Author: rt@hotmail.com.au

A few days ago when getting out of our car after preschool, Miss 3 looked at me and asked, “Can I sit on the car boot?”. I shook my head fiercely as I shuddered away the traumatic memories from the last time that same innocent request was made. I looked into Miss 3’s sparkling blue eyes, took a deep breath and said, “Remember what happened last time we sat on the boot…” She nodded. “We don’t want anyone to get hurt again, okay sweetie”, she nodded okay and we went inside our house. You see, many months ago when Miss 2 was then Miss 18 months we had returned home from dinner at my mother’s house.

It was a clear night and the stars were out. The girls had been winging during the car ride so I had successfully managed to distract them with star gazing. Getting out of the car both girls looked up at the stars in awe. Being heavily pregnant I dashed inside to go to the loo whilst my husband unloaded the car and watched our girls. Suddenly I heard a thump, then a slight cry, then silence. As our Miss 18 months is known to be accident prone at the best of times (seriously, she tumbles over on average at least 3 times a day, sometimes over her own two feet!) I thought nothing much of it. She must have tripped and grazed her knee, I”ll go to the loo then go help husband with the girls. But something turned in my gut and as I instinctively walked to the door I saw my husband carrying our Miss 18 months, quiet, motionless. I grabbed her from him, too scared to look, I could see blood on my husband’s shirt and her face was red and starting to swell. I checked her teeth as I always do after a fall, I couldn’t tell if there were any missing, blood was flowing from her mouth, nose and forehead.

“We have to get her to the hospital!”, I gasped. My husband reassured me everything would be okay, he was in disbelief himself. I held her out and looked at her, her left eye was swelling and she was quiet. “What happened?” I demanded as I grabbed a phone realising we needed help faster than we could get to help.

The wait for the ambulance was awful to say the least. I screamed, I cried, I wailed as my baby girl went in and out of consciousness. At some point husband took the phone as I was inconsolable and unable to be understood as my words turned to dribble between snorts of tears and screams demanding they “Hurry, hurry, pleeease hurry!”. The ambulance ride was horrifying for me, my baby being given oxygen, memories of her happy face smiling at me as I wondered if we would ever have our child back with us in the same capacity she was before the accident. I asked if she would be okay, if she would recover, if she would go back to normal. I was told only time would tell and they would do everything they could. We had left my husband and Miss 2 behind as I travelled with our injured baby in the ambulance. I was so relieved to see them both when we got to emergency a short time later.

There are only two times I have ever seen my husband cry; the first was years earlier when we visited my much loved and unwell Great Uncle in hospital not long before he passed, when he was a shell of the beautiful man he once was, the second time was this night in hospital when he saw our baby with a huge black eye swollen shut and a bloodied face. He felt so terrible about her being hurt that he refused to sit on a chair, feeling he was only worthy of slumping onto the cold hospital floor as doctors treated and monitored our baby.

Holding our Miss 18 months I was relieved when she started to talk, but chills of fear ran through my veins as she asked “Where’s Mummy? Where’s Mummy?” whilst looking at me as I  cradled her in my arms. The next 24 hours was a blur. We were admitted overnight and I sat holding her in a chair, watching the rise and fall of each breath whilst feeling our unborn baby kicking away inside me, as doctors monitored her throughout the night. The following morning scans were taken revealing a fracture to her eye socket. We had been so very lucky there wasn’t more damage done. Again and again we were asked by different doctors what happened. Our girls had asked their Daddy (my husband) if they could look at the stars and he had placed our Miss 18 months on the boot to get a better look. We have a Toyota Camry, it has a flat boot and Miss 18 months sat easily on it. Then as he turned to pick up Miss 3 to sit her on the boot also, Miss 18 months lent forward and fell onto the asphalt pavement below. It happened in a split second, one that is painfully etched into our minds forever.

Miss 18 months required many follow up visits with ophthalmologists (eye specialist), and plastic surgeons (the true jocks of the surgical world reassuring me that no matter what it is, they can fix it) as she recovered from her injuries. The staff at the hospital recognised us each visit. Every appointment was like a hurdle in her recovery and as we received the green light time after time I breathed a sigh of relief realising what we could have lost but are so blessed to still hold onto. I can tell you I have never been so scared in my life, not even when I lay on our kitchen floor in a pool of blood during my PPH after our first baby was born. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that when you become a mother, your life has less value than that of your children. Yes you want to live, you want to live for your children. But whilst you can handle seeing yourself suffering, its impossible to watch as your own child is hurting.

Months later you could not tell that our now Miss 2 had ever sustained such a traumatic injury as she happily plays, and stumbles about as she propels her body forwards faster than her little legs can carry her. The only time she cried during the whole ordeal was when we returned home from hospital and she saw her reflection, her eye bright purple. She refused to have photos taken for some time  insisting “No cheese!” when the camera was presented (not that I wanted photos of her looking like that, it just so happened to be the Easter long weekend and we tried our best to normalise the event by continuing with our Egg Hunt and family lunch as usual complete with photos which even now make me cry to see) but as the bruising turned every colour imaginable and slowly began to fade she started to smile more and more. She is an incredibly tough kid, only a few weeks before the accident she sat on my lap at the doctor’s getting her injections. She didn’t even flinch as she stared down our GP as if saying, ‘What’s that, a feather? What else have you got?’

Thinking back on all of this I realise that this incredibly brave kid just has an incredible trust in everything. When she was younger and I would carry her on my hip, she would often dangle her limbs about heavily as she grew tired, having complete faith I would hold her tight and not let her fall as I always did and still do. She is the type of kid that was on the move early on, and would go about removing the entire contents of every cupboard she could find. Then as I turn my back to clean the mess, within minutes she would have made a furniture tower and be standing atop looking proud of her climbing skills as though she had conquered a new land whilst I would run towards her, arms out yelling “Nooo, stop, wait! Don’t moooooove!”She trusts there won’t be anything on the ground that could trip her up yet seems to fall over anything that gets in her way. She has faith in her own feet and balance as she runs, arms swaying side to side, and still falls over herself. She trips about toys, chairs, the carpets, nothing. There isn’t a day when she doesn’t somehow injure herself. I wonder what I will need to tell the preschool when she starts attending as she always has bruises of some sort somewhere on her body. As I bathe and change her I ask , “Where is this bruise from?” or comment, “Oh, this one is from when you fell onto the dog’s bowl/dolly/block/insert random object from our house here”.

As I watch her walk down the stairs without holding on, or ride her tricycle, or being pushed in her toy pram by Miss 3 or run at the park I shudder as I brace for a fall, arms out ready to catch her. It was only last week whilst eating lunch at a cafe I was telling a friend how clumsy she is and as I am saying this Miss 2 ever so slowly falls from her chair. My friend looks astonished, “It happened so slowly!”. Yes our Miss 2 is accident prone alright, I just hope that she never has an accident as serious as her fall from the car ever again. I don’t think there will ever be a time when we can joke about it either. I tried once, whilst showering with Miss 2 who slipped and fell, my husband watching. I glared back as I helped her up and cuddled her, “At least I didn’t let her drop from the car…too soon?” He shook his head, looking disappointed because whilst it was not his fault, whilst it was no ones fault, he feels responsible and no matter what I say he will never forgive himself.

Watching our Miss 2 in the pool today having her swimming lesson with my husband, both smiling and giggling I know we are incredibly lucky. She tripped when she got out of the pool sure, but she is her usual bubbly self and her happy smiles make the daily panic attacks I endure as I supervise her closely worthwhile. And we now officially have private health insurance, so phew! Perhaps I don’t need shares in cotton wool after all.

 

Do you have an accident prone child? How do you prevent them from injuring themselves?

 

I remember it clearly, walking into the paediatrician’s office for the first time, clutching our first baby carefully as I nervously pretended I knew what I was doing in my new role as mother. We had met our daughter’s paediatrician whilst still in hospital soon after her traumatic birth. She had been in special care for low blood sugar and procedure meant any baby in special care required a follow up within a few weeks of being discharged from hospital. I like to do things by the book so if I was told my baby needed an appointment I made the appointment. Heck, if I was told to travel to outer space to collect moon dust to help her sleep I would have gone to the moon, or at least attempted to.

He looked at me as I stood before him, crying baby in my arms, me rocking her precariously as I reassured us both everything was okay. After a short talk and checking our baby our paediatrician queried, “Do you use a dummy?” I shook my head. Apart from doing things by the book I also wanted to be a ‘natural, go with the flow’ mother, but my anxiety over getting everything perfect for our daughter was preventing my ability to remain calm and relaxed. The questions continued, “She breastfeeding?” I nodded. “Any formula?”. I shook my head. He probed how often my baby fed, “Whenever she is hungry?” I replied thinking to myself I mustn’t get the answers wrong, I need to prove I’m a competent and capable mother whilst also silently admitting that when I really thought about it, she must be hungry all the time because she really did seem to feed all the time. “You are a big dummy!” was his conclusion. Feeling a little shocked I managed to force a smile when he chuckled as he continued “Your baby is using you as a dummy. You are the biggest dummy there is”. Still unsure if I was following him correctly I looked a little bewildered at him, my eyes begging for some advice I could actually use. He must have sensed my helpless state as he went on to suggest we invest in some dummies to help her sleep.

Going to the supermarket looking for dummies can be quite daunting first time round. There are so many different types, some even claiming to be “orthodontic approved” as if reassuring us that if we spend the extra $5.00 per dummy our kids won’t need braces one day? I grabbed a bunch, pink of course, and went back to the safety of our home. That night my husband paced about with our tiny baby swaddled with love. Her face was pink as she wailed at him. My husband offered her the dummy….again…and again…and again… We looked at each other puzzled, now able to talk through thought as we were so sleep deprived we could not waste any energy on actual verbal communication. She can’t be hungry, she just fed. I indicated holding my breasts and shrugging. I don’t know, I’ll keep trying with the dummy I suppose, my husband indicated with a raised eyebrow and a shrug of the shoulders (unless he was in fact thinking I was offering him something else as I had just groped my breasts and perhaps he was actually indicating something else?). Suffice to say, the dummy didn’t work…at first.

Within a few weeks we landed ourselves at sleep school where our baby learnt to sleep…with a dummy. We had learnt the fine art of picking a dummy our baby was sure to love. It was not the colour, nor the brand or the outlandish claims its designers made that mattered. It was the shape. We learnt that cherry shaped soothers were easier for babies to hold in their mouths and once we found a particular type our baby liked we must have bought out most of the stock in the local shop. We leant how to sterilise the dummies, and how to use them to help our baby, who previously cried 24/7, to sleep peacefully and wake happily. There was one rule though that we were told we must follow; only use the dummy for sleep! This is all good in theory, the dummy becomes a sleep association and soothes baby to sleep, but in reality when out and about with a screaming baby, plugging them with a dummy can give immediate relief from their high pitched wails and concerned looks of onlookers.

When pregnant with our second baby we decided to try to ditch the dummy before the impending birth. However our now toddler had very different ideas. We tried everything; cold turkey, reasoning, trading the dummy for a new toy (which required lots of fake winks at the toy shop lady as I tried to pretend to our Miss 2 that we had struck a deal to trade all our dummies for a toy), more bribing and the list went on. Our toddler was and still is a stubborn one. So when our second baby arrived our toddler still had her dummy. I vividly remember checking in on her at night as I always do and thinking it so sweet that in the midst of her falling asleep she had somehow lost her dummy as she lay there so peacefully. I would gently stroke her hair and kiss her forehead then as I turned to leave, out of the corner of my eye I would see her move her hand from under the blanket to reveal a pacifier that she proceeded to place in her mouth as she began to suck contentedly on that blasted dummy! My husband and I would go into her room a few times each night and remove the dummy, usually placing it within her cot so she had access to it if she needed it, but sometimes taking it away completely. We were concerned it was bad for her teeth and as she neared two we felt it was time for the dummy to go. But somehow she always managed to wake with a dummy in her mouth.

At present we have three kids, and only one still has a dummy. Our first child finally gave in and quit the dummy earlier this year, much to our delight as we had greater hurdles to overcome with this stubborn Miss 3. Our new baby refused the dummy, my husband finally admitting I was right to not push the dummy with him as we are desperately trying to get our Miss 2 to give up her dummy. The dentist informed us a few weeks ago that her cute overbite which makes our Miss 2 look ever so cheeky isn’t being helped by the dummy. He advised we get rid of it pronto, but not in a traumatic way that might induce thumb sucking. Hmmm, we might have to be creative here. We have tried to convince her the dummy is only for bed time, but she knows exactly at what pitch she must scream to make me crumble and give in. I’ve tried tricking her back by offering a much smaller dummy than she is accustomed to, one made for newborns instead of toddlers, but again that high pitched cry comes in and whilst I can resist it at home, when out it is a lot more difficult.

So I continue to buy her new dummies as they seem to disappear. Our house clearly has a black hole somewhere where items go into hiding for no apparent reason. Toys and dummies get lost easily around here. But the other week I noticed something strange. Why after just buying a new packet of dummies did my Miss 2 now have 4 dummies sitting on her bed? Where did they come from? Sometimes she will walk out of her room smiling beneath a dummy, drool spilling onto her top and I will remove it reminding her “Dummies are for bed” or “Yucky Dummy”. She usually replies “Yes, yucky dummy” in her sweet angelic voice then turns around and goes back into her room only to emerge with another dummy! Now I’m curious, I do clean my girls’ room regularly, including tidying up their belongings that they love to display on the floor and under their beds, but I don’t often come across stray dummies. Then a few nights ago, when in her attention seeking sleep avoiding repertoire our Miss 2 threw her dummy from her bed for the fifth time and I refused to retrieve it for her a strange thing happened. As I was leaving her room she quietly hopped out of her bed and tiptoed to the pink chair that sits below the window. She mustn’t know that I, as all mummies do, have eyes in the back of my head. I turned in just enough time to see her retrieve a dummy from under the chair cushion. She quickly climbed back into bed then retrieved another dummy that had been wedged between her bed mattress and the wall. How many dummies does this kid have hiding in here? 

Retelling my husband the series of events that had unfolded surrounding the dummies I realised what was happening. My sweet Miss 2 was running a dummy syndicate! And now I truly was the biggest dummy as I hadn’t realise this until now. Perhaps she had even been providing dummies for her big sister who had recently quit her dummy addiction? She certainly was talented in hiding dummies. And now suddenly as her hiding spots were revealed we have a surplus of dummies. It seems our Miss 2 knows the exact location of every dummy that we have in our house, even ones in the car. She has been the mastermind of this dummy operation, probably laughing at our futile attempts to wean her off the plastic contraband. And as it happens, yesterday we were sitting in the waiting room of the same paediatrician who recommended dummies to us years ago. Miss 2 was caught sneaking our desperation dummy from my nappy bag as it is placed in there for desperate times. She attempted her arm bending high pitched request and I folded. Another toddler toddled over to look at our Miss 2 now happily sucking away at her dummy whilst sitting in our pram. “Me!” says the little girls pointing at the dummy. Her parents call her back to them, telling me she must see the dummy as she has one too. I reply, “I hate the dummy”, feeling deflated in our efforts to rid it from our household. The other parents quickly look away as if I have insulted their way of living. I sigh, today the dummy has won, but one day we will be without dummies and forgetting to pack one won’t spell disaster for our outings. But I realise that when the dummies are all gone it will also signal another phase of parenthood, where our kids have grown much older, and so I think maybe it isn’t such a bad thing that our darling Miss 2 has such an affection for her dummies. And as I relax into my role as a “trust your own instincts” mother I thinks its okay she has the dummy, perhaps braces will scare away the boys during adolescence. And then I wonder what line of work she will one day end up in…hmmmmm….

I would love to hear your dummy stories, or any tips to get rid of the dummy. How did you get rid of the dummy? Do you have a dummy syndicate in your household?

After being confined to the parameters of our humble home for nearly four months (after recovering from the birth of our third baby – approximately 8 weeks until I started to feel ‘normal’ again,  then our family’s uncanny ability to share colds for another 8 weeks – each taking turns being sick in different combinations and with varying mutations of the viruses floating about) we decided it was time to have a holiday. Great in theory, then realising we now have 3 kids under the age of 4 years, and a depressed dog that desperately needed some fresh air and space to move, finding where to go became a task in itself. But we did it, found a lovely place that is dog friendly, not far to drive, not too pricey, and they had a vacancy…during the school holidays (and whilst we don’t yet have school aged kids it meant we didn’t need to avoid preschool days and swimming class times, or wait any longer for our holiday!).

Miss 3 helped me pack the ten bags we would require for the next two nights away on our holidays. It was an arduous task requiring a lengthy whiteboard list, nifty folding to fit the maximum amount of clothing in each bag, careful studying of the weather charts to determine what clothes we would need to pack, much thought about activities we would likely do and what was required for these activities, nappies, more nappies, and of course the prized plush toys our daughters have for sleep time. We dare not forget to pack TedTe and Penga! At least we could now narrow the toys down to a favourite few. Holidaying with out first child we fell into the trap of packing several toys just in case she needed the flashing flower toy to distract her from a bout of crying, or the fluffy bunny she loved to hold, or the dolly she liked to push about in it’s dolly-sized pram, or the book with the cat she loves so much. No, a toy each, a book each, some pencils and paper, nothing more, nothing less. After all, we have the wilderness to explore! Oh and then there was of course clothes for my husband and I as well as what our dog required, a leash and drinking bowl.

The morning we needed to leave, as has it when you plan things out as a parent, one of us was unwell…me! But I’m tough, I’ve had three Caesars, I can handle a sore throat in a log cabin no problems. So stuffing our regular sized car full of bags, food, kids and a dog, we set off on our next adventure. After 45 minutes of driving my husband asks me how far away this place is. “Oh, just two hours,” I reply as I read him the directions emailed to us from the holiday stay. Two and a half hours later, after car stops for nappy changes and feeding, we finally come to a bumpy dirt road. This is it! …..We distract the kids from their portable DVD player. “Look at the cows!”, we gasp excitedly as city folk do when visiting the countryside. The girls hardly look up. The road is so bumpy we have to slow the pace right down. “Ahhhhhhhhh!” the girls notice the change and begin to giggle as their voices waver from the vibrations of the car as it trembles along the rocky road. Another 15 minutes and we are there!

As we drive up to our log cabin I notice how small is it. ‘How are we going to fit into that!’ I ponder to myself. Then we we get inside  and I realise it isn’t exactly what was described to me over the phone. The living space was so small it could be confused with a a large cardboard box, the floors were lino, sticking to our shoes as we ventured inside, the bathroom looked like something you might find on a Navy vessel, no bath, just a tiny shower so close to the loo your knees hit the shower curtain when sitting on said loo, and finally the beds, all really close, squished in against the walls. I breathe deeply. “Two nights,” I tell myself.

We did our best to make the most of our holiday regardless of the crappy accommodation. We were together, my husband free from work commitments for the next two days, and the outdoor scenery really was beautiful. We packed our days with river walks, canoeing, watching our dog race around like she was on some type of hallucinogens and star gazing. It only took us about an hour and a half each morning to actually get out of the cabin, all kids dressed, fed and sun-blocked up, and the girls only screamed for about two hours every day as they became increasingly overtired as it was too exciting to nap and bed time became much later. And whilst we still did some cleaning as we were too scared to leave the place in anything but immaculate condition after reading the guest folder that quoted fees for leaving the dwelling untidy ($10 for a dirty spoon! Come on!), at least we didn’t need to cook dinner as there was a dog friendly restaurant onsite. No way I was going to let a couple of overtired kids get in the way of a meal I didn’t need to prepare or clean up. We were the first to eat each night and even though the food wasn’t overly delicious, it was comforting and everything tastes better when you don’t have to cook it.

My husband and I learnt how to balance having three young kids on holidays and a dog, taking turns looking after different combinations depending on the activity and feeding schedule of our baby. This meant that on the last night of our holiday I was breastfeeding out baby whilst my husband took our girls to look at the stars. I relaxed into the overly squishy plastic couch that sank beneath me and realised I could watch television. Not kids television, but adult television. Don’t get ahead of yourself here, I don’t mean anything dirty by that, just like the news or whatever reality or soap episode was playing. We only had about four channels available on a tiny box of a television but it was nice to think I could actually chose what program to watch whilst my baby suckled quietly. And after Miss 2’s screaming episodes from that afternoon, now overtired from a third day without a nap, the quiet was a nice relaxing change. I smiled as I realised how lucky I am to have a husband who is such an amazing father to our kids. He had taken the girls canoeing earlier that day whilst I watched on with our baby in my arms, he had led the way on all our walks, pointing out creatures and funny shaped rocks to our kids as he taught them how wonderful nature is, and now he was taking them to look at the stars. He had thought ahead, bought aero-guard, gotten a picnic rug and made sure the girls were dressed warmly. But after a few minutes they were back. My husband looked at me as the girls raced in, he shook his head. “What happened, the girls were looking forward to seeing the stars?” I questioned. He shrugged, “They got scared”. Didn’t surprise me, I can hold out a piece of cotton, declare its a spider and have them run away screaming. Later he gave me more information. They were lying on the rug looking at the stars, but with a tree obstructing their view my husband tried to move the rug across with the girls still on it. That was too much for them, a moving rug in the dark!

The next day we packed the car and went for one final walk along the river. Both girls stumbled and got soaked so we had a quick outfit change, a bite to eat and headed on home. This time the girls took notice of the farm animals we passed, the chocolate milk cows, the caramel milk cows, the horses and so on. We even stopped to look in awe at a large camel as it munched lazily on tall grass. Then our Mr 4 month old started to cry. He cried, and cried and cried…..and cried. We stopped on the dirt road and then on the free-way a dozen times times to offer milk, nappy change, a lullaby, but to no avail. He cried for the entire three hour trip. By the time we reached our suburb my husband and I were so relieved we looked at each-other and smiled. We were back from our holiday. Now we just needed a holiday from our holiday!

Unloading the car that evening I counted the loads of laundry needing to be done, eyed off the mail needing to be tended to , and looked around the house at all the little jobs needing to be done. But our home seemed much bigger now, the small confines I had been so desperate to escape as we had all been going stir crazy, now seemed so appealing and luxurious. And that night as we lay in our comfy bed, happy to have had some quality time together as a family and happy to be home again, we discussed the logistics of our next holiday. Perhaps Mr 4 month old needs to be a bit older, and perhaps he just needs to like the car! Or at least be able to tolerate it. And perhaps we should book something a bit more 5 star and even closer to home. But most importantly we know we need to make the most of any time we have together without distraction as that is truly what the best kind of holiday is.

Where did you go on your last  family holiday? Was it really a holiday or did you need a holiday from your holiday? I would love to hear your stories!

 

Racing to the bathroom during the night whilst pregnant with our first child,  I would remind myself, “It’s preparation for when the baby comes”, the lack of sleep I mean, at least that’s what I had read. I knew I would be in for night waking as baby needed to feed every few hours, but if I was going to be truly prepared I should have hired a tiny person to scream in my ears at decibels I was unaware existed, all day every day, only allowing for a few minutes respite here and there where the quiet would be so shocking I would wonder if the baby was okay. At the very least I thought the hospital should have handed me a brochure on sleep with fun facts such as “You will never need an alarm clock again” and articles including “Awkward positions you will now sleep in as your co-sleeping toddler wrestles for bed space”.

I honestly don’t remember much of the first few weeks after our baby was born. I was unwell and three weeks after the birth of our first daughter on a regular Thursday, whilst home with only my baby, I suffered a secondary PPH (meaning a whole lot of blood,  and a real acceptance that this was the end, as I held our tiny daughter in my arms feeding her as we waited for an ambulance to arrive, followed by much pain and a hospital stay). After that whole dramatic debacle it appeared our little baby no longer knew how to sleep, if she ever really did as I don’t really have any memory of those early weeks. She would scream non stop as we held her and paced the confines of our home. Nurses visited with great tips of how to convince our baby she was still safe in her womb with wraps and taps and pats and “shhhh” sounds. It was all very practical advice but when the nurse was unable to get our baby to sleep I could see in her face something was unusual about the way our baby didn’t sleep. Sleep school was referred and so off I went in hopes of finding an answer to our sleep woes.

We sat in a room, a circle of sleep deprived new mums, holding our babies. Most babies cried on and off, I held my screaming bundle, nervously comforting her as best I knew how. Another mother offered to help, but how could she help, our baby cried when held, she cried when wrapped, she cried when in her bassinet, or when in a baby carrier. There was no cure, she only nodded off for a few minutes here or there out of pure exhaustion from screaming so much. When she slept for those few minutes I would sigh with relief, then she would awake and I would wonder if I had sighed too loudly. At the start of the class we introduced ourselves and our babies and told of our no sleep stories. I sobbed as I spoke and my baby cried. At the end of the class a nurse came up to me and said I would be fast tracked to residential stay, they must have felt sorry for us, a pair of tired crying girls.

Sleep school was great, and during our stay our daughter was diagnosed with reflux and a urinary tract infection and after treatment she finally slept. Turns out sleep promotes more sleep, a phenomenon our baby learnt whilst at sleep school. It was as if she realised that “Hey, sleep isn’t so bad, I wake up feeling great instead of feeling crappy…all.the.time, and mum seems happier too!” So when we returned home and she slept, in her cot, for more than 5 minutes, I really knew then how precious time was. I was so accustomed to no sleep that with a bit of extra sleep at night I had energy to burn so whenever my baby slept I would be busy making, doing, preparing scrapbooks, cleaning, cooking meals.

When she was 3 months old we were finally ready to tackle outings on our own and mothers group was the first stop. Now outings were a carefully planned and precisely timed event. We only had so much time between sleeps to get out and back home. I remember seeing some mums with babes sleeping on the floor. The floor! My baby only slept wrapped in a sheet, dummy in her mouth, and with a heart beat rhythmic tap on her bottom as I sang then “Shh, shh, shhhed” her to sleep. I was amazed at this baby who was happy playing one minute then calmly asleep the next. I couldn’t let myself get too distracted by these wonder sleepers though as my baby had already been awake for 57 minutes and I needed to get back home in time to prepare her for her next sleep. After several failed attempts my husband and I were very well aware our baby only ever slept wrapped in her cot with dummy in her mouth and a rhythmic heartbeat tap on her bottom as we sang then “Shh, shh, shhhhed her” off to sleep. We even had a CD that played calming waterfall music, and we knew the 7th track featured a thunderstorm (oh we knew aright, we knew our darling baby didn’t like the sound of thunder) so we waited outside her room till the exact moment before track 7 started so we could skip it and our baby would continue to sleep calmly.

The looks people would give us when we explained we had to leave various places and events as our baby needs a sleep, and would only sleep wrapped in a sheet, dummy in her mouth, and with a heart beat rhythmic tap on her bottom as I sang then “Shh, shh, shhhed” her to sleep, could be quite confronting. But if only those people knew the anguish we experienced in the first two months of parenthood with a screaming baby who never slept. I look back at our first baby’s scrapbook and smile as I look at the double page spread of “sleeping” photos. It seemed every time she did sleep we were so shocked and amazed we had to capture the moment to remember it in case she didn’t sleep again. So our outings were strictly timed for many many months. Our conversations revolved around our baby’s sleep routine, when she last slept, how long for, how many sleep cycles did 72 minutes equate to, and when she needed to be wrapped, dummied, tapped and “Shh, sh, shhhhed” to sleep again.

With our second baby I can’t remember much about the early days (poor forgotten middle child), but I do recall her falling asleep on me on many occasions and us being more relaxed about the whole subject of sleep. And now with our third baby who has no hope of any routine as he is carted between his big sister’s preschool and play schedules and activities, I have chosen not to worry about sleep at all. Yes I have broken many sleep school rules with him as we co sleep and I carry him in a carrier every outing we have and in the early weeks all day. But as he snores next to me like a little kitten purring contentedly and he becomes better at self settling and sleeping alone in his bassinet I believe I have found the key to sleep; secure attachment and being relaxed about the subject of sleep (along with wrapping and singing and some gentle “shh, shh, shhhing”). Although, when he does sleep really well, I’m afraid if I tell anyone it will jinx us or something, so I just enjoy those days when he does sleep well, and on the days he doesn’t sleep so well, perhaps I eat a little extra chocolate. My husband often baffles over the phrase “Sleep like a baby” suggesting you might prefer a baby to be able to “sleep like a cat” being able to sleep easily and anywhere and whenever its needed to maintain happiness.

And on the rare occasions now when all three kids are asleep at the same time in the middle of the day, I am often in such disbelief that I spend that time doing non-constructive things as I anticipate their waking up at any given moment. As I look in on my beautiful sleeping babes, I realise its not that parents want their kids to sleep all the time even though we might spend a lot of time trying to get them to sleep. I understand our children look so beautiful sleeping peacefully because as they sleep well we know their up-time has the capacity to be so much greater with a decent night’s sleep, and at the very least we have time to recharge and be better parents.