Sleep, a distant memory

Picture this. Sunday morning, waking up after 1pm, still slightly drunk and pondering what to do with your day. Maybe you will get up and get some food. Maybe you will go for a wander round the shops. Maybe you will go start drinking again, after all, it is still the weekend. Or maybe, just maybe you will stay in bed allllllll day and just chill. Anyone have a recent Sunday like that? No? Me neither!

How many Sunday mornings did I waste away lying in bed watching the Hollyoaks omnibus while nursing a slight hangover but not giving a monkeys because I had all day to snooze it off and be as fresh as a daisy for work on Monday. A lot, that’s the answer.

But then you grow up, have responsibilities and dependants who don’t care if you drank too much wine the night before. It’s 7am and they want some Cheerios! My girls were both great sleepers. Put them to bed at 7pm and they would sleep right through until 7am. 12 whole hours of sleep. How good does that sound???

When you have a newborn, you know that you won’t be getting much sleep for a while but you can deal with that because you know it doesn’t last forever. The problem I had was that Little D didn’t get the memo and has been a rubbish sleeper since he was born. He never liked to nap and wouldn’t go longer than 3-4 hours without feeding. I kept praying that once he started on solids he would sleep better but he didn’t. I was breastfeeding on demand and was bloody exhausted. I started giving him a bottle of formula milk at night when he was about 7 months old in the vain hope that it would make him sleep a bit better at night. It didn’t. I have no idea how but I survived a year on no more than 4 hours sleep. I felt worse for poor Mr B who had to deal with so little sleep and then get up and go to work and use his brain and interact with actual people.

When he turned one we started to see a bit of improvement where he would sleep from 7pm until about 4am. Still not great but a lot better than he had been. His current favourite trick is to wake up between 05:00-05:30 and shout at the top of his lungs. He won’t go back to sleep in his bed so some days if he is yelling really loud we have taken him downstairs and put him in his playpen where he will go back to sleep for an hour.

In the last 6 weeks he has started to nap during the day for an hour in the morning which is great. I use the time to sort dinner, do the washing, clean, oh and eat. I honestly don’t know how he is so perky and happy all the time on so little sleep. Most days I am a mess and pretty crabbit to start off with, but he wakes up with a huge grin on his chops and is full of the joys!

A few weeks ago my sister took the kids overnight to give us a break and I was so excited. We had booked dinner and planned on going to the cinema. We went to one of my favourite places for food and instead of going to see a movie, we went home because we were so tired. I had this amazing plan of being in my bed early and getting at least a good 8 hours. Unfortunately my body clock is set and I was awake just after 2am then 05:20 and I couldn’t get back to sleep.

He now goes down at 7pm and will sleep through until 05:30 if we are lucky, so you would think that I would be in bed at 10pm and getting a great 7 hours, But no. I can’t sleep. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I can’t seem to switch my brain off. I can lie there for 3 or 4 hours and not go to sleep. I’ve tried lots of different techniques to sleep but I’m pretty much back to having a max of 5 hours sleep a night which isn’t ideal.

Surely I’m not the only person in this situation. Surely there are other Mombies out there who are struggling by on a few hours sleep and surviving on chunky cookies and copious amounts of Coke zero? I keep reminding myself that it won’t last forever and his sleep has improved so it will get better. It WILL get better 🙂

Cx

 

Slow Cooker Beef Stew

This is the recipe I use for a yummy slow cooker beef stew which easily feeds us all and even has some left overs for the next day.

INGREDIENTS

• 1/2 a turnip, cut into chunks
• 4 carrots, cut into chunks
• Mushrooms, as many as you fancy
• 900g of lean stewing steak, cut into bite sized chunks
• 2 tablespoons of oil
• 75g of flour
• 3 beef stock cubes
• Black pepper
• Worcestershire Sauce
• 1 teaspoon of marmite
• 1 tablespoon of tomato puree
• 2 teaspoons of dried parsley
• 2 teaspoons of dried thyme
• 2 pints of boiling water

METHOD

1. Put the beef in a bowl and coat in the oil, make sure it is fully covered.
2. In a separate bowl mix the flour, parsley, thyme, pepper and stock cubes.
3. Add the flour mixture to the beef and give it a good mix to make sure each piece is covered.
4. Heat some oil in a frying pan (medium/high) and add in the beef, marmite, worcestershire sauce and tomato puree.
5. Cook the beef for 10-15 minutes to seal the flavour in.
6. Put the veg into the slow cooker with any left over flour mixture and pour over the boiling water and give it a good mix.
7. Add the beef to the slow cooker and mix well.
8. Set to medium or auto for 6-8 hours

I like lots of Worcestershire sauce so wack loads in and I also like thick gravy so an hour or so before it’s done, add in some more flour if it’s needed. Taste through out cooking and add in more herbs or pepper etc if you want to.

I then serve with baby potatoes and loads of veg 🙂

House and Home

and that is what my beautiful children are going to eat us out of! I was showing my Mum some pictures recently and she said “Why are all these pictures of them eating?” and the answer is that they are always bloody eating!

It’s fair to say that my kids have healthy appetites, to the point of I don’t know where they put it. From the first tastes of weaning with baby rice to trying all different varieties of food, they will try anything which is great. When we weaned I cooked everything from scratch and made sure that they tasted as much as possible and really tried to develop their palate and luckily non of them are fussy.

Miss C has multiple food allergies which I have written about before, so it can make cooking family meals for the five of us difficult. We also discovered a few months ago that Little D is VERY allergic to eggs so need to ensure we cater for that too.

I always seem to be cooking and try to switch things up as much as I can so we don’t all get bored. I bought a slow cooker last year and I love it! Just wack all the ingredients in first thing in the morning and by dinner time it’s good to go. I’ve found some recipes online and adapted them to suit our needs. I am going to start documenting some of them because a few people have asked me to and it could be helpful to other families in a similar situation to us.

Yesterday I made a lovely slow cooker beef stew, which I will put in a separate post but until then here are some of the pics my Mum was talking about 🙂

 

I’m back

Well, it’s been almost a year! Have you missed me?

There has been so much going on since I last blogged that I actually don’t know where to start. My last update was about us being a family of 5 and my birth story. Little D is now 14 months old and life has been a whirlwind since his arrival. He isn’t a great sleeper and hasn’t been since birth so the last year has been rough. Most nights we are lucky to get more than 7 hours, and that’s only been in the last 2-3 months. I’m pinning my hopes on the clocks going forward and him sleeping past 05:30am so we can get some actual sleep!

I have literally had no time to do anything for myself for the last year but I’m slowly starting to feel a bit less hectic and more organised so I really want to try and get back to some regular blogs and putting my thoughts down and recording some of the chaos and madness that goes on in my life.

I am officially a stay at home Mum and juggling 3 kids all at very different stages and running the house is challenging and manic and amazing all at the same time. I am really going to try and keep it going this time and as always, I will be honest about everything. Over the last few months, I’ve posted a few things that people have said to me offline “Oh you should take that down” but I believe in being honest and not sugar coating things. Parenting is hard. End of! My three are amazing and funny and frustrating and infuriating all at different times. Some days by the time Mr B comes home from work I am a wreck, then others it’s been a great day and I’m in full on 50’s housewife mode. There are highs and lows every day and if I can share that and make one person feel that they are not alone then I will be happy.

I’m going to leave you with an up to date look at my wee monkeys.

Miss B is 9.5 and is a full of energy and sass. She is still doing really well at school and has loads of hobbies. This year she took up the flute and she is really good.

Miss C is 2.5 and my little toddling tornado. She is full on and one minute she is bawling, screaming and horrible then two seconds later she is adorable and cuddly and loving. In my house I usually just say #toddler.

Little D is 14 months old. Like I said, he still isn’t a great sleeper but he is better than he was so I can’t complain too much. He is almost walking and loves playing his big sisters. His favourite things at the moment are Teletubbies and eating. He eats EVERYTHING!!!!!

And here is me. I’m probably about a stone heavier than I was the last time I blogged, and I have been more tired that I ever thought possible but here I am.  Still standing, just 🙂