Tag: baby

It’s not a competition

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It should be obvious that parenting isn’t a competition. If it was, there would be medals, awards ceremonies and prize money. But there’s no extra credit for how long you can go without sleep, there are no special mentions for martyrdom, and if you’re the dad, give up now because there’s no way you can […]

To sleep, perchance to dream

Gillan DrewLeave a comment

The past nine months I’ve had a recurrent dream. I’m backstage at a play, waiting to go on, and I haven’t learned my lines. It’s okay, though, because I only have two and I’m confident I can blag it. A couple of minutes beforehand, I glance at the script and to my horror I have five pages of complex dialogue and I’m not ready and oh hell there’s my cue.

It’s obvious what that’s about. No matter how much you prepare, how many courses you attend and how many books you read, you never feel ready for the arrival of your baby. I’ve had that dream at least twice a week, often more.

I haven’t had it since Izzie was born. On the third day I dreamt I had boobs, but I couldn’t produce enough milk so the baby was crying. In the twilight before dawn this morning, in the 90 minutes between settling Izzie down to sleep and her waking up screaming, I dreamt I had just given birth to triplets, and again my boobs were empty. I’m noticing a pattern emerging here.

Izzie might only be twelve days old, but she’s already starting to grasp that while daddy might have a great beard, mummy’s the one with the breasts. I just can’t satisfy her on that one, although when she’s hungry she does seem to think I have a nipple somewhere on my left biceps. If I did, it would make things so much easier!

It makes me wonder what Izzie dreams about when she sleeps.

Apparently, babies don’t dream. Despite reaching the REM stage of sleep and spending around eight hours there each day, they have too few experiences upon which to call for creating genuine dreams. Instead, the brain uses this period of sleep to discover the body it inhabits, learning about the nervous system and creating neural links (this is what the jerking movements, distinct from the startle reaction, are all about). But how can they be sure?

Sometimes Izzie cringes in her sleep and whines as though having a nightmare. Sometimes her breathing comes in fits and starts like she’s excited. Her experiences might be limited, but all of our sensations, emotions, thoughts and behaviours are played out in our dreams, even if all we know is milk, and pooping, and cuddles.

I like to think that Izzie dreams of a man with a great beard and a nipple on his arm. As for myself, I have a feeling I’ll be dreaming of my empty boobs for quite some time to come.

Baby Steps

Gillan DrewLeave a comment

When I was travelling through the wilderness of New Zealand I developed a simple mantra: step, step, step. Soaked to the skin in never-ending rain, tramping uphill towards a mountain pass that didn’t get any closer, with nothing but a cold cabin & faulty gas burner waiting for me, it was too much to think of the end goal. Or the middle goal. Or even the next hundred yards. I could only focus on lifting my foot, moving it forward, placing it down, step, step, step.

Raising a baby is all about the steps. My partner Lizzie thinks it’s about getting through the day, but to me that’s far too long term. Don’t think of reaching bedtime, don’t think of the next three hours. Live in the moment.

As I write this, Izzie is cuddled in my arms with hiccups, looking at me in a confused, mesmerising fashion. When the hiccups finish, will I need to change a nappy, feed her, burp her, settle her to sleep? It doesn’t matter. Right now I’m holding her as she hiccups and that’s good enough.

When the authorities learned that two people with AS were expecting, they assigned the unborn baby a social worker and set about testing our capability to raise a child. How would we meet its social and emotional needs? What would we do if it was eight years old and being bullied, or twelve and struggling to make friends? What sort of things did we witness as children (a particularly leading question, I thought: I witnessed some truly awful McDonald’s adverts, but I’m not sure that counts)?

My answer was that no prospective parent can possibly know what they’ll do so far in the future. We were learning about breastfeeding, nappies, burping, not studying dating advice for teenagers. Like any parent we’ll sort out the baby thing first, then the toddler thing when it arrives, then each stage in turn. And when the baby is being bullied at eight, we’ll have eight years of parenting experience, and be better capable of answering that question than if I made something up now.

They ultimately discharged us, with a view to checking in every so often to make sure we’re hitting the social and emotional milestones, whatever those are. Sometimes I think we know too much, and put undue pressure on parents and children, Aspie or otherwise, to fit into a model of what is deemed ‘normal’. But right now, I’m just thinking of step, step, step.

(And the next step was a nappy change, in case you were wondering!)