Mum Life

"Imposter syndrome can be defined as a collection of feelings of inadequacy that persist despite evident success. 'Imposters' suffer from chronic self-doubt and a sense of intellectual fraudulence that override any feelings of success or external proof of their competence." I learnt about imposter syndrome about 3 years ago when I was asked if I wanted to be involved in a massive project at work and I almost said no because I didn't think I was good enough. I remember my head of function said to my manager "Becky is the best person for this job and the only person who doesn't think so is Becky." I always thought everyone at work thought I was better than I was and eventually I was going to get found out. Accepting the work on this project put me in the middle of everything, everyone wanted my help/advice, my opinion became the one that mattered and it made me realise that I was fucking good at my job and no one could have done it better. Looking back...

Feel like it's been a while since I posted anything but it's only been a week. Guess it's been a long week... Got a few posts to catch up on.  After such a lovely weekend, it's been a pretty tough week. 😔 Although we did get our first smile...  Kris had his first night out, went to see Sam Fender with his brother (a Gig that's been rescheduled several times due to covid, that I was supposed to be going to 🙁)  Morgan screamed in my face for pretty much the entire time he was gone. I felt horrendous. Kris came home to me crying in the dog bed. I was such a mess, I felt like a failure, I couldn't get my own baby to stop crying 😭 I know that's such a ridiculous thought, but in the moment its hard to think rationally. I was getting so frustrated, she was too tired to feed properly so was making me sore every time I tried, she would settle to sleep, just nothing worked. The longer it went on the more frustrated I got and she could obviously feel my ...

Baby's need a lot of shit!  We went away for the weekend to my parents caravan for Morgans first holiday. After we'd packed all her stuff and Jazz's stuff, there wasn't much room for ours 😂 but we managed to remember everything and had an amazing time. For the last 9 years (minus last year - stupid covid), a group of around 10 of us have booked a cottage in the countryside for a long weekend of getting drunk, playing stupid games and cooking feasts! We knew we wouldn't be able to go this year with Morgan being so young / being the only couple with a baby. But we were still sad to be missing it, so we decided to go to the caravan and go visit the cottage for a day 😁 It was so lovely to get away! So relaxing and easier than I expected, though I guess it is like a second home - going somewhere new will be another challenge!

This time last month I was in the most pain I'd ever been in. I can't believe that was a month ago! My baby girl is a month old. And I'm having a shit day. You know when you're working full time and you wake up in the morning and think "ugh I just want a day off" then you realise you're not working full time any more and the day off you want is from your daughter and you just feel like the worst person in the world. Well Yeh that.  Last night Kris woke me up at 11ish to say that it was like Morgan had forgotten how to feed from a bottle. Since she was born we have been taking shifts in the night, he keeps her downstairs from 9pm-1am and feeds her from a bottle with milk I've expressed throughout the day, so I can get 4 hours sleep and then I take over from 1. In the first few weeks, those 4 hours were pretty much the only sleep I was getting because she just wouldn't settle. Recently she's been doing so much better and going down fo...

It's mad how quickly my mood and thoughts and feelings can change. Such a small thing can make me feel totally different so quickly. I started writing the last post and within minutes I was crying into my babies crying face.  She was so good while we were out but when we got back it was just relentless, she either wanted feeding or needed changing - she just didn't want to be put down. All I wanted was a lie down for a few minutes and that made me feel like I was such a shit mum. 

Morgan slept from 1.30am til 5am!!! We had a block of 3.5 hours sleep!! All in one go! I couldn't believe it when I woke up and my watch said 5am, had to look at it about 4 times!  Had a chiropractor appointment this morning. I had to see her through all pregnancy, the relaxin hormone that increases during pregnancy did something to my shoulder and it was agony for the first 12 weeks!! Especially since I wasn't allowed to take any of the good pain killers! Well it seems to be coming back a bit, which the chiropractor said it might - mainly due to the hunched over position of breastfeeding.  Anyway, mum took Morgan for a walk while I had my appointment and then we went for a coffee in the new cafe in cross gates. It was so lovely we stayed for 2 drinks! By the time I got home, I had been out of the house for nearly 5 hours! Felt like I was nearly living real life again! 

This week has absolutely flown by!! Can't believe Kris has been back at work for a week already.  This week Morgan had her first bath, she seemed to enjoy it at first but then screamed the place down. Hopefully she will enjoy it more, the more we do it. Someone at Kris' work said we should be getting her into a routine ASAP but she still feels a bit young for that to me.  We had a midwife appointment for Morgans final weigh in! She is now 300g above birth weight! Some much needed reassurance that we have got the hang of breast feeding! 😁 And she met Nanny and Grandad Holden for the first time.

Morgan fell asleep at 2am, woke up at 6 for a feed, went back down at 7 and slept til 9! This is like the most sleep I've had in a long time!! I woke up thinking it was gonna be a good day.... Then in the space of an hour... -my dog was sick about a minute after coming back from her walk... Nice of her to wait til she's back in the house!  -Morgan did a poo all up her back.. And while I was changing her she had a wee.  - I then fed her and she was sick all over me and a further 4 times - then she wanted feeding again - then I dropped my hakka and spilt all the breast milk all over the bed. 🤦🏻‍♀️

Breastfeeding is hard. No one ever tells you quite how hard until you're trying to do it. Before I got pregnant I thought it was natural and your baby just knew what to do. I never thought it would be such a steep learning curve for both of us! Also who knew that they had to get pretty much your entire boob in their mouth!?!  For the first few days she just wouldn't feed from me at all... Every time I picked her up she just fell asleep. The midwives didn't seem too concerned, fairly normal for the first 48h as they have reserves from the placenta and C-section babies can be particularly sleepy.  We started hand expressing into syringes and giving her very small amounts. I couldn't seem to do that myself but Kris could get the colostrum to absolutely fire out of me 😂 I guess the love hormone really does exist!  I was still trying to feed her from the breast but she just seemed to either fall asleep on me or get really angry at my nipple. Sometimes she would latch on but...

We made it to 3 weeks! I have finally caught up with all the blogs I wanted to write. Excited to start writing them in real time instead of trying to remember what happened through the fog! Kris has gone back to work. Our first day just the 2 of us... Think it's gone pretty well. We made it out of the house before lunch to walk Jazz!! I call that a success.  Didn't quite manage a full shower... And had to feed quickly when I got out... Had a bit of an accident! All that wasted milk 🤦‍♀️

Week 2 We had our first trip out of the house! To see the lactation specialist! (see more details in breastfeeding journey post) 🥳 It took forever to get ready - so much more stuff to remember to take!!! Very nervous leaving the house for the first time!! Speed bumbs still hurt 2 weeks after a c-section! 

Probably the longest week of my life!! Passed by in a blur of sterilizing, pumping, changing nappies and trying to stay awake!!! 

She's so tiny!!!  We got to go home Friday lunchtime, it was such a relief and terrifying at the same time! I was no longer going to have a button to call an expert! We had to figure out how to look after this tiny human all by ourselves!!! 

We had to stay in hospital for another 2 nights. We were both on antibiotics and I had a temperature during labour which was slowly coming down. Once they were resolved we could go home. (or so we thought) A doctor came round on Thursday morning and cleared us both for going home, what they didn't make clear was that the midwives also had to clear us. So we spent all day Thursday waiting around to be told we could go, only to find out that we had to stay another night because the midwives weren't happy with Morgans feeding. She just wouldn't breastfeed. We had been hand expressing colostrum into a syringe and giving her that but after 48 hours, she needs more. On my last night in hospital I woke up to absolutely rock hard boobs with milk streaming down my front, I called a midwife and she said my milk had come in so we should try feeding Morgan again. She latched on but just wasn't suckling 😕 I couldn't hand express anymore and the syringes just weren...

The first night was pretty horrendous. At 9pm we were moved from the delivery room down to the post natal ward... Due to covid the visiting hours on the ward were 8am to 8pm, meaning Kris was allowed to come in for a minute to see where we were and drop off my stuff then he had to leave. I was alone. With a baby. With absolutely no clue what I was doing. In a lot of pain.  And completely exhausted, having now been awake for 38 hours. I could barely get out of bed. I couldn't get to any of my stuff as kris wasn't allowed to stay for any amount of time to organise it, so I just lay there listening to other people's babies scream and watching mine sound asleep. I couldn't sleep, kept having flashbacks from the day.  Morgan kept being sick and I had to press a button to get a midwife to come sort her out. And she wouldn't breast feed, had to hand express colostrum into a syringe to give her. Not even 24h old and I felt like I was failing her.  I finally fell...

I'm a mummy. I've been meaning to start posting blogs again ever since I found out I was pregnant but I could never seem to figure out what I wanted to say. Nothing seemed worth writing down. I had a very straightforward pregnancy - no morning sickness, no complications, everything was fine throughout the whole 9 months... Until I went into labour... I was 9 days late. I was due on 10th October and I just wanted her to come out, I was fed up of being pregnant and wanted to meet my baby. Everyone was telling me to make the most of it... But that's not easy at 9+ months pregnant when you can't do much - especially after 18 months of sitting around the house doing nothing due to covid!  It was Monday night around 11pm, we were watching sex education on Netflix when I started getting a period like pain every 10 minutes or so, I thought it might be it but had had similar pains the past couple of nights so didn't think too much of it. Then around midnight as we were about...