Samuel at 8 months'

Eight months' old today and we have a tooth! Just a millimetre or so of tooth, but a tooth nonetheless.  A tiny little shard of white that you only properly catch a glimpse of when he giggles. And Samuel's been giggling lots today. I was squirting some suncream when the bottle made a funny noise. 'Splodge!' I said. He thought it was the funniest thing he'd ever heard, so today I have mainly been saying 'splodge' over and over again, just to make him laugh and show off that toothy peg.

He's sleeping better and he can stay awake for longer stretches - two or three naps a day see him through just fine. His love of books shows no sign of abating and he sits enraptured when his dad reads him daring tales of aliens and witches. His favourite thing in the whole wide world is the cat, and he flaps wildly and shrieks with excitement whenever she walks by. He can play on his own and sit up without any help now. The only thing is, he doesn't like sitting very much. Too boring. Too stationary. He wants to stand and walk and bounce. He's much steadier when he's held in a standing position and I don't think it'll be too long before he tries to totter around. I don't think he'll bother with crawling at all, though, since he's about as keen on tummy time as I am on housework. But, my, he loves to roll himself onto his tummy. Generally he does this when we've just put him to bed, and because he can't roll himself back yet, we have to dash in and rescue him. He always gives us a big grin.

He's a bundle of energy. His legs are never still, his eyes are constantly darting around, and he chats away and grunts like an excitable pirate. I have no idea where it comes from because his dad and I are almost sloth-like in our dedication to sitting down in peace and quiet. Once he's mobile there will be no stopping him. It's very exciting. I think eight months is my favourite age yet.

Keeping our cool

The heat wave continues in South London. As the temperature in the city rises, so does the heat, up from the scorching pavement, up, up, up to our top floor flat. Me and Samuel have been closing the curtains like vampires and trying to keep the sunlight out. We've been sitting in dark rooms, ordering fans and super thin sheet sleeping bags that will inevitably arrive once the hot weather dissipates. And once the heat has hit green house levels, we've been heading out in search of shade and breeze.

On Monday we clambered over the rubble and through the brambles down the side of the building to sit in our garden. What it lacks in ease of access, grass, and garden furniture, it makes up for in shade. It was lovely and cool under the trees so we laid out a blanket, watched the butterflies and played with Samuel's ball.

Then we had company on Tuesday as Jim, one of my best mates from Manchester, came to visit us. I absolutely love it when my friends have time off work and we get to hang out with them during the week. It feels like such a luxury - and kind of like you're skiving off school. We braved the heat of Norwood Park where he regaled me with tales of dating in 2013 and I regaled him and Samuel with nursery rhymes. As you can see from the photo, neither of them were particularly impressed.

Today my lovely NCT friend invited us all over to her garden for some paddling pool action. A fantastic idea, and in such glorious weather, nothing could be more fun for a baby, right? Wrong. Samuel doesn't seem too open to new experiences at the moment and the poor thing cried from the moment we got in the garden. The cries ratcheted up to caterwauls by the time he got anywhere near the pool so we abandoned ship and dashed home for some lunch. Still, it's not going to stop me from exposing him to new experiences - hopefully he'll start to get the hang of social events soon. In the meantime we have a good photo to show to him at his 18th birthday party.

This clueless mother's guide to eczema

Summer has arrived Chez Chittenden. It's brought many joys with it like park visits, painted toenails and Pimms. But the infernal heat has caused its problems too. Fur balls. Frizzy hair. A collective celtic pallor that makes us feel like we face the world with the grace and dignity of a family of goths in a sauna. Also the heat can sometimes bring out Samuel's eczema.

Samuel's eczema first appeared when he had just turned three months' old. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, his face and shoulders were covered in dry, itchy red patches. He clawed and clawed at them, which made it worse. If I took my eye off him for a moment, he'd scratch a chunk out of his face. And, as with every issue that arises as a new mum, I panicked. Would he suffer like this forever? How could I stop him scratching? Was it something I'd done or eaten? Was it the cat? If it was the cat would we have to get rid of the cat?

The GP diagnosed eczema straight away. A mild case, she said, and gave us some emollient cream and steroid cream. Sorted, I thought, and off we went and applied the creams as directed on the prescriptions. But while they helped to ease the itching a little, they didn't get rid of the dry red patches all together. Samuel was still suffering and I was still a bit stumped. Neither me or James ever had eczema as children so we didn't really know what to do for the best. 

Luckily, the health visitor referred us to an eczema education programme for parents run by a dermatological nurse from St Thomas'. I went along a few weeks' ago and the tips I picked up were brilliant. We saw results with Samuel pretty much straight away. And, even better, we didn't have to pack the cat off with a little suitcase and a one-way ticket to Grannyville. Here's a little of what I learned:

1. Don't blame the cat - but make sure she remains lonely
There are a bunch of things that trigger eczema. Heat, pollen, swimming, detergents,
clothing labels and seams, dust mites, illness and cosmetics. Pet fur can be a trigger too, but if you had the pet before the baby came along, their skin is probably used to its fur by now. Just don't get another cat, or any other furry critter.

2. Stickybeaks should complain that your child is too cold or too warm
Since heat makes eczema worse, you should always aim to keep your child cool. That means keeping their room between 16 and 18 degrees (which is freezing) and making sure they wear one layer of clothing less than you, as opposed to the general rule of thumb which says babies should wear one layer more than you. If old ladies tell you that your baby is too cold then that means you're on the right track. Confusingly, since pollen also causes eczema, you should also make sure your child is well covered-up on sunny days with high pollen levels. Go for long armed and long legged clothes, but made from light, natural fabrics. That might lead to a few more moans from Aunty Doris.

3. Your family will never, ever smell nice
Scented cosmetics such as soap or perfume can kick eczema off, so that means binning the Chanel Mademoiselle and going for a more 'natural' scent. And while you're busy smelling of, well, you, baby is busy smelling like a Glaxo-Smith-Klein lab. Emollients are great but I'm yet to find a non-medical smelling one on prescription.

4. You can never over-cream your child
Prescription emollients usually come in those industrial-looking 500g pumps. Apparently, in order to keep your baby's skin protected from all those eczema-causing nasties, you should be getting through one of these pumps every fortnight. Really slavering it on and then letting it sink in, several times a day. This came as a shocker to me because without any proper guidelines from the GP I'd just been putting a thin layer on a couple of times a day and getting through a pump every couple of months. We've seen a whopping improvement to his skin since we got more liberal with the emollient. I also discovered that if you are using steroid creams too, these are most effective when applied after the emollient has sunk in - ideally after 20 minutes. Put steroids on before, and they will be diluted by the emollient. Basically, when you have an eczema baby, expect to have creams coming out of your ears and expect a thin oily film over all of your worldly possessions.

5. Cover up those paws
One of the best ways to stop baby scratching when they sleep is investing in a pair of Scratch Sleeves. They go on like a cardigan, cover up any sharp little nails and look like tiny baby oven gloves. But best of all, baby can't get out of them no matter how much they wriggle. They're definitely one of our best buys.

All of these tips helped with Samuel's eczema, but every baby is different so they might not work for everyone. The main message that I took away from the workshop was that unless you put your baby in a plastic bubble, you can never eliminate all the trigger factors for eczema, but so long as you're aware of what they are and you're prepared, you can minimise them. And you can enjoy a hot summer with a baby and a cat.

And he wore: a Ralph Romper

Way back in December, when Samuel was just 8 weeks old, James had to go to America with work. It had all been carefully arranged before Samuel came along.

'I'll be fine!' I'd said, gurning like a clueless, pregnant idiot. 'My mum will be staying with me, and after all, we're bound to have the baby in a routine by then, aren't we?'

Fast forward to his first night away and I'm crying, wild-eyed, into my iPad. My hair is pointing in 23 different directions and I'm howling at him over FaceTime: 

'You will NEVER go away again! If you ever, ever leave me with a baby again I will BOIL YOUR HEAD!' 

I pause momentarily to wipe away some snivelly snot and a thought occurs to me.

'You'd better bring us some bloody good presents back.'

And he did. This posh romper was Samuel's gift. At the time Samuel was as tiny as a doll as it looked so enormous. I couldn't ever imagine him growing big enough to wear it. But here he is, six months on, looking smart and spiffing and stripy. James goes away with work again in a few months' time. I think I'll be able to manage now. I'll try not to boil his head on his return.

Cheers, ears!

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I've had some really lovely and encouraging comments and messages about the blog over the last couple of weeks, so I just wanted to say thank you. Thanks ever so much for reading. Thanks for telling me that it makes you laugh. Thanks for letting me know that it often rings true and that I'm not the only parent who frequently goes out wearing jeans that have been peed on. 

When I was pregnant and when I first became a mum, I was desperate to hear other people's experiences of some of the things that I was going through. I wanted to work out how other mums managed to cope and make things work. I wanted to be inspired and to laugh to be told that things really can and do get better. And I found all of this, and loads more, in some really brilliant blogs. I want to try and do a bit of that sort of thing with Knittenden. And hopefully I'll eventually get around to doing some darned knitting and posting about that too. (And in lieu of having any of my own knitting to post, the picture above is of the gorgeous knitted bunny that Laura made for Samuel. He's a big fan).

Comparisons

The day the community midwife signed me off, she wished me good luck and offered me one piece of advice. 'Never compare your child to anyone else's and never compare yourself to other mums'.

I've been going back to her words a lot over the past couple of weeks, repeating them to myself over and over. Trying to not compare your baby with others is tough. Babies develop rapidly at this sort of age, and they all reach different milestones at different times. I know that. And Samuel is spot on in terms of his development. I know that too. Yet when I see him at play groups and play dates struggling to do some of the things his contemporaries are doing, I can't help but feel it. If he is popped down on his tummy to hang out with the gang, he cries immediately and wants to get up and be held. If he's offered finger food with the others who are happily noshing away, he cries because he doesn't really know what to do with it. If I move more than a metre or two away from him at any point he cries because he hasn't learned to play without me around yet.

And then I start to wonder about my role in all of this. Maybe I should be giving him more tummy time (and stop worrying about how much milk he throws up every time I do it). Maybe I should be working much harder on the finger foods and not focusing so much on the purées. Maybe if I'd have chilled out a little bit more and not been such a hovering mum, he'd be much happier being left to play alone now. Maybe I should have been more prepared and read up on parenting psychological theories and philosophies long before he came along.

It's crazy how, if you give this sort of stuff time to fester, you really can start regretting tiny little decisions you've made over the early months and start to worry that you've indelibly broken your baby. The other night I was really beating myself up about having given him the odd sugary rusk. But it's madness. I know that Samuel's a happy little man if he's with me and we're sticking to his routine. He's kind, he's funny, he's interested in everything, he's extremely dextrous and he loves a good giggle. I know that when all is said and done, he's doing great and he'll get there in his own time. All that I'm trying to do is the best that I can. There's a huge amount of room for improvement, but I'm on the steepest learning curve of my life. I'll get there in my own time too. In the meantime, I'll keep thinking back to the midwife's words.

We went to Westfield and felt like we were on P Diddy's yacht

I didn't expect to find a secret parenting Shangri-la at Westfield Stratford City. I really just expected some kind of poo-related catastrophe that might result in me being blacklisted by every Whistles store in the UK (the poo would be Samuel's, I hasten to add). But, as always seems the case when we get out and about, the experience was far better than I expected.

I went there to meet Laura for lunch. I hadn't been there before and I hadn't taken Samuel on the tube before. Yet again I was nervous, but yet again it was fine. There were lifts all over the place, so getting on and off the tube at Canada Water was a breeze and Samuel took it all in his stride. 

When we arrived at Westfield, a nappy change was required, so I whizzed us over to one of the mall's 'parent rooms'. I just expected a perfunctory flip-down changing table. And that would have been fine. But no! It was like walking into some kind of VIP chill-out area. Bright, tranquil and modern, it had spacious changing pods, private cubicles for breastfeeding, a flat screen TV showing CBeebies, a lovely play area and big comfy sofas for the grown ups. It even had a microwave and bottle warmers. It was so luxurious that I half expected to see P Diddy knocking back some Cristal while watching Mr Tumble. Sadly, I didn't. But, take my word for it, it's impressive enough Diddy or no Diddy.

Laura and I then headed off for a lovely lunch at The Real Greek, and Samuel bounced around on our laps throughout. After that it was time to head home and, amazingly, he snoozed all the way like an angel. Perhaps it's time I raised my expectations.