Mind that bump - the magic massage table

One of my favourite people, Gillian Parkinson of Le'Essience, has recently purchased herself a super cool new toy..... 

OK it's a massage table, you say. What's so great about that? But wait.... there's more!

This isn't just any old massage table, it's a custom made table for those of us who need a good old rub the most - expectant mothers! Hooray! That big round cut-out you see on the table is made especially for that ever expanding baby bump so pregnant ladies can now too experience the relaxation of a full body and back massage like all us flat-bellied folk.

Particularly in my last trimester when I was all pinched nerves and pulled muscles, Gillian's massages came as a welcome relief. Yet as good as the shoulder and back rubs were, it's always a little hard to get super comfy and relaxed when you're straddling a chair with your belly propped on a cushion and your chin resting on the back of the seat.

Needless to say, when I heard about this super special mechanism I knew I had to share it with the baby wielding mamas out there. And not only this, once mine and Baby Daddy's number two is in the oven (but don't hold your breath) I'll be face down on that table faster than you can say "Painkillers, please!"

Help! In desperate need of some "solid" advice!

To all the mamas out there - 

Little Red is just over 5 months now and showing all the right signs for starting solids. He's shoving everything in his mouth, making chewing motions, gawking (and grabbing!) at our food and is still hungry after his milk feeds, not to mention waking earlier and earlier each morning for his feed.

Yet, we've been trying for just over a week now and every time he seems to be less and less interested. At first he would push it out with his tongue. Then he started to swallow some of it. Now he's gone backwards and has begun the "motor boat game" or he just clamps his mouth shut - and I'm making sure I do the solids thing when he's at least a little hungry, i.e. about an hour or so after his milk feed.

I started on pumpkin and that went down like a cup of cold sick. I then moved onto Watties Organic apple and apple/banana which he was swallowing for a wee while but now spits out. I thought sticking to one flavour for a few days would ease him into it, but nope! I tried him on some pumpkin/kumara today for lunch (pureed to the point of liquidity) and again, my face got more of it than his tummy did.

I'm not sure what to do and need some help. Do I stick with it and hope he gets his head around it? Do I put it on hold for a week or so and try again? I figured he'd take to it like a duck to water seeing as he's quite the little piglet but I was wrong...

What to do, what to do? If you have any tips then please, enlighten me!

Miss Bonnie x

Babies & boobies - Jessica's breastfeeding story

When I was pregnant I knew that I was going to breastfeed. I've always found it an odd concept (milk? from there?) but wanted the absolute best for my baby - I had visions of myself as this breastfeeding goddess in pretty, floating tops that gave discreet boob access for my bubs, sitting proudly in cafes around town.

When Ava was first born, the midwife laid her on my chest and she snuffled around for a while before being helped to latch on which jerked me out of my half-sleep with a loud "ouch!" Everyone looked at me in surprise and the doctor reassured me that it gets better.

It didn't.

On the second night Ava wouldn't stop screaming. She was starving. I fed her continuously for three hours (crying myself the entire time because of the pain) but she was beside herself. Finally a kindly nurse offered me some formula in a bottle. She drank 20mls in under a minute and slept all night long.

By day three I was still in hospital, had no milk coming in, no colostrum coming out, a big painful split down each nipple and blood blisters to top it all off. I couldn't wear a bra any more because the blisters would bleed and my already-sore nipples would stick to the bra. It was agony. By the time a lactation consultant could come and see me I couldn't latch Ava on at all.

On day four I went home and set up the electric breast pump and began expressing. I still had very little milk, I'd pump for twenty minutes and get 30 mls of milk so was supplement feeding with formula as well. It took three weeks for my breasts to heal up. By that point I was getting 70 mls of milk every three hours by expressing, but it still wasn't enough for Ava who lost 20% of her body weight in hospital. I began latching her back on again and SURPRISE! it wasn't too painful. Uncomfortable yes, but not like before.

I got two lovely weeks of really breastfeeding (plus some supplementary formula) and was happy to put the pump away and never look at it again. Then at six weeks old Ava suddenly started refusing the breast. We went to a lactation consultant again who said the latch was perfect (stoked) but to try pumping and make sure there wasn't a supply problem. So out came my old friend the breast pump, and I discovered my milk had dried up. I guess it's worth mentioning that my Mum's milk dried up when I was six weeks old - the same age as my daughter was.

I tried Weleda nursing tea and Fenugreek at the advice of the midwife and Plunket nurse but no success. I was really distressed at losing my milk - after all the effort to breastfeed I only got two weeks! I went to see my doctor, who offered me a script for Domperidone. Domperidone is an anti-nausea drug prescribed to cancer patients and one of its side effects is lactation. It worked a dream. My milk came back and I had more than ever before. Ava was happy and started really gaining weight, I felt like a proper mum finally and I didn't need the breast pump!

Aside from lactation, one of the other side effects of Domperidone is weight gain. After two months of taking it I found I had put on 11 kgs and was the same weight as when I was 30 weeks pregnant. Talk about devastated! I weighed up all the pros and cons and finally decided that I would stop taking the Domperidone and hope for the best. Ava was three and a half months old - I wanted to breastfeed until she was six months at least but I felt that gaining so much weight was putting my health at risk. It seemed so unfair after being pregnant, then losing the bump and fluid only to put it all back on again.

After stopping the Domperidone my milk lasted two more weeks then disappeared for good. Ava was breastfed until 4 months old, and I'm really proud of my efforts. I know I tried my absolute hardest and will attempt to breastfeed again with number two. She's now a happy bottle-drinking 7 month old.

I did get an official verdict about why I couldn't produce breastmilk - my body struggles to produce oxytocin, which is why I was in labour for 55 hours (ow!!) and then couldn't make much breastmilk. But at the end of the day, I think a healthy baby is the most important thing regardless of how they're fed and a little breastmilk at the start is still amazing for a baby's health.

Babies & boobies - my breastfeeding story

Breastfeeding. What a daunting thought. Well, it was for me. During my pregnancy I knew I would breastfeed yet I was absolutely terrified. I wasn't worried about labour. I wasn't worried about childbirth. Nor was I worried about the constant sleepless nights ahead. But when it came to breastfeeding I was a-shakin' in my boots!

Who knows why? Perhaps it was due to the fact that as soon as that wee fleck of a heartbeat started squirming around in my belly my boobs felt like they'd had a run in with a baseball bat and my nipples felt like they'd lost a long battle with sandpaper. I couldn't even bear to touch them let alone have a gaping human hoover hone in on them! Also, I just figured that it was going to be hard. How would baby know what to do? And more importantly, how would I? There's only so much "training" one can do in this situation!

Once Redford popped out though it was a different story. Having spent the first four minutes of my sons life watching him struggling for breath whilst tubes were shoved down his throat and oxygen masks hovered over his tiny, squidgy face my motherly instinct kicked in and all I wanted to do was cheer him up with a sweet boobie/face plant move.

And face plant he did. Little Red turned out to be the child you hear about in ante-natal class. You know, the one that picks himself up with superhuman strength and somehow, in one deft ninja move, goes from snuggling under your neck one moment to headbutting your boob the next and then suck suck sucking away. Needless to say, I was all new mother naivete and thought "Sweet! No hard work required, the boy's a pro." Oh but I was wrong. 

Pumped up with new found hope and the belief that motherhood was going to be a cinch I pleaded with the hospital staff to let us go home the next night and, somewhat reluctantly, they consented. Obviously, I don't know better than the midwife. Within two hours of being home the little peanut chose to exercise his lungs at full volume and his hunger at full capacity. My colostrum was OK - it did the trick for half an hour or so, but this child wanted milk and he wanted milk now. I have no doubt that our neighbours were counting the ways to murder us in our sleep (sleep? what sleep?) for the noise that was reverberating from our bedroom. Thus began the infamous late-night dummy run. I figured that after about 45 minutes bubs was getting fed up with trying and simply comfort sucking to fall asleep so a dummy wouldn't go astray in this situation. So....

12.30am: Baby Daddy Nick gets sent out to buy dummies.
1.20am: I call Nick to see where the heck he is only to find out that he's made his way out to Lower Hutt in a desperate attempt to find a supermarket still open.

*Note to self: win Lotto and start up a 24 hour baby supplies store.

1.45am: Nick calls me, "Um, I'm just at the petrol station looking for some but I'm pretty sure the attendant thinks I'm either shoplifting or on drugs...."
2.00am: Nick returns with empty hands, apologising profusely. Oh dear.

With snippets of sleep here and there, we manage to get through the first night with a visit from our midwife growing thankfully nearer. Hoping for a magic answer when she finally arrived we were a little let down when she told us to hang in there, my milk would come through soon enough. So we waited. Then the night came around again and if I thought it couldn't get any worse I was wrong. At 11.30pm I began the 9 hour feeding marathon. This consisted of me sitting in bed with the boy permanently attached to my boobs (both of us drifting in and out of light sleep) until 8.30am when the midwife returned again and we waited for yet another magic answer - we were told again to hang in there, my milk would probably come through tonight and if not we could look at topping bubs up with formula.

Thankfully the midwife was right and my sanity was saved (not that there was much left after the whole 14 hours of sleep I'd had since going into labour 4 days earlier). I still remember the feeling of the milk letting down: all of a sudden there was a warm tingling sensation and within 20 minutes my boobs had gone up a cup size and looked like mini versions of Pammy's melons. Finally, with a little effort, Red latched himself like a pro once again, he got a belly full of delicious milk and we got a half decent night's sleep.

The next 6 weeks were full on. Little was a hungry tyke and when people suggested I get him into a routine and feed him every 2 hours I smiled and nodded but never took heed. This boy needed to be fed on demand and there was no two ways about it. He was also a lazy feeder, unlatching before the hind milk got flowing so he was only satiated for a wee while. My midwife recommended feeding him off only one breast each feed which helped immensely and a friend of mine also suggested bottle feeding him before his longest patch of sleep at night so out came the breast pump and by around 8 weeks we finally had a baby that slept well, averaging 6-7 hours a night. This was a lifesaver, even if he was still feeding every hour to hour and a half during the day. 

My milk supply has always been, and still is, a mystery to me. Sometimes I seem to have gallons stored away in there and other times I literally have to sit there milking myself to get even a drop. This plus the fact that he got used to feeding via bottle and is hideously impatient led me down the top-up-with-formula road which I had originally wanted to avoid. At first I felt horrible about doing it, that my milk wasn't enough for him and that everyone would judge me but in the end I figured the most important thing was keeping peanut full and happy and if anyone had a problem with it then it was theirs alone.

So now, at 5 months, I feel like we're finally in a feeding routine. He breastfeeds every 3-4 hours during the day with a bottle at 9pm before bedtime and usually wakes at around 5am for another feed. I love breastfeeding him, I adore the closeness and strong bond we have and how feeding time is just Mummy and baby time. We've just started him on solids which he's slowly getting his head around - watch this space for foodies blogs! - so aren't needing to top him up so much with formula.

All in all, I feel I've had a good run with breastfeeding. For something I was so terrified about to begin with I think Little Red and I came out the other end OK. When it comes down to it, it's such a special time and to be honest, I'll be pretty bummed out the day he stops for good!

From cradle to cot - my tiny tot is growing up!

Little Red celebrated his 5 month birthday on Saturday so last night we decided to honour the occasion by finally moving him into his cot. Having put the "transition" off as long as we could, we eventually took the plunge after realising that he was 1) the only baby in coffee group still in a cradle and 2) now playing footsies with the safety bars every time he had a stretch.

So! Up went the cot, out came the mattress and on went the sheets and blankets and boy was it big. We put Little Red in there after setting it up to see just how wee he still was and you pretty much had to squint to find him.

As the night grew ever closer I became slightly apprehensive. While he is a reasonably good sleeper (averaging a 7-8 hour block each night) he's one hell of a stirrer and will quite often get me up to pop his dummy back in around 2 or 3am. Having slept right next to me in his cradle or, when he's really lucky, in bed with me and Nick I wasn't sure how well I would fare having him *shock! horror!* across the other side of the room. I had gotten so accustomed to knowing he was within a metre's reach of me at all times that I felt uneasy having him now about 10 metres away from me - yes, we have an enormous bedroom.

The kid may as well have had his first day at school for the way I was carrying on. I felt as if I was standing on the doorstep bidding him adieu as he jumped in his car and drove off to college, only to return in mid-semester break with a girl on his arm who he claimed was the love of his life (which reminds me of something my Mum always used to say: your kids are only ever on loan to you). My baby was growing up! 

Talk about separation anxiety. On my part, not his. At 9.30pm on the dot after having guzzled his bottle I gently removed our slumbering angel from the arms of Nick, took him upstairs and tucked him in and wham! He was out like a light not to wake again til 6.30am. No early morning grizzles for his dummy. No footsies. No nothing. Just a perfectly content, sleeping bundle. 

I do sit here wondering if it's all too good to be true. That it was just beginners luck and tonight I'll be making the trek from our bed to his in the cold, eerie darkness of the wee morning hours to scramble for his dummy and pop it back in before he gets too worked up. In some ways (I feel it now, but possibly not at 2am) I kind of hope he does need me to make that trip. I don't know how I feel about him being settled and happy in his cot so far away from me. Surely he would feel the same? A little sad that he's not right next to me anymore? Hrm. Perhaps I should lay off the helicopter mum antics.

So, I guess we find ourselves at a milestone. As much as I miss having Little Red close, I do hope the cot thing works out as smoothly as it did last night. I have to admit I thoroughly enjoyed my 8 hours of unbroken sleep. Let's see if I get it again tonight.

Lets play the shame game - Baobab Cafe, Newtown

A dear friend of mine sent me an email the other day ranting and raving over the treatment Jessica, a buddy of hers got when lunching in Baobab Cafe a week or so ago. Having read it and growing understandably more grizzly with each sentence, I got in touch with Jessica to get the full story and here it is, straight from the horses (I use the word horse figuratively, of course) mouth:

I went into Baobab last Friday morning with my 7 month old daughter Ava to meet two friends from my Mothers Network Group and their daughters aged 4.5 months and 8 months. We grabbed a table and moved our buggies out of the way so they weren't blocking any of the other tables or the aisles. The owner immediately came up and said that as the cafe was small our buggies were rather a pain and could we move them outside. All three of us were using them at the time so clearly we couldn't and moved them well out of the way instead.

My daughter Ava started having a little cry so I picked her up, gave her a cuddle and put her dummy in. She cried for about 2 minutes and the owner came over again and the resulting conversation went something like this (not word for word of course, but you get the gist) ....

Owner: You're really going to have to leave. Your baby has been crying for ages and people are leaving because of you. Everyone is staring at you. If your baby is crying you need to take her out of the cafe. You can take her for a walk and come back if you want but you can't stay here, you're annoying the other patrons.

Me: We'll leave, but we won't be coming back... ever!

Owner: I have a baby too you know, but you can't just let them cry in a cafe. It's very irresponsible and it's causing the other people to leave. You need to take the baby away now.

Me: OK that's fine, you can stop now. You've said more than enough and we're leaving.

Owner: Irresponsible blah blah blah, annoying other patrons blah blah blah.

And so we left. On the way out I apologised to the two tables next to us for disturbing them and both said they hadn't been disturbed in the slightest! I was really upset and was in tears by the time we got outside, it was sad because I used to go there all the time and know the staff well who are all really lovely - they always said hello to Ava and she always had a smile for them! Good food, good coffee, good staff. Shame about the owner....

Needless to say, I most definitely won't be blessing them with my patronage. I understand the buggy thing, or would if they were blocking the way of passing waiters. I also understand the crying thing, but not when bubs has been crying for all of two minutes and it's not bothering the other patrons. 

Does this mean that when the woman at the table next to me is shrieking with laughter to the point my ears are bleeding I can complain and you'll ask her to leave? Or when the straggly haired hippies sitting outside puffing away on their fags are blowing their smoke through the doors and windows right into my face I can have a whinge and you'll ask them to get out? I think you'll find the answer is no. Even if I asked, they wouldn't be shown the door. So why then, when no one even complains about an innocent crying baby is this Mama asked to leave? Unfair, I say, and unjust. The worst thing is, Jessica (offended mother) left a wee note of displeasure on Baobab's Facebook page which was promptly deleted. Ashamed, much?

Post Script: Have a read of me eating my words after bagging Baobab, naughty naughty!