Mum Stuff: Cold Turkey

Today is day two of going cold turkey on the dummy. Nap and night times are tricky, he knows he wants it which just reassures me that this is the right time, before he gets even more attached than he is now. He has his first tooth coming in and while I know you can get orthodontic dummies I’d really just rather his teeth didn’t have anything to fight against. My teeth are a mess from sucking on my fingers and had it been a habit I was able to break earlier I would be more confident in my open mouthed smiles.

I also know that I can outlast the whining, he will fall asleep before too long and I won’t give in. He has just fallen asleep with much less fuss than last night and despite the trauma last night he did sleep right through anyway. I think another couple of days and he will have forgotten all about it.

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Mum Stuff: Separation Anxiety, but it’s me not him!

I have been back working full time since Jack was 4 months old. Of course I didn’t want to go back full time but I can’t afford not to. It’s been fine, he’s being looked after by my in-laws. He loves it up there and they love having him. It’s all been fine.

But these past couple of weeks I’ve not been so fine. Most morning I’m starting to feel sick at the thought of leaving him, during the day i get waves of anxiety because I miss him so much. Jack will be 8 months old next week. I’ve been doing this for 4 months with no issues so I have no idea why it’s all coming up now. I’m not worried about anything relating to his care, I know he is well looked after and is perfectly safe, but I’m really struggling to keep calm when leaving him now.

Mum Stuff: How do you make mummy friends?

Read this first and then come back to me.

Yup this is exactly what happened to me. I went to a baby group and no one said hi at all, I was new and nervous, still not confident in my mum skills and my self-esteem was low so I didn’t have the courage to go say hi to them instead. I never went again. The breastfeeding group was a bit more friendly but I still never made any friends. I have no contact details for anyone I met there, now I’m back at work I feel like I’ve really missed out on making “mummy” friends and I worry that this will affect Jack as he is never around other babies, I worry how he will react when he goes to school and meets other children his age for the first time.
Along with all this, and I honestly mean no disrespect to any of my friends, I’ve seen some of my friends only a handful of times since having Jack, some I haven’t seen or heard from at all. Perhaps they think I’m too busy to join in whatever they are doing, and yeh they are maybe right, but it would still be nice to be asked once in a while even if my answer would still be no. I feel forgotten and alone in that respect. Of course I haven’t reached out to them either, partly because I think they aren’t interested in me anymore, but also partly because yeh I have a kid now and it does take up a lot of our time. It’s a two way street and I am just as much at fault.

I’m not pointing fingers, I don’t hold any resentment, I just thought that it was about time to say whats been on my mind for almost 7 months. Yes I get a bit upset about it at times, then I can go for days or weeks and not even think about it, but it’s always there.
I’ve never been good at making friends, not at school, at uni, or life after in the working world. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of people I get on well with in work, I can have a laugh etc with, but none of them I would ever meet outside of work. Part of that is because I live a good 45 min train journey away and in the evenings it’s a nightmare to get home as the trains are less frequent. Also for months our trains have been off at the weekends due to maintenance work so getting places at the weekend isn’t really straightforward.

There are no groups at the weekends. There is an adult and baby swim group at Lanark but it’s pretty expensive and not something I can really financially commit to.

I am very lucky that Chris’s family are literally all around us, we see them every day and they are the best people in the world. I love them all to bits, but it would be kinda nice to have a friend who is mine, not ours and not family, someone from the outside.

I guess since I can’t really commit myself time-wise to this I’m not really going to get any further forward.