MILA & ME - My 5 month update

My recovery 

I can’t believe that it’s been 5 months since I’ve given birth! In someways it feels like yesterday – I can remember every single detail of Mila’s birth story and I’m sure I will forever, but on the other hand I feel like I’m starting to get my pace as a mother which feels great.

I’d say that it took me about 3-4 weeks to feel completely normal again and feel healed. I remember the most annoying part being the stitches as they felt uncomfortable, itchy and tight until they dissolved. As soon as they had gone I felt so much better. I think it also takes a while to mentally recover from going through giving birth and getting your head around your new responsibility as a parent. For the first couple of weeks I kept feeling really down as soon as bedtime would approach – maybe it was the thought of broken sleep? But I always felt this overwhelming responsibility like my life had really changed and I wasn’t sure if I’d ever completely feel like myself again. 5 months in and I feel like now that we have somewhat of a routine I’m getting back to doing the things that make me feel more like myself which is great.

Weight Loss 

Initially I lost the baby weight pretty quickly, within 8 weeks I was down to my pre baby weight, which I put down to breastfeeding and the busyness of having a new baby to care for. The picture above is from 3 weeks postpartum, a great top that strategically covers my wobbly bits and is great for breastfeeding. Since then however I feel like I’ve definitely put on a few pounds. I don’t know about anyone else but having a new baby just makes me want to eat cake! Like I was saying in one of my posts everytime I put Mila down for a nap I feel like I must congratulate myself with a cup of tea and cake. So my next task is to get back into eating healthy, curb my cake habit and get back into exercising regularly.

Mind set

Like I was saying before it took a little while for me to get my head around the responsibility of having a baby. When I first gave birth to Mila I was so anxious about every little thing! I was constantly on google and worrying about the tiniest of things, but I now have so much more confidence within my parenting abilities, so I feel like I’ve come a long way. Every so often I try and leave Mila with Joe or a relative so that I can have a couple hours/day or night break to do the things that I want to do like go for dinner with friends or enjoy some time in a coffee shop reading a book. It’s the little things like this that keep me refreshed and make me feel more like myself again not just ‘Mila’s mum’.

MILA & ME - Mila's 5 month update

Wow, where does the time go? I was planning on doing these updates far more frequently, but alas, life took over and i've just been enjoying savoring every moment of my maternity leave with Mila.

Catch up
The last 5 months have been everything; exciting, hard, emotional, tiring -  I could go on. We got 3 months in and Joe & I were (foolishly) thinking that this parenting thing isn't too hard, we've got it together. We had been blessed with a pretty good sleeper, generally sleeping from 11-5am with a quick feed at 5am and then waking up at 8am from around 4 weeks old, she breastfed like a dream and I guess the only thing that I used to find challenging was getting her down for a nap as she hit the 6 week milestone. Queue the 8 week immunisations to come in and ruin EVERYTHING. Mila actually ended up having her first jabs at 12 weeks and boy oh boy were they a game changer for us. Sleep was pretty much out of the window, she started waking up more in the night which to be honest I felt like I could deal with, especially after feeling like we had got lucky in the first 3 months. For me the hardest thing was that she suddenly started rejecting the breast. Everytime I would try and feed her she would kick,fuss and generally just get worked up and fustrated to the point that I was so worried that she wasn't getting enough milk. I'm planning on doing a proper post about my breastfeeding journey so I will go into more depth there, but it was a hard time and lasted for about 10 days, at which point she was finally breastfeeding well again. I've learnt that there are always these little things that crop up and I always try to remember that i'm sure it won't be forever, and like with everything she'll change again.

I've also left Mila for the first time in the last couple of months, twice with Joe and twice where we left her with grandparents to enjoy time away with our friends. I absolutely adore spending time with Mila, but it was so good to have a break and actually be able to miss her, I think it's so important as parents to have that break because I think it makes you appreciate them more and it's definitely helped me take steps to getting back to myself.

So I think that's a good roundup of what's happened over the last 5 months, onto the update!

Sleep

After a couple of months of the sleep being a bit up and down we are finally getting to a place where Mila is starting to sleep more again at night. For the past 2 months she's been waking up twice in the night. She was going to bed at 8pm then waking at 2am & 5am for a feed. So we've now made her bedtime earlier, she's generally asleep by 7.30pm every night, waking at around 10.30pm/11pm for a feed and then she'll usually have a night feed at around 3/4am and then wake up for the day between 6.30am - 7am (bar the last couple of days where she's decided that 5.30am is her new time).
Nap wise she is usually pretty good unless we're on a really busy day when she sometimes struggles to get a long sleep in. She generally has an 1 hour and half in the morning, 2 hours in the afternoon and a 30 min cat nap late afternoon. We tend to try and get her to have all her naps by 4.30pm in the afternoon so that she is ready for her 7pm bedtime. So sleep wise I feel like we are slowly getting into a routine again which I love as it means I can plan a bit more.

Feeding

Our feeding journey is something that I want to talk about in depth, but at 5 months Mila is now fully on formula. I breastfed with the odd bottle of formula here and there up until 2 weeks ago when we took Mila to get weighed and found out that she had hardly gained any weight in the last month. Being her main caregiver and source of food I felt extremely guilty that she hadn't gained more weight and we made the decision to introduce her properly to formula. We're still finding our feet but Mila generally has 6-7 bottles a day, taking around 5oz-6oz at each feed. I don't know if it's linked but I definitely feel like she is sleeping better since we made the switch and even though we aren't completely sure exactly why she didn't gain enough I have inkling that perhaps I wasn't making enough and maybe she was waking so much in the night due to hunger :( who knows, but it could be the reason. In more positive news we are very excited to start weaning Mila, I've heard a lot about baby led weaning and i'm leaning towards going that way but would love to hear peoples weaning experiences.

Development

At 5 months Mila's character is well and truly shining through. I think the most obvious thing is how active she is. She never wants to sit down, she is always insisting on standing and marching on your legs - it's hilarious, i'm not sure if she'll ever sit up! She's rolling over confidently, she can roll front to back and back to front, but usually chooses to just do the latter and then try and crawl. She's just started trying to push back onto her back legs so I think she could end up being an early crawler. She's such a happy baby and she's at the stage where she is such a pleasure to be around. She can tell now when you're being silly and finds it hilarious, she also loves it when we sing to her. Her favourite songs are anything that include her name, we've edited Miffy the sweet little bunny to Mila the sweet little bunny and she just beams everytime you start singing it. She has her favourite toys which she smiles when she sees and puts her hands out to grab and she can't fall alseep without her elephant comforter - in fact I must buy another for when I have to wash the other one! Oh and absolutely everything goes in her mouth. She actually started trying to eat the bath water last night for fun. I don't miss the newborn stage at all as she's so much fun at the moment, but everytime I see a tiny baby I do feel that sense of nostalgia remembering how lovely those days were.

So I think that wraps it up for Mila's 5 month update. I still can't believe that she 5 months old, when I was pregnant I couldn't imagine anything past 3 months. I was planning to put my update in this post as well, but I think i've rambled on long enough, so stay tuned for my 5 month postpartum update.

BLOGTOBER: HOW TO MAKE TIME WHEN YOU HAVE A BABY

Ironically my last post was about advice that I decided to ignore being a new mum and i'm going to completely contradict myself by posting some advice on how i've managed to make time and get things done now that I have a baby. I'd also love to hear if anyone has any tips that they use as i'm always trying to be more efficient!

Shower & get dressed at the start of the day

This may seem like a really obvious one, but there are too many times where it gets to 12pm and i'm still in my dressing gown, the laundry isn't done and i've realised that i've been snacking all morning. Just doing small things like using Mila's first nap of the day to sort myself out are things that make me feel a little more together and less like a tired & stressy mum. 

Set yourself 3 tasks that you want to get done by the end of the day and that's it!

Sometimes I find that it's too easy to set myself a never ending list of things to do that ends up being so overwhelming I practically do none of it. I then get to the end of the day and feel deflated that i've not 'achieved' any of it. By giving myself 3 tasks I end up prioritizing the really important things and ignoring the things that can wait till later in the week. Normally I end up getting more done because I feel more positive about getting those 3 tasks done.

Limit your social media time

I'm really bad at this one. There are too many times that Mila goes down for a nap and i'm like 'right lets get this cleaning done' and then I realise that 30 minutes has passed and all i've done is browse instagram. It's probably one of my worst habits, so I'm still working on this one myself. On my good days I catch up with social media at feed times as it's when I have to be sat down and can't get much else done or in my 'chill time nap' which leads me on nicely to my next point...

Give yourself down time

I sometimes give myself too much down time because I don't plan my down time into my day if that makes any sense. For me it makes sense to try and get things done when Mila is asleep and take things slow when Mila is awake. However most the time Mila goes down for a nap I feel like I must congratulate myself with a cup of tea and take a little break myself. That's totally fine but if it happens at every nap I get nothing done and then I find myself trying to catch up whilst she's awake and find myself trying to split my time which means I don't end up doing either task very well. At the moment Mila takes around 3-4 naps a day so I normally prioritize one of her afternoon naps as one of my 'chill time' naps where I just take a break myself. Also the more that I get done in the day the more I can relax once she goes to bed.

Break up the cleaning

I struggled with this one so much at first. There I was with a 2 week old Mila, Joe had just gone back to work and I thought I'd try and tackle the cleaning in one of her naps. She woke up 30 minutes in and I hadn't even finished the kitchen. I'm the kind of person that once I get into a task I find it hard to stop until it's complete so having a crying baby interrupting all the time was really throwing me off. It took me a couple of weeks to realise that I was never going to have a full cleaning session without Mila waking up, so now I have two main cleaning days in the week that I try and stick to and I whiz round and do the most important things and forget about the rest.

Tidy before you go to bed

This ties into the point above. If I know I want to get a good cleaning session in the next day I try and make sure that the flat is as tidy as it can be before I go to bed so all I need to do is get stuck into the cleaning as soon as possible. I also find that it's great for my mind sight waking up to tidy surroundings.

Get things done when there's two of you

Being the one that is staying at home with Mila I often give myself too much to do. Having a baby is time consuming, tiring and definitely constitutes as a job in itself in my eyes, but because I'm at home all the time I think that by the time that Joe gets home I must have all of this house stuff done. Spending Sunday morning sorting drawers out might not be fun but you can get it done so much quicker if it's both of you. Sometimes it's my sister or mum that come over and just watch Mila for a while whilst I potter around and get some things done that I need to do, I find that works really well as well.

Ask for and accept any help from anyone

There is no shame in asking for help or accepting help. One of the best things I did last month was ask Joe to take Mila out for the day without me. I got things done around the house, washed my hair, did my nails, I even went for a swim and that was all without having to wonder if Mila was going to wake up from her nap or what time she'd need her next feed. 

If all else fails resort to TV/Youtube

Yes I am one of those mum's who said that she would never place her child in front of the TV. I'm laughing to myself about that one now and how unrealistic that was. Sometimes you just HAVE to get things done and I know that if I let Mila watch '5 Little Ducklings' on Youtube for a little while I'll be able to get on with a couple of bits without interruption. That's my mum confession over for today. 

So those are my top tips for trying to make time with a baby. Overall I think the most important thing is trying to do things that save time so that you ultimately make time for yourself and have quality time with your family. 

BLOGTOBER: FOUR PIECES OF ADVICE I IGNORED

Being a new mum everyone wants to give you their advice about how to look after your baby. As well meaning as this advice might be sometimes you just have to go with your own instincts. There are so many things that midwives/health visitors/family/friends told me to do which a lot of the time contradicted one another so today I thought I'd share the main things that I didn't follow peoples advice on and that in the end really didn't matter.

Don't give your baby a dummy

Ahh yes the age old dummy or not to dummy question. Whether it was right or wrong we gave Mila a dummy at two days old. It was our second night home and she had been unsettled all evening fighting sleep and we were both about to tear our hair out when we suddenly remembered that someone had bought us some dummies. We gave it to her and we had immediate peace and she dropped off to sleep. Some babies have a strong sucking reflex that dummies really help with and Mila is definitely one of those babies. Now that she's a bit older we try to only use it when she needs to sleep so she knows when it is time for a nap, it's also been helping for those days where she's teething a lot to divert her attention. So for us despite a lot of people saying not to give it to her so young as she might get 'nipple confusion' dummies have most definitely been a winner in our books.

Don't drink coffee whilst breastfeeding

I've done a lot of research into this and found that food & drinks can transfer through milk, however different babies react differently to certain food/drinks, it isn't a 'one rule fits all'. Of course if I kept eating a certain thing and Mila was reacting to it then I would of course stop eating it, but it's annoying when people say 'ooh don't drink that coffee she'll be up all night!' however well meaning they may be. I don't drink much coffee in general but i've never found that it has affected Mila. Neither have strawberries and neither have grapes - the other two that people love to mention!

Don't give your baby a bottle if you want to breastfeed

Again something that some advised against and others said didn't matter. We were going to a wedding when Mila was 4 weeks old and being so new to the mama game I was feeling quite overwhelmed with my feeding duties and although I loved breastfeeding it was all getting a bit too much. So despite my health visitor telling me not to, I started pumping the odd bottle when Mila was around 3 weeks old, at this stage it was never a regular thing but I remember being worried that I would end up producing too much milk and being engorged. Neither of those happened and I found that it actually helped to regulate my milk flow somewhat. At first I pumped one to test to see if she would take a bottle and then pumped a bottle on the day of the wedding for her to have in the evening. It was nice to have a couple of hours where I didn't have to think about feeding and meant that I felt confident at planning an evening out with friends knowing that Mila would happily take a bottle and go back to the breast when I returned. From that moment on Mila would have the odd bottle of pumped milk until she was around 6/7 weeks old and I started pumping a bit more regularly.

Don't rocked/held/ fed my baby to sleep

Before I had Mila I read a lot of sleep training advice and read all about those magical schedules that will have your baby sleeping 8 hours at night at 8 weeks old. Now I'm not knocking anyone that does schedules or whose baby is sleeping through the night, i'm going to be honest I envy you massively if that is the case! But for me a lot of the 'rules' just weren't very realistic. Advice like, put your baby down in the cot when drowsy and don't give them eye contact & walk away from the cot didn't work for me and I would always resort to rocking or feeding to sleep. I'm pretty sure that this whole 'self soothing' malarky is a myth as well. At 5 months old, I have probably committed every single 'sleeping' faux pas at risk of her creating bad habits, but sometimes you just need to get your baby to nap at whatever cost, because her having a meltdown 3 hours later just isn't worth it for you or her. So far Mila hasn't created any bad habits and if I put her in the cot to sleep at the right time she will fall alseep and have a good nap. So if you're a new mum and you're worrying that everytime you feed your baby to sleep or when they cry - god forbid - you go and rock them back to sleep try not to worry, they'll decide when they no longer need you to do that anymore. On the other hand if it's getting too much and you're at your wits end with feeding to sleep everytime, then by all means be a little bit stricter if that works for you, the point being just trust your instincts, trust your baby and I'm sure that all will work out.

BLOGTOBER: WE'VE MOVED!

 So it's done! We survived the move with a (nearly) 5 month old baby, a flight of stairs and a lot of heavy furniture. It was tough and I was exhausted by the end of the day but we are just so happy to have more space.  I can't take all of the credit though, moving is easy when you have two amazing friends that give up their Saturday to help you and a brilliant mum to babysit. We have lots of exciting plans for our place - nothing too extravagant as we are only renting after all but a lick of paint and a couple of new pieces of furniture will be enough to put our own touch on it. I'm going to do my best to document it all along the way, we might even try our hand at repurposing some furniture but we'll see! I'll leave you with some pictures of the little details in our new place and i'm sure i'll share some more pictures on here and on Instagram over the coming months. 

BLOGTOBER: SAYING GOODBYE

I'm writing this post with boxes surrounding me on a tiny bit of the couch that isn't being taken up from our stuff, this place has been far from ideal but there is still a part of me that is sad to leave. This was our first home together, the place that we brought our new baby home to and will hold so many special memories. It's been a challenge living in such a small place with a baby, we used all of the space saving techniques we could think of, I for one cannot wait to be able to have a bigger wardrobe in the next place. If i'm brutally honest our next place will be harder on us financially and sticking to a budget will be essential, but living in this place has taught us what we're prepared to sacrifice. Most of all Mila needs more space and we want to be somewhere that we can be settled in for a couple of years before *eventually* deciding to buy and that's exactly what our new place offers us.

So despite all of the negatives and at times feeling desperate to leave, looking back this place has been just what we needed at this time in our lives. But onwards and upwards - I can't wait to share pictures of the new place and our journey making it our own.

BLOGTOBER: FOUR HUNDRED RABBITS - South London Gems

Hi everyone! Welcome to my first Blogtober post. This is a bit of a throwback post as I'm currently in the middle of a house move so I thought it would be a great time to upload my long overdue post about Four Hundred Rabbits in Crystal Palace. Having lived South of the river for 6 months now, I cannot believe how many hidden gems there are. Before moving here I rarely ventured over on this side of the river, most of my favourite places being very East London centric, so I was pleasantly surprised to find so many exciting restaurants and things to do. 

We first ventured to Four Hundred Rabbits when Mila was 3 weeks old. It's such a memorable day for me as it was around the time we started venturing out more and it was also the first day that I ever breastfed in public (nerve wracking). Being a new mum I am always looking for places that are family friendly. Questions that run through my mind are, is it an acceptable place for a baby to cry, is it quiet enough that my baby will potentially sleep and most importantly is it big enough to fit in my pram. Four Hundred Rabbits ticks all of those boxes, it has such a relaxed vibe making it perfect for families and an ideal spot for our first meal out.

Four hundred rabbits specialises in sourdough pizzas drawing influence from pizzas found in Napoli, named four hundred rabbits as that is the temperature that the pizzas are cooked at. Not only does the restaurant offer original pizzas, it also serves up craft beer. As I was breastfeeding practically every hour at that point, I enjoyed a Karma Cola - a fairtrade organic coke, coke drinking has never been so guilt free.

We went for the beef and green chilli pizza and it didn't disappoint. The only other sourdough pizza that I have tried is Franco Manca, and whilst it is very different in my opinion it was just as good. What I love about Four Hundred Rabbits is the interesting pizza choices along with a great price, the most expensive pizza coming in at around £9.50. Mila even managed to sleep through the whole experience so I could really enjoy my pizza. So if you're ever in the area it is one that I would definitely recommend. I went back again the other day and this time indulged in a dessert, a salted caramel brownie with coconut gelupo which was all kinds of dreamy, check out my instagram if you would like to see a picture here.

Thought i'd end this post with a picture of Mila after our trip out. Wow she was so tiny at 3 weeks old! Come back tomorrow for my next blogtober post.