A month into motherhood

And stone the blinking crows, what a month! No matter how prepared you think you are, you are never ready for the whirlwind of an existence that arrives with the arrival of your new arrival! Sylvester torpedoed into the world mid-February after a ridiculously short labour (little over 2 hours) in which we only just made it to the hospital. It all happened so fast I barely had time to process that I was in labour and, before I knew it, I was lying there, torn wide open, in severe pain and presented with this little being that I was henceforth responsible for, thinking, “What in the hell just happened?” Since then we have stumbled through life in a blur of feeding-winding-nappy changing cycles. Sleeping has featured occasionally but not in any meaningful way and when my husband and I kiss each other good night and say, ‘Sleep well; I’ll see you in 2 hours’, that just about sums up our new life: divided into two hourly blocks! It is truly life (and life-style) changing. I knew it would be, but boy I had no idea to what extent.

I knew my exercise and training regime would have to take a back seat, but I had (somewhat naively!) envisioned scenes of my baby asleep in his Moses basket in my home gym whilst I pedalled merrily away on my spin bike next to him. #Cue hysterical laughter here# For one thing, I have a baby with severe reflux who simply will not be put down during the day: he has not seen the inside of that Moses basket since his first week of life! The only way he will sleep is upright in his sling, being worn around the house or carried over a shoulder. I have been incredibly lucky as my husband has taken 6 weeks off work and so we have been able to divvy up the ‘baby wearing’ duties to share the burden on our aching backs and shoulders and to give each other an hour’s occasional respite between feeds. So I have managed a few short (20 – 30 mins) sessions on my spin bike, but doing so uses up my one free slot of the day (a slot that would probably be better spent catching up on much needed sleep). The other slots are spent doing essential tasks, such as cooking, doing the laundry (how does something so tiny generate so much washing?!), trying to sort out the bomb site that was formerly our neat and orderly home, bathing the wee man (again, a small surface area but a massive undertaking), and generally hunting around the house for mislaid baby socks, muslins, hats, nappy inserts etc. Going out for a coffee is now a task that requires warfare level logistics and planning and we need a small army just to carry all the stuff we have to take with us (again, how can such a small person need so much kit? It’s ridiculous!) We have been to parkrun twice, at week 3 (Exmouth) and week 4 (Seaton), but getting there for 9am meant preparing to leave the house at 7am and getting up and starting feeding at 6am! Three hours of preparing for Matt’s 20 minutes of running: it hardly seems worth it! Suddenly the idea I had of doing the Slateman duathlon in North Wales in May seems laughable; for one thing, we’d never fit all his kit and my kit in the same car, despite it being a large estate! Yep, I have had my eyes well and truly opened and my sporting ambitions for 2019 have been well and truly reined in. The Ottery 10k in May seems as innocuous a place as any to start, not least since the start and finish is less than half a mile from my house and so we might have a chance of making the start on time if we set off the night before!!

Many of the struggles with time stem from my decision to breast feed. I can easily see why so many women start but swiftly abandon and revert to formula feeding. We have faced several battles on our breastfeeding journey, such as our wee man having a 100% tongue tie which had to be operated on (a small procedure, thankfully), his reflux issues, my fast let down exacerbating the wind and reflux and the fact that we seem to have got ourselves a gluttonous booby monster who wants to be guzzling away for up to 90 minutes at any one feeding, with feedings occuring at 2 ½ hourly intervals. I thought my arse and the sofa spent a lot of time getting acquainted in late pregnancy, but this is a whole new level of intimacy that my husband may soon start to suspect … If I bottle fed, Matt and I could share the feeds (oh to be able to share that 2am feed when he is at his most ravenous and can spend up to two hours dining out on my finest quality boob juice). But I am determined to breastfeed: the benefits are so great for both of us and the bond it creates is truly magical… yes, even at 3am when I sigh in Dickensian-style exasperation, “More? You want more?” Got ourselves a regular Oliver Twist here who is porking out like a trooper. Born at 8lb3oz, he was already up to 9lb11oz by two weeks! His mother, on the other hand, is going the other way! The other bonus to breastfeeding: it burns 500 calories a day and, after putting on the best part of 2 stone during pregnancy, I was back down to my pre-pregnancy weight by day 11 without even trying. It really surprised me and scared me a bit, but luckily it has stabilised there and not dropped any further as I literally could not shovel any more food in than I am doing now!

I have one more week with the luxury of an at-home-husband, then the real shit’s gonna go down! If Sylvester is not upright for at least an hour after a feed, he screams in pain from his reflux: it absolutely tears at my soul. How will I shower? How will I get dressed? Nevermind how will I fit in a run or a cycle, ha! What a wildly ridiculous idea! My home gym is now more of a storage facility for baby equipment and my ‘wheels’ are no longer streamlined and skinny but come in pram format. Yes, life has changed, but for the better. They are only tiny for such a short time and so you have to make the most of it all, sleepless nights, being pooed on and all (yes, we’ve had a couple of target hits as I have lifted his legs and bottom to remove his old nappy and the missile has fired). We have liquids of varying levels of viscosity emerging from every orifice these days. My boobs often resemble the Jet d’Eau fountain in Lake Geneva and Sylvester’s highlights have included a huge projectile reflux vomit directly into the plug sockets. I lose count of the times his little todger has gone off as I have peeled back the nappy (what’s with that?!) and he has urinated into his own eyes and mouth… it doesn’t seem to bother him too much: boys are grubby beasts. I used to marvel at how far from the toilet my husband could make his yellow splash marks reach, but this little fellow has reached a whole new level and is fast running out of surfaces upon which to leave his scent markings.

My Ironman ambitions are now Ironmum and it really is the most challenging but most rewarding test of physical and mental endurance in the world. No other achievement in my life compares or even has much significance by comparison.

# Typed stood upright at the breakfast bar with a snoozing Sylvester asleep in his sling!