Can I get a nanny?

I love my son. I really, truly, kiss him from head-to-toe, dote on his every need, race home from work in excitement, cuddle, play, giggle with, sniff his head for comfort love my son. BUT (you knew there was a 'but' coming right?) lately he is driving me crazy! I'm tired. Ridiculously tired. I have no idea why but I can barely lift my head off the pillow each day. And being a full time mummy to an 8 month old baby is not easy when you're literally exhausted 24/7.
I've been taking iron tablets (I don't eat much meat so I often get anaemic), having early nights, trying to eat better, keeping on top of my medication, drinking more water.. Nothing helps!
Now, I cannot bear to be away from Cooper for more than a few hours a day so my "life would be perfect if.." dream is that I could be rich, and have a nanny. I would still be home with my baby all day but when I was tired, id just leave the nanny to it and go to bed. Perfect right?! Now, who wants to be my nanny for free...?

Selfish or Selfless?

Since having Cooper, our fur baby Lucy (cat) has become a low priority for me. What used to be my baby, the reason for coming home each night, and the one thing I adored almost as if she was a real child, has become somewhat of a problem.
The first issue is that Lucy is ALWAYS on the countertop, stovetop, sink, dining table. Nothing I do deters her. Not only is this an inconvenience, it's a hygiene issue. She walks through her poopy kitty litter and then all over my kitchen. The same kitchen that I prepare meals for my baby in.
The second issue is Lucy has become bored and destructive. She scratches furniture, carpet, couches.. anything expensive basically.
I tried allowing her outdoors to alleviate her boredom but she keeps sun-baking on the road and I know she will get hit by a car if I continue to let her outside.
I can't decide if rehoming her is selfish (I have a real baby now so I don't need you anymore) or selfless (you deserve a better home where you will be loved and appreciated).
I don't know what to do??!!

Every. Single. Hour.

Yep, that's how frequently Cooper woke last night. It was hell. I'd drag my sorry little self into his room, put his dummy back in, "shhhh" him, and get back into bed. One hour later... "waaaaaaahhhh"!!!!! Newborns sleep better than he did last night.
I have no idea why. Nothing was different.. Same bedtime, same sleeping bag, same room, cot, temperature, darkness, noise level, outfit, dummy, blankie... Everything the same as normal!
I fed him, gave him baby Panadol, burped him (just in case), patted him, rocked him, cuddled him... Nothing worked.
Dear lord he better not do that again tonight!!!

The Liebster Award

What is the Liebster you ask? The Liebster award is given to up and coming bloggers who have less than 200 followers. Liebster is a German word meaning: sweetest, kindest, nicest, dearest, beloved, lovely, kind, pleasant, valued, cute, endearing, and welcome.

The Rules:
1. Each person must post 11 things about themselves.
2. Answer the 11 questions the person giving the award has set for you.

Rules 3-5 were all about passing it on, which I won't be doing. I'm sure I'm committing some terrible blogger-crime by skipping it but I'll risk the bad karma lol.


11 Facts about Me

I can be a total hypocrite when it comes to my husband Nathan cos I find myself telling him off for doing things around the house (eg: eating something on our cream-coloured couch that will stain) but then I secretly do the same things when he's not home 

I have a love-hate relationship with Facebook... so good for finding old friends, so painful to see all the people who are no longer in my life... so addictive regardless!

I never completely stop caring about people, whether it's old friends, lovers, etc... once you've won my heart, you never completely lose it 


I didn't believe in 'happily ever after' until I met my husband Nathan 


I constantly doubt myself when trying to make decisions about life 


I used to be a fairly spiteful person once I'd been hurt, but now I have matured and learnt that sometimes life just happens that way  


I am never the girl with great hair or perfect nails or immaculate make-up because I just don't care enough to bother 


I have been known to eat chocolate & coca-cola for breakfast  


I often talk too much or too loud  


I'm disgustingly messy (not dirty, messy) and I leave shoes, cardigans, hair ties, sunglasses, etc from one end of the house to the other and it drives my husband mad.


When I'm feeling a bit down, I like to read Animal Rescue stories.. warms my heart when these cats and dogs find great homes

11 Questions to Answer

1. When did you start Blogging and why?
I started a few months ago as an outlet for my baby-related venting but am hopeless at keeping up-to-date with it and have never really got it going properly.

2. Do you eat breakfast?
Before I had Cooper, hardly ever.. now I eat toast every day.

3. If you could live anywhere in the world where would it be?
I have lived in London and here in Australia, and whilst I loved the UK and would also love to visit the USA, I think my heart will always be here in Australia.

4. Mini Van or SUV?
SUV but at the moment we have neither!

5. Flats or heels?
Flats.. always!

6. Ocean view or Mountain view?
Ocean.. I love the beach and practically live there during summer.

7. Dream profession?
No idea to be honest... something that had lots of holidays, paid really well and wasn't stressful.. do they exist? lol

8. If you had 1 million you had to spend or giveaway what would you do with it?
I would buy a house and a car. And maybe go on a holiday. Selfish things because we could never afford them otherwise!

9. Biggest Pet Peeve?
Stupid people. I find it really frustrating.

10. Worst habit?
I'm very messy!

11. Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
Still married, with another 2 children... hopefully our own home, a dog and white picket fence!

When baby gets sick..

"Listen up mummy, this is how it's gonna go down.. I'm gonna wake myself up coughing every hour throughout the night and need you to come rock me back to sleep. As for day naps, I'm not taking them unless you cuddle and rock me non-stop. I will also wake regularly during my naps due to my coughing and cry miserably about it... Deal?"

The past 2 months..

So I kinda went AWOL the past two months. Mostly because I'm NEVER using my laptop and it never occurred to me (until today!) that there might be a Blogger iPhone app. But now that I have access to blog whenever, wherever I want, I will hopefully actually post regularly.

Stay tuned...

First Time Parents Group (aka "Mothers Group")

For those people who don't know what First Time Parents Group is, let me briefly explain. Prior to the days of political-correctness, it was referred to as Mothers Group. It's a weekly catch-up of approximately 90 minutes, facilitated by a maternal health worker, with other first-time parents (usually 10-15 people) and held at your zoned-local maternal and child health centre. It usually runs for a designated number of weeks (approximately 7 weeks) with set topics for discussion each week. It's an informal group where the facilitator opens-up discussion for the group to chat about their week and the set topic such as sleep, taking care of yourself, etc. Once the formal meetings cease, many parents continue the weekly catch-ups in cafes or parks, to maintain the support-network and friendships developed.

When I had Cooper, everyone said to me "oh wait until you join Mothers Group, you'll love it" but I was kinda sceptical about it for the following reasons:

• I absolutely hate sitting in training sessions, lectures, tutorials, or meetings when they are "dumbed-down" explanations of blindingly-obvious things or when the meeting is constantly being interrupted by people asking stupid questions that have nothing to do with the topic being discussed, etc. I think the saying "doesn't suffer fools gladly" was invented for me!
• I'm not very good at faking friendship with people that I don't 'click' with. If we are completely incompatible personalities then why bother faking a friendship just because we have been lumped-into the same workplace, sports team or parents group? Faked friendships are so unsatisfying and a waste of time.
• I often find groups of women to be bitchy or fake. I have absolutely no interest in this and therefore certain types of women tend to not like me much.

So yes, I had my doubts as to whether I was going to love these meetings.

Luckily for me, I turned out to be wrong. Mothers Group is awesome! It's so good to be able to meet up with a group of people who are in the exact same situation as me. We share horror stories, tips, ideas, experiences... and we feel so much better knowing that everyone else out there is experiencing similar things with their babies. Not everyone in the group is someone that I want to be lifelong friends with, but everyone is nice and friendly and it doesn't matter that we have nothing else in common because we have the one most important thing in common... we're new mummies!

Having moved to Melbourne from the country, and not having many friends with children in Melbourne, it's really nice to meet people who are on the same page as you when you want to talk about baby poo, sleep or how you cannot find the time to cook dinner. As much as I love my workmates and friends without children, they just don't quite understand the same way my mothers group friends do. I'm actually pretty lucky to have my sister-in-law only a 5 minute drive away and she is home with her baby also. She's been an amazing support to me but it's still nice to meet people outside of family as well.

So yes, soon-to-be mothers, when someone suggests Mothers Group and you think "meh, not for me", give it a go. You might surprise yourself. I've even found a walking-buddy in one of the mums, since she lives a few blocks away. Who would have thought I'd actually make friends at this thing?!

To Lactose-Free or not to Lactose-Free, that is the question...

So about 6 weeks ago, I realised that Cooper's bowel moments weren't exactly normal. They were explosive, smelly, watery and had mucus in them. He was also always bloated and would scream for hours. I am the queen of "Doctor Google" so after searching every website possible, I had narrowed the options down to one of two things; he was either lactose-intolerant or he had a cow's milk allergy. I decided that considering he was only breastfed and I was barely consuming any dairy, that we would go with lactose-intolerant to begin with. So I bought some lactose-free formula and starting alternating his feeds between breast milk and the formula. The change was incredible. Gone was the screaming, uncomfortable baby I had lived with for weeks and a happy smiley baby was in his place. His poo became nice and healthy looking (still smelly but in a normal way!) and everything seemed to be going well.

Then two weeks ago, someone told me that I could get the lactose-free formula on prescription if he was medically diagnosed as lactose-intolerant and therefore cutting the cost of each tin of formula from $24 to $7. So off to the doctor we go. Now in order to do a lactose-intolerance test, I had to reintroduce lactose into his diet. So onto normal formula we went. Oh my god. He screamed. He pooed the most disgusting green sludge I have ever seen. He was miserable. And here I am, with a "feces sample collector" (aka poo jar), scooping up this vile sludge to refrigerate (yes, that's right... poo in my fridge) until I could drop it into the doctor's clinic.

So today we go back to the doctor for our results. "Hmmm" she says, "results inconclusive due to compromised sample". Uhhh WHAT?! All that was for nothing? It appears that the sample was meant to be FROZEN immediately after collection, which the doctor didn't know and therefore didn't tell me. For f**k's sake... maybe they would like to come and live with Cooper for 3 days whilst I redo the test? I'll go sit in a nice quiet lab and test poo and they can come and deal with a poor hysterical baby in utter agony? No? Ok so I guess it's up to me to do it all again.

Anyway, the doctor said she was going to look into other testing methods first. So I'm awaiting her call to see if there is a light at the end of the tunnel rather than a replay of the three worst days I've ever had to put my little man through. Fingers crossed...

The start of something...

"So many lessons learned... I should write them all down for you so that you can learn from my mistakes before you have a baby" - Me
"Hehe. Sounds like a plan. Better idea - start a blog" - Friend

And so it began. I'm not the first to start a blog about motherhood. I actually read a blog by another first time mother who writes about her experiences. But considering the suggestion from my friend, I figured that maybe the world could do with another blog.

Cooper was born on 2nd February 2012. If only I had started this blog 3 months ago... so many experiences... It's all a bit of a haze now but I will try my best to remember some key experiences from the past 12 weeks. The best way to summarise the experiences over the past 12 weeks is to share some Facebook statuses from those weeks...

12 Feb 2012 - Apparently afternoon sleep is overrated.. just ask Cooper, he's taking a stand against conformity by spending all afternoon pretending to settle, only to start screaming 15 mins after he's gone down.

20 Feb 2012 - Mummy & Cooper's first outing without Daddy.. Off to the supermarket we went.. No baby trolleys.. So here I am, pushing a pram with one hand, carrying a shopping basket in the other, looking completely uncoordinated and feeling it too.. I think that was a failed experiment!

26 Feb 2012 - If only it were safe, legal & acceptable to drug your baby to sleep.. Last night's sleep deprivation was torture.

28 Feb 2012 - Dear Cooper, I can't survive on 3 hours sleep a night... please, please, please go down for a nap. Love Mummy.

8 Mar 2012 - Is it bad that I haven't been dressed before 9am since having Cooper?

13 Mar 2012 - Cheap nappies are bullshit!

21 Mar 2012 - Is there any sweeter sound than my son snoring?

29 Mar 2012 - Dear Mum, Am I in the car? No. Am I in the pram being walked continuously? No. Am I in your arms? No. Then I'm not taking a nap. Love, Cooper.

10 Apr 2012 - 8:30pm - 5am... Dare I dream that this is Cooper's new routine?

22 Apr 2012 - My vocal cords sure got a workout this afternoon, Cooper made me sing to him all the way home for 90 minutes.. If mummy stopped singing, Cooper would start screaming!

24 Apr 2012 - Hey Cooper, remember those days when you napped in your cot for at least 1.5 hours?... that was awesome, I miss those days, let's do it again sometime!

26 Apr 2012 - Next week I am going to... stop watching all the unaired episodes of my fave tv shows online, stop eating unhealthy lunches, start forcing myself to do even just a little exercise every day, begin a cleaning routine, persist with making Cooper nap... but today?... today I might just eat this magnum, put my feet up, let Cooper snuggle in my arms and watch another episode of Revenge!

2 May 2012 - Sitting in my car in my driveway, not daring to move in case I wake Cooper.

So that pretty much sums things up and brings us up to today. Stay tuned...