My Lady of the Lantern

My personal calls all get done wee early in the morning ( 6 am to 7 am anyone?) or when I am in office and making good use of the phone in my you-wouldn't-believe-how-big-and-ginormous cabin, and sometimes when I am returning to home from work. Yesterday, I was speaking to my mum on my trip back, when I managed to ask her if I was this way too - that fighting sleep bit. Yes, I was. How long? For a couple of months. My jaw dropped. I do remember references to my mother praying and carrying me around to make me sleep. I also recall references to the fact that I sometimes used to cry, and it was difficult for my mum to discern what was causing it. I remember those bits, but I had never digested that as well and as hard as I did, yesterday evening. And it never made as much sense to me as it did last evening. If Figlia is going my way, I do know that she will turn into a good sleeper eventually. But I now understand how hard it must have been for my mum. Last evening was ano...

I am not even sure if the title suits what I am writing. And it is definitely not the end of what I mentioned in my Saturday post. I should just stop counting nights. Saturday night, it was three vomits (Figlia has never vomited before), and lot of crying before final sleeping. Yesterday night, we bundled her in the car and took her for a drive. We were 10 minutes away from the home, when she stared crying. It was not colic. It was hunger. And she refused to breastfeed. And I was not carrying her bottle. It could be the longest 10 minutes of my recent history. Once home, she had her bottle, quietened down, and I gave her to DH. I was too wiped for any more cajoling for sleep. Just when I think that I can't take it any more, I end up surviving it. I was given a beautiful word once, in a different context though. That word was surrender . If I could just surrender to the fact that she will eventually give this up. If I could just surrender to the idea that I just have to ...

Fourth consecutive night, Aye refused to sleep. Car drives, feeding, killing lights, shushhhing, Aye refused to sleep. Griping, Singing, Praying, Ignoring, Aye refused to sleep. Mum actually searched Aye's back for her batteries because, Aye refused to sleep. What's wrong with her? She is tired, why doesn't she sleep? Coz fourth night in a row, Aye refused to sleep. Fighting with sleep killers for an hour and more, the room lights were finally turned on. Aye smiled at Daddy, Aye refused to sleep.

*TMI Alert* *TMI Alert* I woke up today morning 20 minutes before I normally do, which is way better than waking up 20 minutes later than my norm (which happened yesterday). It translated to not knifing myself for being sleepy clumsy, or driving mules over snail paced working in the morning. I am amazed at how much can be accomplished when there is no time to do it. But that's not what I want to mention here. I noticed a strong change in my CM today morning. It did not hit me at once, but in a few seconds I was able to compute that I had possibly ovulated, and what cycle day it must be today and then I stopped my train of thoughts. I am not TTC. But it is comforting to know that my body will attempt cooperation if I get onto the wagon (oh we are already asking Figlia if she wants a sibling, but she is refusing currently #ha ). It is #appropriateadjective for me to know that I still have cycle arithmetic in control. I can count, people. I totally can. I am so much better tha...

Days before I had gone back to work, I attended a party hosted by a colleague. In a conversation, she told me about one of our students who became a new mum recently. That bit of news, was just one tidbit among the various threads exchanged between us. When I went back to work, I asked how old the baby was. I do not even know what triggered the question, but it was some reference to one of her batchmates. 'Oh!' she said, 'the baby is no more.' It was shocking. The baby wasn't quite a month old when she died. I took my student's number. I texted her a message of condolence, and told her that she could call/contact me anytime. She replied back, thanked me for the message, and told me that she was trying to forget the baby's face, but was struggling with it. I want to clarify here, that I am only sharing the 'forgetting the face of the baby' part of her message. There were other bits to the reply too. I told her that it was impossible to forget ...

"Who are you talking to?" "Myself?" "You talk to yourself?" Inch-close to being married for almost nine years to this man, and he has never figured that I tend to talk to myself? Is your spouse/partner surprised at something that you perceived as common knowledge for him/her? Has your partner discovered something new about you recently?

Figlia started daycare from last Friday. I initially kept her for four hours and upped her hours on Saturday and then on Monday, so that she was on full-hours at the place when I joined work on Tuesday. She is doing well apparently, and her adult parents were apparently more worked up than she is at her new place. She has lots of company there, and when I leave her there in the morning, I don't leave immediately. I chug in a few moments, chat with the helpers, and the little kids there...and I sort of like it. She pays a lot of attention to the activity around her, and she will have lot of playmates when she grows up and starts understanding the playing with others on her own. Her naps have definitely changed...she has more fractured naps overall, and I find her cranky in the evening when I bring her back home. Sometimes she sleeps for about half an hour in the evening. Her being cranky means that I am more tightwired in doing anything at all in the house, and if hubby is not ...

If I ever doubted teething as the cause for fussy baby, I am now 100 percent sure that it is the case with dear daughter... Last night right before bedtime, she began crying. I applied a gel on her gums, and gave her something for colic to get the situation under control. She refused to latch and that meant we piled her in the car and took her out for a drive. She slept, but when I attempted to lay her down on the bed, she woke up. My body was aching and I had a low-grade fever. I finally rocked her to sleep. This crying bit has happened second time in a row. The refusing to latch has happened second time in a row. Figlia used to nurse and nap in the day. She would nurse before sleeping for the night. She started daycare on Friday. That time I left her for only four hours. But I have increased her hours there now. And the nursing everytime she is sleepy is just not happening. She is refusing to latch at night. She just cries. And she has also started to bite me very hard (teethi...

Just four days before I birthed CBub, I was attending a session at my workplace. As soon as the speaker came on, CBub began to kick like crazy (CBub used to kick whenever my Director spoke, that is the joy of frequent meetings). (It feels like a chilling memory, but CBub was definitely a responder.) Anyways, this guy's voice also made my baby kick. I was so excited by it, that I spontaneously pulled my neighbour's hand to make her feel the kicks. She pulled back her hand, gave me a pinched smile of discomfort, and carried on with the listening. That was a bad move on my part. I do not know much of her (she was a recent joinee), but that her only child had passed a few days after birth. What did he die of? Was he a preemie? Was she seeking to conceive again? How much time had passed between the death and her coming to work? I had no idea.  Her baby's death was fitted as news in the corner of my mind, but I hadn't considered that before my overture to make her feel my ...

Yesterday's funny was sponsored by a crying baby who managed to get awkward-positioned in her play gym followed by a lather-face mother running out of the shower to reposition the said crying baby. - - - I take a pic of her on 11th of every month. I forgot to take one yesterday. That's the second time in six months that I have forgotten to do it on time. - - - We went out for a walk yesterday * , but otherwise we had been holed up inside most evenings due to the rains before yesterday. Figlia seems to have started disliking her pram. We could clock a 45 mins walk before, but now, 15 minutes in the pram, and she has a 'let me out' all-limbs-kick on. She does not enjoy being in it anymore. And while I can still haul her around for a while, I can't see myself doing it on a daily basis. We were gifted a Motherc@re carrier, and dear daughter stayed in it for all of 15 minutes. While the pram lasted for a while, the carrier was rejected from the first moment itse...

As the date for going back to work is creeping closer, I am getting more and more anxious by the bit. I know what happens with these things...there will be a build-up, and when the day actually comes, I will plough it down mechanically, the build-up be damned. I am hoping for that to happen. Juggling going to work, leaving her in the daycare, and all that I will have to do in the mean-time makes me wonder how much more clock-prone can I get. --- Figlia celebrated today (she turned 6 months old today) by deciding to sleep on her belly in the morning. She had given that up for months in-between. And today morning, she just decided to do it. We have now entered a phase where she mostly asks for one feed during the night, and two feeds on rare occasions. Her went-to-bed time is however no guarantee of when she will actually wake up. How about 9:00 pm to 7:05 am and then 11:00 pm - 5:45 am for a slot? In the latter one though, she did not take a feed at all...but then refused to sleep...

The house has become quieter with most of the guests who were here the past week gone. *** Figlia is turning back to belly like crazy...and on her belly, she is already trying to hold the fabric and push (she is not succeeding in that currently, but her intentions are clear). And well, we want to rest our feet on the ground...so she is enjoying standing up (supported). She is sitting supported...and I figure, we are going to be flying in a couple of weeks. *** The stupid bleeding is upsetting me. I had a quiet dying down to spotting, clear days, thin discharge days....and I just had a strong episode of bloody hell-flowing periods...still having it actually - day 3! This could however, also be my first clear menses since giving birth to Figlia. Ugh.

Don't want to add the whole mess of the goat rodeo* last night, but in short...dear daughter refused to sleep till 2 in the morning last night. Over-tired baby? Yes, coz she did not nap well the whole day. Over-tired parents. Our last masterstroke was to pile her up in the car and take her out for a drive. Plus, she managed to run a low grade fever (heat wave + exhaustion)...which got cured by today morning. I realized that she babbles when she has fever. Which, flashback to several decades, is me. As a kid, I babbled when I had fever. * That's a phrase that Mel 's daughter had coined a couple of years ago.