Telling the Truth About the Tooth Fairy

Over the Summer, Bean lost a front tooth. Cue the obvious visit by the tooth fairy.

The next day, he called me for a private conversation, away from his brother’s prying ears.

I had no idea what it was going to be about.

With a coy smile, he asked me who the tooth fairy was.

A little taken aback, I asked him who he thought it was.

He immediately replied; “You!”

I thought about continuing the lie, but as promised (mostly to Mr. Strawberry) I resigned to tell him the truth. We always said, in those ‘how will we parent our children’ discussions, we would go along with the fun and games of Christmas and tooth fairies and all that palaver until they asked with straight faces.

“But it’s a fun story don’t you think?” I asked in reply.

We then chatted about how sometimes it’s nice to believe in stories and how boring life would be without stories and imagination.

I’ve written about this before, so it’s obviously something that is close to my heart. I love all things fantastical and my life would be genuinely awful without my nightly escape into someone else’s world when I tuck myself into bed with a book. Everything I said in this blog post, only a year ago, I still stand by. I didn’t tell Ed the truth that day because I knew he wasn’t ready, but Bean obviously was this time. He has lost teeth since and has put them under his pillow with gusto, so my truth telling clearly hasn’t destroyed his childhood.

My worry is, as we head into December, Timmy Twinkles will of course be returning and I can only hope he gets a good reception….

A Boy or a Girl...Who knows?

I am so torn.

When we were expecting the boys, we found out what we were having as soon as we could, and luckily so because I was convinced Ed was a girl and called him Beth for 5 months. I cried when I found out and I’m glad I had the adjustment time before he arrived, rather than going through 9 months of thinking I was getting the girl I dreamed of and trying to deal with not only a newborn baby but a newborn baby boy.

With Bean, it was important to find out because, being just 16 months apart, I needed to know if I could re-use Ed’s stuff and I was super happy to get another beautiful boy.

Now things are very different.

There are no hand-me-downs.

I honestly don’t care what we get. Now that I’ve hung around with kids a little more I can see the pros and cons of both genders. They both come with joys and difficulties of their own. Boys tend to be noisier whilst girls tend to be talkative, boys tend to have a lot of energy but girls seem to come with a lot of drama.
So, when we found out we were expecting, we originally said we wouldn't find out what it was. Let it be nature's best surprise we thought. But it turns out to be one of the most frustrating withheld truths known to man.

I absolutely love surprises. I am not the person shaking the presents under the Christmas tree. Even when I help my computer illiterate husband to order my present online, I cover the screen until the payment has cleared and I can close the page (I get very annoyed if I fail and accidentally see what it is). And in preparation for our last wedding anniversary a few months ago, I refused to help him order me something and therefore got the basic flowers and chocolates. If it wasn’t going to be a surprise, I didn’t want anything.

But growing a human inside me feels different.

I’d love to have that moment when I’ve given birth and my husband hands me our baby and tells me himself if it’s a boy or a girl.

But I am already sick of calling our beloved growing fetus ‘it’. I've named it Pixel so I can avoid this a little.

Trying to find a unisex pushchair I like is becoming a nightmare.

Everything I want to buy in preparation is so gender orientated these days, even washable nappies come in delightful bright prints, leaving me with the choice of white or…white. And try buying a snowsuit, the gender neutral ones are genuinely disgustingly beige.

Knowing what it is might help us all bond with the unborn baby, especially the boys who are basically dealing with the abstract at the moment. There isn’t even a decent bump for them to stroke. The other night, as we all sat on the sofa digesting our dinner, I suddenly yelped and the boys were very surprised to hear me tell them I could feel the baby wriggling. I was especially surprised because with them I hadn’t felt anything until I was about 17 weeks so I wasn’t expecting to feel anything at all at just 14 weeks. The first thing Ed said was;

“I thought it was a lie baby. That means it’s almost complete!”

I guess dealing with an abstract idea, one without any actual proof, is not his strong point and I wonder if telling him whether it’s a boy or girl would help him. Otherwise, he’s in for one hell of a shock.

As much as having a girl terrifies me (they turn into teenage girls you know), I don’t honestly know how sad I’ll be at the thought of having a house full of children and no tutus.

Chatting with a friend last week, she described having baby girl after having a boy as the opening of a new door, and she’s right. I’ve always had the girl door closed on me. How sad will I be to find out it’s always going to be closed? (no. 3 is the last baby we’ll have, it is a car full after all) Will I be better off finding out sooner rather than later? Will it matter at all?

Another part of me doesn’t want to find out just so, if I am having a girl, I’m not swamped in that delightful shade of baby pink. I do so love green, teal, turquoise and yellow.

A friend of mine posted this on my Facebook wall and it made me think, even if I did have a girl, this is probably the kind of girl I’d end up raising anyway, especially with two, superhero obsessed big brothers.

I also love this.

In fact, I already have the cutest skeleton babygrow stashed away in Pixel’s drawers.

According to this, odds are still 50/50 ish regardless of the fact that so far, I’ve only managed to make boys. My chances of having a girl have only fallen 2% after having two boys, so we'll just have to see. We may find out in just over a month, or we may not. Or we might find out and only tell the boys. I just don't know. We've got  month to decide.

He Threatened to Punch Me...He Couldn't Help it.

When Mr. Strawberry and I started spending the night together, he gave me a warning;

“I might punch you in the face when I’m asleep”

Sure you will, I replied, I’d like to see you try.

It didn’t take long for me to realise what made him think he might but it was an exaggeration of the truth and almost ten years later, I can honesty say he has never punched me.

He’s not 100% sure what happens at night, and personally I think his mean ex was the person who hyped it up in his head and told him he’d punched her. I personally don’t trust her opinion but in my experience, although we tend to sleep bottom to bottom so his fists are nowhere near me anyway, it’s more of a judder than a lashing out, so I don’t see how that could have happened. Sometimes his legs jolt, but even they’ve never kicked me.

It turns out Mr. Strawberry suffers from a mild case of sleep myoclonus, which means that as he drifts off every night, he has involuntary twitches, particularly in his arms and legs. The only pattern I’ve been able to notice is that the more stressed he is in his day to day life, the more violent the twitching and this can delay his sleep transition. A really strong judder will wake him up so the poor bloke has to start all over again in trying to get to sleep.

I’ve also noticed is that if I gently stroke him, he never judders. Unfortunately, although I am sometimes the last person to fall asleep, I can’t seem to do it until he’s actually in deep sleep, my arm gets tired or I enter the deeper doze state of falling asleep.

After doing some research, I think most of us suffer with some form of myoclonus without even noticing. Hiccups are the most common type but also that feeling of when you are just falling asleep and you feel like you ‘catch’ yourself, often from a brief falling dream and jolt yourself awake.

Myoclonus is a symptom not a diagnosis and can be related to more serious issues, but because he is healthy and has no other symptoms, I honestly don’t think its anything to worry about, except that maybe he should take it easier and relax more but you try telling him that. Mild sleep myoclonus, which only happens during the sleep transition stage is very common and from what I’ve read, often unexplainable.

So, it looks like I’ll have to put up with it. My only real complaint is that I can’t cuddle him because his jolts stop me from settling. If it gets worse, affects him during the day or starts happening at other times, I’ll whip him off to the doctors.

Sleep well my dearies x

Information sources;

http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/myoclonus/detail_myoclonus.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myoclonus

http://sleep.lovetoknow.com/Twitching_While_Sleeping

http://www.enkivillage.com/body-tremors-at-night.html

http://www.sleepdex.org/myoclonus.htm

Baby Panic

I started writing this when I was two months pregnant but didn’t publish as we hadn’t announced it.

I’m having a panic.

A friend from Uni recently had a baby, and therefore her Facebook posts are full of her beautiful baby and super cheerful notes on how happy she is and how lucky she feels.

Me however, I’m mid panic.

I know what its like to have a baby. I know the mind numbing monotony of feeding, wiping, dressing, washing, desperately trying to squeeze in a nap, trying to make it out the house for it to only end in tears. I know how it feels to have not had any where near enough sleep, to have someone else entirely reliant on you.

And yet here she is, always so positive. I want to message her asking if she really is that positive all the time. I wrote the message in my head and then realized, I really didn’t want her to admit to feeling a little blue. I really didn’t care to have my bubble of her and her joy burst.

I also remember those moments when you look at your baby’s face and think, bloody hell you’re beautiful. I still have those moments now, even though they’re not cute little squishy things anymore, they’re strong and muscular growing boys. And although their temper tantrums are more destructive than when they were in nappies, their hugs are fiercer too.

It may just be crazy hormones, but sometimes I think ‘what the hell have I done?’, but more often I cry with sheer happiness that finally the baby have talked about for years is here, growing well and will be with us in no time at all. The idea of watching this little human grow up and become even half the person the boys have become is absolute bliss.

It’s going to be messy, noisy and sleep deprived, but it’s also going to be full of sloppy kisses and giggling, because if nothing else, the shit the kids get up to makes me laugh until my belly hurts.

I can’t wait.