Ball of confusion

I’m dashing this out while Rosie naps- she barely sleeps in the daytime, and so I am well aware that I am on borrowed time here, my friends.

Feeling rather at sea at the moment- building work starts on our house on Monday, so we will be moving back to our parents for a while. How long that while is has yet to be confirmed, but in my head, it’s two months. We are very lucky to have two sets of parents, both within driving distance of our house, who are kind enough to put up with us for an extended stay, meaning that we can leave behind the dust and the chaos and the “ohmigodwhataretheydoingtomyhouse”. If we didn’t have Rosie, we would have stayed put; lived off takeaways, spent our evenings checking out that day’s progress, worried about the mess after the builders had left. But with a baby, having an alternative in the shape of our parents is a godsend.

However, the prospect of moving out has thrown me into a bit of a tailspin. This is definitely in part due to the fact that we are nowhere near ready. Everything is, as yet, unpacked. Trying to pack up our lives while looking after a four month old just isn’t happening, and with Andrew away with work this week, and me away on a hen do this weekend, I’m feeling increasingly disorganised, and panicky.

I know it will come together,eventually- these things always do. But I’m figuring on a little STER-ESS in the meantime.

In other news, we’re just starting to think about weaning Rosie, and I’ve ordered Gill Rapley’s book about baby-led weaning, so we’ll see how that goes. Another reason I’m worrying about moving out is that Rosie has been such a star in terms of sleeping through the night, and I am loathe to disrupt her routine. Equally, I have unfounded fears about weaning her away from home- whether this means that she’ll find it confusing once we are back. I must stress that this is all coming from me- so far, she’s proved herself to be a pretty adaptable little thing, so hopefully, she’ll prove me wrong once again.

And, as if on cue, she’s awake. Pics to follow!

One month

It’s a month since I last posted. It’s taken about three million years for me to write this post (STUPID WordPress), but here’s a whistlestop tour of what we’ve been up to.

Rosie and I have been to Crystal Palace Park a lot; meeting family, meeting friends, going for walks, and saying hi to the dinosaurs.

Andrew and I had our first “date night” (cringe) since Rosie’s arrival, and went for tapas.

Andrew took Rosie to her first Harlequins match at the Stoop…

… meanwhile, I met Becky, Stuart and Simon for a leisurely Saturday breakfast at the Riding House Cafe, followed by the Hockney exhibition at the Royal Academy, followed by an afternoon martini or 10 at Hix, followed by a cab ride to Clapham to meet Esther and Eugene, followed by A LOT of white wine, followed by… I don’t remember. Followed by my first hangover for the best part of a year.

I took Rosie into the office for the first time, and it was lovely to see everyone. I was surprised at how normal having her there with me felt.

Lent started, as did my giving up of bread and sugar (except fruit and alcohol- there’s always a caveat to my resolutions).

Rosie spent her first night away from Andrew and I; Aunty Frannie took her back to Guildford for the night, where she was spoilt rotten by all the aunties and uncle, and Nanny and Grandad R…

…while Andrew went out with his workmates, and I went to see Rock Of Ages with Lucy. Any show that has a singalong version of Don’t Stop Believin’ as the finale number is more than alright with me!

We have also spent lots of time in South Norwood Country Park, making the most of the early spring weather.

We helped Simon celebrate his birthday with a lovely Sunday lunch at the Bear in Camberwell.

Rosie had her 8-week check with the GP; she continues to get bigger, and louder, and lovelier every day. She’s also had another scan on her clicky hip at the hospital, and all seems to be developing well there.

I’ve continued to train with Mathilde at Training Points, and I’ve lost nearly half a stone according to my weekly Slimming World meetings. Slow progress, and still a long way to go, but at least it’s going in the right direction I guess.

Rosie and I have been trying all sorts of classes, from the good (Power-Pramming in Crystal Palace Park), the bad (Gymboree- not for me), and the ugly (Mummy & Me Yoga- I thought the class was great but Rosie wasn’t feeling it, and was pretty vocal about it, meaning we had to leave halfway through).

I met Stuart for dinner at the Delaunay, for a delicious and civilised grown up Friday night dinner.

Andrew celebrated his birthday with a bit of a do at the Bridge House Tavern, in Penge. This was markedly different to his previous birthday bashes, as it was an afternoon do, there were about a dozen babies present, and we were kicked out of the pub at 7pm due to children not being allowed past that hour (quite right too- evenings are for grown ups). Andrew still managed to get pretty wasted- well done that man.

We took Rosie swimming for the first time. She was decidedly non-plussed- she didn’t seem to hate it, but she didn’t smile much either, and just sat in her rubber ring like a chubby Buddha, while Andrew and I pushed her around making stupid noises and grinning inanely at her.

I went to Canvas & Cream, a new cafe/ bistro/ art gallery in Forest Hill, and met Penny and Astrid for sausage roll and salads. Yum.

I went for post-work drinks with Helen, Rachel, and Eli at Fortana on Kingly Street. We ignored the cichetti in favour of lots of Pinot Grigio, and it was lovely to catch up.

I looked at a nursery for Rosie. Gulp.

I went out with Helen and Lindsay for drinks at the Alma in Crystal Palace, and will definitely be going back to check out the delicious looking food.

I started running again! I’m following a 0-5k beginners’ schedule from the Runners World website, and began week 3 this weekend; 3mins running, 1min walkingx 6 reps. By week 8, I’ll be up to half an hour/ 5k running. I’m really enjoying pounding the pavements (verrrrry slowwwwly), and am looking forward to hopefully seeing improvements in my stamina and speed over the course of this year.

Rosie is twelve weeks old now- those dark days of midwinter feel a very long time ago, as the daffodils come up in the garden, and Spring beckons, with the promise of long, sun-filled days.

Which fills me with fear, at the prospect of summer clothes…

Let’s get physical

 

Rosie turned eight weeks on Wednesday, so two months post-partum, the buck stopped here- it was time to get exercising! This week, I undertook my first post-natal classes with Mathilde at Training Points, as well as going back to my yoga class with Carla. The exercise classes were great, and tougher than I’d anticipated. I think I had imagined that they would be a nod in the direction of exercise, rather than a full blown circuits class, and although they were gentler than I am used to, we definitely worked hard, and it was really nice to have that post-exercise ache the next day. I had to take it a bit easy during the abs work, but really went for it when we did the lower and upper body exercises. I’m signed up for two classes a week with Mathilde, and am hoping that I’ll start to see results within a couple of months.

Yoga was great too, and it was really good to feel my body working again. Carla kept a watchful eye on me, and wouldn’t let me do some of the exercises. She has had a Caesarean herself, and so is well aware what I should and shouldn’t be doing, and I’m quite happy to follow her advice. My yoga class is on a Monday night, and is a great start to the week.

I also had my first Slimming World weigh-in, and have lost 2.5lb (just over a kilo) in my first week, which I’m pleased with. If I can continue to lose at this rate, then I should be down to my pre-pregnancy fighting weight in about five months, just in time for our summer holiday. We’re going to take some measurements at Mathilde’s class this week, so it will be interesting to see if these reduce over the weeks too.

However… the flip side of all this good work is that this week also saw my first hangover in about 10 months. Andrew was in hospital overnight on Thursday, and so I cooked a very healthy curry, and then my sister, Frannie and I polished off a gallon of wine in front of reality tv. It was really good fun, but, oh my God, I felt dreadful yesterday. I really had forgotten how bad hangovers are, and this one was a cracker- killer headache, nausea, demon thirst, crap food cravings- the works. Thankfully, Rosie was a little angel all day, but I’ve realised that spontaneous boozing to that level isn’t really an option any more- these things must be planned. It’s not that I can’t drink- it’s just that I need to know my limits!

We’ll see if the killer combo of white wine + hangover eating shows up on the scales on Thursday. I’m going to have to be really good from now on…

Unplanned boozing aside, I’m optimistic that my routine of Slimming World food + running + Mathilde’s toning classes + yoga for stretching and strength will help me shed the pregnancy pounds and tone up. Now I just need to get my running shoes on…

Hands up, baby, hands up

My daughter has big hands. It was one of the things we noticed as soon as she was born; she looked so little, but her hands looked almost too big for her. As she’s got bigger, it’s become less obvious, and with parents as tall as Andrew and I, it’s not really a surprise, but small-handed, she ain’t. My mum says she has “pianist’s hands”, which gives an impression of elegance, and delicate long fingers. Personally, I’m thinking more goalie/ rugby player.

Don’t get me wrong, they are completely beautiful- plump little fingers, dimpled knuckles, delicate fingernails, and chubby wrists. And Rosie moves them constantly. When she was still in the hospital, she used to regularly perform a sort of Tommy Cooper “just like that” move, jumping in her sleep, extending her hands. It was just like she was casting a spell.

Now, when I feed her, she either bunches her hands into little fists, or places them palm to palm, as if she is either fighting or praying for her milk.

Andrew tried to do one of those handprints-on-canvas, when Rosie was a couple of weeks old, and Frannie and Lilla tried a plaster cast mould a few weeks later. Neither attempt was  massively successful-  babies not being overly great at obeying instructions like “please keep still”, and I was still finding pink paint on her fingernails a week later- but  I love the messy end results of both.

Rosie grips onto our hands, pulls my hair, holds onto us so hard that her knuckles go white. The next moment, she is moving her hands, without reason or purpose, as elegantly as an Indonesian dancer; graceful turns of the wrist, dainty fingers pointing, hands twirling and twisting and turning.

There will come a day, a long time in the future, when my little girl isn’t so keen to hold onto me- but for now, at least, I have her hand. And I cling onto her baby grip like I’ll never let her go.

Weight for me!

Rosie weighed in at a mighty 10lb 7oz this week. Her limbs have lost that skinny newborn look, and the rolls forming on her chubby arms and legs just make me want to BITE her. Yum. She’s outgrown her newborn clothes, and I think she won’t be in her Moses basket for much longer. Go Rosie!

On the flip side, I finally faced the music of my own pregnancy weight gain today, and, let me tell you folks, it was not pretty. We don’t have a set of scales at home, and I didn’t monitor my weight over the course of my pregnancy. I sort of thought- what’s the point? I knew I’d be gaining weight, and, as someone who’s been bigger, and lost a bit of weight, I knew that, psychologically, this might mess with my head a bit. I decided instead to stay as healthy as I could, both in terms of diet and exercise, and to indulge whenever I wanted to, within reason. 

Well, I don’t know if it was the pregnancy indulging, or the marked decrease in physical activity, or the post-partum Christmas treats hanging round the house, or the fact that getting a brownie with my daily coffee has become the rule rather than the exception, or WHAT, but the fact is that I weighed in today TWO STONES AND TWELVE POUNDS heavier than when I first found out I was pregnant. That’s three pounds shy of three whole stones. AND I’VE GIVEN BIRTH TO A SEVEN AND A HALF POUND BABY. Holy cow.

I found out the horrible truth at my local Slimming World class. I’ve been a Slimming World member for years, and find the weekly weigh in really helps me stay on track with monitoring my weight. I started to feel fed up with my monotonous, elastic waisted wardrobe at the weekend, and as I am no longer breastfeeding, and am seven weeks post-partum, the lightbulb went on- it was time to embark on Operation Weightloss. If I’m honest, it’s all about the vanity- I do not want to be restricted to making clothing choices based on how much of my body a garment conceals, or relying on the slimming powers of black, especially when Spring isn’t a million miles away. I went through my Goth phase when I was 15- been there, done that, and sure as hell don’t need to be wearing that Metallica t-shirt again. I also want to feel as fit as I did this time last year, when I was marathon training.

So I’ve re-joined my local Slimming World group, I’ve re-signed up for Monday night yoga, and I’ve booked myself onto 2 x postnatal exercise classes, with Mathilde, each week. I also plan to continue to walk with Rosie, as much as possible. And sooner or later, I need to get my running shoes on. One step at a time though.

I know I can follow the Slimming World plan, and at least now I have an excuse to say NO to the sweet stuff that became my staple diet when pregnant. And actually, rather than my weight gain depressing me, it’s quite nice to have a little project. I’d like to be back to my pre-pregnancy weight by summer- totally do-able, if I am sensible. I’d also like to be back up to running 10k comfortably by summer, so that I can take part in all of our running club’s summer league series. Little goals, but achievable ones.

With Andrew’s marathon training, it’s important that we’re eating balanced, healthy meals anyway, and so all the stars seem to be in alignment for optimum get fit/lose weight fun.

Let the good times roll!

Everybody needs good neighbours…

I suffer from that common London malaise of not knowing- or, rather, not making the effort to get to know- my neighbours. We will have been in our house for five years in April, and until recently, I only knew our immediate neighbours by sight, to say hello to, to pop a Christmas card through their letter box, “hello, how are you” (WHO are you?). Full time work- leaving the house by 8 each morning, and often not getting home till gone 8 at night- explains away some of that distance, but I don’t know how five years have passed without us having seen the interiors of any of our neighbours’ houses (or they ours, for that matter).

As a child, I remember how friendly my mum was with all of our neighbours- there were always coffee mornings, and ladies popping in, and a gaggle of similarly aged children to play with. We didn’t live in a village, or on a cul de sac, but having that closeness with those living around us was somehow reassuring. We were not an island.

With Rosie’s birth approaching, I wanted to build closer relationships with my neighbours, but wasn’t sure how to go about it. It’s a bit hard to go and introduce yourself to someone, when you’ve been living two doors away from them for five years. Turns out, having a baby is a great way of opening the channels of communication. Within days of bringing Rosie home, we had received cards from neighbours who I’d never even met before, a silver coin for luck from the elderly couple next door, an introduction to a lady across the road who gave birth to her little boy on the same day I had Rosie, and an invitation to tea from a lady a few doors up, who has a seven month old baby. For me, this was hugely heartwarming. Being a new mum, for all its wonderful-ness, can sometimes be lonely, and having people who may become friends on my doorstep gives me that sense of reassurance that I remember from my childhood.  The road that was just my means of getting to and from the station has become somewhere where I stop and chat to people, knock at doors, take notice of the comings and goings of people. It might be an unsalubrious part of south London, but it’s my beautiful neighbourhood, and I’m looking forward to exploring it this year.

Répétez s’il vous plaît

Life with a new baby is repetitive, in the extreme. Just one you think you’ve finished a task, oops, look at that- it’s time to do it again. I naively thought that feeding every three hours would allow me, say, two and a half hours to do my own thing. WRONG! Rosie takes about forty-five minutes to take a bottle, followed by a good 20 mins to half an hour of back-patting and winding, followed by a nappy change (or full outfit change, sick-dependant) which is another 15mins or so- by which point she’s wide awake, and I feel bad just abandoning her to the playmat, so that’s another 15mins to half an hour playing with her. She may then fall asleep, at which point I run around the house like a headless chicken, trying to get done the jobs that need doing, in order of priority. And then the cycle starts again.

I am not complaining- spending time with my daughter is a delight, and at less than five weeks old, I thankfully am not jaded with babyville just yet. But the cycle of feed, change, sleep is much more monotonous for me than it is for her. On the plus side, at least with these limited activities, there’s a very small checklist to go through when she’s crying. Fed? Check. Nappy? Check. Tired? Check. Concerned about the impact of global warming on the polar ice caps? Not so much.

I haven’t been blogging very much lately, because I am also concerned about the level of repetition in my posts. Rosie is wonderful, and the minutae of her days are fascinating to me- but not, I think, to anyone else. I’d be bored to death by intricate details of someone else’s baby’s life, so I am conscious that I do not want Running In Heels to become All About Rosie. However, I am finding it really hard to find other topics to blog about. Having not seen the news for a few days (I know, shameful), my cultural references currently run to the box sets I’m watching (Mad Men season 3 finished last night- about to start season 4- and Angels In America), and the terrible, TERRIBLE adverts on daytime TV, which I am a complete sucker for. At the moment, I’m about to start saving with Park, thanks to Coleen Nolan, am embarking on a new career as an Avon lady, and can’t wait to get dieting with Jenny Craig, just like that lovely Scottish lady on the ad. Not really. But such is the level of my intellectual stimulation at present, that none of this is beyond the realms of fantasy. I’ve subscribed to a couple of magazines today to help get me back in the real world. I like knowing about new restaurant openings, even if I’m unlikely to visit for a while.

Yesterday, I made my first foray up into town. I met lovely Ellie for lunch, and then Rosie and I headed east to visit Andrew in his office, near St Paul’s. As I’ve said before, have Oyster- will travel. Except somehow, I managed to break the chassis of the pram  travel system, so that one of the front wheels wasn’t actually on the ground, and the whole thing was on the wonk. Still, Rosie was nice and secure, so I thought, sod it.

It was a glorious day, and it was a treat to walk past St Paul’s Cathedral, its great white dome dominating the skyline of the Square Mile. City workers buzzed about, and the winter sun lit up the Millennium Bridge off to my left in the distance. Later on, after visiting his office, Andrew headed home with us, and we walked the mile or so to London Bridge station, back past the cathedral, and via Mansion House and Cannon Street, before crossing the river. I do love London.

Rosie’s a month old now, and continues to chunk up nicely (thank you, Cow & Gate). This morning, after feeding her, Andrew put her back in bed with me, as he headed to work, and she and I dozed for an hour or so. Waking up with Rosie next to me is now my absolute favourite way to start the day- little snuffling woodland creature noises, the milky smell at the back of her neck, her fingers searching for mine- the perfect peace of having nowhere to be and nothing to do but look at her.

And then, with a roar, she demanded breakfast- and the cycle of repetition started again.