Parent and baby fundraiser

Things are in such a mess politically at the moment: I keep thinking "well, it can't get any worse, surely..." and then next time I turn on the radio/TV or check the internet it totally has, whether it's a racist incident, terrorist bombing (ok, admittedly, so far I have no heard anything to link the Istanbul airport bombings with the UK's referendum so I think that's something that I *can't* blame on David Cameron), the Labour party falling apart, Nigel Farage being rude and nasty and getting loads of press attention for it, the economy suffering or speculation on how the rights and status of EU nationals in the UK (such as my husband) might change.

Plus it keeps raining. Plus I have a baby who has decided 5am is a great time to wake up and start the day.

But in the midst of all this negativity, yesterday something really positive and lovely happened, which was my parent and baby fundraiser for Sense.

As I stated in my first blog post, my friend Vic and I picked the race we want to do first (the Royal Parks half marathon) and it was already full, so we then looked for ways we could get a place and found Sense were looking for runners. To get the place you have to pledge to raise at least £300 in sponsorship, and PR person from Sense rings you up to check you're sincere and are actually going to do the race and not just signing up on a whim. That person asked me if I had any ideas for other ways to fund raise, in addition to the basic collecting of sponsorship money, and on the spur of the moment I said that being on maternity leave I know and meet a lot of mums and babies, and that I could do some kind of baby event. Chatting at my regular Friday baby group that week I came up with a potential venue - the communal garden of my block of flats! It's summer, everyone likes to be outside in green space, the garden is very little used on weekdays when most residents are at work...why not?

Admittedly, it was touch and go at several points as my initial enthusiasm waned and I considered potential pitfalls. What if other residents were not happy about me having lots of guests in the garden? Should I ask permission from the housing association? I nearly did (and got as far as dialling the housing officer's number on day) but I was concerned permission might be refused for reasons of health and safety or bureaucracy if I made a formal request, whereas the garden is for residents to use and if I was just having a few friends round, it would never occur to me to seek permission. So we went ahead, guerilla-style.

I picked a date I didn't have any other appointments and chose a morning time slot. My lovely NCT friends and my talented mother volunteered cakes/refreshments. Debbie who runs my Friday baby group offered to lend out the stash of toys and playmats which made things much easier and simpler. I printed some invitations and started inviting people through all my maternity-leave social networks - my NCT group, Friday baby group, baby yoga class, the post-natal group I go to on a Thursday, the Facebook group for "East Dulwich winter 2015-16 babies" that I am a member of (despite living in the less genteel environs of New Cross rather than East Dulwich), the "New Cross Bumps and Babies" group. I even popped into a mum and baby exercise class that I was walking past one morning to invite them.

It was such a gamble given the VERY unpredictable English weather this June, so beforehand I had many worries: what if no one turned up? what if it rained? should I just cancel? what if it rained just beforehand so the ground was super wet? what if it was blazing hot and we all got sunburnt? what if there was an accident? what if someone's baby got kidnapped and I was held responsible? what if the neighbours all complained and I got us evicted from our flat?

However, none of these things came to pass - not even the rain. It was a really lovely morning with a great turn out of over 30 mothers (plus a very few dads; I tried to keep the invitations gender-neutral so as not to be sexist, but the reality is that it does tend to be women who spend the first months looking after a baby instead of working, so the majority of parents I meet at my maternity leave activities are mums) with their babies. My parents helped me a huge amount with the setting up, clearing away and hosting, the selection of toys from the Waldron Health Centre kept the babies entertained, my mum and my NCT friends provided delicious cake, and I managed to meet a few more neighbours who came out to see what was going on.

I collected cash donations, but I didn't expect to make a huge amount of money, especially considering the outlay on things like a folding table, picnic rugs, and drinks, but people were incredibly generous and the final tally was £159.65...a really impressive amount! Thanks to everyone who came and donated.

A lot of people were asking about my training and I had to admit I'm currently on a break from running, but "the race is ages away [October] so it'll be fine..." hmm: I might need to get a bit more serious about training soon.

Injury setback...and alternative forms of transport

I started this blog post about a week ago and never quite finished it. In the wake of the referendum result and ensuing chaos...I just reopened it and it made me smile that I started it with "the bad news"...post 24th June I have a different perspective on bad news! But anyway, here it is...


The bad news is that I am having a forced rest from buggy running due to an aching hip - the same pain I suffered from a couple of years ago, which was diagnosed as "gluteal tendonitis". I went to physiotherapy for it in 2014, so I have exercises that I should probably still have been doing, so when I started to notice that running was hurting again I decided to take a 2 week break from running and make sure I do my exercises every day. Hopefully I'll be able to get back to training asap.

In the meantime I have continued the routine of babywearing for my exercise...carting a ~9 kilo baby around with me as I walk around Peckham and Lewisham should help maintain my fitness level! I've learnt how to carry Angel on my back in the Manduca soft structured carrier, which is much more comfortable. She also seems very happy with it. I've been trying to learn how to back-carry using a woven wrap but so far it is proving challenging - I keep trying to get her on my back with the "santa toss" technique as show-cased in this video but it's tricky. It doesn't help that every time I pick to try it seems to coincide with a screaming fit from the baby, guaranteed to make mastering a new skill impossible...

And for longer journeys we have now ordered a Bakfiets cargo bike from London Green Cycles!

This is going to be our transport method for taking Angel to and from nursery when I go back to work in November, and we hired it for a week last month to test it out. It's extremely fun to ride and feels very stable. "Why not just put a child seat on the back of a normal bike?" you may be asking yourself. Well...mainly just because it's fun. But additionally the Bakfiets has a great rain cover so Angel will not get wet. We can carry two children easily with no modifications. There's space to carry shopping which will be useful (we are a car-free household). Some people (admittedly, this would be the people who sell cargo bikes...) say that it's a safer option for cycling with a child, as the wider frame means cars give you a wider berth (and, I suppose, because the width forces you to cycle rather sedately - no popping out and overtaking buses on narrow roads). Safety is a priority for obvious reasons and because we live very close to the Old Kent Road which is not the quietest of roads.

How (not) to get out for a run on a Sunday morning/stress

Buggy running means that in addition to your own training schedule, you need to keep your child's sleep needs in mind, as being in a pushchair pushed at running pace is one of the most soporific things for a baby. I've been pretty baby-led up until now when it comes to daytime nap routines, but I am aware that I would like to help Angel sleep for longer stretches during the day and that the timing of my runs could really help with that.

Angel, like a lot of babies, needs her first nap of the day pretty early on. If she's not asleep 2 hours after waking up then she'll probably be screaming instead.

If she wakes up at 7am then the first nap is 9am; if she wakes up at 8am (like today...thank you for our Sunday morning lie-in!) then it's 10am. On a weekday she'd normally have that nap in the sling on our way to whatever morning activity we're doing, but at the weekend things are a bit different and today I thought we'd head out for a morning run. I knew I needed to be downstairs strapping Angel into the Maclaren by 10am to time things well for her nap. There are a number of things I wanted to do before that:
- eat breakfast
- fit in some nappy-free time for her skin health
- catch up on social media
- express some milk for the milk bank
- get dressed
- brush my teeth
and this morning I seemed to mis-time things so that Angel started whinging and crying before I was anywhere near ready to go out. Since it's a Sunday my husband was still at home, but he was clearing up in the kitchen which I didn't want to interrupt.

I knew that the quickest way to calm her down and help her fall asleep when she got whingey would be to get her into the Manduca (the baby carrier). I suppose if I didn't have two floors worth of stairs to negotiate I would put her straight into the pushchair, but I do...plus the pushchair stationary is a bit useless whereas the closeness of the sling gives immediate comfort even if we don't go anywhere straight away. However, as I was in my nightie I couldn't strap her straight on (because then I would be unable to go out) so I gave up on points 3 and 4 on the above list and headed to the bedroom to get dressed, taking my whinging baby with me.

I put her down on the bed and started to look for my running gear only to find that it all seemed to be in the wash. Angel was not screaming urgently but was emitting plaintive bleating cries every 5-10 seconds. I hunted through the pile of clothes on the floor of my wardrobe, through the pile of clothes on the bedroom floor...nothing. Should I put a dressing gown on to go out to the balcony and see if there was something there drying, or just wear pyjama bottoms for running? In which case, which ones?

Angel's cries went up a notch in volume. She was feeling REALLY tired and somehow REALLY unable to recognise what she needed to do about it. This first nap of the day often seems to be the hardest for her and involve the most crying. There's a lot of controversy about whether you can/should try to teach babies to "self-soothe" alone or whether it's ok to actively intervene to comfort them, and I've found this blog really useful on this subject: he basically says that every time you comfort your baby and help them calm down with your assistance, you actually are showing them how to go from stressed to calm, so that's how they learn about calming down - you don't have to leave them to cry alone.

That's all very well, but what about now when I need to get those pyjama trousers, a T shirt and socks on before I put on the Manduca, the baby is crying and there's so many things I need to do before I'll be ready to help her fall asleep in the pushchair? There's something so uniquely stressful about listening to your baby cry when you're trying to do something else. I usually find the solution to this is to put the "something else" on hold and attend to the baby, but in this situation I needed to get those socks on, dammit!

I had a moment of "Oh my goodness just shut that baby up!!!" a flash of insight into why parents might shake their babies or throw them against the wall...*

Then I got the second sock on, grabbed the Manduca in one hand and the baby in the other and charged off to the kitchen to enlist my husband's help. Teeth...shoes...stairs...Maclaren...rain cover...by 10:05am we were on the road and Angel had a peaceful 50 minute nap while I had a very wet run to the river and back.

*please don't call social services! I would never hurt her.