hannah

wife | mama | nanny

[creating-olive]

Gosh, I haven't written here in over a year. After I had Olive I found it extremely difficult to settle in and get back into doing the things I used to do before her. She will turn 2 in a month, that's seriously amazing. Time flies in the most confusing and erratic way once you have a kid, it can be hard to stay in reality. I used to use this space to share my woes and successes, which is why I think I clicked in. I'm feeling a little worried about something, but it's completely out of my control. I need to wait until Monday to be at ease about it, but felt like I needed to get my worry off my chest in a safe, quiet place, where probably no one will even read this. Everything will be okay either way.

[creating-olive]

I don't want to alarm anyone, but I got to visit @first-time-mama and meet her, her older daughter AND new bubba. First picture is me internally screaming over how tiny and beautiful Lorelei is. Second picture is Olive and Lorelei 'hanging out' (being beside each other). Babies don't normally make me feel clucky, but oh my word, this baby did funny things to me. I want a new baby nooooooooooooow.

[creating-olive]

I don't know how much she weighs, or how tall she is, and she sleeps through the night some nights and not others. She eats breakfast, lunch and tea, but isn't fussed if she misses one, she breastfeeds and likes water, crawls and has started to cruise furniture. We go to the beach down the road often, where she eats sand, crawls far away to explore other people's belongings and takes in the ocean and volcano that looks over us. Olive is 9months old now.

[creating-olive]

Baby meals are so cute. First course is vege, chicken, chicken stock and a lil breastmilk puree. Second course is tiny lil carrots and orange. And the third course is full fat plain yoghurt with prune, apple, banana and coconut oil. 🍛

[creating-olive]

I think I need to find myself

I need to find who I am and what I want. I have allowed myself to become just Olive's mother, but I want to be more and I want to feel more. I miss being self adsorbed and making self care my number 1 priority. I miss taking long walks and meeting up with friends for coffee - alone.... Olive is now big enough and ugly enough to be left for around 4hours without needing a small breastfeed, but I really struggle letting her go. I feel quite lost, and identity-less.

[creating-olive]

So many people I know are having babies and all the newborn pictures are killing me. They're so squishy and tiny! I don't think I want to be pregnant, birth or have a newborn again for a while though, we'll look at it at the end of next year. Even that seems soon. Olive's been really hard to breastfeed recently. She's doing so much developmentally at the moment, I can't really blame her. She'll unlatch to clap, wave and make different funny noises with her mouth - it's like she can't switch off. I'm only managing to feed her before naps and bedtime, but even then she just drinks the let down and is off being nutty haha. If anyone has any tips message me please. We breastfeed in my big bed, with curtains drawn to dim the room, no toys and I trying singing and talking quietly with her. I've been trying to pump once or twice a day as I'm so worried my supply is going to disappear! :( We're super good if anyone was wondering. I'm no longer in contact with anyone on here anymore and I actually forgot my tumblr password for a while, so I've only just logged back in haha. I hope anyone that still follows me is good and enjoying their babies! Happy Halloween! such a spoopy day

[creating-olive]

She's 8months old tomorrow. 💕💕💕

[creating-olive]

We're coming to the end of our Wellington holiday and I feel mixed emotions. I love this city so much, we slot in here so well, but then I also love Auckland with how big, busy and full of opportunity it is. Olive is 7months old now - it's such a blissful age.

[creating-olive]

She's half way to one, soft like bread dough and bursting with personality. I miss her every night after I've put her to bed and love that I am her current favoured adult. We go to work together while it's still dark and return home in the afternoon with the sun low in the sky. She is my absolute world. 🌏

[creating-olive]

I'm so excited to have another baby! Though I am glad we have a plan to wait until Olive's 2.5+ before we'll even start trying. The idea of having another little person to nurture and love while having a baby or toddler makes my tummy flip. Noooooo thanks. Seeing ohwhimsicalmama with her son Charlie, going on adventures and being fully present with one another also makes me feel glad of the decision to wait. I want that for Olive and I want that for myself and Zane, I feel it is the right thing for our family. Yay babies! Only 2years to go!

[creating-olive]

I still can’t fucking believe I’m pregnant. I couldn’t get pregnant for 7years, and now I’m pregnant. How? We hear the heart beat at our midwife appointments, we’ve seen the baby on ultrasound a few times and I feel the baby move every day, but I just don’t understand how this can possibly be real. That there will be a baby at the end of all of this. I feel so confused.

I’m not even worried about giving birth or having a baby, because it’s still so surreal.

[creating-olive]

And now a year later we have Olive.

[creating-olive]

I knew this day would come, my little girl is 6months old today and my heart is so full. My mind boggles at the fact that she now has such an obvious personality, a sense of humour and an awareness of the world. I remember regularly looking at her as a newborn and thinking about how in a blink of an eye she would be 6 months old and now here we are and it's even better than I imagined. At the moment she is most happy in my presence, which is fair enough, because I'm amazing. She will go happily to people she knows, but definitely has a growing obvious preference for me. As I said in my last post we've just started her casually eating some solids once a day. I'm feeling both sad and happy about it, happy that she really enjoyed eating and sad as introducing food is the beginning of the weaning process. I've loved being Olive's only source of nutrition and seeing that every roll of chub was my doing. I really hope she wants to breastfeed until at least 2, I think I'll be really sad if our BFing relationship ends before then.

[creating-olive]

Random spewing of thoughts

Life is so busy, exciting and rather exhausting. I've been working part time now for a few weeks and it's going great, it's been a heap easier than I thought it would be. Motherhood has helped me understand what 'hard' and 'tired' REALLY mean, so it's easy to keep perspective when things get challenging. We have my sister and two nieces staying from down South at the moment, which is lovely. Mischa is 13months older than Olive, so it's amazing to look at her and think that next year at this time she'll be a busy, talking and walking toddler!! Olive is still a divine cherub. She's 6months old tomorrow, and we've just started dabbling in some solid food. She's licked a few things, liver, lemon, bacon, Apple, and yesterday she had some bone broth which she loved and gobbled all up! I'm so glad we waited until she was 6months and didn't leap into feeding her just at the first 'readiness' sign. I can't wait to give her a sibling in a few years (I hope). Zane, Olive and I will be flying down to Wellington in September! We're going to get to see going-my-way, my three cousins and visit all of our favourite spots! We found our accommodation through airbnb and got something cheaper, better located, bigger and more equipped for our needs than if we had gone through a large business. So stoked! We're super excited to see the Gallipoli exhibition at Te Papa too. I'm looking forward to travelling with Zane, as Olive and I did a road trip to Tauranga not long ago and on the third day she was wild. Unsettled, not sleeping, screamy, and I was exhausted and sad that I'd unintentionally made someone I was visiting unhappy and disappointed. It was all a bit shitty in the end. Blerghhhh.

[creating-olive]

This is Olive’s ‘yes’ space so far, babypeapod. I loved seeing Sol’s space!

The first picture is when we initially set it up, large foam squares for softness, wool underlay to keep the chill off and a quilt on top (omg look how little she was).

The second picture is her space right now, mirror - which she LOVES watching herself and others in and her treasure basket (all her toys are packed away, a few are normally scattered).

The third picture is her 'open ended’ toys with no 'hidden’ features such as rattles inside soft toys, squeakers, crunchy bits etc. a small glass jar with coins inside, wooden rattles/rings, clear plastic bottle, chains, cardboard tube, metal beater, stones in a mesh bag, shells in a bag, soft bear, a scarf, plastic rings and a wooden doll with movable arms.

From what I’ve read mobiles are discouraged, as well as toys with hidden features. :D and always lay baby on their back.

Olive didn't play with toys until about 6weeks ago, as before then she only played with her hands/feet/body and we never handed her toys.

A couple of good links!

http://www.janetlansbury.com/2010/02/infant-play-great-minds-at-work-captured-on-video/

http://www.janetlansbury.com/2010/08/tummy-time-toys-frustration-and-trust/

[charlieandjordan]

Parenting is so weird. Like, I spend all day with my babe, loving on him and making him laugh. I love it, it’s amazing. But, I’m also counting down the hours until I get some form of break. My body aches, and there has been washing sitting in the machine for three hours, and all naps have been on me, and all meals have been carefully balanced on their spoon so as not to spill on a baby. Then, the baby decides not to sleep for the night unless his face is directly in front of mine, and his breath is tickling my face. So I’m curled into a motionless ball around him on the edge of my bed, and there’s nowhere to put my arms, and my shoulders are freezing, and I miss being able to sleep more deeply than a shallow crazed dream filled hour.

But, then he sleeps in his own bed and I stretch out in my own, only feet away from him in the dark, enjoying the peace for all of three minutes before I start to wonder.

‘What’s the baby is doing?’

‘God I love the baby.’

‘Why is the baby so far away?’

And then I’m up and looking at him. Or scrolling through videos on my phone. Or talking to my partner about stuff baby has done today. Or telling him I love the baby 800 times. And I miss the baby. Why is the baby not next to me? My umbilical cord does not stretch that far, and I don’t like being without him. Can we wake the baby? Maybe if I just carefully moved him in here with me…? He’s probably cold!

Even when I’m dying for a moment to myself, the way I love him is so fierce. It’s so crazy. It’s like he and I are one person, we are a team, a solid entity. He is my life, and I am his, and loving him is what I was born to do. And it doesn’t change, or go away. I still feel this way about my daughter, almost 9 years later. I still find it so strange that she’s off doing things that don’t involve me. That she has a whole life outside of me now that I don’t even know about. I find it harder to sleep when she is not here because my body just somehow feels wrong without the knowledge that she’s just down the hall in her room.

How strange being a parent is. Allowing parts of yourself to break off and grow separate to you like it’s no big deal. How weird to think that these people that I grew inside my belly will one day up and leave me. That they have all of their own thoughts and wants and needs that are different from mine. It’s so bittersweet. Knowing that this baby in my arms, whose every breath I know as well as I know my own, will one day be an adult experiencing this life for himself.

Time moves too fast once you become a parent. The baby can sleep with me tonight.

[creating-olive]

babypeapod first-time-mama theengineerswife that's awesome to hear! It's been wonderful for us so far and I can only imagine how great it will be once we hit toddlerhood! If you guys make any blog posts about stuff you're doing in regards to RIE or see anything good on Facebook please tag me in it! I follow the Janet Lansbury Facebook page and read almost everything, but really like following along with people doing it in 'real life'. smthamhmi do you now use it for Aroha as a toddler? You can use it for next baby! :D fernsfamily Resources for Infant Educarers.

[creating-olive]

This sweet little bagel has two little teeth hiding just underneath her gum! She hasn't been experiencing any of the classic teething symptoms, so I had no idea they were shifting around in there! So exciting! (And quietly relieved we've not had to deal with any teething symptoms so far! 😁) Since Olive was about 2months old we have been following the RIE philosophy and it has been utterly amazing. She has learnt so much and it feels great to say that she has done it all by herself, at her own pace. We never placed Olive on her tummy, so when she taught herself to roll from back to tummy at 4.5 months old, it was a totally new experience that she chose to do when SHE was ready. At 5.5months old she is also now incredible at self directed play. She has a large flat mat on the floor with a flax treasure basket full of open ended toys. Chain, cardboard tube, a scarf, keys, a bag of shells, a small glass jar with coins inside etc all keep her entertained for over an hour at a time. She hasn't mastered returning to her back from her tummy when she gets tired, so we sometimes still need to help her. We also have a mirror laid down leaning against the wall and she enjoys looking into it watching herself play, or watching others and the world all a little bit backwards! We don't plan on propping Olive to teach her to sit and will wait until she learns on her own. I am beyond excited to watch the natural process of her developing this skill and have been reading about when it happens on average, which is 9-16months of age! I fall more and more in love with RIE as I go along! Did first-time-mama and babypeapod follow RIE Regarding free movement with your first babies? And are you planning to with your 2nd babies?