A year

Well, next weekend it is. And, actually, it feels like about 10, but I think that the done thing is to act surprised that it's gone so very, very fast so ... *gasp* ! I think I'm more surprised that suddenly my baby is only weeks away from being a toddler, and the mischief that a one year old is capable of cooking up *faint*

Either way - a year, five minutes, or ten years - I swear I can still feel the contractions. Very unpleasant things, contractions. Lucky the kid is uber cute (I think. It does worry me some occasionally that he may actually look like a monkey and I just can't tell because he's mine) and I never have to do contractions again. Weee! Well, sort of weee! C-sections are a bit vile too (that sensation of someone doing the dishes in your innards ... *shudder*) and I remember what it was like anticipating going into one cold (bit stressy) - the ... benefit? ... of contractions is that after 20 hours of them you actually couldn't give a toss what happens (the dishes) just so long as someone offers to shoot you in the head along the way, so you feel less stressy about the c-section. Ah well.

Anyway. I had a point.

Hmmm ...

I did. I think ...

Nope.

Turns out, I didn't.

And speaking of no point - No point in doing a long, potentially whingy, anxiety laden post about kidlet No. 2 either, because after becoming more aware as the year progressed and weeks of becoming a bit obsessed and stressed, I'm feeling quite relaxed about it because the husband and I have a plan. That plan, is to make a plan later. Excellent. We decided not to decide.

I think it was the start of the new year and Cuinn's first birthday that were making me start to hop on the spot a bit. The recommendation from our OB was 18 months, which of course is only 6 months away. 6 months is just way, way too soon for me to contemplate without going into a tail-spin, so we decided to wait until the 18 month mark and then make a decision. Cuinn's a lot different now than he was at 6 months and at 18 months it may be all puppies and kittens, but at that stage, we'll decide how brave we feel and make our plans and a booking then. No hashing it out, or losing sleep over it until then.

It seems simple enough, I know, but the pressure comes from the wondering, and from weighing up the what ifs - what if all 5 embryos fail and we have to start over if we want a sibling for Cuinn that much. Then we have to come up with the 12 odd thousand to do another cycle (nevermind preparing for the cycle itself) and you'd really rather start shovelling (or, teaspooning realistically) money away sooner rather than later with this sort of business because it takes time, and of course while said time is ticking along I'll be getting older, and bla and bla and bla. But, if we go ahead now solely because of that, I think I might very well have to do rescue remedy shooters for the following 9 months or so (I've done a few just contemplating it), so it's a bit of a conundrum if you spend too much time thinking about it. And, on the flip side, we'd really have to bank on it happening immediately. Tricky. Nevermind an elevated chance of multiple birth *faint*

This first year has been such a challenge, and although we expected it to be hard, we have no idea what was before us this time last year.

We expected a baby to cry, a lot, but didn't expect it for 6, 12, 16 hours straight many days, for months. We expected our activities to be restricted, but didn't expect that life would come to a complete stop again and again as we spent days and weeks studying him and adapating to what he was communicating he wanted or needed, or coping with the fall-out if we failed to work that out (or, of course, if there was no working it out at all). We didn't imagine that if we did take him out for a while, to visit, or shop, or whatever, he would would scream for hours because he overstimulates quickly and wouldn't or couldn't settle during or afterwards, or that he just wouldn't sleep (not because he didn't need to, he just seemed completely unable to shut down for sleep). I expected to be feeding every 3 to 4 hours or whatever is normal, but it didn't cross my mind that I'd be feeding every hour to 2 hours for months and we wouldn't be able to get him onto a bottle, or that he'd basically bellow until he started to crawl. I think it's been unusual - it's definitely been incredible, and exhausting.

Crawling has been such an awesome milestone here, for so many reasons, but especially because it was the start of things for us really - we went from coping and managing to managing and enjoying and loving. The kid has such a sunny personality it's almost bizzare what a pain in the ass he was (very, very adored pain in the ass of course). I blame the gingerness. Gingerness is evil. I might ask if I can have a non-ginger kid the next time, and maybe a girl (she won't eat as much). That could work. I feel comfortable with that.

We really think he came into the world wanting to be on the move and doing, and the first 8 months was us living through his frustration at not being able to do it. He literally changed over night when he started to crawl. I remember saying to the husband that I was having an awesome day with the kidlet and wouldn't it be incredible if that day was every day? And then the next day was good, and I said to the husband that it was going to be absolutely horrible when he crashed post-awesome stint. But he didn't. He just kept going, so much easier than he was only days before. All because of crawling, because that was the only thing that changed in our world.

It's a surprise how restricting he still is mind you, because he's such a routine kid (note to self - be careful how loudly you declare that you're not going to have a kid bound to a routine bla bla because said kid may have veeery different ideas about that) and our days are very determined by that, but such an awesome kid is coming out of it, it's fantastic and our life has adapated to what his needs to be. Plus, being restricted is very different and much easier to deal with than the challenges of that first 8 months, the memory of which is still very fresh.

I found myself falling into the trap too of judging myself in terms of what I think other people think which is a dangerous thing because kids are so individual the only other parent who can appreciate what you're up against is your partner in crime, and the lender of the other 50% of the kid's genetic make up (incidentally, since I'm a delight, that means the husband lent all the blastardly difficult genes in the case of Cuinn. Obviously).

Anyway for all that, we're coming out the other side - I just need more time out the other side, to brace myself for doing that first year again. Just in case.

Weirdly, now that making that decision isn't worrying me at all, I even have days where I feel a sense of anticipation (to say excitement is to be incredibly silly) and I can imagine the kid, who has enough mischief for 10 kids, creating mischief with another kid, and it's kind of ... interesting. The vacuum cleaner and spray and wipe are shuddering, but they'll live.

And, of course, as we've discovered, even if it's really horrible it is over soon enough. I've just negotiated a discount on furniture to set up Cuinn's big boy room. The plan is to hold out as long as possible before shifting him into a bed, but have it all set up so he can get used to it being there (he's very much an everything-in-it's-place, don't mess with my routine kid) and then we'll ease him into having day sleeps (a theory dependant on actually having day sleeps of course) and then shifting completely. I'll post pics once we have the stuff. Next week!!

The last thing I never believed could be, was how amazingly much I would love this kid. Who knew there was that much love in the world, let alone in a person? Horrible, tricky, mischevious, sleep-deprived little monster.


This is where I found the little toad the day before yesterday when he disappeared about 10 seconds after I'd sighted him playing with puzzles in his room - I'd left the child gate open, got distracted briefly in the kitchen, and in the meantime he'd taken himself down the back steps (4 of them. Onto concrete) and made his way out onto the back lawn to play with the dogs. It gives me heart failure to see him on those steps, but he has a system that seems to work, so I leave him to it and just stay close and bite my nails.