It will come as a surprise to precisely no-one that, often mums and dads have very different opinions as to how their little one is growing up. This was clearly illustrated in our house one day, back when our Hazel was about six months old, when my wife Ev arrived from town carrying a book entitled How to solve your child’s sleep problem.

“Um, she has a sleep problem?” I asked.

Her response was that, yes, Hazel did have a sleep problem. Didn’t she need the dummy to go to sleep? And didn’t this mean that, if she woke up in the middle of the night, one of us would have to get up and restore the soother (which always popped out when she fell asleep) so she could get return to the land of nod?

Yes, that was all true. But did it mean that she had a “problem”?

I wasn’t so sure. In fact, if my wife wasn’t flat-out addicted to sleep herself, I’d suggest that she wouldn’t have viewed that state of affairs as problematic either. However, in the interest of a happy household, I acquiesced. We would use the methods of Dr Richard Ferber, for it was he who wrote the above book, to “cure” Hazel.

That said, neither of us was in a rush to be cruel to our baby so the start date for the plan’s implementation kept being put back. Our hand was eventually forced by Hazel. She developed a love of sleep crawling. Yes, sleep crawling. She’d start to wake up but, while still not fully conscious, would set off crawling around the cot. I guess she was looking for her dummy. This would generally end with her banging her head into the side of the cot! It sounds funny but it did mean that not only would she now be awake but she’d also have a sore head. This signalled the end of us bringing her into our bed to get her back to sleep – what if she woke up before us and crawled off the bed?

Finally, as she approached her first birthday (D-Day in the world of Dr Ferber), we took some deep breaths and gave it a go.

For little Hazel, it must have been quite a shock. With no warning that anything was afoot, apart from the fact that she was given her bedtime bottle 30 minutes beforehand (because Dr Ferber had told us to), we simply put her into her cot and left the room. I’m sure her state of mind could, at that instant, have been summed up using a bit of text lingo: “WTF?”

So she cried. She cried because she was tired. She cried because she wanted her dummy. She cried because she wanted her parents back in here right now with an explanation and IT BETTER BE GOOD. But we couldn’t go back in. At least not until Dr Ferber told us we could. The delightful Dr Ferber’s method is basically a cold turkey programme to get a baby off their soother addiction. The plan only allows the parents to re-enter the room at specified intervals. For example, on that first night, we had to wait for three minutes before we could go back in.

Ev was first up for this tour of duty and went back in after those long 180 seconds had passed. Even when you go in to see your baby, you’ve got to restrain yourself to just reassuring the little one that you’re still there but you must not (under all but one circumstance, more on that later) take the child up, or help them to get to sleep, and Ev did what she was told. She was back out in about 10 seconds and the clock was started again. This time we were to wait for five minutes.

After that visit, the next interval set was for 10 minutes but, I’m glad to say, it wasn’t needed as she nodded off before then. So she’d fallen asleep in about 12 minutes. That wasn’t bad for a first night, we decided. Maybe Dr Ferber was on to something!

Alas, were it so simple.

The following day was a nightmare. For a start, Dr Ferber tells you that, if the child wakes at any time after 6am, they are up for the day. Our little lady woke up at 5:55am and, while I was tempted to take the good doctor exactly at his word and let her go back to sleep, Ev decided we were getting up.

The surely sadistic Dr Ferber also told us that we weren’t to alter Hazel’s nap schedule, even if she did get up at 5:55am. Theoretically, this should have meant that she was really tired by bedtime that night but, in actuality, it meant we had to deal with a cranky zombie all day. A cranky zombie who couldn’t even enjoy her naps because, of course, there were no soothers to be seen there either.

By the arrival of that night’s bedtime, the cranky zombie was, if anything, over-tired. She found it very hard to get to sleep and was crying well after we’d waited five minutes, then eight minutes and even another 12 minutes. As bad luck would have it, a pair of family friends called in for a visit that evening and so we had to explain that we weren’t really being callous, as we ignored the screams coming from the baby monitor. Their opinion of us can’t have been helped, either, when Hazel cried so hard that she vomited.

And thus we arrive at the one circumstance in which Dr Ferber will allow you to lift your child out of the cot. He even has a section on it in his book so it must be one of the risks you run when using this plan. So we changed her, and the sheets, “quickly and matter-of-factly” and put her back into the cot. Thankfully for all concerned, she fell asleep quite quickly after that.

We took it one day at a time after that, sometimes stretching Dr Ferber’s rules a bit here and there, doing whatever it took to help Hazel through this change. Thankfully, the plan did work, although it was a gradual process.

There were a few blips. We’ll never forget one particularly bad night when, all excited after playing with her visiting cousins, it took her over 40 minutes to stop fighting the tiredness. By the end, she wasn’t the only female crying in our house.

Our experience that night was one of the low points. It’s a bit tough going through a process that you believe is good for your child only to end up being emotionally flipped around, feeling like you’re actually being selfish and cruel to them.

However, night by night, the time it took her to get to sleep did diminish and now, about six weeks on, she falls asleep within 90 seconds of being put into her cot! Dr Ferber told us it would take a fortnight at most. In this he was wrong. In a lot of other ways though, we feel he is right. Hazel never wakes us during the night any more as, presumably if she does wake up, she simply rolls over and goes back to sleep herself. My wife is particularly happy with this fact.

So was it all worth it? It was tough but, yes, I think so. I’m also hoping that listening to that much crying now will immunise us against the tantrums she’ll undoubtedly be throwing for the next, what, 15 years.

Hoping…

The day our daughter Hazel was born, the hospital midwife warned us of the dangers of ‘nipple confusion’. Stop tittering at the back! The theory went like this: if you (the mother, obviously) are trying to breastfeed and you give your new baby one (just one!) bottle feed, there’s a chance that they will prefer this easier method of milk delivery and reject your milk production devices forthwith. We bought this one for a while but it turned out, in Hazel’s case at any rate, that there was no confusion. Our girl liked milk – wherever she could get it! She could go from boob to bottle, and back again, without seeming to be the least bit concerned. Just so long as the milk flowed, no questions were asked.

So far, so good. After a few months though, it’s one of your parental responsibilities to introduce the little one to food. Looking back at it now, I don’t know why this one is overlooked when the Top Ten Parental Responsibilities list is drawn up. Everyone knows about toilet training, helping them learn to walk and sleep training. But no-one seems to factor in helping them to eat. This is strange, when you consider that it’s one of the first things you actually have to teach them. They arrive into the world with an instinctive desire to suck down milk and sleep, but they need to be taught ‘how’ to eat.

Our Hazel’s first taste of solid food didn’t really look all that solid. It was a mash of various vegetables, depending on the day of the week. Interestingly, this phase actually expanded our culinary horizons – I’d never tasted Butternut Squash before but Annabel Karmel recommended it, correctly in my opinion, as a tasty treat in her Complete Baby and Toddler Meal Planner. At the risk of gaining a reputation for always writing about books, I’d like to take a minute to mention this one.

This is a lovely cook book which even comes with a hardback cover, so Hazel could play with/chew down on it if she felt the urge. It’s also got little happy and sad faces on each page so you can mark off whether your little VIP liked the dish. In the early days, when we were making anything and everything, this was useful as otherwise I’m certain we’d have ended up making a meal just before we realised that we’d done it last week and she hated it!

In this initial period, Hazel only refused one meal. She absolutely would not eat mashed green beans. She took one spoonful and then clamped her mouth shut. This was a surprise both as it seemed totally unlike her and also because of the fact that I hate green beans too. It’s a bit of a strange thing to have inherited, a detestation of green beans, but at least she has an understanding parent who won’t judge her too harshly!

Since then, Hazel’s food has gradually become less mashed and more lumpy. These days her favourite meals include Irish Stew, Sole, Spaghetti Bolognese and she’s also keen on sampling whatever’s on our plates. This can be a bit of a drawback for her parents, of course. Sometimes I find myself sneaking off into the kitchen for a quick snack, before she cottons on. If I succeed, I eat my sandwich in peace. If I don’t, she’ll be there smacking the palm of her hand down on my knee, demanding a piece of bread crust – at the very least!

The eating of solid food proceeded, obviously enough, at the same time as she started to produce teeth. Teeth are great, they help her to eat. However they also help her to chew anything that takes her fancy. Judging by the sheer number of things we find her sticking into her gob, it must be an interesting, perhaps even pleasurable, experience. Hazel’s mantra must be: “Sticks and stones may break my bones BUT they may also be very tasty.”

The teeth, of course, arrive randomly and are accompanied by howls of pain. We’ve been lucky as the teething pains haven’t really disturbed her sleep too much but they do turn our placid little girl into a howling dervish in the evenings. “Who are you and what have you done with our Hazel?” we ask.

Returning to food, lately we have run in to a slight problem. By now, she should be getting the hang of feeding herself. She should be able to sit in her high chair and get through a small meal, using her hands to lift the pieces of food. Our problem is that Hazel decided the high chair wasn’t cool about two months ago. Don’t go thinking we can put her into a regular chair! She’s only 15 months old after all. So now she gets most of her meals standing up, sitting on someone’s lap or sitting on the couch (watching TV). The last method is the only one where she’s guaranteed not to get bored and wants to leave but it does make us feel a little uncomfortable, as we’re doing our best to keep TV watching to a minimum.

She also isn’t very hungry in the middle of the day. Our plans for three main meals in the day have proven to be a bit of a failure and, if I can get her to take some yoghurt or a banana at lunch time, I feel like I’ve achieved. However, this disinterest in some meals doesn’t mean she’s wasting away. The opposite is the case, actually. Whenever my wife Ev’s worried about her not eating, I say “Look at her!” “If she was a chocolate bar, she’d be a Kit-Kat Chunky.”

Fitting it all in!

Dinho is about to start his 3rd month on the planet and he’s growing up fast!

We are onto our 3rd type of baby milk….Aptamil newborn as no.1 was very good for the initial 4weeks, our man started getting upset and was duly diagnosed with colic and the move to Aptamil for hungry babies was made. While this abated the colic somewhat Dinho was still screaming the house down (normally between 8-12pm while strangely allot of fellow parents found to be the screaming hours), so after 3 weeks on the hungry stuff we transferred to Cow and Gate Comfort….”specially designed for colic & constipated babies”…who would have thought I would ever type those words!!!

The young lad has been on the C&G for a week and he is 100% and is a much happier baby! We are also throwing in Dr.Udos (powder) 3 times a week which is helping the lad out greatly too. Every little helps!

Trying to fit everything in has been the quote of the last few weeks. The level of organisation required to ensure work goes smoothly is very high but it all comes together by about 6pm! Get back to the rented room and its fall into bed so that the head is right for the day after, combined with the super-freezing weather bed is the warmest place in the rented room near work! Friday’s are becoming a warzone at work, getting all bases covered and then the 2.5hour jaunt to Tralee which is the only highlight of the week Mon-Fri because there is something to look forward to at the end of the journey! (Note: that was not included in blog just because the woman does read it!!!!! Honestly)

Friday night with “Daddy” (that name still hasn’t registered) home is now celebrated with a Chinese takeout….one portion shared (not only is it romantic sharing one portion in two, it’s also budget friendly!!!), the now fully colic rehabilitated Dinho (touching wood) gets his last bottle of the day circa 11pm and then he’s sleeping ALL THE WAY TO 7AM!!! The rest of the weekend passes in a blur….pharmacy to pick up infocol, baby wipes, nappy supply, baby formula, a spin out to the GF’s parents house, a spin over to her Nan’s, a spin around the town so Dinho is rocked to sleep by the motion of the car….a super quick €5 bucket of balls at the range (big hi-5 for me getting the golf in!), feed Dinho, wash Dinho, change Dinho, have a cup of tay (Barry’s all the way here), the marvel at the quietness of the house, collapse into sleep, up at 5am Monday and the whole rigmorole starts over…

And that’s before even mentioning the money-management, lack of sleep (more so for Mommy but this is MY BLOG MOMMY!)….

Last bit of blog seeing as I mentioned money-management:

KitchenAid (its a fancy food processor) = €550 in high-street, purchasing on eBay (currently high-bidder with 30mins left) @ $146 including P&P.

Re-gripping clubs??? Usually €10-€12 a club in your local pro-shop – Purchased brand new Lamkin grips with grip tape and clamp for $40 including P&P on the eBay also. Massive saving there too!

Dunnes Store – 6 packs of BabyWipes for €6 – Killer savings!

Car-tax must be paid however….so savings GONE ALREADY!

Gotta go, the bath water is now hot enough to bathe the future no.1 golfer in the world (not me, Dinho!)

Yes so the bi-weekly plan for the blog didn’t quiet materialise, but it was always on the “to do” list!

Little Man (as we’ve become accustomed to call our son Christopher, although I’m fairly adamant at getting “Dinho” (footballing hero Ronaldinho) in as a nickname hoping “Christy” dosent start up! is now 6weeks old and counting and has gradually taken over our room, the house and our lifes in fact.

He has one wardrobe in our room and another wall of clothes and accessories in the downstairs spare room….mission for next weekend is to sort through all the newborn clothes that he has ALREADY grown out of!

Dinho was finding it hard to get his oul wind up last week (screamed the house down when trying to get a bottle in) it was off to the doctor, who diagnosed him with the dreaded Colic (which we had already resigned to before bringing our lad in!)although early signs of it. We had chosen Aptamil as the baby milk of choice from the start, and the doctor instructed to change over from the do it yourself powder to the ready made cartons…which is a whole lot easier for us – just open up the carton and bang it into the bottle (sterilised of course!), instant meal. It works out pricier than the do it yourself stuff, but dinho is a whole lot happier on the ready made cartons.

I’ve been driving between Tralee (home) and Cahir (work) like a mad yoke the last couple weeks, but it’s worth it when I get home and see the battleaxe (yes she will be reading this, hi love) and the golfing prodigy. Work is being plenty stressful even without the short night sleep and lengthy drive to deal with!

Keeping an eye on the financial side of things is not a headwrecker as once thought, budgeting house bills + sky bill+ phone bill+ petrol (a lot of petrol) + rent + car insurance + car tax + our food + baby’s food is allot easier when it’s all on one excel sheet and you know what you have extra per week….around €22.50 to be exact!

The Christening date was chosen…18th of December. Couldn’t believe that the church actually charges for it, €50 of the well-earned stuff seems a bit celtic tigeresque. Now to decide if we’ll go finger food at home, or finger food in a bar in town? The thought of having both families out to a meal is way too expensive to even think of!

I haven’t played golf in a month…and I’m kick myself if I let the handicap go up so the plan between now and Christmas is to get to the range twice (Monday to Friday) and get a round of golf in bi-weekly (hopefully that will go better than the blog bi-weekly!).
I should be receiving the spondoolicks for the sale of my car in Italy in the next couple weeks so the choice is to either invest in a new motor or to actually do something sensible and put it into the savings account towards a house…yes a house! Definitely building not buying. Too many episodes of Grand Designs have been watched to go buying a house!!!

22:50 – way past my bedtime for a Sunday night, up at 05:00 for the drive to Cahir…just when Dinho wakes up so I do get the night feed in to help out the missus.

Arrivederci until the next blog entry….in 2weeks or even sooner!

Ever prepared, my wife and I bought our 2 year old a “baby” doll in preparation for the arrival of our second child. We would have done as well to prepare a name for the second child, but such are the decisions one makes.

We were delighted when dolly was duly named “Baby Susie”; chuckled smugly as Baby Susie was fed carefully. These, and others, were good omens for how well Sunshine would get on with the mysterious Kidney Bean.

Baby Susie goes everywhere with Sunshine; in the car, to bed, out for lunch. Baby Susie (or a similar looking surrogate) even contributes to improving bath time, bravely facing the water and soap; having her plastic, painted-on hair washed. What a great idea. What genius!

Then, one day, while excited – delirious even – Sunshine throws Baby Susie from one side of the sitting room to the other, the trajectory followed by the maniacal laugh of a two year old. Oh dear, we thought. Well, she is excited. That evening, Baby Susie descends, perhaps unwillingly, from the gate at the top of the stairs. Oh dear, we thought. Well, she doesn’t want to go to bed. But she has to. Eastenders was on, so it was my go; up to read a story to Sunshine and Baby Susie and calm everything down. Later, during the Apprentice, Baby Susie collides again with the cold tiles of both our hallway and Sunshine’s rejection. “I don’t want Baby Susie!” came the protestations from the top of the stairs, fists white knuckled, wrapped around the gate; determination overfilling teary eyes.

What now? How will she get on with the Kidney Bean (at this time tentatively named Ben or “Girls’ Name, To Be Decided”). Will it start with mollycoddling, only to end in murder? (Of course, there will be murder at some stage, but we’ve pencilled this in – ever prepared – for about 15 years hence). The days were drawing in. Preparations were being made, baby mats, monitors, useless crap that makes you feel grown up, responsible and middle class (see Baby Products). We had to persevere. Sunshine would come round; we told ourselves as once again Baby Susie hit the ground, thrown from overhead to the floor in a fit of now regular maniacal laughter.

At 7.40am on 20^th October, Girls Name, TBD came into the world in the usual way. My request for a Vanilla Mochaccino fell on deaf ears, being substituted for a spoon of Maxwell House, and the ever present “Hot Water”, as demanded in all the good films. A few days after, we brought Girls Name, TBD home. Nervously turning the handle, as Sunshine, followed by her Granny came to greet us. That laugh was there. We braced ourselves, gripping the handle on the car seat, opening arms for a hug.

And it was OK. And it IS OK. Despite all our best efforts, Sunshine can tell the difference between a plastic fabric mock up and a human baby. Who knew? In fairness, Baby Susie has become an integral part of the team again, getting her nappy changed alongside her ‘Aunt’, Girls Name, TBD. Sunshine does require guidance on the requisite gentleness of hugging and kissing an infant, but then so did I.