8 weeks in

Today marks 8 weeks since Eric squeezed himself out of my bits. But great news, they're all recovered now. And we have a cute smiling little boy. He's not smiled for a photo yet though. He does very cute smiles and then we get out the camera and he's like "no mummy I'm not going to smile just for your twitter followers ,I refuse to be sucked into this superficial online world I've been born into. However I will do a sad face for you."

He bears an uncanny resemblance to his auntie Lydia don't you think?

So what have we been up to? To be honest I spend the majority of the time sitting on the sofa feeding Eric while Percy plays with his duplo. It's not that thrilling. But I'm getting to know all about the duplo characters and what they want from life. Turtle likes to wear a canon.

Polar bear likes to eat his fish fingers upside down, apparently.

And Granny (who is actually meant to be a farmer but Percy has always called Granny) likes to have sleepovers with the digger man. I know, my poor dad, he was gutted when I told him.

So thats the duplo gossip.

What else have I done other than duplo? Oh yeah we've been to a wedding... Remember that cod faced aunty, she scrubs up well. Sorry I breast feed as you were walking down the aisle Lydia, I hope thats not in the photos. I thought it was preferable to the sound of crying though.

We've got a new lodger. My good, potentially best friend, Rachel (she's deffo in the top 5) has been made homeless by all her housemates deciding to leave her house. And then the landlord decided, as everyone had left, it was a good time to do some building work. She is with us off and on till my sister moves in in August. Me and Rachel have been reliving our student days when we were house mates, when I get up at midnight to feed Eric and Rach is still watching tv in the lounge and I go and join her, it feels almost like the student days again. If only the mornings were so easy.

wide games in Delamere forest as students 2007ish

Rachel gate crashes the family holiday in France 2016

10 years ago:
Imagine getting up around 9, getting some breakfast, watching a bit of TV, hanging out with your house mates, having a shower then cycling into uni for about 11:30. Hanging out in the studio (I did fine art) doing a bit of painting, maybe popping in to town, doing a bit more painting and then heading home for around 6, for some pasta with cheese sauce, and then staying up for deep chats and episodes of Americas Next Top model till 1 or 2AM. Worth every penny of that 15 grand loan that I'm never gonna pay back.

Compare that with this week: after a terrible night sleep where you're up to feed to baby about 3 times (which can take up to an hour) your 2 year old wakes up around 6 or 6:30AM in a bad mood for no reason, or a ridiculous reason like, he's just noticed you've painted your nails blue, but he liked them better when they were red. You take him down to breakfast and he asks "what are you doing daddy?" you reply "he's taking the bins out". Cue meltdown because he was asking Daddy not you.

You need to feed the baby so you get into bed with a big pile of toddler books so that you can read to Percy while breastfeeding. But Percy doesn't want any of the books you've chosen, or any of the ones he can reach on his floor. He wants the ones on top of his chest of drawers that he can't reach but will dangerously try to climb to anyway. At this point I texted my friend Jenny who had offered to have Percy some time. I'd told her I'll wait till I'm desperate, and this was the time.

So today, Jenny has taken Percy to the safari park. I went to Morrisons this morning with just one child, it was like having a holiday!

Since we got back he's been sleeping and I've managed to:
unload the dishwasher
book the rabbit into the vets
arrange a man to fix our kitchen floor and pay him the deposit
begin some cooking for tonights tea
sort some clothes
make and eat my lunch
contact our plumber
and
write this blog

It's amazing how productive you can be when a baby could wake up at any minute. If I was this productive as a student I would have got a first! I wondered how I found just having Percy as a newborn so hard. This is easy peasy lemon squeezy. It was hard though, it was really hard, probably harder than having two. I don't know why, it just was.

Big respect to new mums: it is harder the first time, and massive respect to single mums. Yesterday Dan was one hour late back from work and I attempted to peel potatoes while jiggling a baby, and it made me think single mums (and dads) need more appreciation.

Parenting fail

I started writing this on Tuesday, but its taken a while because I've been typing 1 handed while breastfeeding:

Yesterday was my first proper day of being a mum of two doing a normal routine with no extra help and it was a nightmare. Eric is now 4 weeks old, so Dan had his two weeks paternity then he went back for two days (where I stayed in and people visited me), then it was the weekend and then my mum came from Monday to Friday the next week and then it was the bank holiday weekend and then I had to do a real life day as a mum of two boys!

After about 3 to 4 hours of broken sleep the day began. I need 5 hours in order to not randomly cry at people who ask me how I am.  Dan leaves the house for the early shift at 7.30. I had decided to go to this group which is on in half terms, they have a hall with a bouncy castle and a load of toys and they have a storyteller lady and it free, which is a bonus. Eric was due a feed at around 10am (he feeds about every two hours). The group was starting at 10, so I planned to leave about 9:40 get to the group, sit down to breastfeed while Percy played. It was all going according to plan until I told Percy to put his shoes on. "I want daddy to put my shoes on" he said. "Well daddy can't because daddy's at work," I said. "But I want daddy to put my shoes on." "I know but he's not here." 2 year olds are not the best negotiators but they never tire of saying the same sentence.

Don't you want to go out and play on the bouncy castle? "I want daddy to put my shoes on."
We can't go if you don't have shoes on. "I want daddy to put my shoes on."
Come on its time to go. "I want daddy to put my shoes on."
Well we won’t be able to go then. "I want daddy to put my shoes on."
I KNOW BUT HE'S NOT HERE!
"If you don't let me put your shoes on you'll have to go on time out. "I want daddy to put my shoes on."
Right time out....

....3 minutes later, "why did mummy put you on time out? "I want daddy to put my shoes on."
The conversation continued for many more minutes. And I had no clue what to do. I didn't want to actually not go out because I wanted to go out and see other mum friends. Should I offer more stick or more carrot? I wondered about live streaming this argument on Facebook live and getting people to suggest stuff I could try. I wanted to make time out a bit more of a punishment so I put him in the toilet, (the room that houses the toilet, not the actual toilet obvs). That was a bit crazy with hindsight, but I couldn't really think straight with all the crying. Then Eric woke up for a feed so I resigned myself to the fact that we wouldn't be leaving for at least another half an hour. So I sat in bed to feed him while Percy whinged and cried in the next door toilet. I kept trying to talk to Percy but all he would say is "I want daddy to put my shoes on." I texted Dan to ask for advice and he ended up phoning me, and he ended up speaking to Percy. Dan promised he would read Percy lots of stories when he got home, if Percy was good and let me put his shoes on. I don't really like that I couldn't fix this problem without Dan's intervention but hurrah he finally had shoes on, we could leave the house! (After the massive faff that is getting two kids into two car seats with a massive bag full of nappies and stuff and a pram.)

We had a nice time at the group, a couple of other mum's consoled me, and a Dad reminded me that "this isn't the hardest phase" (cheers Ben). Yes I am fully aware that when Eric becomes a wiggly 4 month old this will all be harder, but one day it will be easier right? When I retire.

In the afternoon Eric was sleeping, so I really wanted to do something nice with Percy as he misses having my full attention now he has a brother. I gave him a list of things we could do together and he chose baking. We started making ginger bread before I had fully checked that we had all the ingredients. We didn't have enough butter or the right kind of sugar but we made do. I was a bit distracted pouring in the sugar and put way too much in. Then Eric woke up and I had to try and spoon some sugar back into the packet without letting it mix with the flour while holding a baby and holding back a toddler who was desperate to mix suff.

The gingerbread men turned out like this:

It's not how you want your ginger bread men to look but at least there's some diversity, a black one and a fat couple.

I did think about becoming one of those parents who blogs specifically about the failures they are having with their children. I could do that. I do wonder with those kind of people who have loads of followers, whether they are just waiting for things to go wrong? and when their kids are kicking off they are just documenting it, and they're a bit disappointed when they behave.

The house was a tip and I'd not made tea, but luckily someone came round and brought me tea! In my church we do a meal rota when people have babies, so that everyone cooks you a meal and brings it round. I felt a bit guilty on Saturday when the lovely Liz came to bring me a meal. First of all I wasn't at my house so she delivered it to where I was (at friend's house), and secondly the friends (The Evans family) had us over for a lovely BBQ and we were just sitting around in the sun being waited on. I feel like when someone delivers you a meal after you've had a baby, they want to arrive and see you just on the edge of coping so they get a nice sense of achievement that they've helped you out. And Liz has just adopted a baby herself, so to then go out and get us food and not be able to deliver it because were out being fed by another family felt a bit awkward.

But anyway back to Tuesday. Roisin arrived with dinner and I was just on the edge of coping and very grateful for the meal. She'd cooked potatoes, salmon and vegetables and brought pudding. It was warm when she delivered it and not knowing how to reheat salmon we ate it straight away. Percy is normally fussy about food that is new to him and we don't really tend to eat salmon. So I was preparing for another tantrum, but to my surprise he actually said "the fish tastes perfect!" it made my day.

This blog is dedicated to all the people who signed up to my meal rota. Thank you. xx

10 years of Han and Dan

10 years ago today I said "so if you want to go out with me I'm ready", and Dan said "yeah alright then" and I said "oh, ok are we going out then?"

Here is our 10 years in photos:

We met for the first time at Will's 21st birthday, we were both on team pink headband for some game or other.

We got to know each other, Dan's look on this photo was analysed at length by our meddling friends

We both fancied each other and most of our friends knew so they tricked us into playing a very awkward game of twister at Dan's 21st birthday. This scene was later depicted in icing on our wedding cake.

We finally got together on 23rd May 2007

3 and a half years later we got engaged, Dan proposed dressed as santa.

Very soon after that we attempted making a life sized elephant for a political protest, but that's largely irrelevant to our story.

in July 2011 we got married...

bought a house together and I painted it....

....and we continued being weird

In 2013, after years of planning and saving, we set off on a two month cycle ride from our house in Liverpool to Kuwait. Just for lols.

We made it!

In 2014 I got pregnant. Look at, us blissfully unaware of the sleepless nights that were to come.

Percy Samuel Jones was born 22nd October 2014

In Feb 2017 after 3 years of trying to move, 1 failed house sale and 9 months of living with another family, we finally got a family sized house.

Which was good news because 3 weeks ago....

We became a family of 4, with our new addition Eric Peter Jones born 3rd May 2017.

I Proper love you Dan. Happy 10 years of us. xx

12 days of Eric

On the first day of Eric the midwife gave to me, a tiny slimy baby.

I finished my previous blog with the baby being out. This is the story between then and now, day 12.

Day 0
4:15AM After my post birth tea and toast:
Midwife: so we'll just do the paper work and then you can go home in an hour or two.
Me: can't I stay in the hospital and sleep?

.....Later on that day

Me: I'm ready to go home now.
Nurse: well the paediatrician has to check your baby over first and she is so busy I don't even want to bother her, so you'll have to stay over night.

Day 1
Nurse: So you're all ready to go, we'll just get someone to take you to the discharge lounge.

....2 hours later

Me: how about we go for a wander and see if we can find the discharge lounge?
Nurse: no you're not allowed to do that.

About 3pm we eventually get home, 24 hours after we wanted to. Percy and Eric met and we sat in the sun in the garden for a bit, enjoying our new family.

Day 3
I tried to take their foot prints, it's such a cute gift for grandparents, if you don't think about how much a 3 day old baby did not enjoy or consent to it. Percy loved it though.

My sister spotted this on my birth notes:

Time Epidural was requested 1.47am (I'm pretty sure I was constantly requesting it) reason it wasn't given: Imminent delivery within 60 mins. But what was his time of birth? 4.15am!!

Day 4
My boobs have gone from soggy pear size to juicy melon size. Unfortunately that's just the milk coming in and they will one day go back to soggy pear.

Day 5
A new wardrobe arrived for our bedroom. This was followed by 3 or 4 days of sweat, tears, probably not blood, but there were some bruises. So far we'd survived having a newborn but adding a flat pack wardrobe that just fits into a space nearly destroyed us both mentally and physically. And we still have a shed to build.

Day 6
Went to Aldi by myself to stock up on snacks... Without a newborn baby I am just a fat person wearing jogging bottoms buying unhealthy food. I saw a couple in gym clothes buying vegetables and I really wanted to be like "I'm not a fat tracksuit wearing slob! I've just had a baby" but with or without a baby I was still a fat person buying unhealthy food wearing scally clothes.

Day 8
Went for a nice walk through Calderstones park to the ice cream parlour. I decided Eric's head looked a lot like a kiwi and showed Dan this incredible meme:

Day 11
I like to start our kids on comedy young. Percy went to his first comedy show at 6 weeks, he invented his first joke at just under 2 (the wheels on the bus go quack quack quack), he preformed this joke at a kids comedy club aged just over 2 and managed to win best joke. Eric had his first taste of comedy yesterday at the Improvathon. The Improvathon is 2017 minutes worth of improv comedy, I think thats about 33.5 hours. This year it was space themed, so Percy brought his rocket and Eric wore his space baby grow. I was tempted to go in the middle of the night, as I was up most of it anyway, but in the end we went to the child friendly bit with both the boys.

Day 12
We're half way through the 3rd packet of tiny baby nappies, there are 44 in a pack. Percy is still in nappies too, how is this sustainable?! We hope to potty train Percy ASAP.

Overall it has been a good first couple of weeks, there have been ups and downs, not really enough sleep, but it's been lovely to hold our little boy and to have lots of friends and family visit. Sometimes I think I just have babies because I'm an extrovert who likes it when people visit.

When you're trying to play it cool but your brother didn't get the memo

In tribute to Avril Lavigne 

The Birth of Eric

I've lost a lot of weight since I last blogged, and I did it all whilst eating biscuits. Yes, its time for a birth story. The prequel to this is Percy's birth story from 2 1/2 years ago, but to sum that up it was a ridiculously painful induced labour where I had an episiotomy (when someone chops your bits to make way for the head) and ventouse (a little baby hover that sucks the baby out). I remember sending out the "I've had a baby" text and the main point I tried to get across was the pain. Everyone ignored that and texted back "congratulations", they really missed my main point of the text. I said to Dan at the time that the only way I would ever give birth again would be by planned c-section.

So this time was a bit different THANK GOD! I was quite scared about it after my previous experience, I had had a bit of birth trauma counselling with a doctor friend who has just set up this as a business. I wanted to make this birth experience as different from the last one as possible, I considered home birth but then when I thought it through it involved my mum being there to look after Percy while I made mooing birth noises, and I really didn't want to moo in ear shot of my mum.

So I decided on either the hospital pool or the epidural (which numbs all your bits) the problem is that neither of these are guaranteed. It depends on if the pool is available at the right time and if the anaesthetist is available in the relatively short window of time that you can inject the magical epidural. There's two bits of the hospital you can give birth in (unless you're my mum: she'll give birth anywhere in or out of a hospital, the rebel). So there's the Midwife Led Unit, which they claim is a "home from home" for lower risk patients. I mean, if at home you have gas and air hidden under a picture frame and limited access to good drugs then I guess "home from home" is an accurate description. Then there's the high risk bit with doctors around, where you are likely to need continuous monitoring with straps that go round the bump to track the heartbeat, which means you can't go in a pool but they do store the Magic E there.

They sort of imply you have a choice of where you go, but you don't really. If I was being induced, which was the plan for today, I would be high risk but if they had let me go naturally, which was the plan a few weeks ago when the baby was deemed normal size, then I would be low risk.

So I started having mild contractions early in the morning of Tuesday 2nd May. It was annoying because the adrenalin starts going as I packed bags ready to go in, but also I knew it might be nothing, which it turned out to be when I eventually went back to sleep. Dan went in to work as normal on the Tuesday which I kept changing my mind about whether that was the right decision. I had a bit of pain but carried on with a normal day looking after Percy. When Dan got home contractions had started again and Dan started recording them. We contacted our emergency childcare people to see who was free and Rachel became the chosen emergency person. She got the bus over to ours after work, we told her to come straight here as we were worried it had started to get quicker, and then we felt a bit stupid when she got here and it all slowed down a bit. Dan later drove her back home so she could get an overnight bag, and I warned my mum to come up for 7am to relive Rachel and get Percy up in the morning. Finally around 10:30 we decided this was actually going to happen and we phoned the hospital who gave us permission to come in.

There was some discussion as to where I should be because this was natural non induced labour but the baby was still measuring small. In the end I had to start off in the Midwife Led Unit because there was no room in the other bit, and then they said they would transfer me to the other bit when I was ready to deliver. I was measured at 3cm dilated, but you need to get to 4 to get taken seriously and given drugs and you need to get to 10 to start pushing. So we had a walk round the hospital and I spent a lot of time sitting on a big bouncy ball. After a few hours and much more painful contractions the midwife said she could examine me but she doubted I would be more than 3 because the contractions still weren't following a regular patten. I'm glad I asked her still to do it, because I was 7-8cm! At that point she started taking me seriously and got me some gas and air. This is the 3rd time I'd used gas and air. The first was when I dislocated my elbow aged 16, I somehow managed to swallow the gas and air which resulted in a lot of stomach pain. This meant I was fearful of it in Percy's birth and ended up doing it wrong and then giving up on it. This time I finally got the hang of it. It's pretty fun.

I got transferred to the high risk bit ready for the babies imminent exit. My waters were bulging but for some reason wouldn't break. I asked again for the epidural, and the midwife were like "oh but you're doing so well, you don't need it" The last thing the midwife from the low risk bit said before going back to the Midwife Led Unit was "good luck and I hope you don't get the epidural" which I felt was a bit too opinionated. You sometimes hear people saying "it's better to give birth naturally" but when you've already had a traumatic birth experience I think it's pretty natural to want to avoid that horrendous pain ever happening to you again. No one goes for a c-section and says they want to do it naturally do they?

It was a bit difficult to then decide whether to really demand more drugs or not because I was just coping on gas and air but I knew it would get worse when a head started getting squeezed out and it's too late to ask then. In the end I didn't get anything, I don't feel like that was my decision though it's just what happened.

So I got to fully dilated and still the waters hadn't broken and I wasn't pushing. Whereas last time I started pushing when I was 8cm, they told me not to but I couldn't help it my body was just doing it. They felt I was holding back and gave me a little pep talk, the midwife was really nice and she was aware of my negative past experience and tried to make it different so she let me do a kneeling kind of position which I preferred to lying and she explained that she would have to press the button to get another midwife at the last bit which was normal. That was good of her because last time the button kept getting pressed and more and more people ran in because it was a bit of an emergency.

So anyway...we're nearly there thanks for reading this far. There was a back log of things I needed to get out first the waters finally came splashing out wetting my midwife and my sock. Then I needed to poo! ww it's so gross but apparently the poo had to get out before the baby. So I pushed that out and had a midwife wipe my bum. Thanks NHS I owe you one. And now it was time for the main event: The head. I was in so much pain I was moving around nearly falling off the bed screaming almost being sick, I got a telling off got back, into position and pushed him out!

The relief when you finally hear the cry and you've done it is immense! I now only had one thing left on the to do list of things to to push out, the placenta, no biggy that flopped out a minute later. It was 4.15 am, little Eric was here, and I could immediately claim my free tea and toast. Hurrah.

6lbs 4

Dan one hour later...he did a super great job, it was pretty hard work for him too.