The End Of Breastfeeding

There aren't many subjects that get parents going as much as the thorny topic of breastfeeding. I now realise that mums often fall into one of two camps. The first group finds breastfeeding easy and can't help but tell everyone about how they wouldn't dream about giving their baby anything else. The second group finds breastfeeding difficult and so give their baby formula instead, which usually means a lot of nagging from health visitors and, in turn, a lot of complaining about this nagging on various internet message boards. The thing is, everyone seems to think they're doing what is best for their baby, and when confronted with conflicting evidence like this, it's not hard to see where the confusion comes from.

We fall somewhere in between those two groups. From about two weeks old G has had a mixture of breastfeeding and bottle feeding, with an initial one bottle feed per day rising to two and then three shortly before Mrs J went back to work last week. We decided to start giving G the bottles because she was a big baby and often seemed to be hungry, no matter how many breastfeeds she got, and sure enough she was a lot better once we switched. Not all babies are happy to take both breast and bottle (the milk flows out at different rates, which can be irritating for little ones) so we were pretty lucky with that too.

But now Mrs J has gone back to work breastfeeding isn't really practical. The less often you breastfeed the less milk you produce, and there just isn't enough to keep our little milk monster happy, so from this week we're giving her bottles only. It won't be for long though, because soon enough we'll have to start trying solid food. Another thing I've now learned is that, once you finally solve one problem with your baby, you're almost immediately confronted with a new one.

The Early Stages Of Teething

One of the favourite parlour games of new parents is to look at various illnesses and problems which affect babies, and compare the typical symptoms to whatever your little one is doing that day. We've had a busy time of it recently, with a wedding in Nottingham, a 30th birthday party in rural Shropshire, and now we're back in Mrs J's hometown of Monmouth for Christmas (the picture shows G out in her pram enjoying some of the icy Welsh weather). And during these last few days G has given us plenty of material for this parlour game, with a lot of evening crying, excessive drooling, chewing on anything that goes near her mouth, and a pair of very rosy cheeks. The Internet (and it's a fool who doubts what they read on the Internet) says this is probably the early stages of teething.

It can't be real teething, the bit where the teeth actually start poking through the gums. That's not supposed to start for a while yet. And looking carefully into little G's mouth (as I often do, usually when mopping up her latest post-feed vomit), there certainly aren't any teeth in there. But apparently things do move around inside her gob well ahead of time, so this could be what's causing G to be so difficult.

But to be honest, it doesn't really matter what amateur diagnosis we come up with for G, the solution is always the same. Dose her up with Calpol and hope for the best. See, being a doctor can't be that hard.

Going To Sleep In Her Own Room

Baby G is ten weeks old today. It's already hard to imagine what we actually did with our lives before she turned up. Ten weeks doesn't seem like a lot, but I now understand that when you're a new parent and fitting in all of the new things you have to get done every day, ten weeks feels closer to about ten years. I also now understand that those people who say that time flies by and babies grow up before you even realise it are liars. Liars! I mean look at our baby, she's still a tiny baby! She can't crawl or stand up or explain the offside rule (as a girl, she may never be able to do this) or anything!

Anyhow, I'll grant you that she has grown up a little bit since she was born. Enough in fact for us to decide to put her in her own room at night from now on. G has actually been sleeping through the night reasonably happily for a while, so this measure is possibly more for the benefit of Mrs J, who usually finds herself being woken by G's every gurgle and movement even though the little one is doing it all in her sleep. So, the cot is now in the spare room, and G is currently in it, as the picture above (taken in the dark with a flash) shows.

Our new routine calls for her to be in her room from after her mid-evening bath and feed (about 7ish) onwards. Tonight, during the time between that and her usual late feed at 10:30pm, she kept waking up. This meant both me and Mrs J trooped in and out of the room all evening making increasingly useless attempts to settle her down by cooing at her, turning her mobile on (it's amazing how irritating that tinkly sound becomes after, oh, let's say the second time), putting her dummy back in, or just staring at her blankly in the hope she might stop crying (this was me). However, we didn't give in, and at no time did we remove her from the room. This, apparently, is important, and, also apparently, we will be grateful for it later.

After the late feed Mrs J went to bed and I tried to get G back off to sleep. Mrs J manages this by cradling her and softly whispering in the classic motherly style. Alas, when I attempt that, G cries and fidgets and tries to grab on to the collar of my t-shirt and, if that's successful, a clump of my exposed chest hair, to surprisingly painful effect. For the last couple of weeks, the only way I've been able to get her to sleep is on my knees, with her facing away from me. I like to call it the Superbaby position. Here's G demonstrating it a short time ago:

There are two things to notice about this photo. The first is that baldness is obviously hereditary. The second is that it doesn't look very comfortable. But G seems to like it, and that's all that matters. Another thing about being a new parent is that getting baby to sleep is of paramount importance, so if baby develops a taste for drifting off in the airing cupboard or tumble dryer (note - don't try this at home) you'd probably let her do it. Right now, the baby monitor gadget in front of me tells me that G is indeed fast asleep. So it's time I got some sleep too.

Either My Baby Has Colic, Or She Is Merely Consumed By Some Unspeakable Rage

For the second night running, Mrs J left the flat and within minutes I was confronted with a suddenly very angry baby. Last night G ended up crying for several hours. I knew she wasn't hungry, and it wasn't her nappy either. I suppose she might have been too tired, but every time she appeared ready to drift off to sleep she woke up again, expressing what can pleasantly be described as considerable displeasure at whatever it was that was ailing her.

Apparently the big question facing parents in this situation is: does my baby have colic? I'd always assumed that colic was some kind of common baby illness, like measles or chicken pox or scurvy, until I finally got round to reading about it. Well, it's certainly common, and it definitely affects babies, making them cry a lot for no apparent reason. But that's just about all anybody seems able to agree on.

The traditional explanation was that colic was something to do with babies struggling to digest properly, although nobody really knew what exactly. That's still a popular theory, although there are a few others around, including the baby's environment, how the pregnancy went, and that there's not actually anything wrong with the baby at all. Not that any of this academic arguing is of much interest to the parent of such a child, because the hours of crying are real enough. But unsurprisingly, medical professionals have wildly differing views on what to do about the problem, ranging from nothing (because, well, crying is what babies do) to pumping a variety of narcotics with long names into your little one, which may or may not help hold back the baby rage.

The thing is, nobody can really be sure about anything, because babies can't tell you what's wrong with them. The scream for 'Ow! I have terrible pain in my stomach because of a build-up of gas!" is much the same as the scream for "I'm really bored of you daddy and your ridiculous tongue sticking-out game, what time does mummy get home?"

We're going for the narcotics option, in the form of some drops to give G before feeding to help her digest her milk, in case she's lactose intolerant like her mum. The good news about this is that it's a plausible theory for why our little girl is crying, and is easily treatable. The bad news is that it would put me into a minority of proper milk drinkers in our family. I don't much fancy a lifetime of trying to find new ways to cook meals involving goat's cheese, which is not even close to featuring in my personal list of top ten cheeses. But if G really hates ordinary milk as much as the picture above suggests, I don't suppose I've got any choice.

Dirty Protest

All of those infernal parenting books hardly agree on anything. Book one tells us to always go to a crying baby, book two suggests leaving a baby to cry, while book three swears by soundproofing your airing cupboard and keeping baby in there for 23 and a half hours a day with only a pay-as-you-go mobile and a list of nearby Chinese takeaways (I may have made that last one up).

However, if there's one thing all the approaches more or less support, it's the importance of getting baby into some kind of routine. What this routine should actually be is anyone's guess. But we're at least trying to do a few of the same things in the same order at about the same time every day, in the hope G will sleep a bit more regularly and our currently chaotic lives will become a bit more predictable. One of these is, when Mrs J is getting ready to feed her, I'll take G to the nappy-change station (as shown in the picture) and quickly sort her out with a new one.

I did this when G woke up and started squirming at about 3 o'clock this morning. Her nappy was wet but otherwise clean. Typically, it wasn't until after I'd put the new one on and done her clothes back up that I heard the dreaded baby-filling-nappy sound. It's a bit like that feeling you get in cricket, when a batsman hears his stumps being knocked over behind him. Only squelchier, obviously.

Later on in the morning it was feed time again, and so it was nappy change time again. Once more G was damp yet clean. But this time I didn't even get the chance to do the new nappy up before I heard that familiar noise again. Sure enough, a torrent of yellowy stuff came firing out all over the new nappy, the changing mat and most of my right arm. It's no trouble to clean it all up again, even if you've not had much sleep and you've got a screaming baby to contend with. But next time I have a ham sandwich, I think I'll give the mustard a miss.