Jackson is 6 Months old on Wednesday.
How did that happen?
He is not my newborn baby boy of the summer anymore. He is into everything and will, I reckon, soon be crawling – he’s already dragging himself around with his arms. He will be starting to wean on Wednesday, leaving the complete reliance of breastfeeding behind. He will soon be sitting in his high chair, throwing mushed up vegetables at my walls!
It doesn’t seem 5 minutes since I was hugely pregnant, struggling to breastfeed, worrying about taking him out and about, but on the other hand it seems like a lifetime ago. I am so used to him now I can normally tell what he wants and when he will want it before he asks.
He has grown so much – newborn clothes used to be too big for him, but now he’s firmly in 3-6month clothes, even outgrowing some of them! His once skinny legs are chubby and his face has filled out no end. He is now a properly handsome boy – even if I do say so myself!
He hasn’t started teething yet however they are bothering him as he dribbles a lot and is shoving everything in his mouth. I think this is also affecting his sleeping as he uses me as a comfort blanket when things get sore. I’m trying not to dose him up on teething gels and Calpol however sometimes it is unavoidable as he’s been screaming in pain.
He’s been rolling over for weeks, can pick up his dummy and put it back in his mouth and he started clapping on Christmas Day!
He’s always preferred being stood up since he was tiny, but now he stands up with minimal support and he bounces like mad too! His new nickname is Tigger!
I have bought him a ‘Baby Bud’ booster seat from Mamas and Papas ready for weaning which he has been enjoying with his activity tray since Christmas. It stores nicely on a dining chair thus taking up no extra room which is handy in a small house. He seems to enjoy it and manages to sit up with only a little support on his lower back. I don’t think it’ll be long until he’s sitting unaided.

Watching him grow and develop so quickly is amazing. He is fast becoming his own person. He hates being still – we started baby massage and while all the other babies are lying there quite happily he wants to be rolling over and seeing what’s going on and what there is to play with! It’s kind of annoying that he doesn’t like baby massage but it’s amazing to see him so much more into things than the other babies of the same age. Something tells me I am going to have my hands full with him, but he is still my little baby.
Being a single parent I think the bond is a lot stronger than it would’ve been necessarily as a family unit as it has just been the two of us. His dad visits a couple of times a week but obviously Jackson is more attached to me. It has its disadvantages too as night feeds are not fun when it’s you only doing them – I found that cosleeping helped in the early days, however I am finding it difficult to break that habit and get him into his own cot now. I see my parents quite a lot, be it them popping over for a cuppa and a cuddle or me going to theirs for a good square meal. Without them I would have gone insane a long time ago.
The last six months have been a huge learning curve. This parenting lark is hard. I would have been lost without all the help I’ve had from my family, but I think I am getting the hang of it. This little boy is literally growing before my eyes and it is scary and amazing in equal measure. But more than anything I love him with all my heart.

I’m not sure where sleep-deprived ends and zombie state begins.

I know that for the first few days after Jackson was born I was in zombie state. I was in hospital being induced 3 days prior to giving birth, that alone is not conducive to a good nights sleep, and then stayed up all night in labour and then marvelling at my son. Since then I haven’t had an unbroken nights sleep.

The other night I had no more than an hours sleep at a time thanks to Jackson waking up shouting, not screaming or crying, just awake and shouting every hour. The day after that I’d probably have considered that I’d gone back to the zombie state.

Everyone warns you that you don’t sleep much with a newborn, but my son is no longer a newborn, so when does it start being unusual? The most I am getting is 3 hours at a time, my son is 19 weeks old. The other mums I meet and talk to are down to one feed a night, so is my son needy? Greedy? Attention seeking? I don’t know! I don’t know how to get him to sleep more, to feed less, or more effectively, I’m at a loss and I just don’t know.

He is slowly getting into a bedtime routine, down at 6-6.30 and then up every 3 hours from there. I say slowly as he regularly doesn’t go down until 9 or 10, and that involves me rocking him for hours on end, getting slowly more frustrated.

I’m not sure at what point I should call my health visitor and ask for help again. Will it get easier when he goes onto solids? Will it get worse?

I suppose I will continue muddling through until it gets too much, or (fingers crossed it’s this one) he improves and reduces the night time feeds.

No, I’m not one of those mums.
At least not on Facebook.

(My Facebook is reserved only for my real life friends. People I have actually met, and I delete people I no longer talk to. It may seem harsh, but I’m not interested in what someone I went to school with when I was 4 is doing now. By sticking to this I always care about what’s in my newsfeed.)

I use my Twitter account to share Jackson updates, after all, it’s what I made it for, while my Facebook account is saved for special updates and momentous occasions.
I’d never have believed this a few years ago.
I didn’t ‘get’ Twitter. I didn’t have anything to share. My updates would have been “Got a cup of tea” and I would have had no followers, because, in all honesty, who wants to read that?
Facebook, however, got everything. The people who were friends with me to keep up to date on my life were subjected to my mundane, pointless, cryptic statuses. I literally cringe now when I read my daily ‘Timehops’ why on earth did I write that? Why did I update my status 7x a day? Why did I think people cared?!

Back before I was a mum I hated people who shared everything about their child on Facebook. It bugged me. I’m not sure why, but every other update on my Facebook was baby related and I just didn’t care.
Now I guess the rest of my friends feel the same.
The few updates I have put on my Facebook have been ‘liked’ and commented on by the few of my friends who have kids and my family, rarely my childless friends.
I’m not upset.
I totally get it.
To this end I don’t overshare. I get the sharing of those ‘have to share’ photos out of my system on whatsapp to family or on Twitter, but only very occasionally to Facebook where the majority of my friends just don’t care!

I love Twitter, but I’m not the most social person.
I still lack confidence and find myself reading and rereading and redrafting tweets multiple times before I reply to people to make sure it reads right, that I won’t offend them, that it’s worth sending.
That’s me all over. In real life and online.
I go over any conversation with people I don’t really know in my head multiple times before I speak, sometimes missing my chance to speak because I wasn’t sure on what I was saying.
With friends I can be silly, be myself and fire off a reply instantly, knowing that they will take it right, but if I don’t know someone I am terrified of upsetting or offending them, especially as one of the main topics I talk about online is Babyloss.
I’ve never been a particularly sensitive or sympathetic person. What I mean by that is that I don’t know how to express it. Whatever I say I feel like it sounds like I’m being insensitive. I feel everything, I’m sad when people tell me about their losses, but I don’t know how to express it.
I’m working on this, trying to put the ‘social’ back in my social media (however hard this is with a baby around making time scarce) I’m trying to get over my lapses in self confidence with strangers by throwing myself into the conversation. Something I’m also working on in real life, going to baby groups and meeting people. It’s terrifying but also a bit exciting.

Whether online or in real life a baby is a great ice breaker. He is a way to meet people. Photos online draw comments and taking him out in his pushchair I get stopped in the street by strangers who comment on him. Maybe he will be the key to me growing my self confidence.