Reading to Baby

I am a huge fan of reading to children, being a teacher and all! I believe that it is never too early to start reading to your child.

I found an old facebook post that read:

WHY READ 30 MINUTES A DAY WITH YOUR CHILD?

*If daily reading begins when they are born, by the time the child is five years old, he or she has been fed roughly 900 hours of brain food!

*Reduce that experience to just 30 minutes a week, and the child's hungry mind lose 770 hours of nursery rhymes, fairy tales, and stories.

*A kindergarten student who has not been read aloud to could enter school with less than 60 hours of literacy nutrition. No teacher, no matter how talented, can make up for those lost hours of mental nourishment.

*Therefore...30 minutes daily = 900 hours
30 minutes weekly = 130 hours
Less than 30 minutes weekly = 60 hours

I’d like to think that I will start before birth, as I am buying books for later in my baby’s life I would read to them.  I also read a lot myself, and hubby and I sometimes read together, so baby would get used to the sound of oral reading.

After baby is born I would love to read at all kinds of times. I can imagine reading the cards or messages that people have sent for the birth – “This one is from aunty Moo and says...” I love the idea of reading to baby after feeding, and getting into the habit of reading before bed at night right away. As the baby is a little older and able to focus more closely and hold things more easily, I’d love to have a whole range of cloth ‘feely’ books (I have made a few of these myself!) Books about animals, about colours, about numbers. Read through them, play with them, just have them around.

I also think is important to read stories to a child, even when they may not understand all the words or concepts being mentioned. Settling down for some quiet time with a book is a good habit to form early and the rhythm and tone of your voice along with the pictures in the book will keep interest for a start.

I have no doubt that my baby will be surrounded by books. They WILL see books as presents, as things to be treasured and valued and to be shared. I still have many of the books I received as a child and there are many favourites which I now share with my students, I look forward to sharing them with my own child.

I have two very clear images when I think of life with baby: one of me sitting in a chair with baby on my lap reading a book, I think it is a book of traditional stories or an old favourite of mine. The other is of my husband, lying on the bed next to the child, snuggled up close, reading a bed time story. It’s a funny book, about soccer or something that they both love and the child is in awe of the page, staring at what daddy is reading, while daddy is in awe of the child and this wonderful person that we have made together.

Why Haven't You Had A Baby Yet?

After being married for almost four years, I am used to hearing this question. I have heard it from my mum, my grandmother, friends and co-workers. The one person I didn't expect to hear it from was my hubby.

During a recent 4 hour road trip we started talking about babies, this seems to happen a lot lately! A lot of the pressure we are feeling at the moment comes from the fact that we met later in life, so while our much younger cousins are getting engaged any buying their first homes, we are still living in a rented home. Added to this, we have only been living in Australia for two years, so still settling in to some extent. A lot of our savings were used on Visas and relocation, first mine to the UK then hubby's to Australia. So we feel a little behind in this respect.

When we first started talking about family, we always said that we would buy a house first, to have our family settled. I would guess this comes from being raised in families who moved quite a lot. Recently my Doctor keeps referring back to this, saying, "You can buy a house at any age, but the same can't be said for starting a family." So my age is adding further pressure.

It is becoming more obvious to us that I really want a baby, and soon because of my age, but that hubby is worried about the long term consequences of 'rushing' the decision. During our road trip, having gone over all these factors again, he blurted out in frustration, "Why haven't you had a baby yet?"

I was a little shocked and asked him what he meant, should I have tricked him into it before now? But no, he wanted to know why I hadn't had a baby in my 20s like everyone else? That got me again! I was single then, I didn't want to do that on my own, and it wasn't a priority. Hubby was at pains to point out that a lot of the people we know having babies in their 20s are single, so how was that different? I was a little hurt that he would even suggest something like that, as if he didn't know my values or morals at all.

I guess it was an overreaction to an emotional conversation, but I followed it through. If I had already had a baby, with someone else, we probably wouldn't have met and married. If I had a baby as a single mother, he wouldn't have been interested in dating me, let alone marrying me! 

Have you ever faced this question from someone you didn't expect? How do you answer the question from well-meaning friends or relations when it gets too much?

Pre-Conception Appointment Booked!

I have a very good relationship with my Doctor.  I have been in her care for the past 10 years and she has seen me through the usual health issues, for example catching every cough and sneeze from my students in the first few years of teaching before building up my ‘teachers’ immunity.” She has also helped me through depression and working on weight loss. Most recently, I have spent the past 15 months recovering from a double disc injury I received while on school camp last year. I was off work completely for 3 months, then returned to work part time for 11 months and have just returned to full time work at the end of the school year.

All my back injury has done is add another item to the “Cons” side of starting a family. I have no idea if my back will ever get any better than it is now, and no way of saying what impact a pregnancy may have. With all this in mind, my Doctor has been constantly urging, for the past 4 months or so, for hubby and I to come in for a pre-conception appointment. I mentioned this to hubby at the time, and he was more than happy to put it off until ‘later.’

Today, I took the plunge and made the appointment. I am looking forward to hubby’s reaction when he gets home! This will make it all seem very real, but I think to have the information now will give us time to consider any changes that need to be made before we really start trying. It is clear though that we need professional input to help us make this decision and as my Doctor keeps saying, “You can buy a house at any age, but the same can’t be said for starting a family.”

I have done a little research into this as I have no idea what to expect from such an appointment and I don’t want to waste the opportunity. I think it is important to know all the risks associated with becoming pregnant at this age, I will be closer to 36 before we start trying to conceive. At the same time, I don’t want to become so stressed about everything that can go wrong that it puts us off completely. Hubby is very risk-averse and would rather not do something if there is a chance of things going wrong, as opposed to my general approach to life which is take the leap and then deal with the consequences! I’m also concerned about the fact that I have been on pretty strong painkillers for such a long time and what residual effect this might have. Also what pain relief options I would have once becoming pregnant.

At the moment the biggest worry I have is that following our appointment I will want to get started right away! I have a week to wait until the appointment. Wish me luck!

Did you have schedule a pre-conception appointment? What types of factors did your doctor discuss? Were you discouraged from starting a family after 35?

The Baby Question

I’m feeling clucky. My very best and dearest friend has just had her first baby. He’s absolutely adorable. It might seem strange to some being this late in my life, but this is the first time that someone I truly love has had a baby. All of my school friends live far away and most of the friends I have now are more the ‘professional’ than the ‘family’ type. We are all in our 30s (some of us closer to 40) and until now, none of us have had children.

Career hasn't been the only thing holding us back. For some it’s finding the right person to make a family with, for others it has been illness and disease and for some the timing just isn’t right.

I never really thought about having children as I was growing up. I mean, I never gave it any thought; it was just something that I assumed everyone did once they got married. So I thought I would have a family, and I imagined it would be about the size of my own (2 parents and 4 kids) and that was that. Then life intervened. Yes, I went ‘off the rails’ a little in my late teens so my mum put a ban on boyfriends. I wasn’t so far off the rails as to disobey her so from 16 until 24 I never really had a proper relationship.

 Following that I was finished university and starting a career and in the middle of all of that getting to know more about these things called ‘men.’ I had one to go home to every night, I had shared a house with my brother since I started university, and he drove me mad. The mess, the smell... the mess! But we had a great friendship and to this day I know that he is the one person, besides my husband, that I can rely on. The men I was meeting were interesting and many of them had firm views on family so I started to think more about my own goals and what I wanted from family life.  Then I met my husband.

At first he was firmly in the no children camp. I spelled out quite clearly to him that I was in no way that sure. And he was happy enough with that, as long as we kept the conversation open, i.e. he didn’t want to be ‘tricked’ into anything! Not long after being married we had a pregnancy ‘scare’ but the tests came back negative. We realised then that we both somehow or someway wanted a family, but definitely not then! He is a very serious and thoughtful man, many of the reasons he is unsure about having children come from worry over all the things that might go wrong. I am also being really careful to be sure that it IS that I want a family and not just that I am worried about time running out!

So this blog will track our thoughts and the process we go through as this journey reaches some sort of destination. I would love to hear from any other women in their late 30s or beyond who are considering starting a family. Please feel free to share your thoughts and experiences.

An Introduction

My name is Bron, I am a 35 year old woman with an amazing 33 year old husband. We have been married for almost 4 years and finally, for the first time in all that time, feel settled enough in our lives personally and professionally to start thinking seriously about starting a family.

We both come from 6 member households, and both our families have their share of dysfunction. We know there are mistakes our parents have made that we do not want to repeat and mixed with that are things we have learned from our parents that we hope to pass on to our own children.

Our views of families and children are also coloured by our professions. My husband works in retail and has endless stories of screaming children tearing his store apart, before that he worked in hospitality and the stories were of fussy eaters, crying babies and cleaning up the floors after visits from children’s birthday groups! I am a primary school teacher and sometimes the thought of working with kids all day and then coming home to more of my own is more than a little scary.

As well as blogging and teaching I love all kinds of arty crafty things. I love sewing plushies and toys for kids, I draw, I paint, I love computers, I love games (I met my husband playing online!) and I love the possibilities that life can bring.

The main reason I wanted to start this blog is to pull together all my thoughts about the challenge ahead of us and to share what we learn along the way. If any of the information here is of even a little use to another woman considering becoming a mother after 35 then that is good enough for me!

All of the ideas here will be my own. Sometimes I will share posts, resources, or other snippets from around the web or from people in my life that I find meaningful and worth sharing, but they will be here because I want them here.

Thank you for stopping by and taking this journey with us towards possible parenthood.