Gardening in the winter sun. 40-something mums Christmas thread

[somewherebecomingrain]

40-something mums with babies of all ages - please join us. The 20-something and 30-something mums will never satisfy you like this thread.

Drspouse, welcome to our snug. Tell us about you and DS and new baby project. I am 43, DS is 5 and DD almost 18 months.
I have to run to pick him up now but will be back later.

Well, in our case, new baby project involves lots of paperwork. It's a lot more boring than having a baby the old fashioned way. Interestingly I came across some notes on an appointment in that endless round of seeing one specialist after another, when we were still trying the old fashioned way, and the specialist apparently said that the oldest mum they'd had in their clinic was 46. So I'm not far off.

DS is much more interesting than the paperwork - he's at the "saying his words in a cute way" stage, and calls me Mimi. He used to call DH Diddy but sadly that has morphed into Daddy. He had his first haircut on Saturday (indulgent parents, rather than very slow growing hair).

I work 4 days a week in a job where even this causes astoundment and consternation ("what do you mean, you work part time? How on earth does that work?" well, I only come in 4 days a week, I don't spend the fifth day working full time at home, I'm not going to answer your emails because I'm at Music and Movement/washing the nappies/reading Room on the Broom, and they only pay me 80% of my salary. How is that complicated?) and yet, nobody would die if I did not do the job at all, despite my colleagues' feeling of being terribly terribly important.

Drspouse, welcome! What an interesting story, and a moving mini portrait of your DS :) I too love the early talking, though my dd is just three and still dropping first consonants on a few words. My current favourite is the tv program "'ananas in 'ajamas", and the small citrus fruit she calls "'atsuma" She also got upset the other day when her sleeves on her hoody were "inside outside" ...

I'm 43 and had DD when 40 and DS (9mo) when I was 42. (You and I are Proper Fab 40s 'cos we will have had both dc in our 40s;) )

Somewhere, also very suspicious of DrMN, though I too would be interested in how to manage this as you are right not to want her to feel awkward in later life. I was very tall as a child (this height of 5'9" in early teens) and felt awkward about it for a long time- it was only in my 20s onwards I learned to stop feeling "too big" compared to petite friends, helped by many peers growing up to my height and taller....

Interestingly dd and I went today to final checks of a three year study we have been participating in looking at early weaning and food allergies. She is 91st centile weight and 98th centile height: she is also quite muscular - she has incredible muscle definition on her legs and strong shoulders. But I can hand on heart say she is not fat: I think the weight is genuinely about muscle as well as size. She has a little soft tummy, but it only sticks out when she sits down and if anything I think she is lean. But despite the nurse and doctor being v positive about how healthy she was the dietician was clearly concerned and went off to check her bmi. She said it was in the healthy range (doh!), but warned me against letting her weight creep up the centiles further. I think she was worried because dd was 50th centile for first year, but she has also got taller at a faster rate. Anyway I was a bit miffed that they caused me to doubt myself, and I guess it's a warning that some health professionals are quite hard line/cautious about this issue....

Welcome Drspouse! I'm 45, have a 10 year old DS and DD is 13 months. Love your description of your DS. Hope your next adoption goes smoothly for you - what stage are you at now?
I also love the early talking. DD is only making noises but she knows what she's saying. She loves to put any phone/remote control/empty hand to her ear and says "alloalloalloalloallo", says "dat" and "dis" whilst pointing, and calls out to DP "DAD, DAD, DAD!!". But my friend's son who is nearly 2, has taken to calling popcorn "Cockporn" which goes down well when he sees it in Waitrose .

Thanks all - we're at the checks stage, so just crossing our fingers our referees get themselves organised to fill in their forms and meet the social worker quickly (and of course the other way round). We're hoping to adopt from overseas again and that means a shed load of extra paperwork. I just feel for the trees.

Drspouse, I am sorry work colleagues are a bit thick. I believe PT working mums are very efficient because they don't have time to waste on b++s^ and have a life after work. And that makes a huge difference.
I remember DS at 18m saying 'oh oh' when dropping toys from the highchair, 'oh dear' later on - he picked that up from nursery staff as English is not our first language - then 'matmat' for tomato. We recently watch a video of him reading with DH and commenting 'doggy pas content' and then translating 'doggy not happy' he was then 26m ! DD talks a lot, she obviously knows what she is saying, I m 'mimi' too.

Today started with the loss adjuster visit for the leaking roof. 3 separate issues, one being the neighbour's scaffolding knocking out a pipe and a corner of the roof creating very wet wall, the 2 others might or not be due to storm damage....

Watched DD at a zumba lesson at nursery, she looked like she wasn't sure what she was doing there, checking on the teacher then the staff, back and forth !
Told her to come to me for nappy change, she did !
Keep finding her toys everywhere, laundry basket, recycling bins, this morning found beaker in shower, my shirt in staircase !

I so love reading about all the babies development. So many precious moments and memories.
Hi drspouse your story sounds amazing, we're very noise on here so feelfree to ignore qs you'd rather not answer. :) where is your baby from? Are you hoping to adopt from same background?

I'm 43 and rosebud is a very unexpected gift. She's 6 months and just started weaning. I'm currently on a crazy 3 weeks 'holiday' at my in laws in Egypt. My mil is lovely and has given us no end of laughs with cultural differences in baby care. :) I have 2 much older dds and 2dgc!!

Oh rosie I'm very pleased to hear you are not permanently in Egypt! It sounded like it was driving you mad!

I won't share some details of my DS's background for the moment. I think I'll feel happier once no 2 is done and dusted (I have promised DH that will be it!). It's very unusual to adopt from overseas and we sometimes feel like we're in a minority of one (well, two, well three now including DS).

I'm on a train with free Virgin Wifi this evening, having been to a work meeting (interesting and productive, if "let's do X and here's how we'll do it and here's who we might get to do it, but let's not do it now as we're all too busy" is productive).

I think there will be some new washable nappies waiting for me at home, as I got a message on FB from a neighbour that there was something waiting at hers. I think this makes me a very very sad person, to be honest, but I don't care.

drspouse I used to go to productive meeting like that all the time. Tuesday was always meetings day! ! (And night!
Life seems to have found a rhythm that is just about keeping everyone happy. Dd bedtime Iis now 11lm egyptain tine (1am our time) which is not going to be fun when we get home
some dmil and sil do everything. I'm not allowed to do any cooking, cleaning, washing and I'm fine with that :) they do play with rosebud and mil has been given at Big part in weaning which she is really enjoying. They also baby sit for 2 hour each night so i can go down to see my American friend. dsil wwill also bath her under supervision. Ya know babies are Sooooo easy when you don't have to keep house :)

Some, how did the move go?

Bbd. A is a little mischief :)

Keep meaning to send waves out to are merry band of lurkers, would love to hear how all the babies are now

lol Rosie reminds me of a friend from uni who.moved to a former British colony in sub Saharan Africa. she has four children and kept telling me it was not hard at all and I had nothing to fear blah blah. She has three nannies, a cook, a house keeper, a security guard, a gardener, a driver and a house boy who does all the other odd jobs We'll, yes, lovely friend, parenting probably does seem easier. Though hats off, her children are gorgeous, well behaved, fun and not spoiled, which in itself is an achievement with all those staff!!

today dd told me she does not want me to be her mummy. U cried. Not grown up. My sister assures me this is a rite of passage for us both

I cried. Though the syntax U cried also makes me weep

scarecrow I spent a spell in a similar location, with a housekeeper, just for me. The only thing is that it takes you all day to buy food for dinner because either you have to go to 10 shops for 5 ingredients, or you get stuck in traffic for 3 hours, or the Jeep breaks down or gets stuck in a house-sized pothole, or all three.

Greetings to all!

It has been a loooong time since I posted . Or read for that matter, and so I see I have missed some BIG events in everyone’s lives. Such as that Rosie is intrepidly immersed in Egyptian culture (your ability to go with the flow where utterly necessary and dig your heels in where not has me looking on with admiration); Somewhere is having sister problems (I really, really sympathise and wish I had advice, but despite having similar family dynamics my default position is fingers in ears and la-la-la) and has lost a dear friend (so sorry for your loss); BBD had a birthday (happy very very belated birthday!); Eagle has gone back to work (it’s tough, isn’t it? Probably more on us than them – I now get a fab grin from BG when I leave him at the childminder’s door in the morning); Scarecrow has had illness and absent DH to deal with (hope you are all feeling better? Parenting is a right bugger when you are under the weather. Especially doing the loo runs…); Knotty is juggling children and events and activities and the inevitable baby phone obsession (loved the lime picture on FB! Says it all); and Drspouse has joined us, welcome!

December was a complete washout here. BG had two bouts of gastroenteritis which landed us in A&E both times, first time because he couldn’t keep anything down and was severely dehydrated – fortunately we managed to start getting some dioralyte into him just before they were going to put a drip in him – and the second because the diarrhoea was so bad he was passing blood. In the end they said that was because he was on antibiotics at the time for infections in BOTH ears, and the first bout of gastro had stripped the intestine which couldn’t cope with the antibiotic onslaught. And of course he doesn’t have dairy (more on that in a minute) so relining the gut is tricky. Then both DH and I got the bug, (I lost another half stone!) and I had a sinus infection that was utter agony. That went away about a week ago, thank goodness! And this was all in the midst of my MIL finding out that her cancer is now probably terminal. Whioch prompted my already deaqth-obsessed FIL to spend the entire Christmas period droning on about how BG and I nearly died during his birth and how terrible it all was. I am afraid I lost it , not good as I know that FIL is of course having a tough time. But in the midst of trying to talk to DH about trying for a second child, this put us back to square one. Clouds of depression for me.

OK, sorry for meandering rant. Dear me, it seems I am still a bit twitchy about all of this. I will be a model of cheeriness and joy from now on! We are all clawing our way back to health and a bit more sanity. BG has been officially diagnosed at long last with a cow’s milk protein intolerance – not that I have been saying this since he was seven months old! Sleep is still at a premium (this probably didn’t help my coping skills in December) but otherwise he is just bloody wonderful. There has been such a sea change in the last few weeks. He understands loads, is talking nineteen to the dozen – shame we can’t understand a single word, but he has gone for sentences rather than single words, so the inflection is all there, but vocab and grammar rather lacking! He helps me cook, which is his favourite pastime, I’m sure nothing to do with eating half the ingredients before they make it into the finished product. He has even chomped cheerfully on raw garlic and gone back for more. (Proof he isn’t a vampire despite his predilection for nocturnal shenanigans.) He loves dancing, splashing in puddles in his new wellies, playing with the pirate ship he got for Christmas, drawing, playing George (my piano) or Brian Boru (my bodhran), doing jigsaws. As someone said on another thread, it’s such a shame not to be able to take maternity leave now. I begrudge every minute not with him because I feel like I am missing so much. And he is so happy and affectionate and gives the best kisses and death hugs as we call them (the tight neck squeeze). He is always coming over just to make contact before running off to play again.

Right. Sorry, this is turning into a thesis. I will go away quickly before I crash your computers.

Hi goat sounds like you've had a tough time. Poor BG and poor you xxx hope things are settling down again. [Grin] no 2.
Very sad about mil.
Well today. .... ok dh does not always tell me exactly what is going on and if I'm notppaying attention information gets lost. So dh says get ready we're going to meet mil. (I presumed in usual coffee shop) then we got a taxi and dh said we're going to his uncle. Fine. As we get out of the taxi he says we are at the maternity hospital where his cousin has just had a baby boy. OMG. We are blessed. She had literally just had him 1hour before. There were 7adults and 3 children in the room. Baby was in scbu getting O2. Poor girl. Noise, people (not to mention random while girl) and she was 1 hour post section! !!! All babies here are apparently born by section at a cost of £350. Natural childbirth is very rare. Now I understand why they couldn'tuunderstand why I didn't want one for free. :) dmil is very proud of my natural birth and loves to tell my story

Breastfeeding is also not the norm here anymore. The system is very medical. It would seem women have very little choice or say when it comes to childbirth and a want to be like western women and give babies the western options. ... I'll stop now before i rant

Goat, great to hear from you. Poor baby G, poor you and poor DH. What a difficult end of year you had. So sorry about MIL, hope she is not in too much pain, my Dad had morphine at some point but then he asked to stop it, he wanted to have a clear head to talk to us. He recorded a message but I never had the nerves to listen to it, it was 1996 but I still can't do it.
Glad someone heard you about his milk intolerance, finally. But he looks perfectly fine now. Fx it will stay this way.
Rosie, in France, childbirth is also very medicalised but CSection is not on demand, BF is not uncommon but not as widespread as here, 3 or 4 months is the max though as Mums have only 3 months of ML. It is getting better, a very small amount of clinics now offer natural birth with pool and opportunity to be mobile during labour and la Leche League is more and more something people talk about. If I remember well in China, on full moon, Mums ask for CS, superstition about evil taking baby if VB...
Do you know why in Egypt women want CS ?
Scarecrow, DD did not mean it, of course not. You are a wonderful person and a great Mum. Don't listen, keep smiling.
2nd Chinese lesson for DS this evening, asked DH to pick him up so that I could give dinner to A at 5.30pm, this has transformed the whole dynamic of the evening, it was so much better, quieter and both were sound asleep by 7.15pm. But DS was still exhausted. Will see what he can remember of his lesson tomorrow. Good news is in 2 weeks time, he will have Sat morning lessons followed by Swimming, we might run a bit but at least, there will be more going in his brain, or so I hope !
A was a superstar today, good mood all day, playing peekaboo with me from her brother's tent, helped me hoover the mess of her lunch and dinner, ate her lunch, her dinner, slept for almost 2 hours, washed her hair with her bowl of tomato and cucumber salad and dressing. I wonder if the refusal of bottle is due to the fact I love BF her, oh well, I have decided to let her go on until 2yo, I will find a way to reassure her that I will still love and look after her even if she takes milk from a cup. But then I will be weaning from BF and potty training simoultaneously, hum, maybe not such a good idea. Need to think more.
Off to bed, early night, I have kind of lost my voice, time to look after me, my body screams. Good night, ladies and babies.

Off to a toddler birthday party this morning - we're going in and out early, and if DS eats the entire buffet, he can just skip lunch. Then I have one of those very long hair appointments where you think about taking a sandwich (would that be very wrong?).

drspouse hope party was fun? Also no, no to sandwich. having your hair done makes it compulsory you go and sit in a naice (copyright Eagleray) for cappuccino and a spot of lunch, the full Ladies Who Lunch experience in miniature for busy MOT-NOTs (mums of toddlers with no time)

naice cafe
I'm famous for my typos. good thing I'm not paid to write for a living

The Nativity typo was the best one! Can't remember what it was but it introduced so many levels of wrong into your post

House is a post-party bombsite today. I feel like shit and we have to leave for a wedding in 2 hours. Will post more later if still awake...

One week left :) it's been emotional! !!
Bbd its not that women choose c section, they are totally led by dr's who insists on sections because they get paid so much more. This is not my take on it but the general consensus from family members.They are told Iit's much safer and if something happened during natural cb it would be their fault. No vbac allowed. Grrrr. (No wonder they thought I was totally woo to want water birth)
Happy birthday baby eagle :)
25 passed peacefully here, not got access to news atm so not sure about Cairo.
Weaning has been stopped until a dirty nappy arrives (very constipated) is it ok to just stop giving food once started? ?? (Still having boob of course) not sure are food choices are the best. Home next week and we will start with a bit more variety. Can she have yoghurt? ? Oh and how come no one warned about the stink! !! I miss the sweet smell of milk poo nappies. :(
Dental nightmare started again with another absess on same tooth (one 3uk dentists have said must come out but it will leave a visible space) We have a great dentist here who has (inshalla) saved it. Root treatment done, should get cap fitted in a few days (cost £50 total ) ) will be so happy to be pain free for first time in a year and very glad i didn't have it pulled. Just need to finish antibiotics.
Starting to think about trip home. Have given up hope of couple of beach days as i just can't take rosebud away from mil before absolutely have to. :( looking forward to home.