You know how you have some friends who've seen you go through a lot of stuff? They've mopped vom out of your hair after a bit of a session when you were at uni together, or helped you get over awful guys including seeing you cry more than the audience of every screening of every Nicholas Sparks film, ever? Well, little compares to re-meeting up with the midwife who was there for you when you gave birth..
But my midwife with tiniest man, Cassie, was not only amazingly calm and brilliant at her job, but super nice too. We kept in touch with the occasional baby photo spam, and then I was so excited when she told me she was pregnant (and a bit terrified, obv: can you imagine giving birth after seeing hundreds of other women, er, not exactly beaming through it in the past?!).
Anyway, to cut a long story short, as a new mum Cassie agreed to review Baby Bjorn's new version of its One carrier, and she came to my house to pick it up, and when I opened the door all I could think about birth and everything she'd seen and I'm pretty sure I turned tomato-red-faced..
When tiniest man was teeny, he got a bad tummy. Pooping as much as 15 times a day, occasional strands of blood in the nappy - it was enough to get this stresshead-mama-at-the-best-of-times frantic with worry. After it went on a few weeks, we went to see a paediatrician, who thought he might be allergic to cow's milk. It was the first time the word 'allergy' had entered my family at all. As a breastfeeder, I had to give up dairy.
I wasn't used to a restrictive diet and, in truth, surviving on zero sleep with a bouncy baby, an energetic toddler and NO chunks of cheese on crackers / slabs of Dairy Milk etc didn't feel good. Especially since I can't stand coconut, and an expensive trip to Planet Organic armed with all the dairy-free chocolate/cheese/yogurt etc options resulted in the discovery that, er, basically everything tasted of coconut.
Then there were the other worries... how to get enough calcium into my diet? What to do about weaning, making sure dairy-free didn't mean tiniest man missing out on vital nutrients?
