Food

Any of you who know me IRL, especially those of you who've been kind enough to visit me, will be aware that I'm a bit of a foody and I love to cook. Years of an eating disorder in the past mean that I don't take this for granted, and I really feel blessed that I can have such a good relationship with food now. Some of my most memorable times have been spent laughing and conversing with friends, over a home-cooked meal that's been prepared with love and attention.

Given my rocky past with the whole subject, I've been keen to instill a good attitude towards food into Cian from an early age. As a result, we decided to do Baby Led Weaning, which seemed a natural progression from his breastfeeding on demand. He was used to regulating his own appetite and only taking what food he needed from me, and as he had good hand-eye coordination, a good number of teeth and kept trying to steal bits of salad from my plate, when he got to six months old we embarked on yet another phase of our adventure. He was definitely ready for finger foods rather than purees.

Well, he LOVES his food. Really, really loves it. The first thing he ever ate was broccoli, steamed and cut into florets so he could hold them. Shortly after this he tried bananas, steamed apple, mango, courgette, potato, avocado...before he progressed to meats, fish and grains.

These days, he tends to have porridge with berries for breakfast - we usually fill up the spoon and hand it to him so he can feed himself, but I admit I've sometimes been lazy and helped him. For lunch in this warm weather, we usually share a big platter of things like cheese, bread, cucumber, tomatoes, avocado and fruit. His all time favourite fruit seems to be fresh cherries, but mango runs a close second. For dinner I'll usually serve something warm like grilled chicken and veggies, a casserole, cottage pie, pasta with sauce, or curry.

Yes, you read that correctly. Our baby is a curry addict. If Matt ever has a crazy concern that I'm hiding a dark secret about Cian's parentage, he need only look to his culinary preferences.

Part of the joy of all this, apart from seeing the baby's face when I set a meal of lovingly-prepared food before him, is that it's given me an excuse to cook again - something that I've had scant time to do since I became a mother. I've always tried to consider nutrition when cooking, but having Cian means that I'm putting such concerns first now. So if I'm cooking, say, a pasta sauce for all of us, I'll find ways to add extra veggies and healthy foods into it, as well as ensuring it's baby-friendly in other ways such as having sufficient healthy fats, no added salt, etc.

We benefit from this as a whole family, and when we can eat together it feels really natural and joyful. Cian, as with all babies, loves to feel a part of our day-to-day life. Sharing meals is something I want to do all the time as he grows up, so we do it as often as possible now. Cian tends to have his dinner before we do, because Matt arrives home later than I'd like him to eat, but "the boys" have their breakfast together while I'm doing my physio or stretching out a bit, and I have lunch with the baby too.

Some of my mother friends on Facebook have been asking for my recipes, and I've been happy to share them...well, such that they are, as I do more a sort of "kitchen alchemy" than actually recipe-style cooking! One of my other friends suggested that I write a BLW recipe book, and I'm flattered that she thinks anyone would want to read my ideas. What do you think? Might it be worth it??

Either way, I'm thoroughly enjoying this phase of Cian's life. It feels so joyful to watch him exploring new tastes and textures, and we're blessed that he's so adventurous in his food preferences. His favourites seem to be his Daddy's lentil curry, spread onto warm chapatti fingers and stuffed into his mouth with an air of happy gluttony. He also loves my mango-rice dessert, steamed pears with ginger, and is currently really into my new beef and tomato noodles recipe.

In other news, Cian is now Destructo-Boy. We've had to install drawer and cupboard locks, a safety gate (with a cat flap in it so Maliika can escape from his attempts to hug her!), and place chairs in strategic positions around the sitting room to prevent him getting to places he can't. We don't have the most ideal "toddler-safe" flat, because quite simply we have too much stuff in too small a space, but we're managing with much running about and our mutual parental eagle-eyes.

He's also teething again at the moment, though he seems to be coming out of this latest phase. He got his first two teeth at 4.5 months, then had 6 by the time he turned 6 months. In the last week, he's cut a molar and two premolars, from what we can see (ever tried to get a strong baby to open his mouth and let you look??), and he's really been suffering for it. I wish I could go through it for him, especially since he's so precocious in the dental department! It seems so cruel to babies, that they have to endure such pain and discomfort so early in their little lives.

We have a friend arriving today and staying for the weekend, so we're all excited about that. Matt's father and his family are coming by tomorrow again too - more on this later, when I have a chance to write it. Next week we have a couple of outings planned, so it's all go for my mini social butterfly. I've had a bad flare-up of fibromyalgia recently, which has been getting me down and caused me to cancel a number of social engagements, but thankfully it seems to be subsiding again. I get cabin fever when I can't get out and about!!

And that's it from us, for now!

Welcome to the blog...

Well here goes, I guess. In more ways than one!

I'm hoping to use this blog as a place to write about my experiences as a newbie and developing mum. I'm currently expecting my first child - a little boy - any day, and I wanted a place I could come to when I wanted to wax lyrical, hysterical or just plain whimsical about the whole thing. I have a (mostly friends-only) LiveJournal account, and though I've mentioned much about my pregnancy on there I don't wish to bore everyone senseless with stories of what the baby's up to! This blog, therefore, is where I plan to direct people who want to know more about this particular and huge aspect of my life from now on.

If you're wondering about the title...

In pagan terms, the moon has often been viewed as a symbol of sacred feminity and its three phases (waxing, full and waning) as corresponding to three archetypal phases of womanhood - maiden, mother and crone. So I could be considered to be entering the full moon phase in a fairly physiological way right now, and thought it made a fitting title when I couldn't think of anything else!

At the moment I'm thinking back over much of my pregnancy, which has been a strange rollercoaster of emotions and one of the more...well, frankly bizarre experiences I've ever been through.

I became pregnant unexpectedly and it was somewhat of a shock at first, but we settled into the idea very quickly and are now very much looking forward to meeting the baby. One of my main concerns at first was that I was on strong drugs (pain relief and muscle relaxants) for a severe form of Fibromyalgia Syndrome and central sensitisation, and was obviously worried about the effect this could have on the developing foetus. However, my medical team was incredibly supportive about getting all the relevant information from the drug specialists, and additionally the muscle relaxant qualities of pregnancy hormones have led to such a pronounced reduction in pain that I've been able to come off all but the most innocuous painkillers, albeit (almost certainly) temporarily. All scans have indicated that the baby's perfectly healthy and growing well.

The flip side of the 'natural muscle relaxants' coin is that I've developed SPD - symphysis pubis dysfunction, a hormonal condition of pregnancy that causes the SP joint (at the front of the pelvis) and others around it to loosen too much and destabilise. It hurts, and makes the most disturbing crunching noises when I'm trying to sleep - usually, I might add, trying in VAIN to sleep. However, this almost always corrects itself after birth, so that's another good reason to look forward to meeting the little one.

Apart from these elements, and a spotting scare at 25 weeks (it's all fine, turned out to be nothing to do with the pregnancy!), I've really enjoyed the experience of being an expectant mother. Much as in the rest of life, we always seem to be waiting for the Next Big Milestone - be it the 12-week scan, finding out the sex of the baby (for those of us who do), the start of the next trimester, reaching 'full-term' status at 37 weeks, and finally the actual birth. However, I've really enjoyed the actual process, even watching my body change and grow which is something that worried me given a 12-year eating disorder in the past. Feeling the stirrings of life within me, and becoming ever more aware of a developing personality in there, has been a profound experience. I'm still amazed by how utterly protective I feel of my coming son, and I turn into a lioness if I feel anything's threatening his welfare - such as the throng of sharp elbows and shoulders that seems to accompany the influx of tourists here in Edinburgh every Festival season! I've found myself walking with one arm placed shelteringly in front of my abdomen, and haven't noticed until someone's bounced off it... If I feel like this now, how much more powerful must the actual experience of motherhood be, when my baby's no longer within the (relatively) safe confines of my body ?

I have a strange mixture of excitement and anxiety about my approaching motherhood, something I'm told is pretty universal among first-time expectant mums. While I already feel close to and protective of my little bundle, at the same time I have worries about how I'll cope, whether I'll be a good mum, whether I'll bond with him straight away - all the usual things, but no less troubling for the fact that they're common. Everyone (except perhaps one person who has admitted she has her own 'issues') has reassured me that they feel I'll be fantastic, which is lovely to hear but doesn't really stop my own internal churning! ;-)

I guess I'll do what mothers have been doing since time immemorial. Falling through the days, managing hour-by-hour if needs be, and just waiting out the madness until things settle a little more. I know that with the chronic pain condition and so on I might have a difficult life at times, but my priority is making sure my baby son is well cared for, and if that means that sometimes I have to back off from other engagements and interests, then that's what I'll do.

When it comes down to it...I'm a stubborn old redhead.

Strangely (or so it seems in today's borderline tokophobic Western society) I'm looking forward to the birth. I've been told I may have more problems with labour pain than the average woman due to the central sensitisation, which causes my pain (and sometimes random other) signals to be 'amplified' on their way up to my brain. However, if this doesn't happen, I may find that being used to daily pain stands me in good stead for some of the experience. Doctors say it could go either way, and nobody really knows until labour starts and progresses - isn't that the same as every woman? I'm curious to see how I'll cope. My ideal is to use TENS, gas and air and a birthing pool, but I'm keeping an open mind. The only thing I really don't want is systemic opioids, as I want to breastfeed the baby and would regret him being born too sleepy to do so, or (even worse) with respiratory distress. I also spent much of my pregnancy coming off prescription opioid pain relief, so the last thing I want is to be plugged full of them again - apart from which, the anaesthetist recognises that it'd take an awful lot of it to have a decent analgesic effect on me!

Only thing that scares me about labour, apart from anything being wrong with the baby? Caesarean section. The idea of having major abdominal surgery to birth my baby makes me shudder!

I'm sure I'll have plenty of stories after the fact, and probably several elements will have NOTHING to do with how I 'planned' it. ;-)

See you on the other side, as it were!