After Anabelle

Xander discovered he could peek under the cubicle walls at the pool!

Another visit to a park!

Its an end of an era.

A week ago, Xander had his last Mummy feed. 

It was a mutual decision, a natural end. He had been becoming less and less interested each evening over a period of three weeks. Lots of bobbing on and off me, swapping boob for dummy, looking around and then swapping dummy for boob again. The cycle repeating for a minute or two until he settled for his dummy and didn't want boob. I don't think he had been getting much milk really. 

So after a couple of weeks of this I decided to give it another week, and if he was still feeding like that to call it a day, and that day was last Thursday. He had his last little feed. I haven't offered again since and so far he hasn't asked for it either. 

Despite feeling quite emotional for the first few nights without Mummy feeds as part of his routine I am happy with this decision. I planned to stop around his 18 month mark anyway, but I'd rather it have been led by him, which is was in the end. He decided it was time to grow!

Because I knew it was likely to be our last feed I asked Jon to try and capture a photograph of the occasion. Which he did, and this special moment will be something I treasure forever. 

I can't believe how far we came; with the struggles in the beginning, feeling claustrophobic, battling with  the 'one bottle of formula a day' guilt, worrying it would be a slippery slope (it wasn't, he had one bottle a day for 5 months and then dropped that himself too), never mastering a shield free latch (which filled me with guilt too, but clearly wasn't at all a big deal when here we are 17 months later). Then realising I had fallen in love with this precious time with my boy. Feeding beyond 6 months, which in the beginning felt like an eternity away, never intending to be an extended breastfeeder but then feeding beyond 12 months and being led by my boy all of the way. Now here we are...

I'm hugely proud I fed Xander for 17 months. So far beyond all my expectations! 

Now my little baby is blossoming into a toddler, becoming more little boy and less baby every day and is finding a new routine. Although he'll always be my baby baby to me and Mummy couldn't be more proud of him. 

#17 Where did you go today?

Roath Park 

I've been fairly useless attempting to keep up with the 365 questions challenge. Infact I don't think I've done a relevant post so far this month. We've been busy; our birthdays and then Mother's Day. March is emotionally tricky. 

I wish today was Mother's Day. Today was a lovely perfect day. Nothing like last Sunday at all. Today we've had the sort of day I hoped we would have had last week, but emotion and raw grief took over. 

Today started with the boy waking up at 7.30am. Fairly early by his weekend standards recently! So we bought him into bed with us and had lovely morning baby snuggles with Cbeebies on in the background for Mummy and Daddy dozing purposes! 

After breakfast a little later Xander and I went off to church.  Today there was an inspirational guest speaker, Jade, who works with girls rescued from human trafficking and prostitution in Cyprus, as well as co-ordinating  The Night Shelter in Newport. The timing of her visit to our church this morning, following us meeting Joseph and homelessness in London was quite something. Joseph has remained on my mind. Just this week I have emailed St Mungo's, another homeless charity based in London. 

They had put a post on facebook asking people to refer in any sighting of homeless people so that they could try and reach them and find somewhere warm for them overnight over another cold snap recently. So I responded to the post and referred Joseph to them, describing where we had seen him,  but well aware that two weeks later he has probably moved on from that spot. I guess I'll never know what happens to him, but Jade's visit to church served to remind me again how huge homelessness is and all its other associated problems. The stories of trafficking she told us of, foreign girls, some young teenagers, kidnapped and forced into brothels were harrowing. A world wide problem, no just happening in Cyprus, it is happening in Newport too. Frightening stuff. My eyes really are being opened to vulnerable people right now. 

After church we went to my parents for our usual Sunday roast dinner, and after dinner, we decided the weather was unusually spring like and off we went to Roath Park for a family Sunday afternoon walk and feed the ducks.   Alexander clearly recognises he needs to be gentle and loving to animals. As a swan walked towards him, Xander said 'awww' as he does when he sees Fiz. However, Xander didn't grasp the concept of feeding the ducks, and didn't really want to share the bread with them! I think he ate more bread than the ducks did! 

After the ducks had been fed we had a little wander around, and let him have a play in the park, on the swings, slide and some weird bouncy seesaw! Fun and enjoyment all round. 

Too much fun for some maybe. Jon has now been asleep in his armchair for two hours since 7.00pm. Being 32 taking its toll as he heads towards middle-age clearly! *wink* 

All in all a lovely day. The sort of day I dream of for Mother's Day. Maybe next year I'll hold myself together long enough to. 

After a stressful Mother's Day it was good to remember this:

Sleeping baby, looking like his sister. 

I set the bar of expectation too high; on myself, on today. 

Being unfazed by the Mother's Day build up didn't bode as well for today as I'd hoped in yesterday's post. My third Mother's Day without Anabelle and I'm still reactive, still raw. I spoilt my own day. 

It started well. I had thoughtful cards from the children via Jon, I had beautiful charms for my Pandora, perfect little charms for my babies. A blue stone star for Alexander and a pink stone heart for Belle. Truly spoilt,  having more for Mother's Day than I'd had for my birthday earlier in the week! Although I suppose when it all falls together, its all much of a muchness really!  

I was feeling OK. Then came the unexpected trigger. Groupon. A stupid spam, wish they would stop emailing me daily groupon email was my falling today.  

"Mother and daughter photoshoot"

The trigger for a chain of a events that left us unraveling fast. 

My mood changed. Snappy. Jekyll and Hyde according to Jon. 

My foul mood spiraled  Jon and I got snipey with eachother. Of course I hadn't told him what had upset me, I'm not sure I knew right then exactly what had upset me so much, just that I felt prickly and overwhelmingly sad. Bickering, sniping, being unkind to eachother.  

Bickering and snipey turned into a full blown (extremely rare) classy row outside the in-laws. Worse still our baby boy as a witness. I'm so ashamed. 

We went our separate ways for an hour, both in a state.  I went to Sainsbury's on my own to buy Anabelle flowers, completely drained, feeling emotionally exhausted, heavy, hurting. Neither of us with our phones; or at least mine was with Jon and Jon's was at home, although I didn't know it. I thought he was ignoring my calls from my parents house and that he had turned my phone off. He thought I didn't care enough to ring.  Just a total mess of a morning.  By the time we finally found each other again I was beside myself; because I needed Jon, I needed Anabelle, I needed Alexander, I needed my family and it all got too much. 

In work we'd call it a crisis point. And I had hit my Mother's Day crisis. I reacted badly to an email, Jon reacted badly to my reaction. A chain of events, things said, handled badly, responded to badly, communication completely broken down. A bad day. We were not coping. 

Better management of emotion would have resulted in a better end point. Sometimes it isn't that simple.

We'd made up by dinner time and Mother's Day continued for the better. We made Anabelle's garden bright and beautiful. Our Mother's and Grandmother's got their gifts, Xander's Godmother too, and we spent the evening with good friends.

This mornings trauma long forgotten. 

A spam email reminding me today, of all days, that there will never be a mother and daughter photoshoot for me and Anabelle. 

I will lower my expectations for next year and hope I won't always be like this.