Weaning

Most people spend the entire 40 weeks of your second pregnancy telling you how hard it is with two, much like they spent the whole of your first telling you about all the women/babies they'd know who have died or been seriously disabled by childbirth and in my case, all the major fuck-ups your hospital have made. Now I don't want to sound awful but apart from the first-six-weeks-eating-every-hour-and-a-half fiasco Jim has been a really lovely baby. Yes sometimes he sleeps through, sometimes he doesn't and he throws-up. A lot. All the time. But he smiles, and he sleeps and he's funny and he laughs and his big brother adores him. So I'm pretty smug and lucky over here.

I was told I'd forget how to breastfeed. I didn't. Told that Ned would hate him. He didn't. Told that I would never wash again. I do, even if I have to listen to one of my children being cross with me while I do it. I have, however, completely forgotten how to wean.

Ned was known to be a bit of a screamy baby. Hours were spent bouncing in front of the speakers blasting out Motley Crue, Refused and Jay-Z which was one of the few ways to stop him shouting. But man that boy would eat. Anything in a bottle was downed like a darts player on a tight schedule and when it came to weaning after the initial week of not actually knowing what to do with his mouth he would eat whatever came near him on a spoon. Or in an Ella's pouch. My friends marvelled at my wonder baby and his eating.

Not Jim. He eats. But not all his bottle all the time, not all in one go and I keep forgetting to wean him. Some days he has something then I'll forget for a week. I've had to become really focussed on it and I'm thankful that I signed up to an Abel & Cole delivery box years ago which means that, due to my terrible eating habits, there is always something around to puree. I just can't remember what to feed when, what to do with the bottles, when to aim for dropping one. It's as if all knowledge of how to get your child from liquids to solids has fully left the building. It's like it was never there. So of course, it's back to the books. Re-reading the trusty Annabel Karmel's New Complete Baby & Toddler Meal Planner feels like the first time. It's amazing Ned is not just walking round with a bottle of formula.

I've also bought, on recommendation from a friend, River Cottage Baby and Toddler Cookbook, I'm hoping will give me ideas for things that Ned can eat (whether he will or not...) that I can puree for Jim further down the line. So far Jim's had pear, baby rice and porridge. This afternoon we're having parsnip. Fingers crossed something will come back to me soon.

Jamie Oliver's Chicken and Squash Cacciatore

Having a conversation on Twitter the other day I realised I had no shame in admitting I love Jamie Oliver, yes sometimes my hand twitches with the urge to give hi a little slap but I can say that about most people and they don't consistently make cookery books that I love.

I went to Bree's house and she had the new Jamie Oliver, Everyday Super Food. I had added it to my Amazon wishlist but one look at hers and I bought it (half price in Waterstones) on the way home. Not that it is full to bursting with things I want to cook (I look to Jamie's 15-Minute Meals for that) but because I am trying to lose weight, I need a healthier diet, I live with a man who needs man food, but of the slimming variety and Everyday Super Food seems to have that all covered.

The Chicken and Squash Cacciatore with mushrooms, tomatoes, olives and bread is a good example of this. It's just not really my sort of thing, in fact I hate squash so, as suggested by Jamie, I substituted it for the mildly more bearable sweet potato. But it was delicious, filled us up and Joe cooked it. Successfully but not taking hours. So here it is. I didn't take a photo, I left out the olives and resisted the urge to have it with pasta and had one slice of bread as per the recipe.

I sometimes think Jamie's portion sizes are a little on the small side. This did both of us and a huge leftovers lunch for Joe the next day so it would do 4 but make sure you have bread and pudding. In fact, if you are so inclined this is a great one to cook with a view to having the leftovers for lunch the next day, it is filling and reheats well.

Chicken and Squash Cacciatore

Serves 4

1 onion
1 leek
4 cloves of garlic
2 rashers of smoked pancetta
2 sprigs of fresh rosemary
olive oil
2 fresh bay leaves
½ a butternut squash or 600g sweet potatoes
100g chestnut mushrooms
2 x 400g tins of plum tomatoes
250ml Chianti or other good red wine
4 chicken thighs, bone in
8 black olives (stone in)
200g seeded wholemeal bread

Pre-heat the oven to 190C/375F/Gas Mark 5. The recipe says it takes 1 hour 20 minutes and I'd agree with that, an hour of it is cooking time.

1.  Peel the onion and cut into eighths, trim, wash and slice the leek, peel and slice the garlic.

2. Place a large ovenproof casserole pan on a medium heat. Finely slice the pancetta, pick and finely chop the rosemary leaves, then place both in the pan with 1 tbsp of oil and the bay leaves.

3. Stir regularly for 2 minutes, then add the garlic, followed by the onion and leek. Cook for 10 mins, stirring regularly.

4. Meanwhile, chop the squash or the sweet potato (wash first) into bite sized chunks, leaving the skin on and discarding any squash seeds. Jamie chops the stalks off the mushrooms and adds all to the pan with the squash/sweet potato.

5. Remove and discard the chicken skin (we didn't) and add the chicken to the pan. Pour in the wine and let it reduce slightly, then add the tomatoes and break them up with a wooden spoon. Half fill each tin with water, swirl about and pour into the pan and mix it all together.

6. Destone the olives (we left them out completely), then poke them into the stew. Bring to a gentle simmer, the transfer to the oven to cook for an hour or until the sauce is thick and the chicken falls off the bone. Season as you wish and serve with bread to mop up the sauce.

Baby updates

For those who don't know I have a YouTube channel which is mostly make-up stuff but sometimes baby things sneak in there too. Here are the latest ones about lovely Jim

Newborn...


3 months...

Jamie Oliver's Gorgeous Gado Gado

Jamie's Comfort Food arrived in my life when my pregnant superhero level sense of smell was at it's peak and making a baked egg exhausted me. It has to be one of my most looked at cookery books, there are a ton of recipes I want to try out and every mood and taste is covered but they mostly require a level of time and mental involvement that I just didn't have. Until now. Now I am just about managing two children, I'm going to the gym three times a week and it's not acceptable to send my husband out for pizza 5 nights out of 7 because the large slab of fat on my tummy no longer houses a person and needs to disappear. In short I'm not pregnant anymore so I need to take control of what I eat. I'm back in the kitchen.

One of the recipes I've been threatening to try out for a while is the Gado Gado, an Indonesian salad with radishes, beansprouts and tofu, with a peanut and lime dressing. We eat salad quite a lot and I am very strict about what qualifies as a salad-that-is-a-main-course. If there is cheese or meat involved then it is a main course, without these it is just a side salad and not enough for my supper. Therefore feta and mozarella feature heavily in our diet - it's nice to explore other options. Gado Gado has neither cheese nor meat (though I'm sure you could add both) but the egg, potato and tofu sneak this one in to the main course category and it is incredibly filling. We made the amount from the book, recommended for 4 people and had two large helpings each and both had a large bowlful for lunch the next day.

This was the first time I had cooked tofu rather than using the pre-cooked stuff and it was ok - it sort of disintegrated in the pan so I'll probably use the pre-cooked next time, or just try again until I'm better at it (unlikely). I followed his instructions on cooking the cabbage and agree it's the best way to do it (see below). I do think I'd probably add at least one more tomato to this though. But I'm a tomato fan. This is basically, like all salads, one of those recipes where you use the dressing and add what you like. It's a guideline. A good one.

I've changed the order in which he does things as this, to me, makes more sense. If you want soft-boiled eggs, well I do them almost last, he does them first...

Gorgeous Gado Gado
Serves 4

for the salad:
400g new potatoes
4 large eggs
400g firm silken tofu
sesame oil
½ Chinese cabbage
2 ripe tomatoes
1 handful radishes
½ a cucumber
2 handfuls ready to eat beansprouts
½ bunch fresh coriander
optional: prawn crackers
optional: 1 fresh birds eye chilli

sauce:
1 clove garlic
50g palm sugar  (I used this)
120g crunchy peanut butter
1-2 fresh red chillies
juice of 2 limes
2 tsps fish sauce
1 tbsp low-salt soy (we just have normal soy)
1 tbsp tamarind paste

You will need a magimix or blender for the sauce though of course you can mix it by hand, and a frying pan for the tofu if you are cooking it yourself.

1. Scrub the potatoes and cook in salted boiling water for 15-20 minutes or until tender; then halve or slice them up.

2. Finely slice the cabbage if you want it raw of if you want it cooked, which is more traditional, cut into 2cm slices, place in a colander and slowly pour a kettle of boiling water over the top.

3. Cut the tomatoes into wedges, quarter the radishes and slice the cucumber.

4. Put all the veg into a bowl and season with salt.

5. Cut the tofu into 2½ cm chunks and fry in a splash of sesame oil for about 15 minutes, or until golden, then sprinkle lightly with salt.

6. While the tofu is cooking put the eggs on to soft boil for 6 minutes or longer if you prefer. Place all the sauce ingredients in a blender, peeling the garlic and grating the palm sugar if needed, and blitz until smooth. Taste and adjust the seasoning - you want this to be quite limey so I added some more.

7. Traditionally you serve this in individual bowls adding the salad first and then mixing in the dressing. Jamie adds the sauce to the bowls first with the dressing on top so the individual can see all the ingredients while they mix the dressing in. I am lazy. I put it all in a big bowl, added the dressing and mixed. Tastes the same, doesn't look as beautiful as you can see from my picture. If I was making this for other people I would probably do the individual bowl thing.

Seraphine Maternity and Nursing Jumper

If there's one thing I hate spending money on it's maternity clothes. If I had my time over I would go out when I was three months pregnant with Ned (2.5yrs), spend some money at Isabel Oliver, Seraphine and Topshop and then that would be it. I'd have good clothes that would see me through however many pregnancies I had. But instead I hated spending money and so didn't, until I really had to and then it's even worse because you don't get as much wear out of them. This time round I got so huge so quickly I had to buy more clothes at around 6 months because I was growing out of everything. Now some these clothes are nearly good as new having only been draped over my massive bulk 2 or 3 times. And I managed to mostly stick to my policy of only buying things you can breastfeed in... otherwise it's wear-life really is limited, unless you know you are going to bottle feed.

One purchase I have never regretted however, is the Seraphine Maternity and Nursing Jumper I bought when I was about three months pregnant with Jim (3 months). It lasted beautifully throughout the whole of my pregnancy and breastfeeding, goes with everything, washes well and is a flattering shape. £49 seems like an awful lot to spend on a jumper that you wear for such a limited time, an in fact it's quite a lot for any jumper but because most of us don't have the money to buy a whole new wardrobe I ended up wearing either this, or another jumper the whole way through my pregnancy so you really do get your monies worth. And I didn't feel fat, or gross, or terrible looking because it fitted well and still does despite having been worn through the extreme ends of pregnancy.

I don't often do clothing things on here - I spend most of my money on make-up and skincare, not clothes (I wish...) but this is something that is really worth investing in.

Baby Day

As the second child (of two) I always maintained you get a raw deal, no matter how much my mother tried to convince me that you love your children the same (I never felt un-loved!) and they both have certain qualities that the other doesn't and are completely individual etc etc. But I still doubted this even as I was pregnant with what would be my second son. How could I love anyone as much as Ned who is so incredibly funny and clever? Then Jim arrived and as the hormones flooded through my body I was worried that this new tiny person was going to replace Ned who was so big and self-sufficient, not small and sweet-smelling and needy like Jim.

What I actually realise is that we were both right. I do love my boys the same, my heart did expand and make room for Jim as everyone said it would (I hate that expression but it works) but my god I don't feel the same wonder I did with Ned. Jim gets moved from room to room, house to pram depending on what Ned is up to and then, when he's at nursery, depending on what I am frantically trying to get done. My two and a half year old and insomnia made sleeping while he napped an impossibility and the fact that I work for myself made me feel pressure to get as much work stuff done as soon as I could after giving birth.

As the weeks passed and I realised Jim was not getting any tummy time, hadn't really smiled (had he?) and I was grinding my teeth through my terrible sub-concious anxiety (related to my depression, often exacerbated by having a baby) and I thought 'the only person who is going to give you time off is you'. It's true. If I say I'm ok to work, then everyone around me will go with it and the older Jim gets the less likely I am to be told to put my feet up. And it's not really about me, yes I love Jim but I definitely feel less bonded to him than I did with Ned at this age, and that's because we never spend that much time together. Because he's nice and quiet when awake and undemanding of me, he wasn't getting the time he deserved.

So two weeks ago I decided that Wednesdays would be me and Jim days. We would hang out together. Yes the odd thing may come up and we need to take Ned to nursery and pick him up but apart from that we are not leaving Chiswick. We'll look at books, chat, cuddle, walk round the shops and in the afternoon we'll nod off together in front of an ITV drama. In a couple of weeks he'll start being left at the gym creche for an hour while I go to the gym and at the beginning of next year we'll start doing swimming lessons but apart from that Wednesdays are ours and so far the difference is already noticable. He smiles a lot and I am calmer and have a day that I really look forward to. This sounds mean, there are lots of days usually but being a self-employed mother-of-two married to a workaholic means that the weeks can merge and everything is a rush.

Because I have named Wednesday's Jim day, I don't try and work, I don't battle against the mountains of laundry and tidying, I don't do face charts and brush cleaning (for those of you who don't know I'm a make-up artist). Instead we look at little toes, blow hot potatoes on his tummy and sing and dance (mostly to First Aid Kit).

I don't want this to sound smug. I just suddenly realised that he was nine weeks and carted around like a bloody heavy handbag and all the time I was marvelling at how the time had flown with Ned. I was so caught up in trying to get everything done and be a working mum that I was neglecting the actual mum-stuff and I can never get that back... Take your time, I think a lot of mum's nowadays are too hard on themselves. Put your feet up and have a good old cuddle.

I used to sing this to Jim a lot when he was a couple of weeks old and feeding every hour or so round the clock - should have listened to what I was mindlessly singing.

UPDATE: The lovely people at the Counselling Directory have asked me to include a link here and in case you need it click here for the specific page on depression. Please, please go and check it out if you need support in some way - it is set up by people who have seen the gaps in the support of mental health.