group therapy

For your daily Benjamin, here he is 5 minutes before us leaving for mother's group. I knew that no matter what happened today he would find a way to fall asleep when we needed to leave. Oh well, now he's having a nap at 5.30pm - this can't go horribly wrong can it? Something tells me I'll be blogging again in tears around midnight tonight wondering why the boy won't go to sleep.

Anyway, we've just returned from the mother's group meeting, which was lovely. Ben is about 2 months older than most of the babies there but most of the material was for babies his age anyway so I was a happy chappy. The other mothers were nice and their babies were adorable and teeny tiny. Was Ben ever that small? No, he was not.

The child health woman (I have no idea if she's a nurse, midwife or a baglady who just stumbled into the room and started talking to us) was very helpful. I think she was one of the ones who came to our place for Ben's checkups. I have to say that these early childhood centres make me feel very confident as a mother and that counts for so much. She went over things like settling them to sleep, of course, and all those horrible habits I have like feeding/rocking babies to sleep and them not being able to get themselves to sleep. I stayed very quiet but she pointed out that if you do this and they actually stay asleep when you lay them down and stay settled, then there is really no problem. Sigh of relief. She went on to point out the very obvious fact that I tend to forget - if a baby is happy, healthy & thriving and the family is happy with his/her behaviour then don't try to fix what ain't broken. Must repeat that to myself on a daily basis. It was also nice to hear what the other mothers were stressed about so you know you're not alone in having no idea what to do with this little human being in your care.

Ben bonked his head this morning. He rolled into the TV cabinet - it was so slow and he hit it so lightly that I just watched him do it without a second thought. Let's face it, the boy hits his head on my hard noggin enough with no problems. Too bad he was already sleepy and cranky this morning when he had his run-in so it turned into Sobfest 2009 with only one sad mother attending to watch. He lost it - the kind of crying that twists his gorgeous little face up and makes him choke on his own tears & snot. My heart broke because this boy is not much of a cryer and there is nothing that can't be fixed by breastfeeding but he was even too upset for that. Let me make it clear that there wasn't even a red mark on his head to show that something had touched him so it was not a bad bump. Now I'm not so sure about having a boy. What happens when he actually has an injury from some dad-related sport like surfing or motorbikes? It's going to be awful.

In happy news, we're starting him on solids tomorrow. Still will be breastfeeding, just introducing rice cereal in the morning and will slowly introduce more things. I can't wait to see him enjoy real food!! He's always got his eyes and hands on whatever we're eating so he's going to love this. I'll try to get video of his first bites.

Now I'm off to find something healthy-ish to eat so I don't feel so guilty about making chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. And I didn't walk today because of the mother's group and dealing with Head Bumpapalooza in the morning. I'll be back in it tomorrow - actually looking forward to it because I made the mistake of stepping on the scale this morning and had to turn around to see if Louie Anderson was on the scale with me. Not good but I'm staying positive and I'm still going to eat another cookie.