We’re getting Infanrix at our local surgery!

Yesterday, I still hadn’t heard anything and ended up fighting back the tears at the Health Visitor Clinic and telling her how let down I felt. She went and had a talk with the head practise nurse, and as long as I book the appointment with her, we’re getting the mercury-free variety by special dispensation.

Such a relief.

Never EVER pop out to the garage to look for “just one thing” amongst the pile of boxes that are still unpacked as there’s no home for them in the new house.

I went out for ONE exercise video.

“Ooo… there’s Akra Jr’s birthplate. We can put it up next to the birthplate we just got given for Li’l Bhaji”

“THAT’S where my umbrella got to”

“Akra Jr will want his velcro calendar out, take that in while you’re here”

“BABY EINSTEIN VIDEOS! Li’l Bhaji is about the right age for them now!”

“Oh look, here’s a big batch of music CDs we forgot about and haven’t ripped up onto the computer yet. I knew that Queen CD was somewhere around here…”

“Fantastic, I fancied playing this computer game the other day…”

Great. More things to find homes for!

I GOT A SMILE!!!!

Now all I have to do is get Li’l Bhaji to do it when there’s a camera in the vicinity…

So, I’m on the way back from taking Akra Jr to Tumbletots…

*takes a deep breath*

• Li’l Bhaji wakes up a full hour early in the car and starts screaming

• Finally get home and bump into next door neighbour’s mother who is looking after their baby girl
• Manage to extracate Akra Jr from peering into the buggy saying “hello” over and over again while Li’l Bhaji working himself up into a real hungry howl of indignation
• Get inside. Akra Jr demands a DVD and a snack
• Can’t find the damn DVDs anywhere… the little git has hidden them
• Li’l Bhaji still howling. Now Akra Jr howling and accusing me of breaking his toy snake (wooden part of the tail missing in action)
• Doorbell rings… ARGH!
• Some woman checking to see that we’re receiving the free paper (eh? they phone us once a fortnight to check too… are they made of money?). Enlist her help for missing snake part.
• Postman arrives.
• Get back inside. Akra Jr suddenly remembered he “put the DVDs in a drawer”. Finally find one, bung it in the machine. Too many adverts to skip through (menu button disabled … a thousand curses to Disney).
• Get Li’l Bhaji latched on (poor mite)
• Li’l Bhaji finishes his meal, Akra Jr reminds me of forgotten snack.
• Get snack.
• Search high and low (okay, inside the car, outside the house and all around the lounge) for missing snake part. Yay, found it! Akra Jr grudgingly says thank you when prompted.
• Li’l Bhaji starts to cry again – he’s tired this time
• Take Li’l Bhaji up for his nap
• Akra Jr wakes Li’l Bhaji on no less than three occasions while I’m trying to settle him, due to “scary bits” and untimely end of film.
• Come downstairs at last. Now Akra is trying to enlist conversation via ICQ. Fire off a couple of sentences. About to sit down.
• Damn, still have my mother to phone (she left an answerphone message yesterday while we were at parents-in-law)
• Pick up the receiver. Another answerphone message. From my mother. With sarcastic comment wondering if we were still alive.
• Reassure mother I’m still alive. Wind up the conversation fairly quickly as I realise Li’l Bhaji is awake and crying again.
• Still winding up conversation. Doorbell rings. Manage to put phone down. Notice with relief that Li’l Bhaji has fallen back to sleep with no intervention.
• Open door to welcome distraction of friend and her toddler. As long as they don’t require coherent conversation I should be okay.
• Whirlwind of toddler manages to find a big puddle out in the garden and sits in it.
• Find spare nappy, shorts and a carrier bag to put wet clothes in.
• Akra Jr informs me he’s wet his pants. He’s soaked through. Remind him of location of potty and find him clean pants and trousers.
• Li’l Bhaji wakes up. Is in grumpy mood.
• Friend and toddler leave after toddler misbehaves and ignores instructions. Akra Jr ignores request to stay inside as Li’l Bhaji working himself up to frenzy and I want to go see to him.
• Akra Jr picks up a fistful of small stones and throws them.
• Akra Jr slightly pissed off by his mother taking affront at this, swooping in and bodily heaving him inside the house
• Akra then informs me he’s leaving late due to hacker incident at work.

*screams very loudly*

Still, kids are in bed now. Thank God.

Braved the big bad world today and bundled all of us into the car for a family get together in London. Was exhausting, but good fun. Akra Jr particularly enjoyed himself as he got to run around with his cousins all afternoon. I seemed to spend most of the time glued to the sofa feeding his brother though!

Nothing else to say as my brain has shut down for the evening, so here’s a picture of a snail. Just because.

Hey, it’s a cute snail, okay?!

I had the trip into town from hell today. It was the first time I’d ventured out into town with the two of them, though thinking about it retrospectively, a Saturday probably wasn’t the best time for our maiden voyage even though Akra was around as a result.

First of all, we popped into the library to get some new books for Akra Jr and sign up Li’l Bhaji for a library card (well, you can never start them too young, can you?!) This was when Akra Jr decided to throw a full blown wobby. Have you noticed how kids manage to do that in the quietest place possible in order to attract the most stares? Mummy and Daddy severely Not Impressed[tm].

We are obviously gluttons for punishment, as we decided to follow that up with a full-blown tour around the shops – we needed to buy a present for a friend, use some vouchers that we’d received as a present and Akra needed new slippers. Shouldn’t be too long. Oh, but it felt like eternity.

You see, the biggest problem is that Worcester is not geared up for prams or pushchairs. Having more than two parent and child parking spaces in the multistorey might have been useful for a start. With one child, you can just about wing it in a narrow space by getting really close to the car one side of you, leaving a bigger gap on the child’s side. Extracating two children from their carseats in a normal space though is rather more interesting and time-consuming. Public transport not an option as even on the disabled access buses, they won’t let you leave the pushchair up, unlike London Transport which positively encourage you to make full use of these areas.

Then we battled our way around town. You can understand the smaller shops being a bit narrow and pushchair unfriendly, but in general you expect the larger chains to be more amenable to parental shopping. Debenhams seems particularly terrible for this – you could hardly get past the racks of clothing, let alone let someone through walking the other way. Their coffee shop (which is supposed to win awards for child friendliness) was so narrow and packed there was feasibly only one table you could park a pushchair nearby, and guess what, that was taken. We then got stuck on the lower ground floor because there was only one lift and every time it arrived it was packed due to people getting on at ground, but wanting to go up. Five missed lifts later we finally got out of the building.

And people move out of London to get a better quality of life for their children… *shakes head in disbelief*

Long live internet shopping.

This is such a pathetic whinge I know, but Akra Jr has started calling us “Mum” and “Dad” instead of “Mummy” and “Daddy” and I hate it. I know it’s a point that comes to us all – I’m not expecting him to still call me Mummy by the time he’s got children of his own after all… it’s just … I expected it to be later rather than sooner… like his teens.

He’s only three… still a baby really… it’s just wrong wrong wrong!

… you just have to appreciate the irony. Patient Choice in the NHS is hitting the headlines again.

*cue hysterical laughter*

I’m feeling clucky again already.

Which is odd, because I still *have* a young baby. And I don’t really enjoy the baby stage.

Well, apart from the new baby smell. And the little peach fuzz that passes as hair at the back of their heads. And the cute little way they nuzzle against you and end up sucking vigorously on your arm because they missed. The little satisfied grunts and mews when you lie them on your lap to burp them. The complete surrender as they doze off safely in your arms.

Ahem.

Where was I?

Anyone would think I hadn’t survived a really rough pregnancy and had a colicky baby. Anyone would think I’m not looking forward to the relative freedom when they get a bit bigger and I can start thinking of “me” things again… writing, projects, proper reading…

Instead I’m finding myself wondering if I should keep the battered twice-used babygros that Li’l Bhaji is already growing out of just in case. I’m finding myself paying really close attention to what babyness entails so I never really forget. Taking the time to breathe in his scent just after he’s had a bath.

In many ways, I didn’t enjoy Akra Jr enough when he was a baby. I was too busy looking forward to the next stage, urging him on to bigger better things – the thought that when he was sitting/crawling/walking/talking it would be more fun, more interactive, easier. And I *did* really start to find Akra Jr a real joy when he was walking & talking, I’d started to relax more into the motherhood role and became more confident – I loved that he was more interactive, but also I think I missed out.

Actually, I think if I’m honest with myself I know this will be my last baby and that’s why I’m feeling clucky. A way of mourning for all the other babies I’m never going to have. As a result I don’t want to miss a heartbeat. Milestones can wait (well… apart from the first smile… I want him to do that REAL soon please).

An update to my previously blogged about vaccination dilemma.

I went to see the practise nurse today (they’re in charge of the immunisation schedule at that practise so that’s who you have to see). She really wasn’t interested in what I had to say, didn’t read the printouts I’d carefully prepared to back my arguments and told me that Infanrix was not a licensed vaccine for primary vaccination and it was “not surgery policy to administer non-licensed vaccines”. She then handed me a pre-printed NHS factsheet on Thiomersal and Vaccines.

Now I’m really cross.

Not because they said no, but yet again I’ve either been lied to or they are woefully ignorant on the licensing of the drugs they keep on their premises. Either way, it’s not exactly a good sign for a doctor’s surgery, do you think? Ironically, the factsheet she handed me had Infanrix as a listed thiomersal free alternative available on the NHS on page 4.

Had they said “sorry, we don’t do it, it’s too expensive and the cost doesn’t justify any perceived benefits” or “sorry, we’re not allowed to give it until the stockpile of thiomersal ones has run out” then I would have shrugged my shoulders, muttered a lot and started plan B for getting it done privately.

Instead I am writing a very stroppy letter to my GP and already planning letters to my MP, local press and anyone else I think might be interested should that route fail. I’m fired up and feeling bloody-minded enough to see this through to the bitter end.

Bring it on.