I’m suddenly finding myself experiencing another first. This is the first Easter in 11 years that I won’t be working. I’ve had four days with my husband, my demon and the zoo we call pets.
Jake is now just shy of 8 months, he has two teeth, the first of which came in the day before he turned six months. The day after he turned six months, we were all on the couch and he looks up and over and Matt and says, clear as a bell, “Hi, dad”.
It’s fine I know which of us is his favourite.
He did say mum not long after, hell he might’ve said it before, but he is always crying when he says it so that’s…fun.
He loves his solid foods, everything he’s had so far, he’s tried and eaten like a champ. Except beetroot. He hates beetroot. I don’t know if it’s the colour that he doesn’t like or the taste…could potentially be the smell but honestly, I’m yet to figure it out.
I’ve also had to take my first day off for carers leave because Jakey was throwing up and refused to eat or drink. It was also discovered on this day that he is a manipulative little turd. Because I hadn’t slept all night and had gotten very little sleep the previous three nights, Keller came over to give me a hand and watch Jakey while I took a power nap. The power nap did not actually end up happening, but we did make the discovery.
Let me set the scene for you; Jakey would be totally fine as happy as he could be for a little dude not feeling well. I would get up to leave the room so that I could get a drink or something to eat and he would look over at Keller, smile and the burst into tears. The first few times it happened she thought that it was fluke. By the fourth time she picked up on the game he was playing and filled me in on it.
It was safe to say that I was a bit annoyed. A few weeks prior to this day he had been having some rough nights with teething so the quickest and easiest way to get him to sleep was to lay down with him and cuddle him while he was having his bottle of milk. Once he was asleep, we’d take him and put him in his cot, and he’d sleep through the night for the most part.
Unfortunately, this seemed to go on for a few weeks and I just lost track because between work and running the house and all the other shit I was doing I just forgot what day it was.
So now we found ourselves having to get Jakey to unlearn what he’d learnt which if you’ve ever tried to unteach a baby something, you know it’s almost impossible. The first night we tried to reverse this he was inconsolable for almost two hours. I had to wear headphones and crank a TV show just to try and block out the crying because it felt like my heart, if I had one, was going to break.
When Matt was trying to give him his bedtime bottle but since it wasn’t me, he cracked the shits. Then Matt picked him up and tried rocking him, a technique which has proven successful in the past, but all that happened was Jake would twist and turn himself so that he could look around Matt to see me. So, he took Jakey back to his room and held him and it still took another half hour before he finally stopped crying and fell asleep.
Then just as Matt was lowering him into his cot, he knocked something and that woke Jakey up and he spent another fifteen minutes getting him back down.
So, for the next week I had to make myself very scarce whenever it was Jakey’s bedtime. One night Keller and I just went ice skating while Matt was putting him to bed. Twenty minutes later I get a message from him saying that Jakey had gone down straight away with little to no fight.
Safe to say I was a little dark about this.
I know why it happened. I know that it is better to get a handle on it now rather than later. I know that he was totally 100% fine and just being a manipulative turd because I have heard the kid do a real cry. When he wakes up scared and it takes a few minutes before he stops sniffling, or when he hurts himself or startles himself, those are his real cries. Granted the hurt and startled cries sort themselves out after thirty odd seconds and a cuddle. The cries that he was doing that made my non-existent heart hurt but stopped the second he was picked up? Yeah, those were fake. I have zero doubt in my mind that if we had a camera in his room, he would’ve looked at it, smirked and then burst into tears.
This is also probably another reason that I avoid mummy groups. I’m not here to get into a debate about crying it out or what not. Parenting it a goddamn hell hole and sometimes you have to do what you have to do.
If I am short on mental stability and patience then yeah Jake’s cries grate on my nerves a little more than I can handle, so I am far more likely to take him back to bed with me and cuddle him while he drinks his bottle till, he falls asleep. Then he cuts gently carried and lowered back into his cot.
If I am mentally stable (I can already hear the comments being made at the thought of that and feel free to keep them to yourselves) and Jakey wants to fight sleep despite being an exhausted pigeon, then I am more likely to be able to sit at my desk with headphones on till he falls asleep.
There are things I used to say I would never do as a parent. Not only was that incredibly naïve and arrogant of me but goddamn have I eaten my words with a few things. We are all literally just trying to get through this with our sanity and our child’s lives and limbs intact and no long-lasting trauma.
I wish that I could say I’m getting back into the swing of things and a good routine, but I’ll probably be winging it for another few months. Writer’s block is still a bitch.
As a funny little side note the other night Matt asked for back scratches to help him get to sleep and as soon as he started snoring, I went back to my computer to keep playing my game. When I came back to bed, he accused me of treating him like Jakey and leaving as soon as he was asleep…
Welcome to parenthood kid.
Get gud. Get out while they’re asleep and tiptoe to freedom while you have the chance.
A few other cute developments, he now successfully crawls, but only when he wants to otherwise it’s a belly flop/army crawl/worm thing which actually gets him where he’s going a bit faster. He can also pull him self up using most stable surfaces and a few unstable surfaces (see previously mentioned comments about myself).
He also weighs in at a delightfully back aching 11kg. I have not measured him lately but when he stands in the porta-cot (which I have strategically placed next to my desk which has made him the happiest clam in the world) he can nom on the top rail quite comfortably. If he stretches just a bit, he could rest his chin on the rail. He’s getting big.
S.J Smith Books 