Same same... but different (Part II)

Following on from my post about the girls similarities and differences, I've been thinking lately about the similarities and differences in mine & Todd's approach to parenting since Piper has come along and what we are doing differently this time around.  I'm sure I know now why people have heaps of kids....  with the first you really don't have any idea so you fumble around with all the different ideas and bits of advice you are given from the piles of information that is available constantly worried that you aren't doing it 'right' and people are going to judge you and think you're not a good parent, until somewhere around the time they turn 1, when you finally work out that you've got it pretty well sussed and you aren't doing too bad a job.  You also look back and realise that in your best attempt to do everything 'right', you've missed out on just enjoying your newborn for what they are.

Then No. 2 comes along.....  your determined to 'right your wrongs' with No. 1 (you know... back to those piles of information that is thrust in your face at every turn!) but also sit back and smell the roses.....  all while trying to juggle with No. 1 (who by this stage is back to demanding a lot of your attention because they can now get into everything, but don't have a concept of fear or danger!) and be a good housewife and have just a bit of time to yourself too and deal with all the emotions (and not to mention hormones) that come with all of this life adjustment (.... and in our case, it all happened rather quickly, so just trying to keep up all the adjustment has been interesting!)  Oh....  and life keeps turning when you walk out the front door too and with everything that is happening in our world these days (ie. all the disasters, ridiculous cost of living expenses etc. etc.) you've somehow got to fit that in too!

I'm guessing by kids 3, 4, 5 etc. you've absolutely perfected the juggling act and are determined to right even more wrongs that you've made with No. 2, because surely you must be closer to getting it exactly as 'they' say it should be and more practice can only make perfect.... right?!?

Piper is nearly 4 months and to say it's been an easy ride since she was born would be a complete lie!  I am so lucky to have been blessed with very good children.... it could have been a hell of a lot worse!!  Thankfully the worst 'illness' we've suffered is teething (which I know isn't an illness, but I would expect Mackenna to react the same if she was unwell) and both girls are pretty good sleepers (albeit, they rarely sleep at the same time!!)  When I was pregnant with Piper and people would find out what their age gap was going to be, they'd say to me "You're going to be busy", which I always knew that I would be, but it's something that I don't think you can't fully understand until you are living it!  Mackenna was such a good baby who slept for 2-3 hours at a time, twice a day and would be in bed by 8pm so I had heaps of time to spend doing what I wanted to do.  She also couldn't undo the housework I'd done or really get in the way of it either, so I could do it around her if she was awake.  (I did make the mistake of always being home for her sleeps though and would plan our outings around her sleep times, which has created a toddler who won't sleep in the pram or stroller when we are out.)

When Piper was born, Mackenna was still a little bit young to be exploring and destroying every single corner, drawer and cupboard of the house so I got a little bit of a false sense of "this won't be so hard, I'm sure I can manage."  Since then, Mackenna has learnt how to open every single cupboard in the house, has gotten tall enough to reach all of the door handles (but isn't quite tall enough to have enough leverage to actually turn the handle....  watch this space in about 3 or so months!!) and tall enough to reach the top of the table, kitchen bench and cooktop, worked out our dodgy gate install and can escape, can climb the coffee table, walk up and down stairs etc. etc. etc.  You know...  all those things that need constant supervision and constant awareness from Todd and I that everything is safe for her to be 'set free'.  It's taken us quite a while to get the house all moved around (we've done some major moves of furniture and fish tanks!) to make it 'baby hazard free' but it seems that every time we sort one thing out, she grows an inch and finds more things to get into or gets a bit better with her hand-eye coordination and can play with something she previously didn't have the dexterity for.  We've tried to give her lots of different types of toys to keep her well distracted, but as with all kids, Mummy and Daddy's things are much more interesting.

She is also starting to learn the concept that she is her own person and will throw a huge tantrum if things are going her way.  And her tantrums aren't nice....  they are loud and she would have you believe that we've just cut her finger off with the blood curdling screams she comes out with.  They certainly make people look when she has them while we are in public.  She has also learnt that she can dig her teeth into things to express her frustration....  something that she is going to learn is not on in a real hurry (....  for anyone reading this who happens to ever get in the way of her teeth...  you have Todd's and my permission to reprimand her quite harshly for it!!)  Bless her though, it is the immediate reaction she is having to the situation and she does it without really considering what she is doing....  she has bitten herself a few times and I hope that the pain she is causing herself is helping to teach her that it hurts and isn't really a good way to express frustration.  I've learnt ways to avoid the tantrums....  she is pretty responsive to diversionary tactics and it's amazing how interesting you can make a mediocre task sound if you add some sound effects and actions, or a line from a song she knows.... LOL!

Anyways... I got a fair way off the topic of my post.  It's fun to talk about Mackenna, because she is just so gorgeous and innocent, all while being cheeky and learning how to push our buttons at the same time!) 

Things that we've done differently this time around....  it has been quite a different experience actually to bring Piper into the world, even though our approach has been fairly similar.  Todd could stay in hospital with us when we had Mackenna, which was really great.  We changed hospitals with Piper, which didn't give us that option, but he also had to be at home for Mackenna, so I was in hospital on my own.  I had limited time to spend with Todd and Mackenna, and Todd and Mackenna with Piper while I was in hospital, because it just wasn't the right environment for Mackenna to be running around and she wasn't happy to be kept restrained in the stroller.   It was really strange to be apart from Mackenna (and Todd) for that long, as I hadn't ever spent more than a night away from her since she was born.   

Because Piper was so small at birth, I was determined to feed her what she liked, when she wanted it at least until she was settled and consistently putting on good amounts of weight.  When she was about 2 months old, it was clear that she was starting to get herself into an 'emotional eating' pattern where she would be really overtired and screaming her lungs out for sleep, but eating because I was offering it to her (which was fine...  she needed the food to fatten her up!) It just wasn't helping to stablise a milk supply, or help us make plans to go out or help her get into any sort of routine.  I was also determined to store as much as I could for times when I had to leave her with her Dad or Nana & Grandad or anyone else and to enable Todd to give her feeds as well.  She took to a bottle really well and I managed to get heaps stored, but slowly over the past few months it has all been used up, to a point where I now have one feed left in the freezer, which I am trying to keep for absolute emergencies, and a stable milk supply and a crazy busy household which doesn't allow for a lot of expressing outside of normal feeds.

I am not very good at, nor do I really like breastfeeding in public, so whenever we took Mackenna out I would always take a bottle of expressed milk.  With only the one baby, I only had to remember the milk and some hot water to heat it up in....  now that I have to worry about Mackenna too, with her water and snacks and toys and both girls dummies etc. etc. it is kind of too much hassle to have to worry about what I need for Piper as well when there is an easier and quicker option in just going somewhere quiet and breastfeeding her.  I've had to get over my phobia and I'm getting better at the whole 'discrete' thing, but it's really worth the less drama that it is to take a bottle.  

I'm not completely against Piper ever being put on formula, and sometime around the time we wean Mackenna off a bottle and Piper is well and truly eating solids, I will probably wean her over.  Mackenna was exclusively formula fed from 5 months, and still is, and I think it has been to her benefit.  Whilst I know that 'breastfeeding is best' (yada, yada, yada), I am happy that she has consistently been getting the vitamins and minerals etc. that the formula provides on top of what she has in her food.  For the moment though, I am determined to not introduce formula if I don't have to to Piper, for reasons that are honestly purely selfish....  a tin of formula is nearly $25/wk, so added to Mackenna's would make over $75/fortnight we'd be spending on formula and also because I honestly couldn't be stuffed washing and sterilising bottles for Piper on top of Mackenna's (which I don't sterilise, but I do spend a lot of time washing out really thoroughly.)  It will, however, be very welcome to have my body back all to myself after being either pregnant or breastfeeding for the last 2 years so far though!!

This time around too, I'm determined not to be so pent up about absolutely everything, although I must admit, it's not always easy.  In Mackenna's first year, in my attempt to show the world that I am a good parent, I was often really overprotective and overbearing when it came to her and her care.  Her routine, while flexible was in the same breath a bit strict and for reasons that I can't even work out, I'd get frustrated if her it was thrown out of whack for a day.  Looking back, Mackenna has always been such a well adjusted baby and she actually thrived on days here and there that were totally out of her norm (and still does.)  I do notice it though when she's had too many days without a 'home' day to catch up on some rest and recharge the batteries (...you know, playing with all the boring toys at home... LOL!)  As I mentioned earlier, I was also always home for her sleeps, so she never got used to sleeping in the pram.  That wasn't really done on purpose, it was just the way it worked out, but I am aware now that I could have done that a bit differently.  Thankfully though, she will sleep in a portacot anywhere without too much drama, provided she has her comforts.  Piper will go to sleep anywhere provided she is tired, which is great..... our recent holiday meant that she could sleep in the pram or her chair or one of the beds, wherever we happened to be, without too much drama.  (She did start to miss her bed by the end of the holiday though and has pretty much slept for the last 2 days catching up, bless her!)  She is learning too that she doesn't need to grizzle before going off to sleep in public, thank god...  for a while there, it would take me 10 minutes of holding the dummy in her mouth through her grizzling before she'd work out that she was tired and that she could go off to sleep with all the lights and noises around her.

They also don't come with an 'instruction manual' anymore.  Whenever I left Mackenna with anyone (even Todd, bless him), she was left with a page full of instructions about what she did and when, again in an attempt to show the world that I'm a good parent, with a child that is in a good routine and is getting enough sleep... etc. etc. etc.  It's funny though... I hate it when it happens to me and a few things like "Don't they think I know what I'm doing" and "well I prefer to do it this way" etc. have been known to come out of my mouth on a number of occasions for exactly the same thing, so you would think that I would have realised that it was not only unnecessary, but ridiculously over the top as well.  Thankfully, I was never made to feel bad or like I was being over the top for doing it though by whoever happened to be on the receiving end of it.

I've totally gotten off topic again and I'm going to stay off topic... but writing that last bit reminded me of Jamie Buchman....  does anyone remember the sitcom 'Mad About You'? It's been on Foxtel, so I was watching it a little bit and it got up to the series where they had their baby Mabel.  Jamie was also so pent up on doing everything 'right' and Paul was always trying to accommodate his wellmeaning wife, but enjoy his baby too...  it's kind of like that in our house.  There are two episodes that really spring to mind.....  one where they were teaching Mabel to self settle, where Jamie was dead for it while Paul wanted to go in and settle her, until she finally fell off to sleep when Jamie broke down saying "We've just broken our daughter's heart" and one where Paul was wanting to start giving Mabel bottles, but Jamie wasn't ready to start weaning, but got caught on the subway one day when Mabel was due for a feed.  Paul tried and tried to hold Mabel's feed out, but finally gave in and made her a bottle and he thought that Jamie would be really upset about it, but by the time she finally got home, she had realised that it didn't really matter how her daughter got feed, just so long as she did and she was happy that Paul had given her the bottle.  Keeping the outcome of both of those episodes in the front of my mind somewhere kind of grounds me a bit from my stupid 'overthinking' when it comes to the girls.  I also spruce that I parent from a common sense approach (ie. if it were me, would I be pissed off to be restrained in the high chair after I've finished eating too and if I'm overtired and can't go to sleep, or had a big painful windy bubble in my tummy, would I be communicating that in the only way I know how) but I often times don't practice what I preach and get really caught up in what I'm 'suppose' to be doing to get it 'right'

Anyway... this has just turned into a huge rant about not much at all and I could probably carry on for ages, so it might be best to sign off now.....  Piper is starting to get grizzly, so it might be getting close to her bed time....or maybe it's because Spicks & Specks just isn't as good as In the Night Garden!  Thanks for reading all the way to the end, if you got that far......