TRANSCRIPT 172
[0:00 – 1:21]
Meg Faure: Can you believe it? Aurelia is 49 weeks old now. We have been following her since she was born and she’s now just one month away from her first birthday and so we’re going to catch up with her amazing mom Julia, our regular guest and parenting partner in crime, and in this episode we’re going to reflect on an incredible transformation that happens in this final stretch of babyhood, from babbling and bottle battles to high-speed crawling and those first cruising steps. Is your little one approaching one year too? Well then you’re going to love this candid and insightful chat. Today you’re going to learn about the big milk question. What happens after 12 months? Do you switch to cow’s milk? Do you still use a bottle? How much? We’re going to talk about all of that. We talk a little bit about mobility and those mobility milestones from high-speed crawling through to early standing and then also what is normal in terms of walking milestones and then we also talk about communication and how vital this is and little Aurelia is now saying the word “there.” It’s just so sweet and we talk a little bit about language development and how to enhance that and actually what’s the importance of it and we finish off the episode talking about planning a party and the celebration of the first year that it’s not just your little one turning one years old but it’s actually also celebration of motherhood as well so we’re going to be talking about all of that. It’s a really fabulous episode so don’t go away. Enjoy.
[1:22 – 2:04]
Announcer: Welcome to Sense by Meg Faure, the podcast that’s brought to you by ParentSense, the app that takes guesswork out of parenting. If you’re a new parent then you are in good company. Your host Meg Faure is a well-known OT, infant specialist and the author of eight parenting books. Each week we’re going to spend time with new mums and dads just like you to chat about the week’s wins, the challenges and the questions of the moment. Subscribe to the podcast, download the ParentSense app and catch Meg here every week to make the most of that first year of your little one’s life and now meet your host.
[2:07 – 3:39]
Meg Faure: Welcome back mums and dads. This is Sense by Meg Faure and today we have our incredible guest Julia who we have been tracking for almost a year now. Little Aurelia was born a year ago in two weeks time or three weeks time. Is she 49 weeks old now Julia?
Julia: 49 weeks which is a very big number but yeah so yeah three weeks to go until her first birthday which is yeah I mean we talk about it every time and people are probably very bored of us saying it but well I can’t quite cope.
Meg Faure: I know and your little bubba’s almost going to be a toddler so yeah so let’s talk about the wins and the challenges and yeah the questions of the moment. What’s been happening?
Julia: What’s been happening? So there’s I’d like to get off the roller coaster of illness is the first thing I want to say. I think that is probably the toughest part about going from one to two for me. I found the transition in general kind of seamless to be honest because we had the structures in place and I don’t know I found you know she was an easier baby than Santi certainly and I don’t know I had a bit more confidence and experience and you know it was it was fairly easy I suppose but the constant germs being passed around this house is something that I never really had with Santi. Also he was a lockdown baby so you know his exposure was just lower in general until a certain point. So yeah between her being sick all the time and then I got very sick recently as well and it’s just been a little bit boring to be quite honest all of this disruption to sleep and things but I think it’s very much the case for most people with their second, so it is what it is.
[3:39 – 6:01]
Meg Faure: And it is you know like most things in parenting it’s a double-edged sword or two sides to the coin let me rather say. The positive is that she is going to be super robust in her immunity so when she goes to preschool and nursery school she’s just not going to pick up the bugs like he has because he as you said was a lockdown baby first born not exposed to as much so our firstborns just get sick from the day they start creche or play school or whatever it is and if it’s grade one if they’ve been at home until grade one until that point then they get absolutely everything and she won’t do that because she’s actually picked them all up from him. So you know I think people know that every little exposure to light germs is actually a good thing so I don’t believe in things like chicken pox parties and rubbish I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of that.
Julia: No okay. It sounds deranged.
Meg Faure: Yes I mean there was this trend amongst moms who they would say “well we don’t want to vaccinate our child against chicken pox it’s better to get it when you’re a child so let’s you know if somebody’s got chicken pox we’ll all get together and catch chicken pox” well that is the most terrible idea so please do not do that rather go and get the Varicella vaccine if you’re wanting to avoid the severe case of chicken pox but the reality is that these little colds and picking up little bits of germs is really not a bad thing at this age. They actually say that you have to kind of have 14 illnesses by the time you go to nursery school in order to avoid having a year of being sick all the time so she will definitely have ticked that box.
Julia: Yeah I think we’re on track for that for sure. Yeah no no it I think it is probably it does have its benefits for sure and it’s tricky but you know on the on the upside it you know she hasn’t been desperately ill which is good you know other than that first hospitalisation which was really driven by her age more than the severity of her illness at that stage you know it was really just a very very snotty nose but when you are 11 days old and you only have teeny tiny nostrils it’s it’s a bit tricky but you know it has just basically been a series of colds and little light fevers and things so not not so bad but it does disrupt the sleep and that’s certainly the the toughest part I mean if we’d had this conversation yesterday I would have been probably unable to string a sentence together I was so exhausted both of us were because she’d had just one of her nights and you know some days are very very tough but luckily for us with Aurelia they are few and far between.
[6:01 – 6:53]
Meg Faure: So the other side of the coin is obviously the sleep disruption and the and the feeding so they often go off their food and then they stop sleeping and those are the two disruptions that happen with illness and by and large for 90% of illnesses it’s just a case of keeping them comfortable and hydrated and that’s what it’s about so paracetamol is the go-to for all of these things and then also saline drops and that type of thing and she is getting to an age soon where if she does have a really snotty nose you can look at a decongestant which obviously we don’t do in little babies.
Julia: Yes exactly and you know luckily like I said the symptoms have been fairly benign and so they are kind of quite quite easy to manage and you know she’s a fairly easygoing baby and yes her appetite does go up and down you know when we aren’t struggling with things like illness or teething she is fairly happy to eat she’s still quite adventurous eats lots of different things so that’s good.
[6:53 – 8:31]
Julia: But you know by the same token I think one of the things that I’ve learned from my experience with Santi but not just because he sort of became a bit of a picky eater but just in general having gone through this experience with my first child of weaning and feeding that the days where she’s not eating much or the nights where she maybe doesn’t want to eat dinner I actually don’t have to panic I did do that a bit with Santi I was a bit I think because his sleep was such a big struggle for us I was convinced that things like not eating dinner would just be another reason for him to wake up in the night and for me to struggle and I think what I’ve learned basically through essentially having to go through it and seeing what happens is that there are nights like last night Santi absolutely refused to eat dinner I think he had one bite of his food and then was like that’s it I’m not having anything else and he was hungry when he woke up this morning but it didn’t disturb his sleep he doesn’t wake up in the night and rant and there was a part of me when he was little that thought that would happen yeah yeah I think the same is true with her yeah.
Meg Faure: And I think that is such an important thing because I remember having that thought I’ll never forget I was driving I was in Johannesburg I was driving home to my mum’s house where we were staying James fell asleep in the car and I could not wake him when we got home because I’d driven at that you know I got stuck in traffic and suddenly it was six o’clock before I got home and he’d missed dinner and I thought well that’s it you know he’s just never gonna sleep like he’d literally missed a meal his last meal was a snack at four and and of course what ended up happening is he slept absolutely fine through the night and when I chatted to Kath about it and you know and I want mums to know this when we look at little one’s diet and the impact on sleep we don’t take it across one meal we don’t even take it across one day which is actually what we should be looking at which is that they eat more for breakfast less for lunch and very little for supper you actually take it across a week and what you’ll find is when you look at your little one for a week they’ve probably been taking in enough nutrients and it will not disrupt sleep if they miss a meal so that’s the first thing.
[8:31 – 10:25]
Meg Faure: The one of the things that I did want to mention with regards to Aurelia is that sometimes when they when they get sick they get picky and you might have found this with Santi as well they become picky eaters and because we’re anxious about this how much they’re eating and will they sleep we tend to start giving them more milk and so then they start to have more of a reliance on milk either through the middle of the night or even through the day and she’s actually at the age where we need to have a little bit of caution around that I don’t know if you’ve experienced her drinking more milk than maybe she should be at this age.
Julia: Well so this is exactly one of the questions I wanted to ask you because I can’t remember how it worked with Santi so the the milk feeds tend to be a little bit up and down at the moment she definitely goes through phases where I feel like she’s hungrier and she is kind of smashing her bottles but I would say that that’s less frequent than the norm which is more that her daytime bottles she doesn’t usually finish she has usually kind of a bigger like like a 180ml bottle when she wakes up and then at bedtime and then the the other bottles in the day there’s either one or two and it’s it’s normally more like 120ml but she doesn’t even get through maybe three quarters of that so sometimes she does drink them all but but largely it’s it’s it’s a little bit it seems to be kind of reducing the amount of milk she’s taking in but I also am not quite sure about transitioning to cow’s milk and I don’t know if you can remind me how what we should be looking at at this stage of her life I suppose.
Meg Faure: Yeah absolutely so first of all the amount that she’s having for breakfast and before dinner is absolutely perfect so 180ml on waking 180ml in the evening before bedtime those are absolutely spot on and at the moment those should both be formula milks.
[10:25 – 13:28]
Meg Faure: The middle of the day um snack so if you’re following like a four hourly 6, 10, 2, 6, that 10 a.m and 2 p.m those mid-afternoon and mid-morning milks can actually drop away completely and what I would suggest now is that you actually actively drop one of them completely there’ll be one that she’s not that keen on at 11 months and just drop that one so let’s say it’s the 10 o’clock in the morning bottle that she really doesn’t love a lot rather add in dairy in another format into her morning snack so like a little tub of yoghurt or she can have a little smoothie or little slices of cheese on cracker bread or whatever it is those are all better ways for her to be getting the milk in and not to actually offer her milk mid-morning or mid-afternoon the other one depending on the one that you want to keep you can just keep a little bit of milky tea so you can do 60 mils of milk in some tea and that’s absolutely perfect so she’s effectively down to two milk feeds a day she should be having nothing at night obviously if she does wake at 4 a.m and you have to use a little bit of milk to get her back to sleep and then the other half of the bottle of the 180 mils at 6 when she wakes up that’s also fine you know that that that’s being flexible in terms of moving of what she should be drinking as long as she’s currently on a dairy-based formula and she’s not doesn’t have a cow’s milk protein allergy then moving her onto cow’s milk or any other milk at 12 months is absolutely perfect so we have lots of other fabulous milks that are around you know kind of almond milks and so on and if she doesn’t have any allergies to those type of of nuts you can put her onto any other milk as well and milk becomes really quite irrelevant and she does not need formula going forward after a year of age so you don’t have to change it at exactly 12 months you can wait until she’s 14 months but I would definitely start to be moving her off the formula because it’s expensive if you do want to keep on a toddler formula that’s your decision but the bottom line is they don’t really need to be on formula anymore after a year of age so you can start to become a lot more flexible and I would keep that morning bottle of 180 mils and the evening bottle of 180 mils for as long as she wants them so yeah be flexible.
Julia: Yeah okay cool perfect yeah I think moving off formula as you mentioned will save us a lot of money I can’t actually believe how much it costs these days and you know we are people who are relatively privileged I actually it horrifies me the idea of how how most families afford formula.
Meg Faure: It’s incredibly expensive and you know it’s interesting because literally last week I was reading some research that they were talking about um it was I think it was from UNICEF or World Health Organisation and the risk for babies from underprivileged homes being on formula is massive absolutely massive and that is the reason why the World Health Organisation says breastfeed for as long as possible because most moms in Africa and most underprivileged environments they cannot afford the formula so what they do is they start to stretch the formula tin out by diluting it incorrectly with water so that instead of six scoops you do four scoops for the same amount of water and it thins it out and that’s where you get your nutritional deficiencies and that is the reason why we do say that breast is best for babies in homes where formula isn’t affordable because formula is very very expensive so yeah moving off it now at a year of age is absolutely fine and I hear you it’s it’s a it’s an expense.
[13:28 – 15:42]
Julia: Yeah cool no that’s um the strategy that you’ve kind of outlined there I think would work quite quite well for us. Um I remember with Santi we it took quite a long time to drop the evening milk eventually I got to the point I was just like right cold turkey same thing with dummies for him I was I’m not doing transitioning I’m not reducing it we’re just going cold turkey I’m gonna deal with the tantrum whatever comes and actually it worked quite well so I will get to that stage with her I’m sure a bit further down the line but um for now I think that’s it’s also like it’s a nice little routine you know as part of the bedtime and part of in the morning when she comes into our bed for example so yeah.
Meg Faure: A lot of moms a lot of moms ask me when must they drop that evening bottle and you know I actually didn’t drop it my kids had it until they were like six or seven years old but what they had was a it was a milky tea eventually but I like that you know that the comfort of it and the fact that it was you know I’d kind of signified it was a like a break in the end of the day it’s like closing closing your computer at the end of the day you know it’s like “boom, this is a line in the sand.” The only time that that does change is once you’re trying to get them out of night nappies if you’ve got a little one who battles with nighttime bed wetting and one of my kids did and for that one we had to go like absolute cold turkey no water no milk no nothing after 4:30 because otherwise they would have wet their beds so but for most little ones they don’t do that they make a big wee before they go to bed and they’re fine.
Julia: Yeah no it does have its its place I think but yeah eventually we’ll we’ll phase it out and in the meantime we’re working on things like transitioning to straws and to sippy cups so I recently bought her a little sippy cup that she can drink her tea and her water out of that you know requires a sort of mouth skill essentially so we’re kind of working on that. Um that’s also one that I wanted to mention so when we were transitioning our kids off bottles because it does come a point to which you don’t want them to be on bottles anymore um they might still be having their milky tea in the evening but it won’t be in a bottle.
[15:42 – 16:13]
Meg Faure: And quite a nice little tip and this is really not strictly by the book but anyway I don’t do things by the book always. So one of the things you can do is actually take a very hot needle. So this is for little ones who are really not wanting to get off their bottles.
[16:13 – 17:24]
Meg Faure: You take a very hot needle for like two-year-olds or three-year-olds and you puncture a whole lot of holes with a very hot needle into the top of the milk teat so that instead of it having a very slow flow, it gets a very fast flow, which is effectively a sippy cup. And so when they’ve had those, it takes away that comfort element of the sucking and then moving them onto a sippy cup becomes much easier because the sippy cup is basically giving them the same flow as the bottle is then. Whereas some little ones get very stuck on wanting the bottle teat and they won’t transition onto the sippy cup for bedtime. So just kind of make it really like a sippy cup. I mean, they say you shouldn’t do that with bottle teats because of the risk of the rubber rupturing. So you do need to be careful, but I would just watch the top of that teat, puncture it and then eventually move them onto a sippy cup.
Julia: Yeah, that’s a good idea. I’ve only ever heard something like that around trying to get kids off the dummy because it also like disrupts the sucking of the sort of rubber part of the dummy, same kind of idea.
Meg Faure: Exactly. Yeah, exactly.
[17:24 – 17:31]
Meg Faure: And how is she doing developmentally? I mean, she’ll be walking in the next month, I’m sure, if she’s not already.
[17:32 – 18:03]
Announcer: This episode is brought to us by ParentSense, the all-in-one baby and parenting app that help you make the most of your baby’s first year. Don’t you wish someone would just tell you everything you need to know about caring for your baby? When to feed them, how to wean them, and why they won’t sleep? ParentSense app is like having a baby expert on your phone guiding you to parent with confidence. Get a flexible routine, daily tips and advice personalised for you and your little one. Download ParentSense app now from your App Store and take the guesswork out of parenting.
[18:04 – 18:11]
Meg Faure: And how is she doing developmentally? I mean, she’ll be walking in the next month, I’m sure, if she’s not already.
[18:11 – 19:12]
Julia: So, Santi walked at exactly two weeks after his first birthday. So, that is her line in the sand, as it were. And since she’s been a little bit, not dramatically faster developing than Santi, but a little bit ahead of him, it’ll be interesting to see how we go with that. She’s definitely practising her standing. She loves falling down from standing more than anything in the whole world. She’ll literally kind of be playing on the couch and she’ll pull up to the back of the couch and then launch herself backwards to fall flat on the couch. It’s hilarious for the whole sort of sensory input thing. She loves it. So, yeah, she’s loving her standing. She crawls at a rate of knots. I mean, it’s frightening how fast you can cover ground. And she’s definitely starting to cruise a little bit on furniture. It’s not sort of her preference at the moment, but she’s definitely experimenting with it. So, yeah, we’re going to see how it goes. I do think it’s probably coming, not just around the corner, but I suspect in the next maybe six weeks, something like that, we’ll see a bit of walking.
[19:12 – 19:12]
Meg Faure: I love it.
[19:13 – 21:03]
Meg Faure: Well, what’s quite interesting is that the average age that boys walk is 14 months. So, Santi was ahead of the curve and because he was less than 13 months and the average age that girls walk is 12 months because girls actually do progress a little bit more quickly. Having said that, and I remember us having this conversation when she first started crawling, she wasn’t as proficient and she started to prefer standing. And we thought, “Oh my goodness, is she going to be an early walker,” which she hasn’t turned out to be, which is fabulous. And I remember saying to you and moms, you can go and listen to the episode. I think it was when she was about nine months or 10 months old. And I remember saying to you, she must crawl as fast and as long as she possibly can, because that is the milestone that consolidates so many other gross motor foundations. So, in my mind, absolutely no rush for her to walk at all. But the fact that she’s 49 weeks old and is already starting to cruise, I think you’ll probably see her walking probably almost at the same age as Santi. It’ll be interesting to see.
Julia: Yeah, it will be. And I remember that conversation quite vividly. And when I do see her doing her kind of very, very fast crawling, I’m actually quite comforted by it, funnily enough. I think maybe with Santi, I was more focused on, maybe, I don’t know, many first time moms maybe do this, you almost want to rush through those milestones because they’re so exciting. But I do definitely see the benefit of her actually spending more time crawling because, I mean, I’ve got a friend who her child started walking only at about 18 months and it was a little bit sort of almost worrisome. But, I mean, she’s a perfectly well developed, intelligent, you know, very much on target child. It actually really doesn’t matter.
[21:03 – 22:23]
Meg Faure: No, it doesn’t. And what’s really interesting, and moms who’ve listened to all my episodes will have heard the story before, but my firstborn was a very, very early walker. He walked at nine and a half months, which is chaos. And at the time I was thinking, “Wow, his gross motor, like he’s so advanced.” And in actual fact, he ended up not being terribly coordinated in terms of his kind of ball skills and that type of thing. He ended up being an exceptional endurance athlete, but he wasn’t actually, or he is an exceptional endurance athlete, but not an exceptional coordinated athlete. Like ball sports were just a disaster for him. And whereas my sister, her middle child walked for the first time at 18 months. And I was very worried. I thought, this is like, this is on the late side, really late side of normal. And he has recently been selected to play cricket for KwaZulu-Natal primary school kids. So, I mean, that’s just, that’s such an example. He is so coordinated and yet he did so in some ways, I think taking it slowly with milestones leads to consolidation of foundations. And that’s actually what we want because, and that’s actually, to be honest with you, Julia, it’s about everything about young children is that the longer and slower they have to consolidate things, the better they are adjusted. And, you know, it goes to even cell phone use, you know, like the longer that they play in the real world, rather than on technology, the better they’re going to do with social skills later on. We know these things. So taking it slow is very important. And there’s a very good book that I read a few years ago called “In Praise of Slow,” and it was about slow in every aspect of our world. But one of them was, you know, kids taking milestones slowly. So, yes, let her go at her own pace.
Julia: Exactly.
[22:23 – 22:52]
Julia: No, it’s a good reminder. And, you know, her other little quirks at the moment is also something she’s doing, which is super cute, which is that she’s doing a little, I mean, she’s not talking that much, but she’s definitely doing a little bit of repeating of certain words. So one of the things that, I mean, not perfectly, but it’s, you know, it’s her version of saying the word “there.” So when she sees someone she knows, if she sees her brother, or she sees Tsitsi, or she sees Gogo, whoever it is, she’ll point at them and go “there,” which is incredibly cute. And the same thing, if you sort of point at an object that she recognises, she also says “there.”
[22:52 – 23:20]
Julia: And then what’s the other thing she said? Oh, we have like a sort of plastic toy telephone, essentially. And the whole story is kind of odd to me, because obviously, the way that we use telephones is so different from when you and I were growing up, which is where you actually used to pick it up and say hello, as opposed to tap at it with your thumbs. But obviously, when we play with the telephone, that’s what we do with her. So now she’s learned that she picks up the phone, and she goes, “hi,” which is her version of saying hello. And it’s so cute.
[23:20 – 24:00]
Meg Faure: I would definitely take both those as words. So she’s definitely saying two words already. And that is amazing, because, again, similar to walking, which is quite a variable milestone, I mean, I mentioned nine to 18 months, it’s a nine month kind of window. Speaking is actually also a very variable milestone with not a lot of kids saying that many words by one. And it sounds to me like she’s probably saying, is she saying Mama or Dada?
Julia: She babbles Dada. I cannot get her to say Mama just yet. But Dada does come out of her mouth, although I’m determined that it’s more that she’s babbling than she’s saying it, although my husband doesn’t agree.
Vito (in background): She said Dada to me this morning and gave me a big kiss.
Julia: Vito disagrees wholeheartedly.
[24:00 – 24:01]
Meg Faure: Dad talking from the background. I love that.
[24:02 – 25:31]
Meg Faure: Brilliant. Yeah, so she’ll probably have five words, I guess, by the time she’s a year. You know, when you start to break it down, “Ta,” “Ma,” “Their,” “Dog,” she’ll probably start to have five words, which is really, really awesome. And of course, we’ve spoken about it before. But that pointing and saying “there” is just a critical milestone. It’s children who are autistic do not do that. And the reason is that they don’t have a sense that what is in their mind needs to be conveyed to another person’s mind. It’s that mind mindedness. And so the fact that she is already doing that means that she’s going to be a fabulous communicator, which doesn’t surprise me coming from you. So I think she is going to she’s definitely on target with that one.
Julia: Yeah, well, her brother is an absolute chatterbox. So I have no doubt that she will follow in his footsteps and we will not have a moment’s peace until they move out at 18.
Meg Faure: Well, it’s such a good thing. And you know, I mean, it’s one of those things that there was some research done that showed that parents who are chatty, have children with higher verbal IQs. And that’s because there’s a direct proportion between the number of words that a child hears in a day, and their verbal IQ and verbal IQ is very important. Although I’m not a, I’m not hung up on IQ, verbal intelligence is important, because it’s the way in which we’re able to convey to the world the ideas that are in our mind, which is what happens in any area of business, you know, so and even coding, you know, the ability to learn a computer language is also built on in language. So moms, if you’re listening to this, and you’re not a chatty mom, like Julia and I are, you actually need to make real efforts like you need to learn to actually talk through stuff that you’re doing in the day that has no, we would never normally talk through like, just telling your little one, “Come, let’s go change your nappy. Now, how do we change your nappy? Let’s lie you down or lift up your bum or look at…” you know, so all of that, just talking through the mundane of the day is actually assisting with verbal intelligence. It’s important.
[25:32 – 26:30]
Julia: Yeah, I do think that also Tsitsi helps a lot with that, because obviously, you know, the large part of the day, she’s spending the day with her, and she’s very aware of these milestones and their importance. And she talks and sings to her all day long. And I’m telling you, that’s where she got these two words from. It’s not from from me trying to kind of get her to say them. There is definitely something that she’s learned from Tsitsi and that she kind of reinforces. So it’s also great to have that, that other influence and kind of assistance with that as well. So yeah, I do think she probably will be fairly chatty.
Meg Faure: And that’s where it comes to the importance of choosing a good nanny and also a nanny who almost replicates your strengths as well. You know, like, you know, who is chatty. I think that’s very, very important. Our little ones spend a lot of time with their nannies, you need to make sure you’ve chosen them well, and you equip them, train them. So very important.
[26:30 – 26:34]
Meg Faure: So before we finish off, we are heading towards a one year old. Are we thinking about a birthday party?
[26:34 – 29:32]
Julia: Oh, yeah. Um, look, first birthdays. I’m sort of doing the same thing that I did for Santi, which is a very kind of small family tea. I think that what she will have is a little party in the park with her friends. So we’re very lucky that we are two roads away from the neighbourhood park, which is very, very popular and full of children every single day. And certainly both of my kids go there every day. And often what they do, and certainly we did this last year with Santi is that the nannies will host a party for their child in the park for the other kids who kind of frequent the area. So I think that will be her little kind of friends’ party, which we’ll probably have on the day. And then, yeah, on the weekend, we’ll just have a little tea with the aunties and uncles and grannies and godparents and things like that, which is what we did for Santi. So very low key. But yeah, it’s a it’s a very interesting milestone that really does sneak up on you. I mean, even even with Santi where that year felt incredibly long, actually, even so somehow, you know, the 12 months pass and then you you’re suddenly forced to think about how long it’s been since they were you in hospital with them. And, and they were this teeny tiny, you know, dependent little blob, and how now they are much more independent and learning to talk and learning to walk and eating all sorts of interesting things and engaging with the world and how far they’ve come in that time. And then also, of course, you reflect on your own experience and how far you’ve come in that time. And what a different parent I am compared to the parent I was to Santi and all those sorts of things. So it’s, it makes me think a lot. I mean, I’m a, you know, I live in my head a lot. So I do I’m a kind of thinker about life and about things like this. But I do find myself pondering it quite often and finding a lot of, I guess, kind of meaning in it. It just, you know, mothering, I think is so, it sounds really twee, but it’s so important. And I think being an active parent as well, as in considering how you parent and trying hard and understanding that sometimes you make mistakes and that you can repair and, you know, just really kind of bringing your whole self to parenting, I think is, is so important for your kids. And I try really hard to do that. And some days are easier than others. And that’s, yeah, those are the sorts of things that I think about at this point.
[29:32 – 31:40]
Meg Faure: I love that, you know, I attended a lecture by probably the most, the forefront researcher in the world now, her name’s Claudia Gold, Dr. Claudia Gold. She’s actually a paediatrician, but who’s now focused very much on infant mental health and development. And she works at Harvard and, you know, she’s really the top. And she said that our whole world is, is kind of driven towards a knowing of, you know, like, “I know how to do this. I, like, these are the facts,” you know, like, it’s all around black and white and knowing. And she said, we need to as parents pivot that from being a space of knowing to a space of wondering. And I think when we do that, which is exactly what you are saying there, we do start to find meaning because, you know, like we don’t have all the answers. We don’t get it all right all the time. We’re not entirely sure if we’re making the right decisions. And sometimes we really stuff them up. But actually wondering about it actually will bring more meaning and more resolution than having it all black and white and being able to follow the rules of a book, because the rules are going to change all the time. So yeah, I think it is. And it is quite a meaningful moment as we exit the first year, knowing that we’ve done our best to lay down the foundations. And then of course, the next stage is then autonomy versus doubt, which is the second stage of emotional development. So the first one being attachment, and then moving on to autonomy versus doubt, which is exactly where Santi is now, where we’re at self-esteem and, you know, that type of thing. So yeah, it’s very interesting to move from the one phase to the next. And that is what a birthday is about, I guess, is that.
Julia: Yeah. And patting yourself on the back for keeping children alive for another year.
Meg Faure: And staying married.
Julia: Well, that absolutely, you got to get through the first seven years of your children’s lives, you got to work on it.
Meg Faure: Yeah, excellent. Okay, well, Julia, love to chat and we will catch up again. I think it’ll be about when she is a year old. So we’ll definitely make time to connect again. Thank you once again for sharing with us.
Julia: Thanks, Meg. I’ll see you when she’s one.
Meg Faure: Brilliant.
[31:41 – 31:50]
Announcer: Thanks to everyone who joined us. We will see you the same time next week. Until then, download ParentSense app and take the guesswork out of parenting.
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