One year teetotal

At the end of July I looked at my journal and realised an anniversary had passed. Quietly and with no fuss. I did nothing to mark or commemorate it. But I noticed it.

It's been a year since I last had an alcoholic drink. The picture at the top is me before I stopped drinking, the picture at the bottom is after. I think you'll see it's made a big difference.

OK, so the picture on the top is actually Cherry's picture of her Granny but it does look a bit like how I felt after a few too many.

I have never had a good relationship with alcohol and I swung from one extreme to another with it. In my teens and early twenties I was completely teetotal. I didn't even like the taste of alcohol and I hated its effect on people. I really had no motivation to drink at all as I found I often had the most energy and the best time of any of my group of friends. As the non-drinker I usually ended up driving to clubs or parties, and I could easily have a fantastic time on nothing but tap water and atmosphere, then drive home stone-cold sober.

As an added bonus I could always remember exactly what everybody had got up to the previous evening - myself included - and I never had to sit around clutching my head and wailing that I wished I hadn't done that.

Then when I went off to university I started drinking small amounts. I was always really careful not to have more than one or two drinks, as I'd seen enough friends overdo it and end up vomiting, passed out or being carried home not to want to end up in that state.

When I came home from university I got a job in a pub while I took a journalism course and perhaps unsurprisingly, I started drinking more. All of a sudden I got a real taste for it. I loved getting drunk, but I also loved the camaraderie surrounding drinking. I loved pub humour, tall tales of misdeeds fuelled by alcohol, I loved lock-ins or sitting outside after closing time with a group of friends until the early hours, and the waking up in the morning hungover but euphoric and giggly, usually with a good friend, piecing together the chaos of the previous evening.

I drank heavily all through my twenties. After a while I stopped drinking during the week, as I found I couldn't really function at work with a hangover any more. But weekends were open seasons. When I met Noel one of the main things we bonded over was our love of drinking, going out and having fun.

Only it wasn't really that much fun for me any more. More and more I was picking fights and arguments with Noel when we were drunk, bottling up everything I felt was 'wrong' with our relationship and letting it all spill out in a drunken, aggressive rage. More and more I was waking up on Saturdays and Sundays hungover and exhausted and with a lingering sense of self-hatred. More and more I wanted to rein it in, drink less, have more energy and more and more I found myself forgetting all of my good intentions after the first glass, drinking until I was drunk and then regretting it the next day.

For whatever reason, I have never been the kind of person who can just have one glass of wine, or even two. I always wanted the entire bottle and no matter how good my intentions when I opened it, it always ended up empty.

Being pregnant gave me a concrete reason not to drink and I never questioned it or wished that I could. I did have the odd small glass once or twice when I was pregnant with Cherry but it just made me feel bloated and nauseous. With both children I didn't drink at all until they were four or five months old, and then I would pump milk early in the evening, before having a drink, and offer the bottle of expressed milk later if they wanted to feed.

But once or twice I did breastfeed Violet after drinking because she woke so frequently and I felt deeply uncomfortable with it. All the information available suggested it would do her no real harm but that wasn't really enough reassurance for me. I wasn't interested in 'not harming' my child as much as being the best mother I could be. And more importantly I did not really trust myself. Half a bottle could, because it always did, eventually turn into a bottle. Or a bottle and a half. Maybe not tonight, or tomorrow, but sooner or later I would end up drinking more, and more. Would I still continue to breastfeed her?

I also found even the odd glass of wine had a huge impact on how I felt the next day. Even a small glass seemed to drain my energy. Increasingly I disliked and resented the presence of alcohol in my life. It no longer felt a part of me, of what I did, and it felt wrong and unpleasant to drink even small amounts around my children.

And so I decided to stop. After two pregnancies in quick succession it actually didn't feel like much of an effort. I rarely drank on weeknights so I didn't have to give up the classic glass of wine once the kids are in bed. And at weekends I was often so tired after a busy week with two young children and broken nights with Violet that all I wanted was an early night anyway.

One year on and I can honestly say I don't miss alcohol in the slightest. I don't miss one single thing about it, because my relationship with alcohol has always been turbulent. I never liked myself drunk, and I never liked myself hungover either. I hated how energy-sapping alcohol was and how small it made my outlook. I wanted more to life than pubs and bars and hustling the kids into bed so we could have a drink.

I was a bit concerned that my relationship with Noel might suffer a little if I wasn't drinking. Would we still function as a couple without alcohol, a glass of wine on the sofa with a film, a bottle with dinner on a Friday night? Realistically of course if all that bound us together was alcohol then our relationship was in trouble regardless of whether I drank or not.

Noel was concerned about boundaries. If I wasn't drinking did that mean I expected him not to drink? Would he offend or upset me if he had a beer? Would it be unkind of him - would he be rubbing my face in it, flaunting at me what I have decided I cannot have?

Me choosing not to drink certainly did have an impact on him and on our relationship, but not a negative one and I hope not one he has found hard to adjust to. He certainly says he finds me far, far easier to live with and be married to since I have chosen to stop drinking. I also find I am kinder, more patient, more loving and less aggressive with him and more able to speak my mind as and when I need to.

Not drinking alcohol is a decision completely personal to me. What other people do is their business and their choice. I would never stop anybody drinking in my company. However I would sometimes choose, and have chosen, not to be in the company of people who are drinking heavily or drunk. The way I see it the choice is mine. I can be present, or I can go somewhere else and do something else.

More than anything though I completely identify as a non-drinker. It feels like a natural part of my identity, probably due to my teetotal teenage years. In the same way that some people identify with a political party or with a lifestyle choice or hobby or movement, I just identify as a teetotaller. I never worry about being 'boring' or 'square' or 'no fun' or any of the other things we can sometimes associate with those who choose not to drink alcohol. I never even think about drinking anymore or wish I could have 'just the one'.

I think I'm still pretty good fun, I am sober and I am happy. I also want to say a big thank you to the lovely Jo Payton for her amazingly honest and inspiring blog Mocktail Hour which really gave me the push to stop boozing for good. I just love the internet.

Living Arrows 14/52

Spring is here! Actually here, not 'the sun shone for 15 minutes' here. So I dressed my crazy girls for sunshine and fun, let them play in thickest mud, and took them to the edge of the world.

I'm really glad I was honest about finding parts of last week tough, and about my ongoing quest to stop yelling at my children. It makes weeks like this, when we're all beautifully connected and in perfect harmony, so much sweeter when I acknowledge the hard as well as the good.

There's so much I want to remember from today, from the yellow brimstone butterflies we saw to Cherry's fierce and intense concentration as she played with a few stones and a stick for hours, conjuring personalities and stories from wood and earth.

A beautiful happy day with my beautiful happy daughters.

Breastfeeding at 19 months

This was supposed to be an update on breastfeeding an 18-month-old but I am so late with it it's turned into breastfeeding a 19-month-old!

When I had Violet I had no real timescale in my head for how long I would breastfeed. I weaned Cherry at nine months to kick-start my cycle again so I could have Violet, but knowing she was to be our last child there wasn't the same pressure.

And so I find myself breastfeeding a nearly 19-month-old with no surprise. There has never been any real reason why I would wean Violet, and so I haven't.

Well actually that's not true. There's one very big reason why I might consider weaning and that's that Violet wakes frequently to feed at night. Still! So from time to time the subject of night weaning has been broached. Once or twice I've tried settling her without feeding, and sometimes this works for the first, second and even third wake ups. But eventually there will come a point where Violet will make it abundantly clear she's not settling without feeding, and I will of course feed her.

I know night weaning has worked for many a knackered breastfeeding parent, but it doesn't seem likely it would work for us. In all honesty I think I would just spend hours comforting a crying confused toddler. I fancy that at 11pm, midnight, 1am, 2am, 3am, 4am and 5am like a hole in the head.

Plus I can't shake the feeling that she will get there when she's ready. Of course I'm tired and so is Noel but we get on with it, we don't moan and complain (well, not much) and it doesn't have a dramatic impact on our quality of life. We remind ourselves and each other constantly that it will end, it won't be forever, this will pass. Perhaps we're just used to it. I have faith in Violet and faith in my instincts.

Breastfeeding her at 19 months is never dull. She calls it 'EAT!' and she's quite insistent when she wants to feed. She will march her little self over to the nearest chair or bench or sofa, clamber up, announce 'At-dee' (her word for 'up' or 'getting up', I think she's trying to say 'upski!' which I often say when I pick her up) and demand 'Eat.' If no 'eat' is forthcoming she will absolutely insist. Violet is fierce, I rarely argue with her.

She's entertained by the way I spray during a milk letdown. I am fascinated that I still do this after 19 months, and can only assume I have gold-top fuelled torpedoes for breasts. I can also safely assume that, given that she feeds hourly at night (more eat! MORE EAT!) which is when milk production is governed, I have the supply of a dairy cow. Certainly Violet is bursting with health and vitality.

She's quite physical and feeding, especially at bedtime, can often involve a good deal of wriggling and hands flailing around and even a bit of pinching, which I don't like and tell her so. I also don't like it when she pulls madly at my clothes, but other than this I do very little in the way of 'discipline' around breastfeeding. She asks, I provide.

I have never left Violet at night (I've only left Cherry twice at night and once was to have Violet!) so I have no insight to offer on how she would cope away from me for a night. I have spent the odd full day away from her and she's been absolutely fine. She does want to feed when I get back, and I am always so bursting that I would keep trying even if she didn't want to!

I think the difference between breastfeeding Cherry and breastfeeding Violet is how I feel about it. As much as I loved breastfeeding Cherry I thought of it as simply being about food, a way of dispensing nutrition. With Violet I view it as a relationship, even a mothering 'technique' if you want to call it that.

In a way it's a metaphor for the difference between the way I have approached the early days with both of them. With Cherry I was far too anxious to trust my own instincts and to trust her, and so I complicated matters with routines and methods and techniques and not 'letting her get into bad habits!'. With Violet I listened only to her and myself everything has just flowed beautifully. It's been a far easier, more natural and more rewarding way of parenting. Although I concede I've had far, far less sleep.

And it means that (hopefully) I don't have ahead of me the difficult second year I had with Cherry, in which I realised things had to change but had no real blueprint for what attachment parenting a toddler would look like, so we had to kind of feel our way and make yet more mistakes on top of mistakes until we found a balance that suits all four of us.

Today I sat watching Cherry and Violet while I ate breakfast. Violet was pottering about in her new Thomas the Tank Engine pyjamas in a particular shade of blue that suits her so beautifully. I caught her eye and we just had a little moment in time, the two of us together.  She stopped her pottering, came over to me, held out her arms and said 'cuddle Mummy!' I picked her up and she cuddled into my lap, put her little arms around me, and leaned against me.

It felt like a real concrete example of the connection between mother and child that breastfeeding is so helpful in building. I'm not for a minute suggesting you can't build that connection formula-feeding, before anybody jumps to that conclusion. It's a connection I have built with my older child only after weaning! But this is a post about breastfeeding and those are my honest feelings on that moment. Breastfeeding Violet is one of many very easy ways in which we maintain that connection. It requires no thought whatsoever, it's completely instinctive for both of us and for that reason I can't see either of us wanting to stop any time soon. (Although because I have been asked this more than once, no I don't imagine I'll still be breastfeeding her when she's 21, much as I don't imagine I'll still be changing her nappies, reading her stories and helping her wash her face, brush her teeth and get dressed when she's 21 either)

10 things that surprised me about breastfeeding *this* one-year-old

1. That it's an entirely different experience to breastfeeding my older daughter, who I weaned at nine months. Hence this is ten things that have surprised me about breastfeeding *this* one-year-old not *a* one-year-old. Because every child is different.

2. There are no thought processes involved at all. I don't think about how much she feeds, when she feeds or why she feeds.

3. I have no idea how often she feeds. Somebody asked me this a couple of weeks ago and I was genuinely completely stumped. This is because, as per point number two, I give it no thought whatsoever. She asks, I feed. She doesn't ask, I might offer. I have no idea when, or how often, or for how long, or how much she takes.

4. It's not about 'giving her milk'. Breastfeeding Violet isn't an act. It's a relationship. It's a two-way thing. At her one-year review the HV asked 'does Violet drink milk at all?' and I immediately said 'no', because she drinks water or occasionally juice. Then I understood what I was actually being asked!

5. It doesn't 'interfere' with my life in any way, shape or form. Or perhaps it's more accurate to say I have readjusted my life, and myself, so as not to interfere with breastfeeding a one-year-old. I don't drink alcohol any more so that's not an issue. We co-sleep most nights so night feeds aren't an issue. I can be away from her for hours on end and my breasts will feel full, but I think this has happened twice in the last year. It's just not an issue because I have chosen not to separate myself from my children for any length of time other than on very rare occasions. This comes back to breastfeeding being a relationship not an isolated act. It's part of the whole.

6. She has eight teeth and has bitten me frequently, usually when another tooth is coming. And yes, it hurts! Cherry had no teeth when I weaned her so the experience is completely new, that said, V cut her first tooth at four months so I've had plenty of time to get used to it.

7. Having done it before with another child doesn't necessarily make it 'easier' second time around. I've had more issues to overcome feeding Violet (blistered, cracked nipples at the start due to incorrect latch, nursing strike due to thrush, those teeth!) than I had with Cherry.

8. I have no idea for how long I will continue to breastfeed. As long as we both want to, is my stock answer.

9. I loved breastfeeding Cherry and expected to love breastfeeding Violet too. But when I think about it 'love' isn't really the right way of putting it, because that implies breastfeeding is something of a 'bonus' or a 'treat'. I think lovely Adele at Circus Queen really sums it up in her post here when she says that breastfeeding is 'our joint right'. It's our right too. Do you love your rights? They're more fundamental than that.

10. Nobody else seems to think it's 'weird' that I'm breastfeeding a one-year-old. Even if they did, I probably wouldn't notice. You don't tend to pay much attention to what others think of your rights.

Now what?

I keep thinking of Buffy the Vampire Slayer - I mean, who doesn't? But there's one scene in particular I think of. At the very end of the last series, when Sunnydale has collapsed into the hell mouth (oops SPOILER ALERT!) and Buffy and the Scoobies stand at the edge of the precipice. And Dawn and Willow ask Buffy 'so what are we going to do now?'

'Yeah Buffy, what are we going to do now?'

And Buffy just smiles.

I don't want to directly compare having two children in the space of 20 months to a fictional town collapsing into a hellmouth, so I'll leave it to you to make that association. Violet turns one in a few weeks time. Here I am, a mother of two children.

I have a family. We have a family. We are a family. Our family is complete.

Now what?

This is a strangely bittersweet time. My baby isn't a baby any more. My other baby definitely isn't a baby any more!

There are no more newborns in my house, there isn't a little crib set up at the side of my bed (admittedly there's an eleven and a half month old usually IN my bed or in the travel cot at the end of my bed but still), there aren't muslins all over the house.

There are no more tiny sleepsuits - just HUGE sleepsuits and pyjamas. There is no more helpless infant mewing at my breast, nuzzling into my heart, blinking into my gaze, wrapping tiny, soft fingers around mine.

There's a gigantic squirming nearly one-year-old wriggling and chattering and turning herself upside-down gymnastic nursing, and a two-year-old who laces her fingers through mine as she falls asleep - but there's no more baby.

Now what?

There is much to look forward to, this I know. But there is deep sadness. A couple of weeks ago I took a pregnancy test and I was as desperate for it to be positive as Noel was for it to be negative. It was negative.

I will probably never again experience the glory of a positive pregnancy test. I will never pee on a stick in ecstatic anticipation, if I do it will always be tinged with 'oh god, REALLY?'

My breasts will probably never again explode with life-giving sustenance on the third day. My perineum can rest assured it will not once again have to separate itself giving birth to yet another gigantic tiny one.

I will never know the awe-inspiring, primal beauty of childbirth again, the irritating, frustrating, exhausting joy of pregnancy, the blissful bubble of those first few days and weeks, falling in love with the tiny person you have created.

I will never know what other combinations of Noel and I could meld together to form another entire person, distinct and different from him and me and their two sisters, but curiously also the same, and very much of us, all of us.

Noel absolutely adamantly doesn't want another baby. I absolutely adamantly do, but I think it's quite telling that I wanted two children, and now I have them I want another baby.

When I think about it it's not even a third baby I want. I want my children as babies again.

I want Cherry so helpless and tiny and huge all at the same time, so noisy and sensitive, so vibrant and emotional, so frustrating and forgiving.

I want Violet so loving and gentle, her tiny beautiful blue eyes peeping out at us, entirely peaceful and tranquil, sure all was well with the world if I was near.

I want myself as a new mother again but with the confidence and knowledge I have now. I want to go back and do it all again with the experience I can only have gained by having done it before.

When I was pregnant with Violet a part of me was already looking ahead to now. Violet at a year old, Cherry to turn three in December, the baby days gone, the toddler and pre-school days full of fun and energy and exasperation and chaos just around the corner.

My body my own again, my breasts are Violet's for as long as she wants them but the rest of me is all for me. My brain capable of taking in snippets here and there that don't involve my children.

Now I'm here I'm not emotionally ready at all.

I feel I have changed fundamentally, and that I cannot go back to the life, career and world I lived in before.

But I don't really know what my new world is yet, because it's been full of pregnancies and babies since March 2011.

Now there's no more pregnancy and there's no more babies. Now there's toddlers and fun and splashing and running and shouting and jumping and cuddling - but there's no more babies.

Now there's possibly, even, at some point not too many million miles away, a bit of time for me.

Now what?