Let's go week 12

all change! or perhaps not!

The baby’s sneezes have become what I guess a doctor might call ‘productive’. Before, they were the tiniest little noises — ‘ahh….tsyoo’. The only way to express how cute this is would be by screaming or kicking something.

Now, you might get this type of sneeze, or you might get a big spray of wet to the face. As with many things baby-related, this should be gross but isn’t.

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The baby is no longer doing the newborn scrunch! But you still get to enjoy it when she’s lying on the changing mat and has her knees up by her ears. Babies are so flexible they might as well not have any bones at all. Apologies to vegetarians but this pose makes her look like a delicious little chicken, ready to eat.

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We’ve transitioned into 3-6 month clothes and hoo buddy! Isn’t it nice to wear clothes that fit? An evergreen statement. She can still manage a few of the 0-3 month outfits, especially the newer ones that haven’t shrunk after numerous pre-owners. We didn’t really choose any early stages clothes ourselves, because we were gifted or handed-on basically everything. So I’ve been all over Vinted this week looking for the sweetest, most colourful little items.

I tend to assume I’m putting her in neutral baby clothes, but strangers constantly mistake her for a boy. My friends… did you know that little ladies can wear blue and green too?

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Apparently 11-weeks-old is another leap week, i.e. a week with a big developmental step. It does help to know we’re in a leap, as you can use this to explain away any fussiness at all. Disappointingly, the skill she’s ostensibly learning this week is “smooth transitions”. Or as my partner put it, increasing the number of frames per second she moves at. So not a super exciting one.

Me: how are those smooth transitions coming along, darling?

The baby: [waking up from a nap, staring frantically around, jerking her head one centimetre at a time]

Me: great

My mum remembers this week being a difficult one, which is notable both because she can’t usually remember details about us as newborns and also because she won’t hear a bad word against Baby Me. In her telling, I was a perfect angel; I went everywhere with her and slotted easily into her life; I napped well and sleep was no problem.

There’s a lot to be said for this dreamy view. How lucky to grow up with the solid belief that your arrival changed your mum’s life infinitely for the better. It probably can’t be overstated how useful this is for your sense of self. Imagine! To be so loved and wanted for your whole life, and to know it. All I can do is hope my daughter grows up with the same knowledge.

What it’s not helpful for, however, is when I experience any newborn challenges at all. For example…….. sleep.

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Oh my god. Sleep! Just one area where I fear we’re doing it all wrong.

At bedtime, we've been doing the same routine I mentioned before — she sleeps downstairs with M for a couple of hours before I take her from midnight to 6am. This is more for us than for her, but it’s been working okay. After terrible sleep in the heatwave, she did longer stints this week — five and a half hours in a row, then six hours, then an outrageous eight and a half hours all in her crib. So I’m not currently worried about nighttime sleep, as long as she’s swaddled (DON’T talk to me about how we’ll have to stop swaddling soon).

However… if you put her down for a nap during the day, she’ll pop up awake almost immediately. If you sit on the couch and put on Wimbledon while she sleeps on your chest, she’ll nap for an hour or two.

You can guess which of these is more appealing to me, so I’m not trying that hard to make her nap independently yet. I think some babies need more comfort than others, I believe that it’s building her emotional regulation, and I know it won’t last forever. I really like the contact naps, too. She’s still so little and we have plenty of time to form a routine.

But sometimes I worry if I’m doing it/anything right, as written about previously, and I ask my mum who tells me how easy it was when I was a baby — just put me down somewhere and I’d be off to sleep, no prob! — and I realise, yes! We are in fact doing it all wrong.¹

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We’ve started calling her a grembo, short for gremlin. E.g. M, as the baby kicks and screeches: ‘why are you being such a grembo?’

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The baby is actually three different babies:

• Alert, awake baby. Big eyes, jerky head movements. Chatting and burbling. Pleasant little face, or wry expression. Smiling in a way that makes me want to punch something from sheer joy. Kicking and kicking. Staring at the side of her pram and laughing, even though there’s nothing there. Sometime grembo.

• Sleeping baby. Solemn, calm, looks like a cartoon. Perfect sweet angel.

• Fussy or crying baby. Scrunched up face, no sign of either of the other two babies. Everyone is extremely upset.

When she’s in one of these states, it’s very hard to imagine her in the others.

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M, while nap trapped: little cannonball on my chest

Me: she’s so heavy now

M: she is! And she’s so sweet

M: …when she’s sleeping

Me: she looks like a Pixar baby when she’s asleep. Those wide chubby cheeks

M: wait I’ll find a picture of her

M, holding out a picture of the Boss Baby: there she is

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Some thoughts about shared finances. M was doing a John Lewis order for a wide-brimmed hat to wear while gardening because he is, at heart, an Animal Crossing character, and asked if I wanted to add anything to the order. I requested a couple more nursing bras, as I get through one a day at the moment what with all the baby fluids. M then put them on the joint account, while paying for his lil hat himself. This hadn’t occurred to me. But nursing bras are a joint expense, he reminded me, because if I wasn’t breastfeeding, I wouldn’t need them.

I’ve not really talked about finances on here yet, but it’s a huge topic. The mental load of clothing yourself through pregnancy and postpartum is massive, but it’s a financial load as well — hardly any of my pre-baby clothes fit me, and many that do aren’t breastfeeding friendly. This is a separate complaint. But viewing baby-related clothing as a parenting expense is clearly the way to do it. So thank you M for doing this better than I was.

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Babies really re-sensitise you to cuteness. We’ve all seen so many videos and memes at this point. I can see a video of cute puppies and feel almost nothing. But now, the baby makes a happy little sound or curls into a tiny croissant and my heart explodes into five thousand pieces.

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We’re bad at tummy time in this house: M and I aren’t very good at putting her down to do it, and (I hate to be critical) the baby’s not great at it either. Her neck is strong but she always does legs-only tummy time, i.e. squirming and kicking with arms flying out behind her, driving her face straight down into the mat. Baby, use your arms! Those belong to you too and they may be helpful here.

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Baby fussing all evening, refusing to either feed or sleep. Gnawing on M’s hand with her slobbery little mouth. Scratching us with tiny, flailing fingers and insanely sharp nails. Eventually M lays her on the sofa while she’s fussing and screaming, just for a break. Then she starts smiling and laughing at his hand, resting near her on the sofa.

M, staring at her: what the hell is going on

M: not content with savaging us, she’s now using her cruel sense of humour?

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So much spitting up this week — way more than before. ‘Are you okay????’ I ask her repeatedly. She’s not bothered. We’ve learnt the surprising alarm system: if there’s a huge, moist, awful retching sound, it’s just a burp. No problem. If there’s silence and then a sudden wetness on your chest, it’s time to get the muslin for what could be an impressive quantity of vom.

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Her bald patches (see last week) are developing and joining up.

M: they’re forming a line round her head

Me: she’s going to have an island but a really big one

M: it’s going to be the inverse of a tonsure

M, absently: I love Inverse Tonsure. My favourite prog metal band

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I went back to dairy a few weeks ago. Did I ever mention? It wasn’t a dairy allergy for the baby after all. No one really thought it was, so as suspected, my martyrdom was fully self-inflicted. But it helped me to know during screaming sessions that at least this wasn’t due to all the milk and cheese I eat.

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She met her new friend P, who’s ten months — very lovely. The clash of titans, making them both look normal sized. Whenever we meet an older baby, it’s a funny glimpse into the future.

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Something I forgot to write about last week is that whenever I spend too much time inside, I start to forget how to leave. Luckily, M had two days off this week when it wasn’t so hot. We visited an alpaca farm, partly for a nice day out to show the baby an alpaca (verdict: bafflement) and partly because I was worried she would’ve forgotten how to be in the car, in the same way she’s forgotten how to take a bottle. She and I both need regular reminders of how to do stuff. But she was totally fine. Unfortunately we’re going into another heatwave and another week indoors so fuck, fuck and fuck, I guess.

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Agonising about what to do about nursery. When, where, how long to send her? More on this next week, perhaps.

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Me: what are you thinking about darling?

Baby, stops babbling to say very clearly: mun-nee

M: money, oh right

Then today she made a sound that was exactly like oy-yull, i.e… oil. It feels like we’re playing Only Connect. What’s the next word in the sequence? Shareholder? Oligarch? Does this mean she’s going to be an oil tycoon? I love her unconditionally, but that will be a hard choice to support.

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If you go ‘mmmmMMMM’ as you lean in and kiss her little nose, she smiles. If you keep doing it, she’ll laugh and gurgle. It’s not possible to describe this feeling in mere words.

M: inject it into my bloodstream

M, crying a bit: it’s too much!!!

1. No sympathy please. Agreement or insults only.