The chubby mans first bump

Arthur learnt to crawl last Sunday afternoon. He was 1 day short of 10 months old.

I thought he would have been fully mobile by now. But I think his cold has set him back a bit. He will move for incentive, ie my iPhone, the remote or the telephone, but he won't follow me when I leave the room, instead he prefers to sit still and cry until I return.

Since last Sunday however, he's decided he'd like to learn to pull himself up to standing! So we've had less than a week of crawling, and already he wants to walk... cheeky chubba.

Anyway, to get to the point.

Today, we went to the breastfeeding clinic to lend a peer supporting hand to some new mummies & babies. It's a big room and they have a toy box for older babies/toddlers. Arthur spotted this quite early on, and lo and behold, crawled quite quickly over to the box. He was happy amusing himself for a while, he pulled himself up to his knees to get himself into the box to see what toys he could find. I was merrily chatting away to the mummies, when all of a sudden, there was a burst of tears, and my poor lovely chubba was folding up into the floor in floods of tears. He had a dent in his forehead where he'd clobbered the corner of the box. It turns out, he'd pulled himself up onto his feet and then slipped, and cracked his head.

My poor baby, he's got a great big red bump on his head, which I suspect will be a cracking bruise tomorrow morning. His first bump, and I'm sure, the first of many!

Shocked Response

So we were out last night with a group of friends.

It meant leaving my babe with the mother in law. This should be fine, he sleeps in the evenings, undisturbed normally. But the opportunity to go out hasn't happened very often, and I have issues leaving him. I feel lost without him. I feel like I'm missing something when he's not with me, which is silly in the evenings because he sleeps in a room by himself and I wouldn't normally see him anyway. So of course, he woke 5 minutes after she arrived, and I had to go down and soothe him back to sleep. He slept well all evening after this, so I needn't have worried!

We were out with four other couples, all of whom have children, three of them currently pregnant again. Most of them breastfed for a little while.

We got chatting to one couple who are pregnant with twins. Talking about my babe, how he's just started crawling, how he's been poorly, how he doesn't really eat solids and just mainly has milk feeds. The husband said to me 'You're not still feeding him yourself are you?' in a disbelieving tone, and when I replied sheepishly, 'Well, yes, of course' the look of shock on their faces! It kind of made me laugh a little, 1 at me feeling sheepish in my answer, and 2 why would I feed him any other way? He's 10 months old.

I've recently completed my breastfeeding Peer Support training, and I'm eager to help other new mummies out. And yet, a friend asking me if I'm still feeding made me feel sheepish, and kind of like I'm being a bit weird to still be feeding? I know it's thoroughly against the norm to still be breastfeeding at this age, and even more so that my babe has never ever had a drop of formula milk. It shouldn't be this way though.

My husband and I were raised soley on breastmilk, and I wouldn't have it any other way for my babe. Just think of all the money we've saved!