I missed my baby

About ten seconds ago, I had this:

And then I blinked, or I turned away, or I did something; but I don't know what, and when I turned back, and opened my eyes, I had this:

And I'm not saying that the second isn't every bit as magical and astounding as the first; I'm just saying that  all I did was blink.  And I missed my baby.

Because he's six months old tomorrow (or possibly the day after: B and I disagree on this one.  If you're born on the 31st May are you six  months old on 30 November or 1 December?  And how much more complicated if you're born on 29 February?) and he's not a tiny baby any more.

And somehow, where with L, the first six months took years: an endless, wonderful,  wouldn't change it for a second agony of learning curve and colic and sleepless nights, and with S and A they were a focused marathon, feeling every yard of those twenty-six miles, don't worry about whether you're enjoying them or not (for the record, I did; in parts), just get through, the last six months have disappeared in the blink of his unbelievably long eyelashes, or the flash of his ever-ready grin.

But I didn't want them to. I wanted to savour them.  I had plans. There were pictures I wanted to take, that I never managed to get of the girls: the mole-rat face of a tiny baby, just off the breast, nose to the fore, eyes tight closed, like a naked rodent and no less adorable for it; the bottom lip, pushed out in fury beyond the seeming stretch of those tiny muscles; the first taste of solids (adores them, for the record, but I still haven't taken a picture); the first weighing in the calico hammock the health visitors bring; the moments he mislaid his thumb...

Because all those are gone, fleeting as daybreak, a moment in time that will never be repeated.  Like the sounds and feelings that I will never experience again: the tiny weight of my newborn, the blind seeking for milk, the first hesitant squeeze of my finger, the tearless, angry, babybird cries.

And I tried, I really did.  I have found myself thinking, countless times, that I wanted to bottle that moment, that feeling, that smell.  But it passes, and I forget, and now I can bearly remember what he felt like at three weeks, or looked like at three months.

M is not the baby he was.  He has lost his startle reflex. He has lost his skinny new baby look.  His voice is older, his smile is more knowing.  He has grown and changed and I am so proud of him. But despite all that I can't help wishing I had noticed the moment that I lost my baby.

M is for midget

So I spoke to the GP about M's weight.

Actually, that's a lie. I sent the GP a text that said "I'm a bit worried about M. I can't get an appointment with you for a week.  Fancy coming round here, so that I can cook your children lunch and you can inspect  my baby?"

And he said "Yes, how about Sunday?".

Sometimes I love living in a very small town.

Anyway, they all came round (his wife is also a GP), and poked at M, who smiled obligingly and looked thoroughly healthy, and we agreed that there was nothing obvious wrong, and that maybe we should come in to the surgery to have M checked out properly for the scarily vague Failure to Thrive.

Which we did, last Thursday. M was weighed and measured and prodded and listened to, and turned upside down and tickled, and had put on 8 ounces in just over a week.

Which still doesn't make him huge, but does put him back on the scale (at the 0.4th centile rather than just under it).  More importantly his head circumference is still where it was at birth (75th centile - it's all those brains), and so is his length (25th).  The GP and I went through the list of possible causes of Failure to Thrive (I feel it needs capitals) and none of them seemed to apply, so we are left where we were.

With a small baby.  Whom I am to feed a bit more often.*

He's still not weed on me though.


*That bit obviously because one is not allowed to leave a health professional's office without having added to the layers of maternal guilt...It's one of the NHS's founding principles.

Would I know if there was something wrong with my baby?

My baby is off the scale.

He is the best baby in the world. Officially. I've had three other babies so I should know.

He is three months old now. He gurgles, he smiles, he giggles. He grins at me, B, and the girls. He recognises our voices, he turns his head towards them. He rarely cries, preferring to sit and watch the chaos, smiling and nodding in non- judgemental approval.

He feeds well and happily, jaw moving strongly, eyes closed in pleasure, or wide open, framed by unfairly long lashes, as he seeks my gaze.

He sleeps, sometimes calmly and without moving, and sometimes noisily, sucking determinedly at the thumb he discovered about five weeks ago, but always deeply and solidly. For twelve hours a night and several during the day.

He has never weed on me.

He is the best baby in the world. He is off the scale of wonderful babyness. Even if he proves me wrong tomorrow and wees all over the place before wailing solidly through the night.

He does everything you would want a baby of his age to do. Only, of course, better. He is perfect.

But he is off the scale.

He is three months old and he weighs 10lb 4oz. In the last six weeks he has put on six ounces. Plotted against the newborn growth charts he is below the 0.04th centile.

He is off the scale.

If you lined up 1000 babies born on the same day as him, he would be one of the smallest four. The NHS red book says that babies of this size "will normally be referred to a paediatrician".

But M is not, yet, being referred. He is developing normally, he is doing everything a normal baby would and should do. He is not hungry. The health visitors are not worried. I am not worried.

Until we look at the charts.

One of the health visitors told me, and I don't think she was joking, that I should just stop getting him weighed. But then they looked at each other, and I could see the confusion and the tiny little edge of concern. Instinctively we all think he's fine. Small, but fine.

But what if we're wrong?

Where did our confidence go?

As I sit here, girls in bed (without too many tantrums), one hand on keyboard, little finger of the other in M's mouth (makes typing tricky but keeps him quiet), I feel, for a brief moment, like I know what I'm doing.

Which is clearly enormously tempting fate, so watch this space for news of an epic disaster (along the lines of the deer that jumped out in front of the car on the A1 last weekend - necessitating a lot of explaining to Direct Line about why offering us a fiesta to get home in wasn't going to work).

That aside, as I have a fleeting moment of confidence, I've been finding myself wondering: as a species, where did our confidence go?

This is my fourth baby, so you'd sort of expect me to know what I'm doing wouldn't you? I certainly expected that I would.  But, while I definitely do have more confidence than I did with L, and more time than I did with A and S, I still find myself at a loss more often than not; asking for reassurance, checking the baby bible, reconfirming to myself that if I feed him again, or leave him to cry, or take him out for dinner with my mum, or let him roll off the sofa at three days old (a real low point), I'm not going to doom him, or destroy him, or ruin his chances of getting a proper job in twenty-odd years time.

But if I were a zebra I wouldn't feel like this.  If I were a chimpanzee, or a kangaroo, or a mouse, I'd have my baby, or my multiple babies (and wouldn't having fourteen make twins feel like a walk in the park on a sunny day?), and I'd just get on with it:  I'd know how he latches on, and that I'm doing it right; I'd know how to keep him warm without letting him get too hot or cold; I'd know, instinctively, how to keep him safe.

So why can't we? Why is there this huge industry around telling us stuff that every other animal knows without asking? 

I mentioned this to my sister-in-law the other day, and she said it was about the information - because the information is there, we become insecure and we rely on it. She said if we weremembers of an undiscovered tribe living in the jungles of Papua New Guinea, we wouldn't feel like this; we would still have that instinctive certainty.

I'm not so sure.  I suspect that for all a Papuan new mum may not have Gina Ford, or the baby whisperer,  health visitors, community midwives, the co-parenting lobby, the nanny state or the breastapo, I bet she has a mother, a granny, an aunt or a neighbour, all regaling her with their stories of dreadful deliveries and breast-feeding nightmares, and all telling her, "We didn't do it like that when you were young" or, "Oh, no, we do it like this now".

I think it's something to do with being human. As a species we no longer have confidence in ourselves.  But I'd love to know when it was lost.  And I'd love even more to know how to get it back again.

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ps Once again I feel like Cinderella.  I am not off to CyberMummy tomorrow, due to new babies, small children, builders and the late and not at all lamented deer.  Instead I will be heading back up the A1 to home, hopefully in a car which will fit us all.  I will however be wishing I were there and sending a big hello to everyone.  Have fun for me.

Four children, two adults, ten days.

Well.  Here we are. Ten days in. I have been discharged from midwifery care.  We're officially on our own. Flying solo, just me, B, the children (it's very odd not being able to say "the girls" any more) and the tummy bug.

Oh?  Did I not mention the tummy bug?  It came to visit about five days ago and has cut a swathe through the girls (see, I can use it, but only in very specific circumstances), though so far has avoided B, me and, thank everything, M.   While I'm grateful for that particular small mercy, I will confess that the clearing up of midnight vomit is not made better by the knowledge that you'll be up again at least once more before morning, whether anyone's sick or not.

Other low moments:

Tantrums.  Lots of them.  Not sure if it's being 2 1/2 or being a big sister or being ill, but the combination of all three has resulted in a lot of screaming. And that's just me.

The new shower screen shattering into a million pieces all over the plumber (who is fine, but shocked), meaning we can't move back into our bedroom this weekend after all.

The discovery by A and S that they can get out of bed.  On their own.  Whenever they like.

And the discovery that this gets more and more fun the later you do it.

The discovery by A and S that this skill is also useful during the afternoon nap.

Losing S's Piggy. Admittedly it was the spare Piggy and we have now found it, but it was a moment of sheer panic. For both of us.

B and I, both very tired, both fed up of clearing up sick and forcing recalcitrant toddlers back into bed, both at the end of our tether with being shouted at, nearly, but not quite, reducing each other to tears through sheer rattiness.

And the highs:

Paternity leave. Thank you, thank you, thank you Tony Blair.  I could not have got through the last ten days without B who has been utterly utterly fabulous in every way.  I never expected to have luxurious lie-ins with just my baby asleep in his crib beside me, but I have had them, every day since he was born, while B gets up with the lark (and the girls), gets them dressed, gets them breakfasted, even does their hair... It's six years tomorrow that we said "I do" and I couldn't be happier that I did.

Sleep.  I know, that sounds ridiculous, but when the girls let us, we are actually getting some sleep. I realise that I am dooming myself by even admitting this, but M is letting us have six hours between feeds at night which at 10 days old I couldn't have hoped for and am more than happy with.

Breast feeding. And breast feeding just one.  Don't get me wrong, I am delighted for both me and the (little) girls (see, it gets confusing, doesn't it?) that I fed them myself, but it was rarely anything other than functional:  strap on cushion, lower self heavily onto sofa, roll baby up arm onto cushion, repeat on other side, feed...  With just one you get all that lovely post-feed cuddling, the incredible lightness of a newborn against your shoulder as you wind him, the weird lopsidedness of having one full and one empty.  I'm loving all that, I really am.  And even better, he's regained his birthweight so I feel like I'm doing a good job too.

Big sisters. We've had our moments (see above), but there is something so incredibly heart-warmingly magical about how they want to stroke his head, or change his nappies (aka hold the nappy bag), or choose his clothes.  I know there will be fights, and arguments, and tantrums, to come, but when it works, it's amazing.

And us.  We are complete now. This is our family, and there hasn't been a day since he was born that I haven't, if only for thirty seconds, looked at the six of us, walking down the lane, or transfixed by Octonauts (well, maybe not all of us) and felt a glow of pride, and luck, and joy.

The birth story

We are five days in.  I am typing this half-lying on the sofa, arms outstretched to the laptop balanced precariously on my knee, while a small, very small, person snuffles into my neck.

It is magic. The sleepless nights, the logistics of managing four under five, the living in a building site are as nothing beside how magical it is to know this little person, who five days ago we hadn't met and couldn't imagine.

Can you tell we're still on a high?

It seems incredible that it is only five days since he was born.  I'm already finding it impossible to imagine a life without him in it, as though he has always been here.

Yet it is only five days.  This time six days ago I was settling down to bed in hospital, believing, irrationally, that I was never going to have this baby, and, more rationally, that I was going to be sent home in the morning, still bleeding, still intermittently contracting, still pregnant.

It was not to be. 

If you are squeamish, uninterested in these sorts of details, or related to me by blood or marriage,  you might want to look away now...

If you're still reading, and haven't read this post, it'll give you the background, but when I woke up in hospital at 3 am last Tuesday I was definitely not in labour, and I was definitely fed up.  My mum had dashed up on Sunday when I was admitted and B sent her off to Tesco's to buy pineapple and curry, while he came in to bring me home, and the girls went to nursery. 

And then the doctor appeared, examined me, and said; "Actually, we've changed our minds, we're going to break your waters.  Have a nice morning, get some lunch and we'll be back at one-ish."

Oh.

We spent the morning sorting out the logistics back at home and walking, just to get some fresh air.  I wish now that I had spent some more time relishing being pregnant, but I didn't and now I can barely remember what it felt like.

2pm.  We are in the labour ward.  I am not contracting, haven't, in fact, since mid-afternoon the day before, but nonetheless, this is happening.  A midwife and doctor are doing unimaginable things with what looks like a knitting needle.  Nothing happens, although they think they've broken through the membranes. We are sent for a long walk.

2.55.  We are back from our walk. We have got very familiar with the loop up and round the hill over the last couple of days.  The views from here are still much nicer than they were in London, and even better, this time the walking seems to have worked.  I am definitely having contractions.

3pm.  Oh.  My waters have definitely broken now.  Ow.  Tens machine. 

3.45. I look at the clock.  This pain is almost unbearable  I've only really been going for an hour.  I can't take much more of this.  I desperately want to be examined, to be told that I'm nearly there, but I know I can't be and I am frightened to be told that I have hours more of this to endure.  I have apparently lost all my colour.  I am made to lie down.  I turn the machine up.

4.10. I ask, somehow, what happens next, and am told that although things seem to be happening quickly, I am probably still a way away, but I will, in due course, feel pressure in my bottom and an urge to push.  I think; "I've been feeling pressure in my bottom.  Don't hope.  Don't hope. Don't say anything.  It can't be."

4.15 (according to my notes). The midwife has gone to the loo.  "I am pushing!".  B is rushing down the corridor, desperately shouting for her.  She runs in, dragging on an apron. Shouting for a colleague.

Push.  Pause.  Pant.   Push.  Pause.  Pant. 

I am very present in the moment, in a way I don't remember with L.  It hurts.  More than I could have possibly imagined or remembered.

Now.

4.29. "Put your hands down". 

I have my baby.  M.  He is warm, and wet, and pink.  He is not crying, but he is snuffling, breathing loudly and noisily.  B is crying and now so is M.  I am in love. 

After L, A and S, comes baby T!

Well, he was worth the wait.

Baby T (actually M but 'T' still amuses me and I've just given birth very fast so I'm entitled to be indulged).

His official time of birth is 4.29 pm. He weighs 7lb 7oz (3.38 kg) and measures (ish, clearly) 51 cm (they didn't tell us that in inches). He has dark hair and blue eyes and looks remarkably like L did.

He is obviously the most perfect baby boy ever to have been born.

What a difference a day makes! (One for the playlist, I feel)

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After posting this, I realised that this week's Gallery subject was "I am grateful for...".  This post was obviously not written for the Gallery, but I couldn't miss the opportunity.  Click here to see what everyone else is grateful for.