Totsgear excel themselves

I wrote about Totsgear last week. Well, the car seat came in one week later, and they phoned to let us know - and delivered it to us the next day. No delivery charge. Amazing.

A true dilemma

I haven't looked up the official definition of 'dilemma', but I'm pretty sure that what we go through at night with Ainsworth is a true dilemma... on the one hand we don't believe leaving him to cry is right and really want to pick him up and cuddle him when he's crying, and on the other, when we know there is nothing wrong and all he wants is to be rocked off to sleep because he can't get himself back off, what should we do?

We've tried 'pick-up, put-down', we've tried rocking him off to sleep, we've tried leaving him, we've recorded every wake-up and looked for patterns, we've screwed ourselves up in emotional knots trying to do the right thing, but still he wakes frequently and sometimes takes up to an hour and a half to resettle - which is very frustrating at 2am.

Then last week, after 80 minutes of trying to settle him, we left him to cry. It was horrid, but it seemed like there was nothing else to do. Does the saying 'cruel to be kind' ring true here? I don't know. What I do know is that after leaving him a few times (and it takes about 45 minutes from mega-screams to whinging to sleep) he does seem to be getting better at settling himself back to sleep. He did it twice the other night and only cried for 10 minutes last night after I left him.

I always go through to him when he cries, but I'm trying to be perfunctory - change his nappy, offer water, brief cuddle - and not stay very long so he gets the message that waking at night is not on. I do hope he's not made less secure as a result of being left alone at night. I do hope he knows we love him and are there for him when he really needs us. But it must be very confusing for him and I wish I knew what the right thing to do was... but then I guess a lot of parenting is like that.

An advertisement...

This isn't really the place for advertising or promotion, but we were so impressed with our local independent nursery shop this weekend that I thought I should tell the world.

We'd just started wondering what Ainsworth's next car seat would be, and had seen an advert for the Bebe Confort Axiss. We immediately thought we'd found what we were looking for, but needed, of course, to check it works in our car. Our local Mothercare didn't have one in stock, so while we were out and about yesterday we popped in to Totsgear, a small, friendly, family-run store in Hitchin which we already knew because it's where we'd bought his Bugaboo.

Well, they had an Axiss on display, and they showed us how it worked. We asked about trying it in our car (which, at that moment, was parked on the other side of town) and it turns out that they come to your house to do it. What's more he could come the very next day (ie, today. Yes, that's Sunday morning). Sure enough, this morning at ten o'clock on the dot, as arranged, the Totsgear van pulled up outside carrying their demo Axiss (and a few alternatives), and the proprietor put it in the car for us, checked it fitted correctly, and showed us how to do it.

We placed an order there and then and it'll be with us within two weeks.

And the really amazing thing? There's no charge for the home fitting, and - despite such brilliant personal service - the car seat is costing us less than anywhere I've found online.

Now that's what I call a shop.

999 emergency

Someone in the house phoned 999 this morning.

I'll give you a clue: it wasn't me, and it wasn't Rachael.