Trust Your Motherly Instincts

Dear baby Eva,

I stopped writing to you once again. Life just got busy. Another story for another time. I am writing today as I found a letter which I never published. It was from months ago when you was just fourteen or fifteen weeks old. It seems really relevant today as you approach fourteen months as I am feeling a bit run down after an unusual bad night from you.

What really hit me was three things, firstly just how far we have come and developed together over the last fourteen months. Secondly how things are never as bad as they seem. The desperation and exhaustion in this letter brought the memories back to me and made me realise that actually last night in comparison to those early months was not that bad, I am not that tired and I am not that desperate. And finally and most importantly I realised that trusting your instincts and blocking out external pressures was and is the single most important ingredient to happy parenting. I went with my instincts, I have let you lead the way and I think we are doing a pretty fab job. How do I measure our success? is it the fact you have been consistently sleeping through since eleven months now with the exception of the odd bad night due to illness, teething, developing and partying like last night.  or the fact that we baby led  weaned and now you eat everything in site including fruit and vegetables with no drama, could it be the fact that you was an early crawler and walker, that you know numerous animal noises and names? No. I base the fact that we are doing a pretty fab job on the basis that in general you are happy, you are healthy and you are developing into a delightful and independent toddler with all the normal ups and downs this entails.

A letter from months ago…

The mystery continues. It seems like a distant memory that night you teased me by sleeping all the way through, the nights of eight or nine hour stretchers. Where has my sleeping beauty gone?

Asleep in your Chico Next 2 me crib

My head is almost too tired to put words together and make sentences. When I’m speaking my words come out wrong or different to what I’m thinking. My eyes sting. My arms are heavy. Why? I don’t know why, nothing has changed, our routine is the same. Sleep regression is my only thought. What ever the reason please, please, please just let this be another phase that will soon pass.

I haven’t wrote for a while because everything has felt like such an effort. You are so much fun at the moment through the day but looking after you and keeping you entertained is zapping what very little energy I have. Anything and everything else is on standby until sleep resumes.

Big news You rolled over, both back to front and front to back. I think back to front was a fluke though as you haven’t done it again since.

We have had some gorgeous weather recently and have been making the most of it by spending it in the garden. You in your sun tent.

The biggest news is you randomly started taking a dummy after days of trying to suck your hands. I thought this was going to be the answer I was looking for but sucking seems to stimulate you not sooth you. It reached a point where you was waking every hour or more screaming when your dummy fell out and then taking forever to drift back off because you was sucking so hard. I have two options now, first is to back track and remove the dummy or second try bigger dummy’s which are easier for you to keep in. I’m trying option one first.

Asleep in the car the first time you took a dummy

Option one is likely to involve lots of comfort sucking on my nipples but I’m good with that if your happy. It just seems everyone else has an opinion on it. Apparently the general public, family and friends think that at fifteen weeks I should be getting my life back, you shouldt be feeding as often as you do and you should be sleeping through. Well they can all fluff off. What I’m doing feels natural, when I follow my instincts we work well together. When I second guess myself because of something I read, feel like a failure because someone has made a comment or change our ‘routine’ to fit other peoples expectations that’s when it goes wrong.

It’s amazing how oppinionated people suddenly get around babies and how they feel the need to comment on things which if they was talking about an adult would actually be quite rude. She doesn’t have much hair, is she a ginger etc etc. Then you get the old schoolers who weaned early, put babies to sleep on there bellies, kept them REALLY warm and bundled up and didn’t leave the house for the firsts three months and it didn’t do their children any harm. I’m sure it didn’t but research has evolved and I am choosing to raise my child, my beautiful little starfish my way based on what I feel is THE BEST and healthiest way for us.

Rant over, feed over (with extra comfort sucking ) time to put you down and see what tonight will bring.
Love you princess

Mummy x x