Olympic Moments

I've got a confession to make.  Before the start of the Olympics I really wasn't bothered.  I still think the torch looks like a cheese grater with a gas lighter in the middle of it.  We went to the local round of the torch relay, and I was distinctly underwhelmed.

However, we had tickets for the football in Cardiff last week, and against my better judgement off we went with Squeaky in tow.  A two year old.  At a football match.  No, lets be accurate, TWO football matches.  We applied for the tickets in the very first ballot, and picked the session on 1 August because there were two men's matches & in my words at the time "with 2 matches, you stand half a chance of one decent team". We were made up when it turned out that the second of our matches was Team GB.  We actually saw Mexico vs Switzerland and Team GB vs Uruguay.

I was still muttering about whether this was really a good idea even on the train to Cardiff.  The "vital information" that London 2012 emailed to me last week said that you absolutely, positively MUST allow at least 2 hours before the ticketed start time to get in.  That might apply to the events in the Olympic Park, but really, for the Millennium Stadium it was overkill of the highest order.  They've hosted things before, there's no distance to trek, an hour would have been too much.


However, getting there two hours in advance meant we had plenty of time to soak up the carnival atmosphere.  I don't know if it was a result of it being the Olympics, or because Mexico were one of the teams playing, but it really was an incredible atmosphere out on the street outside the stadium.  People in Mexican dress, all sorts of other fancy dress costumes, tv and radio reporters talking to people, singing, dancing, crazy people dressed up as comedy referees.  The roads around the stadium were closed off to traffic, with the exception of the team buses, which were lead in by a pair of beautiful police horses.  I could see through the windows of the coaches to the players, but a photo of a bunch of bored footballers with headphones on doesn't make for great blogging moments.

Even the police were happy to pose for photos, and I was quite impressed that Squeaky didn't announce "Me really scared" when we went over to the horses.

Once through baggage checks, and into the stadium, we grabbed a quick (and expensive) drink, and settled down into our seats.  The Millennium Stadium is pretty good, but I've got a few suggestions.  I've been a couple of times before, but I still find it difficult to find my way around as the entrance doors listed on our tickets were not the ones closest to our seats & we had to walk quite a way around.  To be honest they could do with a few (dozen) more bars & food service areas, as the queues were absurd, and a few more toilets for the same reason.  I was also a little unimpressed to find that the baby-change rooms were used by staff to store their belongings, which meant that a room big enough to be used by 4 or 5 parents at the same time, and designated for breastfeeding, could only be used for 1 nappy change, and no breastfeeding facility was available if needed, or at least not in the area we were seated in.

I'm still not a massive football fan, I have to admit, but it is a much better thing to watch in person than on TV.  It's a lot more "real", I don't know, it's hard to describe.  Have a couple more photos...

Mexico (L) vs Switzerland (R)

Team GB (L) vs Uruguay (R)

The atmosphere was very different between the two matches.  There were a lot of empty seats during the first match, and I got the impression that quite a lot of the crowd were people who wouldn't normally go to football.  It was all very calm & polite.  Then on came Team GB.  And in came the football fans who had spent a couple of hours warming up in the way that they do best (there's branches of Wetherspoon's opposite two of the main gates)  The volume went up a hundredfold.  It was still friendly, but not quite the same.  Squeaky had had enough by this point, and fell asleep on me five minutes into the first half, and only woke up when Team GB scored right on half time.  That was my cue to take her home, as the trains run hourly, and I wanted to get her home safely.  SqueakyDaddy stayed for the second half, and the later train was very very full, so I made the right choice.

I'm finally getting into the Olympic spirit (Mo Farah is running as I type this), and I'm really glad I went.  I probably won't go to another football match, and unless Squeaky grows up to be an athlete, I'm not likely to attend another Olympics, but we went, and it was a great experience.

I was not sponsored to attend this event. I paid for my own tickets, and have not been asked to write this.  All opinions are my own.

Breast Aid Pads Review

It's not that often that a press release lands in my inbox that makes me think "Whu?"  Even less often that it makes me think "Whu?" to such an extent that I have to reply to the sender with my questions along the lines of "I can't quite picture it".  Enviro-Pod's Breast Aid Pads though, are a rare thing.

Squeaky and I completed our breastfeeding journey last summer, but not without a few hitches along the way.  One of which was a sudden & debilitating attack of mastitis, while away at the in-laws for a long weekend.  Fortunately, we'd been talking about mastitis the previous week at the breastfeeding peer support training, so I knew what to do.  Keep it warm, feed off that side til it's empty, gentle painkillers, and unusually for breastfeeding not listening to what your body tells you (which in my case would have been to erect a steel fence roughly 3 foot around the outside of my boob and keep well away!)

Breast Aid pads are designed to help with mastitis, and other breast pain associated with breastfeeding, choosing not to breastfeed, or moving from breast to bottle.  The pads use NASA technology to reflect body heat back onto the breast, keeping them warm, helping with milk flow, and reducing the risk of pain or easing pain that's already there.  The pads fit directly into your bra, with no need for any other fixings.  Though they were launched in Sweden, the pads are made in the UK, and endorsed by medical teams as far off as Australia.

I wish to goodness I'd had these pads during that weekend of mastitis.  My first thoughts were that they are big, but then I remembered that you kind of need the support and warmth to go round to the side as well, almost round under your arm, and that's how the pads fit.  At first glance the underside looks like shredded newspaper, but it's actually Flectalon, which is used to line preemie incubators, with a very very very thin layer of aluminium, to reflect body heat back.  (Bear in mind at this point, my boobs - non-pregnancy mode - are a GG cup, and the sample I received was the smaller size. I'm not kidding when I said they're big)

The images here are of black pads, but they're also available in white, and in small & large sizes.  At £26.00 they're not cheap, but they are washable, reusable, and could easily save a fortune in not having to buy other breast pads (and painkillers!).  As I'm not currently breastfeeding, I can't comment on how well they work for me, but I would definitely give them a chance if I head down that road again in the future.  I've got a few friends who are currently breastfeeding, or soon will be, and I'll be making sure they know about Breast Aid pads. Who knows, one of them may end up writing a guest blog for me on the subject!

Disclosure: I was provided with a pack of Breast Aid Pads free of charge for the purpose of this review.  I was not told what to write, and all opinions are my own.  Links are provided for your convenience only, I am not a member of any affiliate scheme & will not receive reward for their use.

Weaning, woe!

Oh woe is me, woe indeed.  For my little baby girl is no longer a little baby girl, but a fully fledged toddling thing.  She's finally weaned completely off the boob, after 16 and a half months.  I don't know what to do with myself any more, apart from delight in the presence of underwires.  I'm proud of myself for having fed her this long, but it's only been a couple of days and I miss it already. There's nothing quite like a little warm snuggly body curling up for a feed.

WOE I tell you, woe.

Graco Parent & Child Interaction Day

Was it really a week ago?  Apparently so.  Well, it was a week ago that I found myself in the bar of the Drury Lane Travelodge with Squeaky, a couple of good friends and a reasonable bottle of red wine, anyway.

Last Wednesday, Squeaky & I jumped on the train to make our way to London for a press day with Graco,  along with some of our fellow Graco ambassadors.  We had a reserved seat. but as I had the Symbio with me and didn't really want to leave it unattended, we commandeered the wheelchair space at the end of the carriage (there weren't any passengers with wheelchairs needing it, don't worry!) and left our seat for someone else.  This meant we had a lovely space for Squeaky to stretch her legs & enjoy the journey (and I didn't have to have her on my lap for 2 hours solid).

I'd already scoped out my routes from the station to hotel, and hotel to The Future Gallery, and found that due to some fairly major works, the underground was a non-starter, so we leapt on the bus, and watched the world go by as it limped slowly up Oxford Street. I was having visions of trying to get us both on board an old-fashioned London Routemaster bus (you know, the ones with the door at the back & the spiral staircase), but they don't really exist any more, or at least not on the route I needed.

Well, enough about that.  The press day itself, seeing as that's what we were there for.  Squeaky & I were the first to arrive (by about an hour & a half, if I'm honest, but that includes the time spent having a sneaky McD's breakfast & a stroll round Leicester Square), and were greeted by the lovely Jane, who has been at the receiving end of a lot of my emails over the last few months (and yet she still smiles!), and we were soon joined by Wendy, Emma, Danielle & Lindsey with their lovely children, Symbios & Fusios.  (That's the pushchairs by the way, not their children's names.)

Dr Suzanne Zeedyk & Emma Kenny both gave presentations regarding child psychology, parent/child interaction, the effects on children's development & how changes to pushchair design through the years, and across the globe, have changed the way children experience their world.  There are many reasons why the old fashioned Pram (think Princess Di pushing Wills around [look! I'm being topical!]) has given way to the outward facing buggy so popular today - greater use of cars, engineering, safety advances, storage, fashion, celebrity, the list goes on.  But these outward facing buggies, allowing children to see the world, could be creating stress for the baby, as well as denying them the opportunity to interact with their parents.

Children are born connected, and not just by the umbilical cord.  Studies have shown that babies can recognise sounds, songs, and words heard in the womb after they are born.  Babies are born mimics, and face-to-face interaction helps stimulate the growth of neural paths, promoting the child's intellectual and emotional development.

Both the Symbio & Fusio have the option to face either inwards or outwards, enabling communication and building stronger bonds between parent & child.  I love this, and usually have Squeaky facing me to we can chatter while we walk - but I've always got the option to flip the handle and show her the world (or pull her through a doorway, honestly, that is such a useful feature).

I have to admit at one moment during Suzanne's talk, my little brain went walkabout.  Suzanne spoke about how touch stimulates the production of Oxytocin, a hormone that promotes happiness, love, and a warm & squishy feeling.  My brain, still filled with breastfeeding mentor training went haywire, and started wondering why we weren't also talking about Prolactin and "P makes it produce, O makes it flow!" Luckily I kept that thought to myself, until now at least.

We also had a bash at baby massage, with the lovely folks from Tiddley pom, and had a Symbio vs Fusio pushchair shootout, where Squeaky & I came second to Danielle's lightning Fusio skills!  Seriously, she's a whizz. I also had a lovely chat with Katy from Pushchair Trader about the FlipFlop test (or what happens when you galumph down the road rather than taking delicate tippy-toe steps and fall over your footbrake) The Symbio's fingertip brake is a great big pass on that test.

It was great to meet the other ambassadors, and we had a good chat, ate lots of cake and played a quick round of baby Russian Roulette (go me, linking to my own posts!) before heading back out into the world with our goodie bags. At this point, I should admit that my macaroons didn't make it past Paddington Station, but they were lovely. Our journey home was completed with a cancelled local train, the next one being full to bursting with drunk & sunburnt people who'd spent the whole day on Barry Island beach, and a slow stagger up the hill home.

Mega-Mummy Milestone!

Today was the start of the long-awaited Breastfeeding Peer Support training course.  I say long-awaited, I don't think it's really taken that long, just since I first heard about it til today, so much has gone on.

And as I was in the course for 2 hours with the rest of the mums, Squeaky was in the crèche.  Only the room next door mind you, but still out of sight & with other people for a whole 2 hours.  The crèche is run by our local genesis project, who provide free childcare to enable mums to go on training like ours, so they can gain skills& find work.

Now, I've got to admit I was apprehensive.  Squeaky's got a fair sized attack of separation anxiety going on, along with a need to wind herself around my ankles every waking moment.  To the extent that she howls when I hand her over to my mum, even when I'm in the room.  But she was brilliant.  I'd read something about not straightaway handing them over to a person, so I let her stay on me for a few minutes, and she then went happily to one of the staff, and into the ball pool for a play.  I had to fill in some paperwork, and maybe that helped too, that I was still in the room and visible to start with, while Squeaky settled in.  Then off I went, knowing she was only next door, and with other babies she knew as well as the staff.

And she was fine.  Absolutely fine.  Played in the ball pool, made some spooky handprints (white paint on black paper) for Hallowe'en, and had a nap in a pushchair. All in all, a good morning.  I was slightly disappointed that she was still asleep when I went to pick her up, I was looking forward to her greeting me, but instead I got to wake her up and got the puzzled "where am I?" look instead.  Maybe next week she'll be awake?

One, Two...

Guess how many teeth Squeaky has got now?  Three!  Three whole teeth in her mouth!  This is the child who whinged & whined for nigh on 3 months before her first tooth came through.  Then about 4 weeks later the second one followed it.  And now, less than 2 weeks after that, and without me even realising another tooth was imminent, she's cut her first top tooth!

Bitey joy!  Thankfully it's literally only just cut the surface, so she can't actually use it to grind against the bottom one & draw blood from me, yet.  But I'm sure that day will come.  Time to move to formula?

Time Off!

Last week, SqueakyDaddy surprised me by saying we were off to Torquay at the weekend, to a lovely guest house we'd visited the previous year on his birthday.  And better than that, we were going to be adults!  Squeaky was booked in to stay with my parents.

Now, I've got to admit, I wasn't sure.  She'd been a pain when they were babysitting for the evening a couple of weeks ago, so a whole night and day? Whoa!  But I swallowed my concerns, if they were happy to be kept awake, then it's their choice.

As it turned out, I went over a couple of days before, thanks to visiting Trunki, and catching up with old friends, which meant Squeaky could get properly settled in before we left her.  And settle she did, like a trooper.  Played merrily with her toys, was asleep earlier than normal, woke only once for a cuddle at 6a.m., and was a little gem, by all accounts.

Me? I went swimming, drank more than I've done in 18 months, ate curry, shopped, and didn't sleep because my boobs hurt!  24 hours is a long time away from a breastfeeding baby.  I expressed a few times, and it broke my heart to have yo pour that precious milk away, but I had no way to store it, and complete strangers don't take kindly to you wanting to grab their baby & shove your nipple in its mouth.

We're home now though, and had a rough night.  Squeaky's got a cold, and tooth number 2 has finally broken through the surface.  Calpol is our friend.

(The guest house don't know about, and didn't request this link. I just like them, and wanted to tell the world.)

Holiday Time

The Squeaky family are just back from a short trip to Blackpool, and are absolutely exhausted.

Maybe we should have chosen a different hotel, one where the ambient temperature was slightly below that of the surface of the sun, but how do you know until you arrive?  Seriously, the place was like a sauna.  And that meant that Squeaky didn't sleep well.  Despite normally sleeping straight through the night with very rare problems, we woke 2 or 3 times every night, and took forever to settle.  Which meant that all of us had trouble getting back to sleep.

It was a good trip though.  Sometimes I, not forget, just get used to how adorable Squeaky is.  It takes seeing other people to remind me.  Breakfast took upwards of an hour every morning, due to her smiling at everyone, and the recipients of the smiles stopping to talk to her.  She's a little gem when we're out as a rule, and behaved beautifully in the dining room, eating her breakfast without too much fuss, at least in part due to the level of attention she was getting.

What is it though?  At home, where there's all the changes of clothes in the world, meals go in mouths, and clothes stay pretty clean (Squeaky's, obviously. Mine always end up with weetabix on the shoulders).  When we're away, and there's only (only!) a couple of changes of clothes per day, she manages to get covered with food every time?  She was a very grubby baby some days last week, I must admit.  The day she decided to eat sand on the beach just added to the general grubbiness.

And as usual, whenever we go away, she's picked up a cold.  I don't know whether to blame it on swimming in a different pool, or just exposure to different people (and therefore different germs).  Either way, she's grumpy and snotty, and grouching when I try to wipe her nose.  She won't let me near her with the aspirator bulb thingo, so we just have to go with the saline spray and the snot.  Mmmmm, nice.

What else to say?  We had a fab week, went to the zoo (where Squeaky promptly went to sleep and missed almost everything), went on all the piers, on the beach,  in the Sandcastle waterpark.  We walked for miles, and Squeaky happily sat in her buggy or in the carrier.  We went on buses and trams, ate lots of meals out, breastfed in cafes all over the place, ate chips, cheese and melon, but not all at the same time, and won enormous cuddly toys in the amusements.  See?  Big enough to sit in the buggy.

Oh, and yeah yeah yeah!!!  We're crawling!! Squeaky has now figured out what to do with her arms as well as her legs and is zooming around on all fours.  Watch out world, we're mobile!

Breastfeeding Adventure.

Today's adventure was a trip to town, on foot, because my car was in the garage for tyres & brakes.  The trip to town was the dull bit, though we did FINALLY join the library after having lived here for 7 years.  Our library's lovely, by the way, a proper old-fashioned, high ceilinged, parquet floored, Carnegie library.  And it smells just the way a library should - a mixture of varieties of dead tree, polish and booksmell.  (Yes, firefox, that is a real word.)

But the real highlight of our adventure, and the point of my post, was when we went back to the garage.  The car wasn't quite ready, so we sat in the waiting room, where Little Miss Squeaky decided to sing for her lunch.  There was no way around it, she wanted milk, and the only way she was going to get it was from me.  So feed her I did, with a blanket for privacy.  And then persuaded the manager to sign up to the Breastfeeding Welcome scheme.  More businesses for the scheme, more vouchers for me!  And I think it'll be the oddest place included, but I'm more reliant on the car now than I ever was pre-Squeaky.

No-one said it would be easy...

There's a million updates I owe this blog. Is there a genuine issue with blog-guilt or have I invented a new syndrome? Whatev. Here's one.

Squeaky had been a bit slow to gain weight over a few weeks, mostly because she's the sort of child that doesn't tell you she's hungry until she's STARVING, and I'd assumed she was ok. Seems that if I just shove a nipple in her mouth, she realises "oh, yes, food, I could go for some of that", but she doesn't come up with the idea on her own. So we've banned the dummy, apart from bedtime (and as a result, she's not too fussed then either), we've done LOADS of expressing to give her a daily supplementary feed, and generally fed like crazy. As a result, we've had a couple of 9oz/wk gains! RESULT! She's slowed a little this week, but she's got a cold, so hopefully that's all it is.

Expressing is damn hard work, you know. Sterilising, pumping at the bazoongas until you feel like Unigate Dairies. I suddenly feel a lot of sympathy for dairy cattle. Especially when the most reliable time to get a decent quantity of milk is 3a.m. Like I need to lose any more sleep. But it's worth it to see her grow.

An Outing

Today we went off to Cardiff Bay, so that Squeakydaddy could run the Sport Relief Mile (or three in his case, for some reason or other). I don't mind these kind of things, as long as no-one expects me to run. I wasn't built for running, and I don't really plan to start now, sorry.

Anyways, as usual with any trip out lasting more than a couple of hours, Squeaky needed both changing and feeding. And I was SO impressed. I knew that Cardiff Bay is "officially" breastfeeding friendly but wasn't sure what to expect. I strolled into the Millennium Centre, as being a suitably large & public building, and I didn't really fancy the disabled/baby change portaloo outside. Toilets are toilets, but these were clean and well sized, which is a good start.

After a quick nappy change, I asked the duty manager if there was somewhere I could feed Squeaky. Now, I've said before that I've fed in public in a few places, but I didn't expect to be told that I was welcome to feed anywhere in the building! I was also offered the choice of somewhere a bit more private, and shown to the medical suite, where Squeaky could have her dinner in peace. Much nicer than sitting on a toilet seat somewhere, which has been known.

All in all, ten out of ten for Cardiff Bay!

Breastfeeding. First post of... many?

So, as I said in the introduction, Squeaky is a breastfed baby. Aside from the cost, and the health reasons, I figure I've got boobs for a reason, and I might as well use them.

If anyone ever wonders about breastfeeding, I really have got to say, get all the support you can. Meet other mothers who are doing the same. Seriously, do NOT compare your dainty breastfed child with your friends' hulking great formula fed creature.

For some (unknown to me) reason, breastfeeding is very much a rarity around here, almost every child I see is formula fed, and next to Squeaky they're giants. The comment I get most (aside from "Isn't she gorgeous") when people meet Squeaky is "Isn't she TINY!" Yes, she is little. But that's because she's eating what she needs, and that's the way breastfed babies grow. She gains weight every week, the doctor & health visitor are happy with her, so am I.

I never thought I'd be confident enough to be the kind of person who would breastfeed wherever, but it goes to show what motherhood does. So far, Squeaky has had dinner out in 2 different supermarket cafes, a soft play centre, a couple of shopping centre toilets (one somewhat more pleasant than the other), and in the front seat of my car parked in supermarket, pub and McDonalds' car parks. She's not fussy. I'm not going to wave my naked boobs around at all & sundry, but I am going to feed my baby when she needs it. If other people have a problem with that, then that's exactly whose problem it is, theirs, not mine. So far though, I've had only positive reactions, people asking how I'm finding breastfeeding, and general baby questions. Oh, and one old guy getting a bit starey, but as Squeaky and bosom were both under a blanket, I don't understand what he found quite so interesting.