‘The sleepless nights, feeding, changing nappies, changing hormones, changing body, baby sick, baby wee, more baby sick (this time in the hair and down the back), exploding nappies, snotnami, poonamis, learning 25 verses to The Wheels on the Bus and in my case, this time, learning how to be a Mum of two. And oh my, the SLEEP DEPRAVATION!!’
The First Three Months… by Big Little Men & Me – by a Dorset Mamma.
It hardly seems like five minutes since I was looking with joy at those two little blue lines on the pregnancy test. It had felt like a lifetime coming. I know that relatively speaking 15 months of trying for a baby isn’t a long time compared with the struggle some face, but following an agonising miscarriage in Jan 2018 and many months of trying for our little rainbow baby, getting a positive was so well received.
Now after nine months of growing him and hoping and praying he’d be OK, he’s here in my arms. And the time is flying by so terrifyingly fast. I’m desperately trying to saviour every moment; to drink in his newborn scent, to mentally record his sweet little murmurs and capture the picture of his changing face. They change so quickly. One moment you’re greeting their squishy little face for the first time, the next you’re looking at schools for them.
The milestones are so bittersweet. Every ‘first’ has its ‘last’ and every achievement, however small, is a step towards independence and these tiny little people growing into who they are going to be. You long for them to ‘take their first steps’, or ‘sleep through the night’, to ‘settle at nursery’ – the pride and joy is immeasurable – but with every milestone reached is an underlying grief for a stage that is past.
Three months in…
Speaking of milestones, we have just gone into the next bag of clothes marked ‘3-6 months’ retrieved from the great cavernous attic space in the sky. I think my husband is secretly delighted to be clawing back a bit more space back up there, bag by bag. The last couple of years have seen him negotiating the contents of our loft like a scene from The Incredibles. I digress.
It just doesn’t seem possible that we are already ditching the teeny tiny (or not so teeny in this one’s case!) baby grows and Size 1 nappies. You look down at them and wonder how they ever fitted inside your tummy?! 3 months old and growing quickly! He’s got a big appetite on him so we are feeding a lot but he seems to be doing well on it. They say that the first 12 weeks are the hardest. And they are hard. Learning to be a Parent is tough but in all reality the first three months there are just the beginning of a very steep learning curve, especially the first time around.
Each stage has its challenges, but the first three months most definitely pass by in a bit of a blur. The sleepless nights, feeding, changing nappies, changing hormones, changing body, baby sick, baby wee, more baby sick (this time in the hair and down the back), exploding nappies, snotnami, poonamis, learning 25 verses to The Wheels on the Bus and in my case, this time, learning how to be a Mum of two. And oh my, the SLEEP DEPRAVATION!! I had quite forgotten about that and it’s something I have had to re-learn to cope with the second time around. Much easier dealt with at 3am by my pal Rich T. Although my waistline doesn’t agree. Needless to say the post about my new fake fit-bit is imminent… 🤪
Big Bro…
My eldest appears to be adapting to life as a big brother well. It’s been a huge change for him, having had Daddy and I to himself for 3.5 years, but he seems to be pleased to have his little brother around. I’m sure it will only be a matter of time before the two of them are arguing over who is playing with the train set!
Since the arrival of ‘Baby Potato’, as he sometimes is fondly called (the name thought up by his cousins!), my biggest boy has hit many of his own milestones and I’ll be honest I felt like he grew up overnight when the baby arrived. He’s learnt to use the toilet, come out of the booster seat at the table, his vocabulary is ever expanding and he’s just transitioned into his ‘big boy bed’. He looks so little in it, but he appears to love his new space themed bedroom with ‘a ladder’ and ‘den area’ under the bed. Our bargain of the month; free courtesy of Facebook Marketplace.
My boy seems to be growing up at an even faster rate now. We have started looking at schools for him and I have never felt more like an ‘adult’ than touring around a school with the headmaster for my own child! Wherever he goes, I hope it is a wonderful experience for him and I am sure he will thrive in his next stage.
For now I am holding on tight to every moment of our pre-school adventure, even the challenging days and the ones when I am wandering around the house like some kind of sleep deprived goat.
Big Little Men & Me 