To Dummy or not to Dummy? That is the Question

 
Most of the photos I have of Darcy with her dummy she is asleep

Before Darcy was born I had a list in my head of do’s and don’t’s that I wanted us to have with Darcy I can safely say a lot of these all went out the window as you don’t really know what you or the baby are going to be like until you are in the moment. One thing that I always thought I would never change my opinion on is Darcy not having a dummy, I am not the hugest fan of toddlers walking around with dummies in their mouths and you always hear the dreaded “dummies give you wonky teeth” story so that was one thing that I thought was set in stone. Fast forward to Darcy being 3 months old and the no dummy rule also went out the window.

Darcy from birth has always stuck her fingers (sometimes her whole fist) in her mouth, as the weeks went past Simon and I increasingly got worried that this was going to be a habit for life. As she grew and was able to use her hands more her hand/fingers went less in the mouth until it came to sleep time, as soon as Darcy got sleepy the fingers went straight in. After weeks of discussing it and thinking of all the positives and negatives when Darcy turned 3 months we decided to give her a dummy when she got sleepy. Our thought process behind this was that; it will be “easier” (note the air quotes) to take the dummy away from her than it would be to take her fingers away, as we knew we didn’t want her to grow up sucking her fingers/thumb.

I love photos of Simon & Darcy asleep 

The first couple of weeks were great, Darcy no longer sucked her fingers and the dummy worked perfectly; as soon as she got sleepy the dummy went in and within minutes she was fast asleep, the dummy would then usually fall out and if she stirred or cried all we had to do was pop the dummy back in and she was asleep again, lovely! Until we started using it for more than just sleep time now it was being used for; sleep time, grumpy time, mummy just needs to wee time, not quite dinner time. It was not all day it was just when she was getting a little grumpy or needy and the older she got she started to know what it was and where kept it when she didn’t have it.

I am sure Darcy is magic because every time Simon and I discussed taking the dummy away she would get poorly and we felt we couldn’t take it away as she needed it to comfort her. This happened every couple of weeks from 10 months until Christmas, so by now Darcy was 1 and we had already discussed by the time she was 1 it was going but yet again she got poorly. One of those lost days between Christmas and New Year we were sitting around talking about goals for 2017 and I said January 1^st Darcy is going cold turkey with the dummy, so the 1^st January came around and we woke up took the dummy away and that was it no one could say the word dummy around Darcy.

 Oh gosh I miss her being this tiny

I can’t say that it hasn’t been hard because it has, but it is nowhere near as bad as I built it up to be in my head. I was expecting a devil child who never slept and sucked their thumb she wasn’t quite that bad. The sleeping was going to be the most difficult aspect for all of us to get used to, her night time routine is quite solid so we hoped that if we kept to it she would fall asleep without the dummy. The first couple of days once Darcy was put to bed she would cry for about 30 minutes as the days passed it turned to 20 minutes, 10 minutes to when eventually Darcy could be put to bed at night without a single cry, hallelujah! We might have the night-time routine down but the day-time nap is a completely different story. This is still a working progress a month down the line but each day it is getting easier for all of us.
 
One thing that I would advise when deciding to take away the dummy or making a big change would be everyone who is involved to be on the same page. Darcy is fortunate not to just have her Daddy and I around she also gets to spend a lot of time with both sets of Grandparents and her Aunties and Uncle and we had to make sure that everyone understood what was going on and our new sleep plans so that Darcy could stay in a routine no matter where she was, as routine is the most vital part when changing an aspect in a babies life.

Whether you do decide to have a dummy or not, each parent to there own. You might be like us and changed your mind or you always knew that you would or wouldn't. One thing I am sure of is that every baby is different even when they are siblings do what you feel is right and never change your values or beliefs for anyone.   

25 Weeks

25 Weeks

Is anyone else finding it tough to sleep?

I have always been one of those people that could shut their eyes be asleep within minutes and then not wake up for 6-8 hours, whereas Baby Daddy takes ages to fall asleep and then can stir by the smallest of sounds.

Since being pregnant I am having a lot of trouble sleeping and it is getting on my nerves. I know people say that it is your body training you for when the baby comes but in my opinion I should be able to sleep now so when baby H does turn up I’m all well rested and ready to go. But no I am up at least twice a night to go to the toilet and now indigestion has kicked in so when I am trying to sleep I am lying there with terrible heart burn and indigestion plus my bump is constantly in the way. Why body why?!

I know my bump is in fact my beautiful baby but gosh it is getting in my way when I sleep. The weight of the bump and gravity do not bode well for sleeping, I can no longer sleep on my back as it hurts my spine too much and lying on my side means I topple over from the weight of my bump. I have had to start sleeping with a pillow underneath by bump to keep me straight and take the weight off the bump. This helps until I switch sides because in a semi-conscious state I have to remember take the pillow over with me to the other side. 

One night I must have been on one side for too long as the baby was lying on a certain nerve at the top of my left leg which caused the whole leg to go dead which was fun when I got up for my mandatory wee at 3am. After walking up and down the hallway to make the pins and needles go I had a numbing pain at the top of my left leg and groin which didn’t help when I was trying to fall back asleep.

I can walk in the pitch black from my side of the bed, around the bed through the corridor and into the bathroom without hurting myself, impressive right? Thinking about the positives.

The worst thing about not sleeping great at night is how tired I am throughout the day, I wake up in the morning tired and only get more tired throughout the day so by 6pm I am shattered and could go to bed. 

Let’s just hope all this ‘training’ does indeed help when Baby H gets here maybe I should start getting Baby Daddy up as well?

22 Weeks

Lets talk symptoms…

A few of the symptoms I have felt are;

-       Tiredness

-       Extreme Emotion

-       Lack of appetite

-       Gagging

-       Nausea

-       Generally feeling low and deflated

-       Full Bladder!

The first thing I want to make apparent is that I didn’t find out I was pregnant until I was 12 weeks. This meant that I was trying to find reasons for my symptoms which obviously looking back now was all because I was pregnant and some of the excuses may of contributed but were not the only reason.

Lets start with tiredness; March to June is the busiest months at my work and probably the worst months to fall pregnant. We were very busy and I was working a lot of overtime, which I thought explained the tiredness. I was knackered, one weekend I was only awake for about 8 hours over the 48-hour period and that was only because Baby Daddy woke me up to eat. I didn’t start to feel tired until Easter time, which meant I would have been 4-6 weeks, don’t worry though the tiredness stopped at about 18 weeks. Baby Daddy and I noticed a sudden difference in my fatigue and since then I have had a lot more energy to get up and do things. I have struggled to keep my eyes open some days, I do not know what it is going to be like once Baby H gets here, they do say its your body going into training.

I have never cried so much in my life than I have done in the past 22 weeks. I have cried at adverts and sometimes I don’t even know why I was crying. Again we put this down to being stressed and unhappy at work it seemed to be the best excuse for most of the symptoms I was having.

I will talk about gagging, nausea and lack of appetite in one paragraph as I do feel they all go hand-in-hand. About 3 weeks before I found out I was pregnant a nasty bug was going around the office and of course I caught it. For a week I was bed ridden; I couldn’t eat, I had swollen tonsils, diarrhea, vomiting, think about anything you could have, and I had it. Even though this only lasted a week I thought that my pregnancy symptoms, which obviously continued after the bug, was my body still just getting over the sickness. I have a very good gag reflex normally, not many things could make me wretch, my sister on the other hand only has to smell something bad and will gag for 5 minutes. A good friend at work who also had the horror bug was saying that she was still gagging even though we were both better, to me this made sense to why I was gagging. I can officially say that gagging is horrific! If you are someone who suffers from a short gag reflex I feel your pain and do not know how you live your life as everything was making me gag. When I say everything I mean I was gagging at everything! A few of the most memorable and weird things were; walking into a warm room, walking through a swarm of midges and people talking about number 2’s. Due to all the gagging this is what made me be sick the handful of times that I did, it was only when I couldn’t breath through it, or control it that I threw up, thankfully.

**Side note ‘Morning Sickness’ is bull it should be called ‘All Day Sickness’ it does not just happen in the morning do not be fooled!**

Along side the gagging I continuously felt nauseas, for a good 6 weeks. To help this I ate the most; plain, boring, tasteless food you could think of. I had rice and corn cakes coming out of my ears, none of the fancy flavours literally plain maybe lightly salted. I ate these for breakfast and lunch for 6 weeks, this is what seemed to settle my stomach and help the sick feeling. Another food that I felt helped was mints, I would suck on them through-out the day to keep my stomach occupied and from building up the acid which was causing the nausea. Due to the nauseas feeling I completely lost my appetite and within the first 12 weeks of pregnancy I lost quite a bit of weight obviously I didn’t know I was pregnant so was not looking out for myself in the way the books say you should. Thankfully at about 19 weeks I found my appetite; which I am very happy about, the one downfall is I cannot eat as much as I used to. I can now only eat half a pizza!

Before finding out I was pregnant I was feeling very low. I couldn’t 100% explain everything I was feeling and I was getting upset and frustrated. The day I had my doctors appointment I was expecting to be written off work and given anti-depressants that is how low I felt. I am not embarrassed about how low and depressed I felt at the beginning as my body was changing and preparing in ways that I can never understand or explain. Maybe if I had found out earlier I would of understood why I was feeling the way I was and could of helped myself through it better, instead I didn’t want to get out of bed, do the things I enjoy doing or some days even talk to people. The moment I did find out I was pregnant the doctor made sense of all the symptoms and I did instantly feel better as I had answers to why I felt terrible.

The last symptom I am going to talk about is one that I think will last until this little rascal is in the world and that is my bladder! I can honestly say I think I have gone to toilet more in the past 22 weeks than I have in a year. When I am awake I wee 3 times an hour, honestly. I am one of those people who can sleep through a thunderstorm but since being pregnant I wake up at least 3 times a night to wee, which can be very frustrating. One positive I can walk from our bedroom to the toilet in the pitch black.

I hope that hearing about my symptoms will help you feel less strange as I would of felt a lot better to know that I wasn’t the only one who could fill a pool with urine within a day. I would love to hear about the symptoms you guys had/have as I do feel everyone is different and we should all help each other through this confusing time in our bodies lives.   

Baby Mumma xx