Things I have learned about baby clothing.

My daughter has A LOT of clothes. A scary amount, actually. Now she has slowed down growing, it's not nearly as bad as when she would only last in size for a couple of months. Sometimes, things would only get worn once. I always felt that this was a sickening testament to how rich we are as society, that a small child could accumulate so much stuff. However, I also learned to look after her clothes really well, so here are some tips, some Australia/Brisbane centric.

• If a stain won't come out on the first soak, try hand washing, if it still won't come out, soak it every load until comes out. It almost always will.
• Carrot and bolognaise are HORRIBLE to get out of your child's clothes. You are better off feeding them nude.
• If it can't be soaked, don't buy it.
• A tumble dryer is your best friend.
• If it says on the label "do not tumble dry", dry it on low heat. I have never ruined anything by ignoring this label.
• If it needs handwashing, you don't need it
• If you have a winter baby, you need at least one woollen hat and jumper. They DO need hand washing, but are the warmest thing you can get, so ignore previous rule.
• 3000 bibs, singlets and socks are not enough. Make it 6000. Actually, at least 20 bibs, singlets and socks. Little hats don't go amiss either.
• Everyone will buy you wraps. I had so many. Don't buy yourself wraps. 
• Muslin wraps are the best for breastfeeding. Don't buy any expensive special designed crap, because that's all it is.
• If you are planning on using disposable nappies, wait for sales. Big W has GREAT sales on Huggies. Stock up then. A box (108 NB, 99 Crawler) represents about a month.
• If you plan to use cloth, go to the Children and Babies Expo. They have samples you can handle, people to give you advice and excellent deals.
• Washers are cheaper and gentler on your baby's skin than even Huggies sensitive skin products. Target sells ten packs that are about $5 and they are the perfect size and thickness.
• Anything from Target will wash better, fit better and last longer than anything else. This includes Pumpkin Patch, all the DJs and Myer brands, Kmart and Big W. Best and Less is a very close second to Target.
• If you want gorgeous stuff that is unique, Australian made, inexpensive and well made, make the time to go to a Mummy Market. There are lots of them. My one of choice is the Ipswich Handmade Expo. There's also the Mummy Tree Market, the Butterfly Tree Market and the Mumma Market.
• Alternatively, buy off Facebook sellers. They are actually awesome.
• Bonds Wondersuits and singlets are expensive. This is because they are the best. Target and Best and Less often have sales that put them at a price that is comparitive to the home brand.
• No matter what you dress your child in, someone will, at some point, incorrectly identify your child's gender. This has happened to me at least twice while Lily was dressed extremely girly.

Anyway, I think that's all. Mummys feel free to add in the comments!

Things that annoy me (when it comes to parenting)

Just for fun, because I feel like it, I'm going to go on a little rant about things that annoy me. This is mainly inspired by me, in the face of Lily's upcoming 12 month vaccines, having a re-look at anti-vaccine advice.

1. Mummier-than-thou: I don't mind a bit of mumpetition. I actually quite like it. It makes me think through my choices for my daughter, read and re-read research and helps me learn to protect my daughter's best interests. It also helps me to humbly except that sometimes, I am wrong, or even a bit haphazard. What I can't stand, and I rarely get into conversation with such people and they certainly aren't my friends, is people who think that their choice is the only choice, that simply because you disagree, your research is flawed or non-existent. Better yet, I love people that flat out refuse to listen to bodies of evidence produced by better research practices than their sources because they know their sister-in-law's, cousin's, aunt's, dog's breeder did it the way their massively flawed research suggests. Sometimes I like to goad these people on message boards, but one must be careful arguing with such people as idiots nearly always win arguments by dragging you down to their level and beating you with experience. Or simply exasperating you so much, you give up as your brain leaks out your ears.
2. People who are rude about breastfeeding: I'm about to come out of the closest here. *deep breath* I plan to breastfeed until Lily is AT LEAST 2. This is not something I planned when I was pregnant. My mum didn't breastfeed, and my grandma didn't breastfeed long as Mum failed thrive on breast milk and many of my friends had been unsuccessful with breastfeeding and I was very anxious about public attitude. I planned to give it a go for at least 6 weeks and then what happened, happened. Then Lily was born prem and while I have yet to find unshakeable evidence that breast outstrips formula by a wide enough margin that it should be shoved down the throats of parents of healthy, full term babies the way some groups think it should, the evidence of the benefits of breast for prems is pretty much uncontested. So 6 weeks came and went, and my attitude shifted. I decided to breastfeed until at least 1, which had been Bob's attitude all along. Then 6 months came and went. And I decided that 2 was my new aim, and Bob agreed. Lily was pretty much a case for the text books on how good breast is for prems. But the disgusting things that are said about breastfeeding in some circles, usually not parents, have really made the bile rise in my throat. Comparing it to urinating or defecating in public, suggesting women should hide out in toilets or use bottles, suggesting there is something PERVERTED about it. It makes me furious. The public attitude is absurd. I've even heard some people, that should KNOW better, saying they will not breastfeed, not because of careful research or personal negative experience, but because they don't want to be tied down to their child. Oh, FFS. Well, for the love of all things holy DON'T BREED, because your kid will be a clear asset to society. Of course, things are turning around, and the new push by Queensland Health is for breast for 12 months+, which I think it awesome! Having said that, I will champion anyone who has chosen bottle for good reasons, and there are lots of them, exclusive of physical inability, and have done on many occasions.
3. And finally, why I'm here, the Anti-Vaccine Movement: When I was in hospital, I felt the urge to pick apart every decision for our child. It seemed like a better use of my time than moping. One of the things that piqued my interest was whether to vaccinate or not. I did exactly 10 minutes research. I went to the Australian Vaccination Network website, one of the leading anti-vax groups in the world, and was astonished there was no forum or way to make comment on the papers they presented. So I dug a little deeper and found them to be an exceptionally horrible organisation that had committed borderline terrorist acts, were vitriolic towards parents of sick children who were too young to immunised and had caught diseases off unimmunised children and called for people to sue anyone who gave them advice to vaccinate if their child had an adverse reaction, but didn't seem to think that the reverse could be true. That THEY may be sued if a child died after their parents took the advice of their organisation. And the absurd things they were saying, such as calling measles a benign disease made me distrust ALL their research and finally, I decided that anyone who told me to vax was at least more right than these fools when I discovered they weren't just AIDS deniers but CANCER deniers. And I discontinued my research. And Lily had been jabbed with everything since. 

However, as a footnote, since then I have followed all anti-vax/ pro-vax discussions and have kept a close eye on the activities of Meryl and her cronies. I have learned through doing this that:

• anti-vaxxers pose a threat to herd immunity, because the fewer people that vaccinate, the more a disease is likely to pop up and the less effective immunisation is as a whole because not all vaccines are 100% effective, 100% of the time and they require high levels of vaccination for efficacy. If 10% of people are allergic or unable to vaccinate because of disease, and 10% fail to vaccinate, you reach 80% vaccination rate, which is when herd immunity begins to fail. 
• The vast majority of anti-vax research is done with small test groups, poor scientific practise and with an end goal in mind. Sometimes, the research isn't even done by doctors, immunologists or scientists; sometimes it is an opinion paper from someone such as a naturopath, who really has no place purporting such things.
• If 100 papers support vaccination, anti-vaxxers will champion the one that doesn't, calling the sometimes THOUSANDS of doctors and scientists involved in the other papers sell-outs and cronies of "big pharma". 
• They still think Andrew Wakefield is a hero and have no f***ing idea about ASDs.
• they think SIDS guidelines are another thing the government is using to control the masses
• that Andrew Wakefield's paper set real Autism research back decades
• that, having read detailed descriptions of adverse reactions, and having seen what is described as a adverse reaction by anti-vaxxers as reason not vaccinate, that they are hysterical (c'mon, a grumpy baby with a fever and sore arm is a well documented reaction and is no reason not to vaccinate), fail to recognise other environmental factors (Autism cannot be recognised until 9 months and often not until after, so yes, it DOES correlate with the MMR, but only by coincidence) and gloss over cases of obvious child abuse (one case was clearly shaken baby syndrome)

This is not EVERYTHING I have learned but, in short, yes, I am worried about adverse reactions and hold my breath for up to a week after she gets vaccinated, but I am not going to stop vaccinating her because of this. Quite frankly, if you don't immunise your kid, you are a fucking idiot.

My kid is a little vicious....

In the past couple of weeks, Lily has become a little vicious.

It's my fault, really.

One night, just after a breastfeed, Lily reached up and grabbed my nose and pulled. Her father and I both laughed our heads off, so she did it again. And then she pulled my lips, poked my eyes and yanked at my hair. It was all very funny.

Until, two weeks on, she will let out a manic laugh and attack my face, hooking her fingers into my nose and pulling, twisting my lips, gouging my eyes and tearing out my hair in great handfuls.

It hurts. My eyes water and I often am left unseeing in one or both eyes for several seconds. But the damage is done and no amount of scolding or non-reaction can fix it. Especially as her father laughs his head off whenever she does it.

It won't be as funny when she does it to some poor child on a playground. I just hope he's the one that has to scoop her up and race off, mortified, calling apologies over his shoulder.

1000s of Kisses

I really like to kiss Lily. I must do it a hundred times a day or more. This might sound like an exaggeration, but it is not.

From a quick kiss on the head as I run past her while she sits on her play mat between loads of washing, to kissing her hands as she reaches up to touch my face while we play, to kissing her all over her tummy while she lies in bed with me in the morning, or kissing her all over her face and neck, just because it is fun.

I am lucky, because Lily likes to be kissed. Kissing her rapid fire anywhere on her body illicits the most delightful giggle bubbles and kissiing her on her face and hands helps her to relax when she is sad or tired, and feet kissing is just a fun way to play, and she often initiates this.

Lily also likes to kiss. Well, we call it kissing. It involves her grabbing your hair and yanking you forward as hard she can, opening her mouth as wide as it goes and pressing it against your cheek or nose, licking and biting. In truth, it's gross, and a little painful. But everyone laughs and we say "Oh, thank you for the kisses!" and, after all, she can't see the winces of pain.

What happened to the Kanga Cuddles?

Lily came home with a variety of odd and cute habits from the NICU. The top three were needing to be swaddled, her dummy obsession and kanga cuddles.

Swaddling only lasted a month or two before one night, she just decided she didn't like it any more. She SCREAMED until we undid her, then promptly conked out. No fight, no weaning her off. It was bliss. Although seeing as this was in the coldest part of winter it presented us the challenge of keeping her warm. Thank God for Bonds wonder suits and their mittens.

The habit that I swore before she was born I would never allow under my roof was the dummy. But, dummies are a NICU staple, teaching children on the last leg of their sometimes extremely long journeys that sucking = full tummy, as their food heads down that wretched nasogastric tube.

And Lily LOVES hers. We don't go anywhere without our entire stash, especially since she has learned the "Oopsie" game. She plays with it like a toy, and her father has taught her the gorgeous trick, that entertains lines in shopping centres everywhere, of holding the handle end in his mouth and having her "kiss" him to take it. But it's life in our house is coming to an end. As she sprints towards being a toddler, she has learned another trick with her dummy, that has had me leaning over the cot almost crying with frustration. This trick involves her refusing sleep by clamping her jaw so tight I can't even open it by putting my pinkie in the corner of her mouth a la the unlatch technique and doing this horrible closed mouth cry. She is deliberately refusing the dummy so she can't go to sleep. And what happens if we walk away, hoping she will just exhaust herself? She lets rip with an open mouthed wail. And then we start again. Sometimes for hours. Until we give in, pick her up and put her in our bed. The dummy's life will end at Easter when both Bob and I will be home for a number of days and we can go cold turkey. It will be hard, but we will be rid of them before one, when they will begin to interfere with speech, dental and jaw development.

Which brings us to the final NICU habit.

Once Lily was out of her humdicrib, and off her KanMed, I would spend 8 - 12 hours a day at the hospital just cuddling her. Kanga cuddles are a fairly recent NICU "treatment" and involve either skin to skin or Mum's skin to bub's clothes, chest to chest cuddling. It speeds growth and makes for healthier babies. Only the very tiniest and sickest prems don't get Kanga cuddles, but it's not something they delay for too long because the benefits are overwhelming. I loved it. Bob loved it. It was really nice. And when she came home loving it, we quickly caved on our "No co-sleeping" rule. Even during the few months were we couldn't get her to sleep unless we Kanga cuddled her we rarely said anything bad about it. Sometimes I would Kanga cuddle her just because I liked it. And we used it as an alternative to normal Tummy Time, because at around the same time swaddling left our house, so did quiet, calm and productive Tummy Time. And just like swaddling, it hasn't returned.

Lily hates Tummy Time so much, that even though she can roll both ways, she doesn't. Just doesn't. We've caught her at it less than half a dozen times, which is how we know she can, but she simply WILL NOT roll. But Kanga cuddles have stayed, and we both had visions of an overtired toddler, sick five year old, still wanting that special cuddle. But now she can sit and is close to standing, the most awful thing has happened. Kanga cuddles have left our home. She screams just as though its floor Tummy Time and rolls off the offending parent.

It's sad, but we still get plenty of cuddles, Daddy even gets a cuddle that just for him that we call "The Snuggle", where she wriggles her whole body against his, burying her head in his neck or shoulder to lay it there. Lucky I still breastfeed or I might be jealous.

S*** For Brains Oscar Sposka and Darling Dexy Doe Does

One of my gorgeous blogging friends has just posted beautiful posts about her animals, so I'm going to take a post, after my little soap box saga, to tell you how wonderful my animals are.

Both our animals came to us without any planning what-so-ever (much like Lily).

Oscar was originally bought by my grandma as her pet. It was the first animal she has ever bough from a pet shop, and she bought him because of his gorgeous eyes. When I asked  her why she bought him, she simply said, "He looked at me."

But Oscar is a boy. A real boy. Rough and tumble, goofy, high energy and generally ADHD in dog form. And Grandma's placid girl dogs couldn't cope and Grandma herself was a little horrified by what she had bought. So we adopted him. And we love him like a child. He is sometimes frustrating (WHY does he take 45 minutes to choose spot to poo, even on rainy days and at 1am?), sometimes naughty (WHY are my undies so delicious?), sometimes a sook (WHY does he need to sit ON us?), sometimes really smart (WHY can't we leave anything of his on any surface, even high ones?) and always loving.

Oscar is pretty much Bob's dog, so when I read, I think even before I was pregnant, that dogs, particularly male dogs, sense labour before it happens, I wondered how that would shape up. While I was on bed rest at home, Oscar would spend his days with me, in bed, snuggled up, generally being my little friend on a very long and lonely road. At night he would abandon me for his father.

At 31+1 weeks, I went for a routine check up with my Ob/ Gyn and her said Lily looked low. I said she had always been low, even when she was too tiny to need to huddle up. He frowned and said, "Well, just keep up the bed rest and the progesterone."

At 31+6, my grandma and mum popped over. Mum commented that Oscar was being unusually clingy with me. I laughed and said "I hope not. Dogs know when you're going into labour." And forgot about it, assuming he was feeling like less of a night time traitor. The next night I went into labour.

And he has been Lily's little soldier ever since. Getting up with me and sitting with for me each heart breaking pump while she in the NICU. Racing to us to each time she makes a peep, even now. I remember the one night we almost tried control crying, he would race between us and her, his eyes begging us to do something for his little girl. If she wasn't enough to make us forget that nonsense, he was. He sits between her and any new people to our home, and follows around anyone other than us holding her. He loves his girl. And even when she pokes eyes and pulls fur, he patiently waits until she tires of him before moving on, although, lately, he has been a sentinel just out of arms reach. A sentinel, nevertheless though.

Dexter is a gorgeous creature we bought from the vet when we took Oscar for a check up. He was rescued from a kitten farm and hand raised by the nurses at the vet. He was the best impulse buy ever. He, as opposed to Oscar, is indifferent to the baby. She adores him though, laughing her little head off at his antics, and enjoying the moments she catches him off guard and she can attempt to shove him in her mouth, just like her less mobile stuffed animals. And while he licks her feet and her hands, and sometimes takes an experimental nibble when he is playing with her (her toys) voluntarily, he has never once lashed out at her vicious fur pulling antics. Which is saying something as my feet and ankles have grown accustomed to his awesome stalking and foot murdering skills. He looks imploringly at us, but just takes it. The only problem we have had with him is when he was tiny, he would attempt to sit on her head or share her milk. He has grown out of that now, although we still keep a wary on him when she is sleeping, as our beautiful boy loves nothing more than to curl up right under your chin when you are sleeping.

The most important thing about our boys? They are best friends. Rough and tumble, hilarious, murderous, biscuit stealing (both ways), best friends.

We are as blessed with our animals as with our baby.

Loving Lily and Working

When we found out we were pregnant, we were a little stressed about how we would cope financially (isn't everyone after the happy news sinks in?), but with a whole semester of teaching ahead of me, plus a small savings account, I was sure I would get around 12 months to be a mum and definitely 6 months. In an ideal world.

However, the world is not ideal, and I got to work just one week before my body decided that it was not suited to a long, healthy pregnancy. And then the medical bills came in, and they came in and they kept coming in. When our accountant worked it all out, even with Medicare, tax rebate and private health we were well over $5000 out of pocket. Not great for a young couple just starting out. Crippling in fact. When Lily came home, we had just three months for me to find a job before disaster would strike. So when we got a call when she was five weeks old offering me just enough work to keep our heads above water, I took it, even though Lily would be just six weeks old when I started.

I was torn up. NO ONE we knew was in our position. No book I could find advocated what I was doing, although the always beautiful "What to Expect" series said I was in good company and could do it if I had to. OR if I wanted to. Wonderful books those.

I didn't want to, it was hard, and it was stressful and it was tiring. But I love my job. Really love it and I DID enjoy it. Lily never missed a drop of breast milk. Her clothes were clean, her room was clean, she had lots of quality time with us, including reading books and playing age appropriate, development appropriate games. We mainly ate home cooked food, my clothes were always clean and ironed, and the only concession we made was hiring a cleaner. Lily spent two days at day care, but that was our choice. It was directly across the road from my work and I would spend a number of hours with her on those days. And her daddy looked after her one day, and my grandma the others. She had just as much attention and loving as if I were staying at home. She is excelling for a prem, and while a little less mobile than I'd like, is doing great for her actual age.

And I am excited about returning to work for Term 1. As I said before I love my job. It is rewarding, I am good at it and it suits mothering. I do not love it as much as Lily, but at the same time, in the months I have been a SAHM I have found it doesn't suit me. I get bored, frustrated and lonely. And that is fine. When I signed on to become a mother I did not sign on to dissolve myself as person. I truly believe I can be a better mother to my daughter if I work.

So that is why I froth at the mouth when I see "SAHM" bagging out working mums. Or pitying working mums. Or questioning how well working mum's children are raised.

My mum worked, and I love her and am attached to her and was doing I lot better when I landed in Prep than many of the other children whose mothers had been at home with them.

Even Steve Biddulph, author of Raising Boys, amongst other well knowing parenting books and a very vocal opposition to long day care for children and babies says that it takes a village to raise a child. It is only in recent times that we have abandoned that. His loudest lament is the short time fathers get to spend with their offspring and the overall reduced interaction children have with males, thanks in part to paedophile hysteria.

Queensland introduced Prep because study after study, and teacher anecdotal evidence, showed that children that went to kindergarten and preschool faired much better in Year 1 than their home counterparts.

And even if I didn't have to work, Lily would be spending one day at day care next year because I personally believe it is a good thing. Learning to share, getting colds, getting bitten and learning to bite back, interacting with people outside the family sphere.

I won't work for a year with the next one. We have planned this time for the heavy load of bed rest and medical bills. But I will return to work well before my children head off to full time school. That is how I make a happy home, and I am tired of feeling guilty about it.