okasen

I appreciate the sentiment (it hasn’t gotten better per se yet, but we’ve gotten more used to the… nature of the screams) and also I wanted to apologise for being rather combative in explaining the context— which, yeah, was definitely missing in the original post. Gonna edit that now to make this post less rant, more informative.

Yep this. I’ve been given the advice to step away from my baby when she’s crying if I’m overwhelmed and she’s in a safe place. That’s advice from basically every medical professional I’ve encountered during pregnancy and post partum. Because it is so, so important to not let your nerves get fried in an attempt to be a perfect parent, because letting your nerves get fried will lead to shit you’ll regret down the line. Be that shouting or checking out mentally or way worse stuff.

Ear plugs =/= can’t hear. Loops specifically are designed to allow you to hear but not have hearing damage.

My baby is colicky AF and will scream while we’re in the process of making her a bottle. Or while we’re burping her. Or when we have to pull the bottle away to wipe spit up. Or while we’re in the process of soothing her but not soothed yet.

I’m pretty patient (with children, not judgy parents though) but I’m not perfect. I can parent better and be more present while not massively overwhelmed by a noise designed by evolution to be horrible and intolerable.

I’m so sorry. I almost wanted to downvote this because I want to downvote the circumstance.

But heeeeeey that would sort childcare… woohoo…

The swaddle. My child has learned being awake is fun. Including at night. By the power invested in me by this swaddle blanket, she will learn the beauty of SLEEP.

I grew up such a people pleaser that this would have worked SO well on me. Stop leads to “why?” But my parent being upset, or god forbid dosappointed… those are some words of great power.

I swear my nearly 3 week old is starting to turn her head towards me, and occasionally even try to focus her eyes on me, when I speak to her up close.

She wasn’t even meant to be born for another 12 days! At least going by due dates. But honestly as much as I’ve researched adjusted age for preterm babies, I’m becoming convinced I can ignore all that. I can see her speeding towards the 2 month milestones (the first checkpoint, essentially). She’s not hit them yet, that would be crazy, but I’m seeing early signs like the above.

Also she read Watership Down.

Okay it was an abridged version for kids and I did the reading. But she liked the pictures.

Okay not strictly words, like at all, but the other day I had my baby in my lap and she randomly arched backwards, pursed her lips in an O, and after a dramatic pause let out a long “oooooooooooh”

I knew then I was sleep deprived because I lost my shit laughing.

Tl:dr; “ooooooooh”

If your freshly born newborn doesn’t poop because she’s constipated, well they work surprisingly like toothpaste tubes if you hold their knees to their chest.

I’m sorry for the image. I’ve earned my “grit your teeth and do what you gotta” merit badge at just a week and a half postpartum, so I’m… happy?

I would love a general/weekly discussion post! Currently 8 months pregnant with my first, so I’ll take any chance to connect with other parents once she is here.

Beautiful! And I bet it’ll be even more beautiful in bloom!

Do you harvest from this patch and eat them? I’ve never had prickly pear, but everyone I know who has raves about it. Therefor, I am jealous 😄

I would just like to both validate and challenge your view of the UK. I lived in Torquay (Devon, so the southwest) for a good long while, albeit during the height of lockdowns, and community felt nonexistant. There were some punk-type-folks attempting to get stuff started right when I moved away, but only just then iirc.

I moved to Inverness (Scottish Highlands) and it’s night and day. There’s a queer community doing hella shit, there’s a tool library popping off, lots of good local initiatives are being organised and taking off.

My kneejerk response is to say that Inverness beats the hell outta Torquay. But the thing is, about 4-5 years ago NONE OF THE STUFF I mentioned was going on. The queer meetup was organised by one dude who moved up from London and was gobsmacked that there wasn’t an active community. Now it’s consistently a huge, weekly event. There are even offshoots of quieter meetups that had to be created because the main one is So Successful. But all the local queers will tell you that before this started, they thought they were all alone up here.

And the tool library is only about a year old, but keeping on well.

So on one hand, yeah, I think the UK has a very… independent culture. But once someone identifies a need in a community and fills that need, people tend to show up and appreciate it.

Also, i reckon this is a good time to be an organiser. People are tired of being alone during a pandemic, people are tired of seeing what other communities do via the internet and want their communities to do the same.

Tl;dr be the change! There’s an appetite for it.