COWS, SHEEP AND GRUMPY ME

I'm grumpy this evening.  After a good start when they arrived on Sunday afternoon, my mother has just begun to irritate me despite the fact that she's been helping out (especially with the two very lively older children).  It's completely unfair of me because it's largely because I'm very tired, having had one very interrupted night's sleep and then a night where the baby woke at 11pm and didn't go to sleep until 2am, having, in the meantime, filled 3 nappies, taken 2 bottles, vomited milk right across my bed and decided that it was time to chat and play rather than to sleep.

I've been wanting to get him into a routine and keep thinking that we should keep him awake more during the day, but having just looked on the internet it sounds as if he's perfectly normal for his age and - as I keep saying to people - it is only a short phase.  He's also eating hugely though and my very mixed emotions about stopping breastfeeding are somewhat calmed by this as there's no way I'd have kept up with him.  However I am still a bit leaky, which makes me feel sad that I'm not still feeding him and don't have that closeness, but proud that I managed to produce so much more milk this time than I did with either of the others.

I met two ex-work colleagues for lunch, which was lovely.  I expounded my theory that, like cows, some women are lower yielding than others.  Being of farming stock they agreed and one mentioned that sheep are the same and that some lambs have to have bottle top-ups: which made me feel a lot better.  The other had had a similar experience breast feeding as me, though she kept going for 6 weeks.  So all in all a large sigh of relief from me: I'm not an evil mother whose children are going to be forever at a disadvantage because they weren't breastfed.

The internet is a really mixed blessing, in fact, isn't it.  I've also just looked up about babies grunting and snuffling at night to be told again that it's perfectly normal, and related to their immature digestive system: which perfectly corresponds to my feeling that it was something to do with Baby Son feeling full of milk.

The exciting prospect at the moment is that I will be starting French lessons with a native French speaker soon: I met her through organising the choir for the Lanercost Festival!  We've been emailing in French to organise things: I'm sure my French must be painful for her to read but I've really enjoyed using it.  I so hope I manage to get some reasonably paid work doing something which gives me time to follow and develop all my other interests and skills so that I can carry on doing all these things.

I'd better go to bed as in my grumpy mood I told Husband that he was dealing with the baby for the next few hours while I got some sleep: so that is what I ought to do.  I've also just looked at the windowsill and remembered that I want to move all the photos and noticed that there is a layer of dust which needs cleaning.... 'a woman's work is never done' [sigh]....