The Long March & Baby Boot Camp

I must say at times during the months of March and April I did feel a bit like Chairman Mao and his comrades marching on and on and on and on...OK, may just a little bit of an exaggeration there. But there certainly were some very long days and nights during these two months. It was absolutely all consuming. At times I felt a bit like the life had been sucked out of me and I was dragging myself around, not really living but just surviving. Yes, I know that this sounds all very melodramatic (I must admit that it does to me too, now that there are quite a few months between the present point in time and March/April). Dealing with a baby who was perpetually cranky was just very very physically and mentally tiring.

BUT, it was not all doom and gloom. There were some very nice moments. Particularly when Mum came to stay in late March. She had been at a conference in Hong Kong and just swung by Singapore for about four days on the way back to Australia. She was a bit of a lifesaver at the time coz I was a bit frazzled by this stage. Anyway, Mum was determined to put Nicky through Baby Boot Camp ("BBC). She was of course to be the Herr Commandant of the BBC and she reckoned that within a few days Nicky would be a changed baby. Yes, she was rather confident that her "baby whispering" skills would come up trumps and Nicky would be on the straight and narrow again. However, by day 5, the last day of the BBC Mum had to admit that Nicky had won! But she said that it was only Round 1 and she vowed to come back punching for Round 2!

Another funny moment was when Mum and I were at the baby clinic getting Nicky weighed, after we had had a particularly difficult morning. Anyway, we were going through what had happened that morning with the healthcare worker, and Mum just suddenly launched into a bit of a monologue on how Nicky was simply an "irritable baby" and how I had been exactly like it, and all she could do at the time, because she also had my brother Steve who was a toddler to look after, was stick me under the lime tree in the far corner of the back garden and let me wail! The healthcare worker was smiling politely but I think was just a little taken aback! So Mum and I coined the term "Irritable Baby Syndrome" and decided that Nicky certainly was having a bout of this.