Winging it

Winging it, is in fairness, what we have been doing with regards to parenting little Markus.  That sounds bad but in retrospect, I think it's worked well for us. By 'winging it' I should clarify that we haven't been blindly making decisions, we've just been making them as we need to - as it becomes clear that a decision needs to be made. Sometimes we haven't even made the decision. Markus has made it for us.

I'll back-track a bit. I had some preconceived ideas about babies.  Tero had no ideas about babies! 

1) I will breastfeed for six months.

2) The baby will sleep in his own bed in our room initially and then move to his room at three to six months old.

3) We will have a lovely routine and my life will not be greatly impacted.

Are you pissing yourself laughing yet?  You should be. Here's how it went:

1)  Well that's very noble of you, Nicola. Breast is best!  Six months is the recommended exclusive feeding duration.  How did that work? 

Markus is now 22 months old and still feeding away. Not really any less than he was when he was 6 months old.  Why?  It became apparent rather quickly on that it's an amazing bonding experience. It doesn't lessen the older the baby gets and in fact from my perspective it becomes more and more of a social 'tool'. A connection for us both. For Markus it's food, water, comfort, solace, quiet time. It's more than that. I can barely explain. He's still fed to sleep most of the time.  He doesn't use a dummy, because mummy soothes him. Mummy is lucky in that she does not have to work at this present time so she can - I don't want to use the word indulge because that would be wrong - accommodate this *need*.  

When will I stop feeding?  Wrong question.  When will Markus stop feeding?  When he damn well likes.

2) Markus sleeps next to me. He has done so from a very early age despite a few early-on attempts to settle him in his moses basket next to the bed. Why? It works best that way. In the early days I slept more not having to sit up, haul this hefty little bundle out of the basket, feed, replace, sleep.  He made it clear that next to me was where he was supposed to be and I could rid myself of any silly notions that it would be otherwise.   I can honestly say that now he has, in the last three months, started sleeping through, that I will miss him sleeping next to me when he does eventually move to his own bed.  When?  You guessed it: when he wants to.

3)  Oh dear.  Really?  Teehee!  We didn't get close to a routine until about 20 weeks... and then out of it, into it, out of it, into it. My life has changed beyond recognition.  But we are in a pretty good routine now. We are nicely settled. I am far less stressed than I have been for a long time and I believe that has been the biggest impact.  As for 'getting my life back', well I am just getting quite content with the one that I have. It's quite nice, thankyouverymuch.

So to sum up, throughout the last 22 months, I have been reading voraciously about breastfeeding, co-sleeping, baby-wearing, baby sleep patterns, baby needs and it seems that we have naturally fallen into 'gentle' or 'attachment' parenting if you want to label it. It felt right and from what I can ascertain, it is right. Our little people are little for such a short time that meeting their very basic needs does not feel like a chore (well okay, it does sometimes, but not for very long).

Ten months ago, I found myself in the strange situation of being able to take a leap. The company that my partner, Tero, and I worked for announced redundancies. The package was such that we both volunteered and within six weeks of finishing our work, we had moved from Cork, Ireland to Lahti, Finland.  Not an obvious hop unless you consider that my partner is Finnish and that Finland ranks very, very highly in terms of education. Our other options aside from staying in Ireland would have been the UK – the economic crisis had too much of a stranglehold there – and South Africa - as much as I love my home country, I would have been too paranoid to move there with our small child. Finland, with its proximity to my Mum and other family in the UK and the aforementioned education system, was the winner.

We packed our 29 boxes. Well, no. I packed our 29 boxes.  In hindsight I would have packed more, but we were on a somewhat tight schedule.  Tero headed off the day before me and I followed on with our projectile-vomiting 14 month old boy.

Initially staying with friends, we soon found an apartment of our own – note: sharing with people who do not have a toddler and who do not fully understand a toddler is not clever or fun.  We bought the second apartment we saw and rejoiced mightily the day we moved in after three months of tip-toeing around making as little noise and mess as possible.

We have now been in Lahti for nearly eight months and I am slowly getting used to life here and, for the most part, enjoying it.  Lahti does not have a very aesthetically pleasing city centre. It is very much function over form. There are a handful of buildings that are not monstrosities but on the whole, to me, there is a whiff of Soviet influence about the place. Of course if you look at Finland on a map, that might become self-explanatory.

Adjacent to the centre, though, is Pikkuvesijärvi. It's a small lake, delightful in summer and autumn and striking in winter. A direct translation of the name would be 'small water lake'. Pikkuvesijärvi is next to Vesijärvi: the translation is 'Water Lake'. It is a much larger body of water which meets the recently gentrified harbour: An amazing summer time attraction.

The areas outlying the city centre are mainly leafy, pretty. Much of the living is apartment based but because this is not for want of space, there is no feeling of being hemmed in. The pavements are wide, there are playgrounds everywhere. There are little woodland trails all over the place and indeed the trees seem to encroach onto the city itself.

As I type, though, there is snow on the ground outside and has been for over a month now. The winter here is beautiful and somewhat frustrating. There’s the wrapping up myself and a toddler before heading out by which time one or both of us is a sweaty mess and rather glad of the cold air. There’s the ever present dilemma – oh first world problems – of whether to take the sled or the buggy: Markus can’t fall asleep in the sled and is also not protected from the elements in it. Pushing the buggy through snow is an extreme workout I do not relish!

The first 7 months have been a bit of a whirlwind but I think we will be very happy here. All Lahti needs is a couple more decent coffee shops and I will forgive it the functional architecture. The next step is learning what is purported to be one of the world’s most difficult languages. Wish me luck.