Mother's Little Helper By Kate

My name is Kate and I'm a chocoholic.

That's nothing new, I've always been partial to a slab of blended cocoa butter and solids (70% minimum for choice, but any port in a storm...) Now, it's becoming a more serious dependency. After dealing with a fractious child, chocolate becomes an absolute necessity and I even shock myself with how voraciously I can wolf it down.

Not that Rosie is an especially fractious baby - well, no more than the average, anyway. But she certainly has her moments and it can be a frazzling experience trying to work out what's wrong (if indeed there is anything properly wrong) and put it right, or at least soothe her to some degree. If it's not hunger that's producing the angst, the next most common candidate is tiredness. Over-tiredness is the worst because the obvious solution is for Rosie to get some shut-eye, but it's the last thing she's willing to do in that situation and it can take some serious persuasion on our part before she'll calm down enough to go to sleep.

Fortunately, this is not a situation that's arisen too often and generally we can feed/rock/dummy Rosie into submission without an indecent amount of time having elapsed. But it's getting tougher. Tonight we were up to two and a half hours from me first trying to get Rosie off to sleep and her finally making it into Nod Land. Thankfully, only a small proportion of that time was spent crying (her, not me - although it's tempting sometimes) - the rest was feeding or fussing. But oh, the blessed sight of a baby in peaceful repose and the sacred silence! At that point, I go and grab the chocolate. Everybody needs their drug and right now, what with the lactation and all, this is mine.