Isla One - Mummy Nil

Apparently babies can't count. But I beg to differ. Isla can - she waits till we begin the latest round of sleep training and on night 3 - the night when it all begins to slot into place, she gets one of the following; a cold, an ear infection, a cough, a sore throat, some teeth, a growth spurt, or a stomach bug. Then, sleep training has to be abandoned, since the snot or bile production resulting from her blood-curdlingly angry roars is not entirely conducive to sleep. I think even the most leave-them-to-cry-their-heads-off prone of the baby experts would probably have to concede that there is no point embarking on Campaign Sleep Through The Night when they're ill. No, you just have to soldier on, and you sleep in your dressing gown.

You know it's not going well when both parents are sleeping in their dressing gowns. Parent sleeps on ready alert. Heaves tired body out of nice warm bed at Madam's bidding. During the ear infection phase her bidding was merely to fall asleep on A Parent, standing up. She'd roar, be picked up, feel a bit better, put her head on Parent's shoulder, and fall asleep. Parent will try to put her back in. Roar. Gets picked up, feels a bit better, head on Parent's shoulder. Parent stands there for half an hour, not moving - then if lucky, Parent able to place extremely heavy bundle of joy delicately back in cot. If not, roar roar roar - another half an hour of standy up sleepy, as we called it. Well done, you got her back down, I'd say when the Dressing Begowned Husband came back to bed. Yeah, he'd say - standy up sleepy.

And that's not the end of their counter-assault. They seem to be fit and healthy. Are going to bed properly for naps, going down well at bedtime. So you begin to consider the next strategy in Campaign Sleep Through the Night - eliminating a leftover night feed from the days of the cold, dealing with that rogue 2am habitual waking resulting from the growth spurt, or cutting out the dreamfeed at 10.30pm. And bang - immediately she tunes into your brain wavelength, clocks trouble, and goes on hunger strike or refuses to drink her requisite (minimum, according to Goddess of baby food Annabel Karmel) three quarters of a pint of milk a day. And that requires one heck of an iron will in her mother; riddled with self-doubt, it becomes in her mind a case of wilful neglect - refusing to feed a poor tiny little starving baby in the night.

Isla One - Mummy Nil, as her father says.

Contraband

In none of the baby books I have read (and as a neurotic first time mother I have of course read many, in an effort, it would seem, to make myself feel even more inadequate than is already natural for a beginner) has the importance of contraband been stated.

Babies like what they are not meant to have. Put a brightly coloured rattle in front of one, and and a corkscrew, and they will go for the corkscrew. They know bright colours are meant for babies, and dull colours are not.

We have harnessed the power of contraband. Isla has a basket of contraband. The basket itself is contraband - it is wicker, it is shedding threads and probably has sharp bits on it. There are ribbons tied to the basket which Isla chews and sucks and carefully picks up with a thumb and forefinger. In the basket are such illicit treasure as the wooden bit of a corkscrew (I am not that bad a mother - I took out the actual screw), food jar lids, a wooden spoon, a jar of vitamins (extreme contraband), some measuring spoons, an old nurofen packet, an old infacol bottle, an old shampoo bottle, a load of other old things and a load of plastic spoons.

In the five minutes before feeding time, all items are explored with gusto and thrown on the floor, leaving just the right amount of time to defrost one of the many delicious homecooked meals I have lovingly pureed, get her beaker ready, find a bib and if I'm lucky, make myself a cup of tea.

The tea is a luxury. In fact, it's beginning to feel like contraband.

Things Babies Like

Oh, there is nothing babies like so much as sparkly lights. We had to re-do bedtime last night because I overstimulated the daughter with the Christmas tree. She went bonkers in her bed and said to me (I translate), it's your fault, I'm not going to sleep a mere 5 minutes after you've put a twinkling thing slap bang right on the route upstairs to bed. You had successfully completed the wind-down to bedtime with That's Not My Dinosaur and a nice warm drink of milk and then we walk past that amazing sparkly amazing twinkling lovely amazing thing and you expect me to yawn and fall asleep. Yeah, right. Like, I'm so not going to am I.

Fair do's I thought.

Actually there is something else babies like, but for different reasons, and that is crisp packets. These aren't so much sparkly as really flappy and noisy and you can cover them in saliva and then wipe them everywhere.

Remote controls are a big hit too. Isla appears to be reading Ceefax page 100.