Wasted trip to the Zoo

I think that whilst I was pregnant and my body was making little Emmeline, something went wrong somewhere between week 18 and week 38. I appear to have not manufactured whatever gene is necessary for my child to show any interest whatsoever in animals at the zoo!!! She totally lacks the animal interest gene much to my dismay!

It all began in the morning. I was at a loss as to what to do and then like a lightning bolt out of the blue, it hit me – let’s go to the zoo. I thought that it was a fantastic idea! I imagined little noodles face lighting up when she saw the giraffes, squealing with little baby delight at the monkeys and awestruck by the bears. I have way too much imagination and I do believe that what I was actually imagining was some piece of crap Disney movie, because these kinds of reactions from an 8 month old baby could only happen in the land of Walt!

The day started as it meant to continue, not remarkably well! Xavi and Yaincoa had things to do, so I got us ready and decided to walk down to the zoo so that Emmeline could doze off whilst we were walking and then wake up and refreshed for when we got there! Off we trundled. . .  

A quarter of the way there and Emmeline had eyes like saucers. Still awake.

Half way there and she was screaming her lungs out at me due to tiredness (everyone was looking at me like I was an evil mommy who had abandoned her baby). Still awake.

Three quarters of the way there she had given up crying and was now just listlessly staring at the walls of her pram. Still awake

When we got there (or more so, to the park at the entrance of the zoo), she started to wail at me again. Still awake.

I was screwed. I knew that if we went into the gym she would fall straight asleep – Murphy’s Law.

So I decided to walk around the park and in a last ditch effort I whipped out the emergency dummy and plonked it into her mouth. She decided to really push me by then playing with the stupid dummy and putting it in her mouth, chewing it, taking it out and waving it about as if she was about to throw it away! Silly cow!

I gave up and eventually just decided to go into the zoo and see what happened. 17eu later and we were in. I had put Emmeline into the baby sling so that she could see all the animals better, I had my camera out ready to start recording one of life’s beautiful moments, and I had a really dumb grin of a new parent on my face.

First up, an ostrich! It was right in front of us, it is from my home country of South Africa and it was huge. I pointed it out to Emmeline, used an appropriate sing song voice, went ‘ooh’, ‘aah’ and ‘wow’. Emmeline looked more amused at me than the big bird! So I shut up and just pointed. Nope, still grinning at me like an idiot! Took out the camera to at least get a picture of the stupid bird I had seen a thousand times and my dud daughter launched at the camera finding it much more amusing than the bird. I told myself that perhaps in her little baby eyes, the ostrich was camouflaged?

I was determined and so off we went. Next up: flamingos. Bright, big flamingos right in front of us, playing in the water! LOTS OF BIG BRIGHT BIRDS! Nothing! Once again, my dud of a baby was more interested in me and the camera than the wildlife that surrounded us.

Hmmmmmmm, starting to get an uncomfortable feeling . . .

I heard the monkeys and headed in that direction thinking they would definitely get some kind of reaction from my daughter. By the time I got there, Emmeline was snoring away on my chest! Silly cow.

So there I was, a lone adult (absolutely parched, with no water and no money and convinced I couldn’t pay for anything by card) pushing around an empty pram with her (increasingly heavy) daughter strapped to her chest fast asleep and snoring. Uncomfortable and thirsty!

Had I not have seen many animals before it could have been alright, but I spent 2 months touring AFRICA! I have seen the big 5! I have touched a cheetah; I have been 1 meter away from wild silverback gorillas, wild elephants and wild giraffe! I watched a hyena chase down a baby gazelle, I have seen whales swimming just off the shore in front of me and I have swam with dolphins! I have seen all of this in the wild, in their natural environments! And so for me, not only does the zoo not compare, it is also just a little but sad!

But there I was bidding my time until sleeping beauty woke up! Coincidentally, the lions were also sleeping, the panther was sleeping, the jaguar was sleeping, the tiger was sleeping, the hippopotamus was sleeping, the wolves were sleeping . . . . In fact it would seem that the only moron who was not asleep was ME!

Eventually Emmeline woke up, and I was buoyed on by new optimism! We quickly did lunch and then went over to the chimpanzees. There was only one and it was kind of far away, so when she did not pay much interest I thought it must be camouflaged again. How much can 8 month olds really see?

Then along came a lady throwing bread at the monkeys – something I am pretty sure you are not allowed to do but something that no-one cared about because with the bread thrower came 5 chimpanzees!!! And every time she hurfed bread at them, they performed tricks! TRICKS! Their arms would move and they would strike poses; they would clap their hands and move about – actual performing chimpanzee’s right in front of us! I had to elbow a few dodgy looking gypsies out the way so that Emmeline could see, and you know what my little angel did?? She launched herself at the camera every opportunity she got and when she couldn’t do that, she kept trying to grab some mans leather jacket!! She didn’t give a stuff about the performing chimpanzees, oh no, a leather jacket was way more interesting.

Everyone, please meet my dud of a daughter Emmeline.

Somewhere, someone is laughing their arse off at my expense.

The final straw came when she paid no interest to the giant elephant standing in front of us! I gave up, I put her back in her pram and I gave her the lid of her bottle to keep her entertained!

I eventually checked if I could buy something and pay by card and yes, I could. I bought water, coke, and chips and replenished myself! Managed at least to get a photo of Emmeline with some giraffe in the background to remember her first zoo trip! Although I think the picture of her trying to grab the camera out of my hand is a much more accurate picture!!!

What made the whole day worse? Whilst walking home, Emmeline spotted a pigeon. An average, every day, common street pigeon. What did she do?

Shrieked with delight . . .

p.s. update: at least we didn’t go 2 weeks later – mommy wolf escaped with her babies in tow and had several areas of Barcelona on alert whilst they rounded her and her little ones up to go back to the zoo!

A Hard Week

So last Friday we had Emmeline’s 6 month vaccinations plus a private vaccination (Synflorix) which meant that in total, she got 3 injections! I felt like such a bad mommy for allowing this to happen to my little angel! But I thought that at least that way all done and dusted, and she would be protected! Well, the first injection went fine, the second bought a few yelps, the third bought several more, however the crying stopped after only a few seconds! Good girl.

Emmeline never had any reactions to vaccinations before so I was not worried, but on Friday night she started to get really irritable and pissed off with everything. When I picked her up I noticed that she felt much hotter than normal so I took her through to the bedroom and took her temperature, 38.5c. oh dear. I decided to get her bathed and to bed as quick as. She was fine in the bath, but by the time we were dressing her and drying her hair, she was screaming at the top of her lungs. My heart broke knowing that I could do nothing for her except give her medicine and hope that she fell into a long and deep sleep! That was the night that Xavi was going to feed her and put her to bed for the first time as we are now doing cereal in a bottle and not breastfeeding. But he saw my face and he said he would do it another night, he knew that all I wanted was to hold my little girl in my arms and try to make her feel better. She didn’t sleep very well and at 4am her temperature had risen to 39.1c. I bought her into bed with me and hardly slept a wink. The next morning after consulting my book and the internet several times, I knew that there was no need to go running to emergencies and that I should continue with her medicine. I did just that and we continued our day as per usual going to meet daddy. Her temperature dropped in the middle of the day, but rose again in the afternoon and the evening. Once again, she did not sleep very well, waking every 2 hours, something she only does now when she is unwell.

Sunday passed us by the same, Emmeline with a fever. She managed to remain smiling mostly, but was also a lot more weepy and irritable than usual. Monday morning and she still had a fever. I decided that I was tired of waiting so I got an appointment with the paediatrician for that same morning. Off we went. The paediatrician checked Emmeline and said that it may be a delayed reaction to the vaccinations, but that normally only lasts for about a day. But she also noted that Emmeline had no other symptoms, she was bright and alert, and she was still as friendly as ever. So I was told to monitor her temperature every 6 hours and if she continued with a fever, I was to return on Wednesday morning to do a urine test to see whether noodle had a bladder infection. Tuesday was the same, although there was a drop in the middle of the day. I got hopeful, but back with fever in the evening. Wednesday morning 9am and there we were at the paediatrician again. She had to stick a plastic bag around noodles cookie to catch her wee when she had one do to the test. So I could only loosely put her nappy back on and only put her socks on, no pants. We went outside to wait; I wrapped a blanket around her legs and fed her hoping to speed up the process. She was tired and started to get irritable. With her semi naked there was no way that I could put her in the pram to sleep and I certainly couldn’t walk up and down to get her to sleep. So although we have banished the dummy unless it is bedtime in the evenings, I found myself reaching into the bag for the emergency dummy I carry everywhere! This in my mind was definitely an emergency. I popped it into her mouth, and noodle was out like a light! When she woke up her little bag was full, but the paediatrician was busy! So we waited and as soon as she was free we went in. Unfortunately by this time, some of Emmeline’s wee had leaked out the bag and onto my shirt. Mmmmmm. Thankfully there was still enough to do the test! Turns out that there is no urine infection, yaay!

So we still didn’t know what was wrong. The paediatrician told me to go home and continue to monitor it. If she continued with a fever, I would have to go back on Friday morning for urgent blood tests, but she assured me that she was not worried as Emmeline had no other symptoms, she had good colour, she was in good spirits and she was bright and alert. It’s true that that morning she didn’t have a fever. Although that afternoon she did! But in the evening there was no fever and so far today, no fever! She is very irritable today and she has literally been growling at me all day, crying a lot more than usual and sleeping more than usual, so I have given her some medicine and hope that it helps. Hopefully she is on the mend as I hate to see my little girl sick! I feel awful for her! And I really don’t want to have to cart her off to the doctors tomorrow for analysis because that will mean another injection, and I think that she has been through enough already!

This week has been hard not just because I wish that there was more I could do for Emmeline, but also because it has been exhausting for me. She has had a week of fever more or less, and before that she had about a week of diarrhea! She has been waking up every night between every 1 – 2hrs in the last 5 days leaving me feeling zonked out again. During the day she is still napping, but she does not want to be left alone for even a minute. So on various occasions xavi or I have had to sit with her until she falls asleep. She is also not content to sit alone and play as much as normal, so she has been by my side a whole lot more than normal. And feeding her has been a total nightmare. We started on solids and before she got sick, she was kind of accepting things. But on the weekend especially she screamed blue murder at us when we had to feed her. She was having none of it! I can tell that she is getting better as she has been much better at eating yesterday and today thankfully! I am totally exhausted and really need to have a rest myself because being so tired means that I am not at my best for her. It means that when she wakes up every hour like she did last night, I am too tired to investigate what is wrong and instead I reached for the easy solution that was to simply feed her. Therefore even though I have not been to the gym in way too long and I really want to go, I know that the best thing that I can do for everyone is to go for a nice (if possible) long sleep with Emmeline this afternoon for both of our benefits! Actually scratch that, me sleeping is actually in everybody’s benefit! I will also shower my angel with plenty of hugs and kisses and hope that tomorrow she wakes up my little Emmeline again!

War on the Dummy

I never wanted to give Emmeline the dummy. I didn’t see the point and couldn’t actually read any clear cut benefits for the dummy. It seemed pretty equal in the pros and the cons. So I decided to not give it to her and wait and see what happened. Xavi was fine with that, although there were various times when he would wonder if it was depriving her of something as his son yaincoa had his dummy from the beginning for I don’t know how long. I wasn’t trying to be different, but I just didn’t want to give her something just because everyone else had done it!

But around 7 weeks old, she started to try to suck the life out of everything. She would stick her hands so far into her mouth that she would almost choke on them! So after a little bit of nagging from xavi, I eventually relented, dragged out the dummy, boiled them all and reluctantly gave in. We gently put it in her mouth and waited. I think that I was waiting for her to automatically spit it out in disgust so I could go ‘ha’ and xavi was waiting for her to suck it up like her new best friend so that her could go ‘ha’! She gave us a middle ground and spat it out the first time but took it in the second time. It was remarkable because a few seconds before, she was irritable and crying/whinging and just wouldn’t settle, but after giving her the dummy if was as though someone had just pressed some kind of ‘relax’ switch on my daughter! She just relaxed immediately and lay very quietly on the sofa! Shock horror. We could eat dinner together and at a normal speed without worrying about her starting to cry in the middle. I was gobsmacked . . . and a little disappointed that she took to it like that! The next night though, she spat that dummy straight out leaving me with a huge grin. However, she did seem to have a necessity to suck on something and so she took to the dummy. I gave out strict rules regarding the use of the dummy; it was only to be used if she was all irritable and wouldn’t settle and to help her to get to sleep. I was worried that there would be ‘nipple confusion’ issues and also didn’t want to have a child who always had a dummy stuck in her mouth! However, over the months, the dummy started to get used more and more, yes even I was using it more. She just loved her dummy and I felt bad depriving her of it but I found that I would give it to her even when she didn’t need it. She would cry and you would give it to her and she would automatically relax with a look of contentment on her face, or she would be so tired but fighting against sleep but the minute you put the dummy in her mouth, her eyes would just close! However, it was becoming too much. I realised that things needed to change, but I didn’t know how I was going to go about it! Firstly I had to make sure that xavi was on board with the idea, and then I would have to work out my strategy! While I was still going over the whole thing in my head, Christmas came along. My parents posted pictures of Emmeline on the internet and I noticed that in almost every one of the pictures of her, she had her dummy! Oh dear. Around the same time, I noticed her waking up and crying because she didn’t have her dummy. I would give it to her; she would suck it for a while, take it out her mouth, chew on it a little, drop it and then start to cry because she didn’t have her dummy! How irritating? Especially at 3am! It seemed that she was waking up more and more during the evening whimpering for her dummy and then I would be the idiot playing fetch the dummy, sometimes having to give it to her up to 10 times and trying to gently swat her hands away from her mouth so that she wouldn’t pull it out again. Eventually a few days ago I woke up and said to xavi “that’s it. The dummy has got to go!” I explained everything to him and decided that whilst I am not planning on taking the dummy away completely right now, I do want to start to use it less and less so that she becomes less dependent on it to help her sleep.

Along came day one. Her morning nap time came along and I decided to see if I could get her to sleep without the dummy. I decided to put her to sleep in my arms so that she at least had some other comfort. I know that there are probably plenty of people thinking that I just substituted one sleep aid for another, but my idea was to get her off the dummy and then I would get her back to sleeping by herself without a dummy or by being in mommy and daddy’s arms! One step at a time. I have come to realise that a lot of things with babies depends on who is more determined/stubborn and can go the longer. I think I will win every time, so I knew that no matter how long it took, I would walk up and down the hallway until she dropped off. It took around 30 minutes or so! She fell asleep but I was unable to put her down as every time I sat down, she woke up! poo.  Along came her second nap of the day and I thought ‘well, I can’t give her the dummy now’ so I didn’t, and she fell asleep in daddy’s arms! For the 3^rd nap, (she naps a lot as she never sleeps for longer than 30 minutes at a time!)her and I went to the room to have a sleep together. We share the bed and this is normally the only way the Emmeline will have a nice long sleep. I settled her down and the crying began. She wanted her dummy and I decided to not give it as it may send out mixed signals to her. So I stroked her hair and I sang to her. Eventually she calmed down and she fell asleep. That evening when I put her down to bed I gave her the dummy. I decided that would be the last hurdle to overcome and that she could still have her dummy at bed time.

Well day 2 went the same more or less, and here we are on day 3 and that has also gone the same. No dummy during the day and in the evening I am not giving her the dummy every single time she cries, I am giving it to her every other time so that she can start to slowly get accustomed to not having it the whole time. I don’t know I that is the right thing to do or not, but hey ho, it feels right to me.

I am so proud of her and how well she is adapting to this whole thing. I imagine that it could be quite a traumatic event for a little baby, but she is handling it like a trooper. Although I am not living in la la land. I do have a strong suspicion that she will give me a good run for my money in the screaming stakes those first few times of putting her in her own crib during the day to sleep without her dummy and not in the arms of mommy or daddy,! But as I said before, everything step by step. I know that she is still young, and yes, I could leave her with her dummy a little longer, but the longer I leave it, the harder it will be, and not just for me, it will be harder for her. It feels right to do this now, and I have noticed that she appears to be making more noises and ‘talking’ more these last few days as well. An added bonus is that she also appears to be sleeping slightly better during the evenings, although it is still early days so I won’t do the dance of joy just yet! I still have to tackle getting her to truly sleep on her own, so I may be eating my words next week!

Sleep deprivation

Sleep deprivation - a sufficient lack of restorative sleep over a cumulative period so as to cause physical or psychiatric symptoms and affect routine performances of tasks.



Emmeline clearly does not suffer sleep deprivation



That is how the dictionary describes it. This is now my life. I had to look it up to check if it could explain how I feel some days, and it comes close, but may days, the word ‘tired’ doesn’t seem sufficient. It seems such a weak word to describe something so big!

I have a new born baby whom I am breastfeeding. Of course I am sleep deprived.  However, I sometimes feel weird saying this to people. Why? Because they all just give you that superficial ‘oh shame’ look and nod their heads swiftly moving on with the conversation. They just don’t seem to believe me!

I think that generally people fall into 3 categories.

• Those that cannot even begin to imagine the sleep deprivation that you are feeling as they have never experienced anything similar.
• Those that think you are just exaggerating “oh, all mothers say that. Ha ha ha”.
• Those that think you should just accept it and get on with things. ‘You had a baby, what did you expect?’

Maybe I am totally wrong, but it is how I feel, I feel guilty to tell people how crap I actually feel some days due to lack of sleep because they probably think I am just exaggerating. I AM NOT. Take your worst ‘ooh I am so shattered’ day and multiply it by around 50. EVERY DAY. ALL DAY. ALL NIGHT!

My baby girl Emmeline is now more than 4 months old. However my lack of sleep began way before she was born. It began when I fell pregnant. Back then it was due to a large number of reasons such as the need to go to the toilet 5 times a night, the increase in body temperature, the increase in the size of my tummy meaning that I could only sleep on my side (not so comfortable for me), the hunger pains, and again the need to go to the toilet 5 times a night. But my sleep deprivation took a drastic increase with the arrival of my little girl.

I am breastfeeding her which means that I cannot share night time feeds with my partner. He would love to help, but he is lacking in essential equipment! Anyway, I don’t see the point in Xavi waking up to ‘give me the baby’ and share my hell. What is the point? Seriously? So that we can both just be exhausted the next day but at least we get to say ‘Oh yeah, Xavi wakes up and helps’. Why? To show how he shares responsibility? He does a lot for Emmeline during the day so dont need him to show me anything during the evenings. Yes, I could express milk and he could bottle feed her, but I would much rather prefer that he gets a good night sleep so that he can be fine at work (he wakes up very early and he has a physical job). Plus, I really need him to be in a good mood, because depending on how tired I am , I may not be so rosy, and I need him to not only support me, I need him to put up with me and my irritability. Anyway, Emmeline sleeps right next to me, so I would wake up even if xavi did the feedings. Our close proximity does mean that I am aware of her every move and her every sound. She whimpers and I wake up. She strains to go to the toilet making noises and kicking and tensing her legs, I am right there with my eyes open cheering her on to get that poo out. My little one eats a lot. No more than other babies I am sure, but a lot anyway, so she whimpers for boob a lot as well.. I am very happy to be able to satisfy her appetite, and I will wake up as many times as I need to for her. I will do what she needs. . .

But my god I am tired!

I think that before I had Emmeline I must have thought that all mothers just said that they were tired, but really that they could not have been quite so tired. Boy has karma kicked me in the arse for that thought. I could never have imagined how I would feel, so I guess I just never really believed or appreciated other mother’s pain. From the beginning, Emmeline has always woken up a lot. So many nights it feels like my head has just hit the pillow and I have to get up again for her. For a long time, until past 3 months old, she was waking every 2 or 3 hours. Some nights she could do 4 hours, some nights we would wake up exactly every hour. You may think to yourself ‘Well, 3 straight hours of sleep isn’t bad’. Oh no my friend, it is not 3 hrs. You see, when we say she woke every 2 hrs, it is actually 2 hrs between the time she started her last feeding and the time she starts her next one. What generally happens is something like this: 02:00am baby wakes, stumble out of bed, groggily attach baby to boob, play endless rounds of free trial Tetris games on my mobile to not fall asleep on baby, burp baby, optional poo to then change, attempt to attach baby to other boob, watch Xavi turning over taking all my blankets with him, huff and puff irritably no avail, look down and see baby is fast asleep, put baby back in crib, go to toilet, suddenly feel hungry so quietly grab a biscuit from the biscuit tin, go back to bed, climb into bed noting that it is 02:30 ish. Attempt to fall asleep. Great, get to do it all again at 04:00am. Not pretty. There are times that I do have to hold my head in my hands and just go ‘Oh Emmeline, really?’ when I have to get up regularly during the nights. And the minute I have had this slight moment of impatience, I feel bad and guilty even though I know I haven’t done anything wrong. I would hear of other people’s baby’s sleeping 8, 10 or even 12 hrs and would wonder why I did to piss Mother Nature off so badly that she gave me a baby allergic to sleep. Was I doing something wrong? The one time that Emmeline slept for 6 hours, I bounded out of bed like a bloody panther to make sure she was still breathing!

When you are deprived of sleep on such a constant basis, you are no longer tired. You are so much more. It is not just that your eyes have that burning sensation that is normally the result of a night out and too few hours sleep. Your body feels tired, your brain feels slow, you can hardly think straight, you can’t really follow conversations at a normal rate. Then there are your emotions, they are stretched to the limit. I get irritated when I haven’t slept enough, irritated and generally feel on the verge of crying. Then I get irritated about being so ready to cry. I lose my patience and my temper with those around me. I just generally tend to have no time for anyone. I feel like half a person. The other half left me to go and get some shut eye somewhere.

I am optimistic that there is light at the end of my sleep deprived tunnel, and almost every night I go to bed I think “is this the night she sleeps for 6, 7, or 8 hours straight?” I am always hopeful that yes it is. I am still waiting. I told myself it will get better when she is 4 and a half months, or when she is 5 months, or when she is on solids. I motivate myself thinking well I have done it for this long, I can keep going.

Then some bitch on the internet stated that this will continue into the first year!

Someone please tell me that she is totally wrong!!!!!!!