Barefoot In The Kitchen

We’re getting rid of bottles during the day over the next few weeks.  David is already pretty good at the whole cup thing, but we want to achieve this pretty much full time:

There’s something else, too.  My baby boy, who stopped being breastfed mostly at four weeks and completely at six months, who stopped having expressed milk at nine months, who adores his bottles, has decided he wants to start again.

He sees his cousin being fed, and tries for days afterwards to get me to feed him.  A few weeks ago, I let him.  By some miracle, he managed to latch on properly and get some milk out, and I’ve been feeding him before a nap and for comfort since.  He’s not been able to the last few days, first because I was ill, and then because I’d had antibiotics, but he’s asking and desparate to start again.

I hated breastfeeding the first time around.  He never latched properly, I never got the hang of holding him properly, and he had terrible colic which was fixed by the more regulated flow from a bottle.  It’s so different now: despite the long gap, it’s come naturally and easily to both of us.  It’s wonderful.  It’s something only I can do for him, that his beloved Daddy can’t.  He doesn’t bite, which I was scared about, and it hurts less than when he was a newborn.

Now, I’m aware this might be a phase that he grows out of in a week.  He might equally go on with it for another year.  I’m not actively trying to increase my supply, which, oddly, never really went away.  If he’s still interested in a couple of weeks, I’ll dig the breast pump out, buy some more breast pads, and start expressing a few feeds a day.

I’m not going to become evangelical about breastfeeding: I understand why it doesn’t work for some people, because it didn’t work for me at first.  I wouldn’t have thought to try again if David hadn’t wanted it: he’s doing fine on goats’ milk, water and juice.  Like I’ve said before, we all have to make parenting choices, and somewhere along the line someone will criticize us for them.  (I’m particularly looking forward to my mother’s reaction to David and his resumed love of breastmilk when we go to visit them this weekend.)

David doesn’t need breastmilk any more: I know we could drop it tomorrow and he’d be fine with his goats’ milk, but I don’t want to.  Call me selfish all you like, but I adore this.  Now that he doesn’t depend on it to survive, I can relax and enjoy the experience, and that’s the best thing ever.  I’m going to buy a new nursing bra and dig out the nursing tops, and enjoy this while it lasts.

(Also?  I’d normally hate the expression, but I am SO teaching him to call it boobie in front of my mother, just for the added shock value.)

Darling, darling David,

You’ll turn fourteen months old at 3.14pm today, and this month you are definitely Toddler, rather than Baby.  I love this stage, and I can’t say I miss the baby as much as I thought I would.

You started this month walking a little more than you were crawling.  You ended it running everywhere.  You’re a joy to follow, and a nightmare to catch up with: you certainly keep everyone on their toes!  You love walking because you can carry things, especially Tiger, who now comes everywhere with us.  You are also a minature escape artist: you’re learning to operate doors.  We’re screwed.

You’ve spent a lot of time with Grandma and Grandpa over the last few days, as I’ve been first in bed and then in hospital.  (I’m mostly better now, although I won’t be if you keep playing that blinking xylophone.)  I think you’ve missed me: you certainly seemed to.  I’m happy, though, that you’ve had a lovely weekend with your grandparents and a day with Daddy today, even though I’m a little sad that you completely managed without me.  You’ve been lovely and snuggly, though.

You’ve also been horribly ill this month, of course.  It started with a runny nose, and moved onto an ear infection and conjunctivitis (well, if you will rub snot in your eyes…), followed by a really nasty case of tonsilitis, followed by a sickness bug which gave you the nastiest nappies in the world, ever.  You were sick over two cafes, countless baby changing rooms, and the kitchen and bathroom more times than I care to count.  It’s the first time I’ve ever put you in a disposable nappy and not felt bad about it, although I’m now regretting buying those disgusting Huggies pullups.  You look much better in a Bitti Brite.

You’ve developed a love of music, both with That Blinking Xylophone, your Mozart cube, and the piano.  You ask for “PAN-O!” all the time, I lift you onto the stool, and stand behind to make sure you don’t fall off.  You like the twelve-bar blues, and you can make high and low and loud and quiet sounds if I ask you.

You’ve also decided that you like to look at books, thank goodness: I was beginning to worry that you were swapped at birth!  Your favourite “book” is the Green Baby AW2010 trade catalogue, and you’ll sit and look at it for hours.  I’m glad we’re branching away from “That’s Not My…” now, although you still like That’s Not My Dinosaur and That’s Not My Monkey.  Your speech is coming on in leaps and bounds alongside the reading, and you’ve learned so many new words I can’t write them all down here.  Wily has been renamed “Dog”, Snowball is “Bo-baw”, and Eric is still “EH-RH!”

Food!  Food has been so, so much better.  You eat pretty much everything unless it’s slimy, and we’re still having a bit of a vegetable battle.  You managed to bring yourself to put baby spaghetti hoops in your mouth the other night, and you have a new favourite food: pizza!  A couple of months ago you wouldn’t have touched melted cheese, never mind wolfing down an entire M&S kids’ pizza.  You get excited if I get one out of the freezer and cross when I put it in the oven.  You also love grapes, and yoghurt-coated raisins, and garlic bread, of course.  Oh, and Daddy’s beer.

You’ve developed a cheeky streak this month, and a love of flushing things down the toilet.  These things have included pens, Duplo people, and toilet roll!  You grin when we dare to tell you off, and it’s so, so hard to keep a straight face unless you’ve done something like bite somebody.  (Yeah, please can we quit that?)

That’s it from me this month, I think.

I love you, toddler-boy.  Stay like this, please?

Love,

Mummy (and the evil Daddy who puts you in disgusting disposable nappies, but he’ll still cry when he reads this.)

The other day we went to see the Registrar in preparation for getting married.  It’s a routine appointment, where you submit a birth certificate, proof of residency and proof of address, and get given permission to marry at any point within the next year.  Joe went in first and did the lion’s share of the paperwork while I waited outside with David, and then we swapped over.  (I can’t say that I found this anything other than a little weird: we weren’t talked to together at any point this morning.)

I followed the registrar into the office and sat down; we exchanged the usual pleasantries, and started on the paperwork.  Then:

“I forgot to mention this to your partner.  Your little boy: he is your little boy, isn’t he?  Well, after you get married you can have his birth certificate re-issued.”

Huh?  Seeing the utterly confused look on my face, she continued:

“You can legitimise him: you can change his birth certificate to show that you were married.  You only get one chance to, and it’s just after the wedding.  You can’t do it after that.”

Pardon?

“It would be much better for him not to be illegitimate.  It’s so important that children are raised in a stable married environment, don’t you think?”

What. the. fucking. FUCK?  I mumbled an agreement to be polite.

“We must get on.  Don’t let me forget to give you the form.  Just fill it in and drop it off here after you’ve done the ceremony.”

I made it through the rest of the appointment without being sarcastic or rude, just.  I think I managed to mention the idea to Joe in a positive tone of voice in front of her.  It’s only now that I’m writing this, after thinking about it for a few days, that I’ve realised I’m still angry about it.

Why should Joe and I being married make any difference to David?  Why should things be any different for him because we weren’t when he was born?  He’s being raised in a stable and loving relationship without any legal pieces of paper, and that seems to work well enough.

I have no dispute with this service being available: I’m know it’s important to some people.  My quarrel is with the Registrar herself, and with her attitude; with the belief that children born inside wedlock are somehow worth more than those born outside; with the assumption that marriage is the most desirable, the only proper environment to bring a child up in.  Yes, I would’ve liked David to be born five years later, when we would be married and settled, with a bigger house and more money, but he wasn’t; and in any case, the “marriage” bit would be the least important part of that: being settled and happy in the relationship would be far more important.

What I’m trying to say, I think, is that marriage isn’t the be-all and end-all, and that to suggest otherwise is deeply offensive to children like David.  We’re getting married to celebrate our family, not to make us a better one.  Our cheeky, bright, happy, much-loved little boy isn’t worth less to anybody because we didn’t sign some legal documents before he was born.  He should be proud of where he came from, not ashamed that his parents weren’t married: that attitude is straight out of the 1950s, and should be left there, never to make a return.

David is “illegitimate”, but David is happy, he is healthy, he is loved, and he has parents who love each other.  That’s what matters in this day and age, not whether we signed a legal document before he was born.