familytastic!

I read an article today about world birth rates and the fact that the amount of males born is signigicantly higher than the amount of females. It made for very interesting reading, and pointed out that this skewed birth rate is causing problems in some countries (such as China) where men are beginning to find that there just aren't enough women to go around.
Reading the piece reminded me of my feelings and concerns when I found out that I was expecting my sons.

When I was growing up I always imagined a family with at least 2 or 3 daughters, I couldn't imagine what it would be like to have a son.

When I found out that I was pregnant with a boy during my second pregnancy I was slightly nervous. I wondered if I could parent a boy, I imagined a crazy toddler turning into a surly young man who is conditioned to bottle up his emotions and remain difficult to reach.

Everyone I spoke to with sons disagreed. Each and every person told me that wee girls are much harder work, they want to rule the house, while boys are much more placid and easy going.

To date my experience has been immensely positive and I can't believe I was ever worried. My three children are all precious to me, it makes no difference what gender they happen to be.

I think my concerns must have stemmed from the fact I have two sisters very close in age to me, my brothers are a lot younger, one has yet to reach his teenage years. As my father was not around for most of my childhood, my experience of family life was very much a female orientated one.

I am lucky to have an excellent husband who is very much involved in the childrens lives. This will hopefully come in useful in those teenage years, when embarrassing topics have to be broached, and my son may not actually want my input into his love life, or romantic crises. And I am now wise enough to realise that my daughter is unlikely to want to confide in me about her first love or hot crushes either. Surly teenage behaviour is not limited to the males of our species, I can all too well remember the trouble I gave my own mother!

My sister is currently 5 months pregnant and strangely, experiencing exactly the same worries as I did, way back when. I am trying to give her the benefit of my experience, but I know that once the baby is born, no matter what the sex is, she will realise for herself, what a precious gift a baby is, and that sex is irrelevant to the love you feel for that person who is piece of you.

It has been playing on my mind recently that every development that Daniel makes carries him one step closer to being a toddler and one step further from being my wee baby.

It dawned on me this week that while with Rachel everything she did was a first for us, everything Daniel does is a last.

We are pretty sure that we won't be having any more children. So this is the last one of my babies I will breastfeed, wean to solids, walk the floors with at night as he cries with teething pain or rock to sleep. My eyes are filling up as I type.

I love watching all my children grow and develop. They are all at such fantastic stages right now.

Jake is becoming so sociable and was invited to his friends birthday party last week for the first time. His speech is amazing and he loves just sitting and chatting with us. Very often Rachel will go off to do her own thing, but Jake is always there, wanting to be involved.

Rachel is changing every day. Everyone is commenting on how different she is beginning to look. She is losing her baby face and starting to look like a 'Big Girl'. I can now almost see what she will look like when she grows up. She can melt me with her big brown eyes, I know they will always be her most beautiful feature. Rachel as always is just full of love.

Daniel is crawling, eating unpureed food (he was eating handfuls of cooked carrot and swede strips tonight), laughing almost all the time and not spitting up on us nearly as much. He is babbling constantly and all day, every day Rachel and Jake will compete with each other on who can make the baby laugh the most.

These are all moments that I am so grateful to have experienced. Its hard to get my head around the fact that this is it. This is our family. It makes me treasure these memories even more.

Just the other day my mother and I were discussing the obvious benefits of breastfeeding and pondering as we often do why more people don't give it a try.

I mentioned that like Esther at All Things Creative, I always found the first few weeks very difficult. No matter what position I tried to feed my baby in I always ended up in great pain, with cracked and bleeding nipples.After the birth of Daniel I was even tempted to give up and try bottle feeding for a change.

However each time, as soon as my baby turned 3 1/2 weeks, the pain disappeared as if by magic and from then on breastfeeding was the easiest and most beautiful experience in the world.

My mum, in her infinite wisdom, came up with a great analogy for the process. She believes that breatsfeeding is like learning to play the guitar. Stick with me it makes sense in the end (kinda).

When you begin to play the guitar you end up with very painful and blistered fingertips, caused by holding the strings for too long. But after a few weeks of practice your fingertips form callouses and the pain disappears. In my mothers mind breastfedding is very much the same thing.

I don't like the thought of calloused nipples though......not very sexy at all!

Trixie Tracker does exactly what it says, it allows you to track your baby. It has categories for

* Sleep
* Diapers
* Bottles
* Solids
* Nursing
* Pumping
* Medicine

and allows you enter data each time your child feeds, sleeps, has a nappy change etc. The idea is that through the charts and graphs then generated you can analyse your childs daily schedule and improve it if needs be.

While I can certainly see the benefits of this programme, I am 100% positive that using it would turn me into a neurotic basket case. I would be constantly checking to make sure that my baby has consumed enough fluids, had enough naps, eaten his recommended daily amount of fruit and vegetables...the list could go on and on.

I can see how Trixie Tracker would work for first time parents, I would have loved this when I had Ray. But how on earth would anybody with a few small children find the time to document every bowel and bladder movement, every ounce of bottle or short nap. Between entering the data, and then analysing your results, I can't see that there would be much time for actually parenting your child.

Over on Motherhood: Welcome To My Crazy Life Sabrina just posted about her son Damien and his new found fascination with hair pulling.

"Damien has become quite the hair puller. I may have to wear it in a bun for the rest of my life, or at least till he's around 2 and understands that hurts like hell! I can't hold him at all now with out him grabbing a handful and ripping it out of my head. He enjoys looking at my painful expressions while I try to pry it away from him. He always has such a big grin like he knows exactly what he's doing when he does it. Grrrrrr......."

I feel your pain Sabrina, Baby D is at exactly the same stage. The hair pulling I can cope with. If I tie it up he can't get to it. But what am I supposed to do about my glasses? They are fast becoming unwearable. He has bent and loosened them so much that every time I bend down they fall right off my head. They almost ended up down the loo today as I bent to help Jay wipe!

I can't afford to buy new glasses, so I am just going to have to tape these ones to my head!