive, social - and that days like these are part of the golden age of motherhood.

Monday afternoons

2008-07-14T12:20:00.001+10:00

On Monday afternoons, Louis and I have a routine of going to my parents' house in Malabar. We've tried Wednesdays and Thursdays, but they're never as good as Mondays.

My parents' house is right near the golf course, and on the water, so Louis and I can sit in the garden and play with the dog and watch the wide ocean sway and the whales pass in the distance.

On the way, we usually drop into my mother's surgery so Louis can be weighed.

I love the weighing almost as much as the Monday afternoon visit.

Mum's receptionist, Elaine, who used to be a paediatric nurse, fusses over Louis and handles him in that calm, brusque way professionals seem to hold babies. In her arms, he just relaxes like a sigh being let out, knowing he's being held by a pro.

Monday afternoons encapsulate the reason we came back to Australia (and it's not because of Elaine, although both of us dig her).

When Louis enters my parents' house, it's as if Angelina Jolie and her newborn twins were flown in by helicopter. Everyone crowds around, the cameras flash and Louis loves to look slightly above it all.

He's an instant celebrity and I'm like his entourage, gathering his things and booking appointments into diaries and scurrying in his wake while he's carried on shoulders.

Seriously, the amount of energy my family wastes trying to make Louis smile or goo or blow raspberries could power the emerging Chinese economy.

That's my mother in the photo above, holding Louis. She's always been such a kind, warm, ebullient mother to me, and I'll be pleased if I can be anywhere near as good a mother.

Justin and I were at a friend's house a few weeks ago and the woman, a professional and a mother of two, seemed shocked that I'd invited my mother to Louis' birth.

It was clear she'd never met my mother.

First, there was no way to keep Kinga away. Half a world globe couldn't do it. And second, I wouldn't have wanted to, either. She and Justin were the perfect team, both calming, funny and supportive, both rolling their eyes quietly at my hysteria, and both washed clean with joy when the sticky, screamy bundle finally arrived.

Now, it's strange to think that - when we lie on the bed on Monday afternoons and play with the baby and talk about some weird thing Louis is doing - she remembers me doing the same things.

Quietly, I'm gobsmacked that time works in this way, so that my mother and I can be two adults calmly discussing Louis' feeding in 2008, when I was the one baffling her in 1974.

There are only two people who truly understand how intensely I feel about Louis - and I don't mean how intensely a mother feels about her child, I mean how intensely I, Alexa, feel about this particular baby, Louis.

The first is my husband, and the second is my mother.

So, when Justin's at work and I can't rant to him about our child, there's nothing more heartening to me to be able to tell someone that Louis is "so adorable I could eat his face off," and having them not only understand, but AGREE.

And that's the best thing of all about Monday afternoons.

What it's worth

2008-07-11T19:12:00.000+10:00

A little tired and despondent today.

Again with the double-night-wakenings. Louis will put himself back to sleep for the 2amish wakening, but if I ignore him, he wakes again an hour later, leading me to surmise he's truly hungry. Then I get cranky because I was too stupid to feed him the first time and get it over with.

If we're really lucky like we were last night, he'll also wake at 6am with tummy troubles instead of his usual 7.30am.

I phoned my wonderful mum this evening, just needing to whine to someone. She gave me a thorough mental shake, topped with a dollop of sympathy, which was exactly right. She told me to feed him when he woke crying because it was quicker, and reminded me that none of us four slept through until one year old.

"And then you were all walking, and I guess you were so tired you stopped needing a feed."

Which made me feel better. If she sucked it up with four, then I can manage one.

Otherwise, our Louis is almost five months old and growing sweeter by the day. He seems to know his name now, and loves chatting and bouncing on laps and trying to chew his feet and trying to creep across the floor, reminding me of a paraplegic in rehab.

He's also taken to grabbing for my chin when we're feeding.

I used to think he just wanted to hold something, so I tried to fob him off with a toy, but no, he swatted the green giraffe away and clutched for a piece of my flesh. It's no dice with the chin, but we compromise and he holds my thumb.

It's ME he wants to be in contact with. (Damn obvious, right? After all, I am his mother and he has no choice but to love me. And yet this still surprises me).

And that? That's worth a year of sleep deprivation.

Woolworths

2008-07-07T13:20:00.001+10:00

The olives were $6.95, the bread $4.95 and I couldn't resist the child on sale for $2.75, second sock not included.

(Thanks Emily for the pic.)

The damned books

2008-07-07T12:42:00.000+10:00

You know those people who were trained at Life's University under the tutelage of that rakish professor called Experience?

I'm definitely not one of those people.

Personally, I've always been a fan of accumulated wisdom. I see the advantage of avoiding the pitfalls that others before you have fallen into.

In fact, I'm the kind of person who, when confronting the dragon, prefers to march forth with a sharp sword, a variety of snacks, as much information about the life-cycle of the beast as I can muster, and a sturdy umbrella tucked under my arm.

Even from here I can hear the Experience types who just love to go with that flow rolling their eyes in a slightly superior, amused way.

Because they believe in Life's University, they never come out and tell you what they think directly - it's better you learn it yourself.

Still, their thoughts are transmitted in that little smile: "all your anal-retentive, uptight, bookish stuff never works in real life and you'll get your comeuppance".

Except it mostly does. Note that for thirty-three years, this approach has worked a treat.

It's worked at school and university. It's worked with the functional craft skills of writing. It's worked when stuck on a tricky knitting maneuvoure.

It's even worked with relationships (check out Cary Tennis's column Since You Asked). And if you read fantastic literature and drink it all in, you can learn a ton.

Unfortunately - and it pains, pains, pains me to admit this - you smug, easygoing, devil-may-care Experience types win hands down when it comes to mothering.

So far, I have devoured a massive pile of the damned mothering books.

From Contented Little Baby to the Baby Whisperer, from Weissbluth to Pantley, I've perused them all.

I can quote the fine gradations between the gradual removal method to CIO (crying-it-out), I know about 45-minute sleep cycles, I can describe the technique of wake-to-sleep, I can argue the advantages of blackout blinds and minimal eye contact during night feeds, I can tell you the average hours of sleep a day needed by one-month olds versus nine-month olds.

I've read message boards, Googled until my fingers blistered and even emailed experts when I was desperate.

And you know what?

I'm forced to agree that, for the first time in my life, all my reading has done is to depress and confuse me.

There is nothing quite like waking again to your baby's cries at 5am, staring blearily out the window, knowing that the rest of the mothering world has it all under control while your child refuses to be Pantleyed, Forded or even, God-help-us, Spocked.

With the books, naturally, comes the idea that my son's habits are under my control. The idea that my son is under my control, that I am in charge here. I mean, yes. I am the parent (and he'd better not forget it).

But I'm only onstage for such a short time, and I'm not even the main character here, dammit. Yes, I've got a meaty supporting role but it's not top billing.

And, as Louis gets older, I'll be forced to fade off into the wings, still supporting, still encouraging, still vital, but off-stage.

In other words, no one has all the answers, and it isn't about me.

Realising this makes me want to pull the teeth of those earth-mothers who have the easiest babies in the world. You know, the feed-on-demand earth mothers who tell everyone to walk barefoot, co-sleep and it will all end up fine.

They're the parents who have that aggravating little smile on their lips. Check your faces, everyone. Is this you?

So for now, I still read the books. Eh. Old habits die hard. But I note the contradictions. And when it all goes belly-up and I don't know what to do, I just take a deep breath and do whatever works.

And so far, it's working.

(Note that also, I quietly pray those Experience mothers have, for their second children, little brats who bite and rub snot on the sofa and refuse to sleep.)

Moving

2008-06-30T13:31:00.000+10:00

I've been offline and will be for a little longer, while we organise internet access in our new apartment.

The babe is well, he's loving having his own room - actually, I'M loving that he has his own room - and generally being cute.

Back shortly after screwing together some Ikea furniture.

Katja

2008-06-24T12:09:00.000+10:00

Katja comes in two mornings a week to look after Louis, so I can write, go to the gym, run errands and generally have a little time to myself.

We're lucky to have Katja, Louis and I.

She's a lovely chick with a great sense of humour and a creative spark, who enjoys being with my son. In fact, you can see her hair and torso in the photo just below.

She and Louis hang out, play, do craft projects together (last week, she daubed the feet of a perturbed Louis with blue paint and printed them on card), read books, sing, go for walks to the park where they sit under the trees and watch the leaves, and generally have a great old time.

In fact, when Katja's here, Louis's so excited he hardly takes a proper breastfeed because he knows that playtime's on its way.

When he's supposed to be feeding and she's in the room, he smiles and coos and flirts with her, and generally makes me feel like an old boot.

Not only is she excellent with kids, but Katja is also a great photographer.

In this post are a few of the fruits of her labour, so you can see how skillful she is, and see what Louis actually looks like in real life, rather than through the dubious lens of my camera.

To me, her photos have a retro kind of sensibility, somehow elegant and homespun all at once, that I love.

Mouthful

2008-06-23T19:25:00.001+10:00

When he's nursing, Louis has this habit of looking up at me with a fat mouthful of tit in his gob and smiling.

Naturally, I melt like a chocolate button on hot concrete.

But lately, he's started looking up at me and babbling through the mouthful, chomping away as he "talks" in what sounds to me like high-pitched whale noises.

Obviously he has something urgent to say, so my approach is to nod gravely and say, "yes yes, I see, I see". At that, he seems encouraged and continues. What's he talking about, I always wonder? The Rudd government? How good the milk tastes? How he'd like a bigger crib, thanks, because the stinkin' bassinet is too small?

He reminds me of a balding guy telling the dentist - who has his gloved hands down his throat - how the grandkids are going.

My men

2008-06-21T19:00:00.000+10:00

How I love weekends with my two men. Sleep-ins, tea and toasted walnut buns, lots of "sitting" practice on the bed, making schnitzel, copious naps, hot baths, reading in bed, and trips to the Supacentre (spelt with an "a").

Actually, the latter is a pain in the arse, but necessary, as we had to buy a fridge and television in preparation for moving apartments next week.

How I love the trappings of an ordered domestic life.

Pure gloating, I know - but they are beautiful, aren't they?

Dramatic farting

2008-06-20T09:15:00.001+10:00

Some mornings Louis and I wake cheery, screeching and yipping at the upcoming day.

"Show us your worst", we scream at the morning, "c'mon! We can take it! Naps? Pah! A little white milky puke? We're up for it! Nothing can get us down!"

Then, we might get dressed and do some rolling on the bed, or Louis "stands" on my lap holding my hands and wobbling, or perhaps we'll just do a little singing about poo and such matters, and this small domestic kingdom is a pleasant place to be.

Other mornings I wake wanting to pour myself a stiff gin and tonic, and even Louis looks like he's got a hangover.

This morning is one of the latter.

Last night Louis had the worst gas I've ever seen. The babe kept waking screaming and arching his back and writhing, and nothing would soothe him except manipulating his legs into a "bicycle" for twenty minutes, after which he would finally fart and fall asleep again.

We did this perhaps ten times last night or maybe more. Hard to remember as everything blurs together between 1 and 5am.

I'm blaming the cheese I had in the afternoon, since it roughly aligns with the time the gas started. I refuse the blame the hot red curry I ate for dinner. Absolutely refuse.

(Above is a gratuitous photo of a buggered Louis refusing to take his nap this morning. This was taken after a long bout of kicking and grumping and generally not-napping, and we still haven't hit sleep mode yet. I've ducked around the corner with my laptop and am listening to him petulantly kick the mattress as I type.)

Also yesterday, the lovely Emily* lent me a book I've been dying to read, called Operating Instructions by the mordant Anne Lamott, about the first difficult year in her son's life.

In an orgy of panic, I flipped through last night before I went to bed anxious to discover one thing: at what age did the dramatic Sam sleep through?

(It's a lot like my bad habit of flipping to the back cover of a book to discover how old the novelist was when they were published. If they were younger than me, I used to scowl and tell myself the novel sucked, and anyway, they'd have no longevity. Nowadays, I'm so much more mature. I just avoid reading books by anyone less than my age.)

Well, despite the fact Lamott's written a book about the terror of motherhood, her son slept through at three months.

Oh please, Ms Lamott. I don't care if you were a single mother. I'm not impressed by the fact you were a former drug addict. And so what if your best friend was dying of cancer? Three months? Eh. Bite me, is what I thought before retiring at 9.30pm last night.

* I've noticed I've referred to her the "lovely Emily" a few times lately. Makes her sound like a gameshow hostess. However, she really is lovely.

Six hours

2008-06-18T08:45:00.000+10:00

I am never going to make a proclamation about sleep again. I should have know.

In fact, I did know. Hence the title of my blog.

Now Louis has a cold, so he's up twice a night again bleating for room service.

And the servant, after pretending for ten minutes that actually no, that's "fussing", not "screaming at the top of his lungs"... well, she obeys.

Sigh.

I feel like a failure as a mother. Why do other babies sleep, but not mine?*

* Having read this over, I can see I'm taking this way too personally. The ego has got involved where it needn't be. Nonetheless, this is how I feel.

Date night

2008-06-17T09:21:00.001+10:00

For the past two weeks, Louis and I have been having double-dates with Anita and Orla. I should explain.

Anita is a gal I went to school with.

Creative, self-deprecating, funny, with the chiselled profile of a Norse goddess, Anita’s apartment is littered with books and photos and her paintings and brushes and flamenco shoes and tchotchkes.

When I was in her flat, I had the urge to examine everything up close. Her cello against one wall, the peeling sheet music of a Bach cello suite on the stand, open magazines on the sofa, warm afternoon light streaming into the living room.

Orla, Anita’s baby girl with her partner Drew, is two weeks older than Louis, and seeing them together is an exercise in temperament. Already, both little personalities are emerging.

Orla is a little ginger-haired cutie, and the most easygoing, flexible, cheery baby I’ve met.

Put this baby down for a little while on the playmat, and she lies still, ogling the toys with a few coos. Then she falls asleep.

Although Anita avows her daughter is stubborn – and I’m sure she knows better than me – it seemed to me you’d sometimes forget you had a baby, if you had one with Orla’s nature.

Louis, meanwhile, is inquisitive and yet wary. Stillness is not his way. Put him down and he kicks and flaps his arms and makes noises at everything he sees.

He also seems to take a while to warm up to new experiences.

Take for instance the Jolly Jumper. It’s a hanging harness which puts babies upright so they can bounce about. Orla has one, so we gave it a whirl.

Orla bounced and swayed around in her Jolly Jumper, cooing for fifteen minutes while we chatted, quite happily entertaining herself.

Louis? He was about as eager as a pig about to be lassooed when we approached him with the harness.

Once he was hooked in, he stared at the playmat he was standing on for a minute, legs flailing, lips curled in fear, before braying that he wanted out.

My boy - the not-so-jolly jumper.

My full eight hours

2008-06-16T11:44:00.000+10:00

I haven't wanted to put this up for fear I'll jinx myself.

Today Louis is four months old and over the past five days, something has changed.

After four heinous weeks of waking and screaming at 1am, 3am, 4am, every am, it seems sonny-boy has suddenly reverted to his previous sleeping pattern.

The pattern goes: bed at 7pm.

At 10.30pm I take him out of his bassinet for a sneaky feed while he's half-asleep before we go to bed ourselves.

He wakes at 3amish for a quick ten-minute slurp. Then, he's back asleep until 7.30amish.

Compared to those Sleep-Mensa babies who go down from 7pm to 7am without a murmur, my child is a kindergartener. But for me, it's enough.

For the last five days, you see, I've been getting eight hours sleep. I'm so ecstatic, I've been counting the hours out on my fingers and dancing around the house.

I need to capitalise and bold it for you to fully appreciate the magnitude of this. I'VE BEEN GETTING EIGHT HOURS SLEEP.

This sleep may be broken into two shifts of four hours, but compared to what I was getting, it feels like I've been in a king-size bed in the Park Hyatt on three tabs of Ambien.

I know, my life is very small. But I have been humbled by a baby.

In sleep terms, I've felt like an unslept woman forced to parade a mattress factory, with a torturer behind me prodding my back so I keep walking past all those beds. I've been greedy for sleep like a binge-eater salivating after cookies and hot chips with gravy and tubs of lush vanilla ice-cream.

See? I've been so sleep-deprived I'm drunk on bad metaphor.

We'll see how long it lasts.

Holding him tight

2008-06-14T18:39:00.000+10:00

A few nights ago, my husband suggested I write a post about how much I love my son.

Of course, he was joking, but then again, he wasn’t.

I adore my son but that’s hardly a novel sentiment, so I also find it hard to write about love without sounding mawkish. How do I find words to express something so universal and yet so private, to make it swell large so you can understand how I feel?

Still, I take Justin's point. The love we have for our child is so big, so overwhelming, that not writing about it seems a lie.

After mulling it over, the best adjective I can find to describe my love for Louis is “ferocious”.

Having Louis in my life makes me fiercely protective, as if I was wearing a sensitive internal organ on the outside of my body. He seems so tiny and breakable and the world so full of sharp edges and cruel knocks.

My son smiles at me with such shy trust, my gut twists. I hate the idea of him ever hurting even though I know he will.

And when I hear something like this from a lovely gal I met on the internet on an online pregnancy messageboard, I feel like vomiting.

She’s a little older, European, was dying to meet her son. Her baby was born a few weeks before mine. He was a delight. Sure, he was gassy and screamy and pukey like the rest of the world's babies, but also joyous and smiley and dribbly and cuddly and oh-so-cute.

I loved the snaps of the baby lying on his dad’s chest while his father snoozed, snuggling with his mother, of her holding him proudly in the hospital. The pics were nothing flash and professional, mind. Just candid shots of domesticity taken on the fly - my favourite kind of photos.

Then, when he was seven weeks old, she and her husband found their son in his bassinet. He wasn't breathing.Her husband did CPR. By the time they got their baby to the hospital, he needed to be on life support. And you can fill in the rest.

Afterwards, she wrote me an email with this in it:

“You hug your little man Louis tight each day. If I'd known I was only going to have [my son] for 7 weeks, I never would have let him go. I would have held him 24/7. But I can't change what happened.”

It makes me want to erase everything negative I’ve written or said about being Louis’ mum.

It makes me wonder why I angst about nap lengths and feeding times when my baby is thriving.

It also reminds me when he wakes up four times at night mewling, to thank my lucky stars that he’s waking up at all.

And so onto the love.

Over the past ten weeks or so, Louis and I have a nightly bath together with a candle for light before his final feed. Very romantic, no? I get in and wash and when the water cools a few degrees, Justin brings our naked baby to me.

Louis can spend 10 to 15 minutes in there with me happily floating in my arms, breastfeeding when he's fussy, or just staring at the shadows cast by the glow of the candle.

Lately, though, he’s discovered how to wriggle and splash and soon, I know, I'll be on the sidelines and he’ll be bathing by himself, flooding the floor, spitting water at me, chucking toys around, refusing to wash, making me curse.

But now, he bobs and stares at the candlelight thinking whatever small, milky thoughts inhabit the head of a 17-week-old baby, before he retires for the night.

Hold him tight. I’m holding him tight.

Red-light baby

2008-06-11T15:24:00.001+10:00

We live in Sydney’s infamous red light district of Kings Cross.

Although my grandmother (who the family calls Annie) prefers to say we live in Rushcutters Bay, she’s having herself on.

Still, although we live in the Cross, we do rent in a hermeneutically-sealed security building right in the middle of the area, looking over William Street where transvestite prostitutes ply their trade and junkies loiter.

It’s a tame way to live, even the area is seedy.

Most days, Louis and I squeeze in a run to our local supermarket, the one with the neat ramps for wheelchairs and prams.

(They have supermarkets in the Cross, Annie, because even prostitutes buy milk, frozen peas and laundry detergent.)

The supermarket walk is one of our favourites.

This route takes us right through the shabbiest, sleaziest areas of the Cross.

It takes us past the old guys drinking 24 hours a day at the Bourbon and Beefsteak. It takes us past the doormen outside the neon strip clubs, chatting to the strippers devouring fags on the street between shifts.

We wander past the sex shops and the Bada Bing nightspot, past the tourists in shorts checking their maps, and past wealthy middle-aged men driving around in their convertibles all day dealing drugs and looking for boys to pick up.

Past the screaming couples outside the train station and the drunks near the fountain.

I’m sure Annie would argue we’re surrounding our baby with bad influences.

In fact, we are moving at the end of June. However – before my grandmother gets her hopes up - we’re moving to a two-bedroom apartment in the same block so Louis can have his own room.

The current tenants are having a baby, and they’re moving out because the husband happens to agree with my grandmother. He’s got it into his head that the Cross is a “crazy” area in which to bring up a child.

“I get pregnant, he gets old in the brain,” his wife, an exuberant Slovakian, tells me, rolling her eyes. She’s lived here for seven years and adores the area. She’s mourning leaving our brilliant apartment building, along with the colour of the Cross.

I guess by extension, the husband must think we’re crazy, too. We prefer the term “open-minded”. We’ll live here for as long as we can, until the kid is running around and we need to rethink our options.

And Louis? Well.

Nothing like a broad education.

Be glad you're not my neighbour

2008-06-10T20:59:00.000+10:00

It's hard to believe that this little cherub - the one you see in the picture that the lovely Emily took for me today - just spent an hour screaming before we could get him to sleep. After all, he was a delight all day. He cooed, played, took his naps as instructed.

This is a baby who, until three weeks ago, went to sleep without a murmur.

Last night, he woke an insane four .... or was it five....? times, screeching. I'm not keeping records anymore, as it only raises my blood pressure to know exactly how bad it's getting. If I don't remember, I can pretend it didn't happen.

Before about three weeks ago, he would wake once for a feed and go straight back to sleep. Then, three weeks ago, he started waking twice for no reason I could discover.

I was whinging about twice. Now I think twice would be heaven.

Something's up.

Gas?

He seems a little young for teething.

Just hungry?

Upset that Hillary lost the nomination?

I wish he could talk. More when I am feeling less cranky and dark.

Breastfeeding, part I

2008-06-07T12:30:00.002+10:00

In the beginning, breastfeeding was the hardest thing I’d ever done. It felt so goddamned parasitic. At first, as Louis sucked, I felt an emotional depletion I find hard to describe.

For the first six weeks or so, nights were shattered into two-hour bursts of sleep, broken by Louis’ little whimpering cries and squirrelly squeals.

I would wake with my heart pounding, feeling like a total failure. I couldn't understand how so many women - plenty of them incapable, careless or dull - managed to do this, even enjoyed it.

At his cries, I’d stumble out of bed in our New York studio, pick him up, and fumble him to the breast.

Even thinking about it now chills me. Breastfeeding a newborn was a marathon of need, need, need I could never finish, like a punishment in Dante’s inferno.

At that time, I'm sure I was close to post-partum depression*. I simply couldn't believe I would ever join the human race again, where normal people in normal clothes walked around in daylight.

I used to stare at the glitter of the New York skyline at 2am, cursing that women are the ones born with the mammary glands. Lucky fathers, I thought, black with rage at my sleeping husband. Every night, I wished I was male.

During those blurry day-nights of the first six weeks of Louis' life, I tried to make breastfeeding into a science.

Louis and I would sit with just a tiny book lamp for illumination to check he was latched onto the nipple correctly. At the same time, I kept a record in a little black notebook I grew to dread. Which breast did he take first? How many minutes on each? Soiled and wet nappies in what quantities?

As I wrote, milk dribbled down my writing arm blurring the numbers in my notebook, and dripped sympathetically from my other breast. Louis? He just grunted, sucked, resettled himself, doing exactly as he pleased.

Those nights, I cried as much as he did.

I had horrible dreams I jotted notes about, like this one:

Week 3, dream in a two-hour stretch of sleep.

Breastfeeding a teenage male. He sucked me dry like a vampire and then wanted more. I wept and kept begging him to buy a carton of cow’s milk. Finally, he was persuaded and bought the milk, and then realised he liked it. Let me be.

And then, I realised I felt rejected, mingled with relief.

Somewhere around week six or seven, I found myself crying less. As Louis grew older, he fed more quickly.

He slept more.

I slept more.

Somewhere there, I tossed out that book. Even looking at its black cover swamped me with despair that we weren't progressing. Somewhere in there, without even knowing it, I had started to abandon the idea of progression.

Now, breastfeeding doesn’t scare me. Now, I love it. It struck me yesterday that this is the closest physical relationship I’ll have, apart from with a lover, and, although it somehow feels taboo to say this, breastfeeding is a sensual pleasure.

The milky little sucky lips. The perfect profile, unblurred by life. His blank, milk-drunk stare. The tiny hand that waves until he locates my thumb to grasp.

So, even when I'm swearing at 3am, I know when Louis and I finish this odd, animal dance called breastfeeding - and I'll be pleased if I can manage more than six months - I’ll feel rejected and teary.

I’ll wander around the house jealous of the sippy cup, wondering where my baby went.

* Edited to add: I spoke to my mother, a doc, about this. She said no, I didn't, that I was sleep-deprived and hormonal and in a "mild dysphoria" but not actually depressed. I'm still not sure, myself.

L’enfant? Il est un artist

2008-06-04T10:13:00.000+10:00

At this point - touch wood - the child seems to wake for two things only during the night. He's either:

a) hungry or,
b) uncomfortable

Unfortunately, he's been uncomfortable with a gassy stomach regularly during his life, and last night was flatulence city.

When the groaning and moaning started at 9pm, I fed him and went to bed myself, knowing from experience this would be a long night.

He woke at midnight and wouldn’t calm down. So I fed him and he settled. 3am arrived, and I heard him moaning and groaning again.

Cranky, I clomped out of our room and picked him up, cuddled him. Which never works because, as I said, he's either hungry or uncomfortable, and cuddling soothes neither.

After ten minutes of wailing, I finally stuck him on the tit. The tit is the easy option - it cures every ailment, even the dreaded gas, at least for an hour or so.

Desperately rooting for the breast, Louis took two deep gulps of milk and pulled away, with a suddenly becalmed expression on his little face.

Wacko, I thought. Winner. I’m the Baby Whisperer of Kings Cross, although I have no idea what I just did. I put him back and threw myself back down on my own mattress.

Thirty seconds later, I heard a deep sigh from his bassinet outside, and a loud gurgling noise from the lower reaches of his bowels, followed by the kind of airy squirt you get when you try to extract the last from a plastic bottle of tomato sauce.

Fark. He’d done a massive shit.

For non-parents, here’s the lowdown - some babies of over three months dump every day. Most, like mine only dump every few days or more. At the extreme end, some only dump every two or three weeks or so (pity these parents).

If it’s not every day, when the excreta finally arrives, it’s a gargantu-shit, mustardy yellow and soft as hot butter. You have to sprint to clean the baby, before the shit stains every piece of clothing and bedding the child owns.

So I swore a few times - just loud enough to wake up my husband so he could take his share in the joys of parenting – and stomped back.

I took a cooing Louis to the change pad on the floor, flicked on the lamp, stripped off his jammies. He kicked benignly as I took off his nappy and saw what I had to clean. Yellow smeared all over his back and legs.

Sighing, I started to mop him down with wipes and water, and then Louis gave me a beatific smile, like he thought he was the baby Jesus. A small squeak issued from his arse.

I turned to grab a wipe. Then, from behind me, I heard a sound as if from the dogs of hell.

Splat. I felt something wet hit my neck.

I turned slowly, hoping it wasn’t what I thought.

It was. Even Louis looked shocked.

Louis had coated me in splatters of projectile shit from face to toe. Shit in my hair. On my neck. On my hands.

Shit all over the slummy-mummy tracksuit pants I forgot to take off before I went to bed. Shit on my singlet. On my socks. On the sofa. Shit on the carpet. (Sorry landlords. Hopefully, the rental board doesn’t read blogs).

My child had become a miniature Jackson Pollock, his art wrought in psychedelic browns. At that moment, glorious in his creation, Andres Serrano couldn’t have topped him.

At this stage, I said every foul word I knew, and invented a few more for good effect.

As Justin trekked from the bedroom rubbing his eyes, the boy looked at us both, smiled, and from his miniature dick flowed a cascade of urine in a gentle arc, like you’d see issuing from a cherub on a Baroque fountain.

And cooed.

Lou rhymes with "poo" and "spew"

2008-06-03T20:18:00.000+10:00

I'm Alexa, and this is my mothering blog.

By the title, you may be able to discern that I haven't been sleeping too much lately.

I'm 33 years old, mouthy, highly strung and a control freak, the last two being tricky character traits when it comes to mothering, which involves so much going-with-the-flow.

Let me put it this way, I'm not going with no flow unless it's been introduced to my parents, has a steady income, a house in Vaucluse and nice table manners. And that's after I've examined its credit card record and done a thorough police check.

I'm married to the gorgeous Justin (who has all of the above except the house), and we have our little one Louis. (Louis is pronounced "Lou-ee", just for the record.) As of this post, Louis is 15 and a half weeks old. On Saturday, it will be four months since I squeezed him out.

Louis George was born February 16 at Mount Sinai hospital in New York city, and he was 7 pounds 15 ounces and 20 inches tall. And me? By week 2, I was shellshocked.

Not by the birth, which was as easy as getting my wisdom teeth extracted and remarkably similar, although the orifice was significantly lower.

No, I was shellshocked by the having of a child. The being of a mother. Carrying Louis in the womb was a piece of piss - I couldn't hear him scream through the amniotic fluid, for starters.

But raising him? Taking responsibility for the life of another? Egads. What does one do when confronted by a being that, when asked a sensible question, can only cry in response?

I should explain. In my pre-baby life, I treasured control.

I was a newspaper journalist and a wannabe writer. I wrote the second draft of a novel last year in New York, although we moved back to Sydney early in 2008 with the new baby. The novel is with a publisher now, and I'm still waiting after months of twiddling my thumbs. A bit like being pregnant, really.

Nowdays, my horizons have significantly narrowed. I spend most of my time ah-gooing, stressing about the ContentedLittleHappiestBabyWiseWhisperer routines my boy just won't keep, practicing blowing raspberries, kissing Louis' fuzzy head and gently biting his cute cheeks, overanalysing his every squawk, and singing him made-up songs about cutting nails, getting dressed and doing large smelly shits in nappies. All of the good stuff.

Lucky for me "Lou" rhymes with "poo", "spew" and "goo".