Baby Blogs On

Progress report
4 months

If babe is to reach the heights of football prowess that babyfather expects, there are a few skills to be mastered first - learning to sit up, for instance. Lying around in the field could hamper her team mates, however good her dribbling.

Today babe made exciting progress in that direction (at least you'd be excited if you were her grandmother and a paediatric physiotherapist, both of which Ganny happens to be). I laid her on her front for a spot of baby massage after her bath, and she pushed up with her hands so that she was holding her head and chest off the floor. She kept this up for the several minutes I spent oiling her. I was of course completely calm and unconcerned but I thought Ganny would want to know so I phoned her in the next five minutes.

Another milestone was the introduction of a teaspoon of 'baby rice' to the babe's mouth, and thence to her bib. Apparently she will eventually learn to keep it inside her mouth, which makes it easier to digest.

Babymother is pleased to report that the bosom friendship continues. :-)

Boobs, boobs, read all about it
16 weeks 5 days

Apologies for the long blog-gap. Bloggap?

My whole life for the last week has been to do with breast-feeding, and the agonies and ecstacies thereof. I followed the health visitor's advice and tried to feed the babe more often to build up my milk supply (you may recall that I was starving her). Unfortunately I made the mistake of trying to feed her a couple of times after only two hours (traditionally, it's four), when my boobs were off-duty. She tried to feed, got nothing out, concluded that boobs are useless and nothing would persuade her to try again. So she had a bottle of formula. That's happened a few times, and there have also been times when she's drunk all I had to offer and still been hungry, so I've topped her up with formula. I'm really not sure that I have enough milk to keep up with her new voracious appetite, and now she knows about bottles, she's really not sure she has enough patience for my slow output.

This could be the end of our bosom friendship, and I have to say, I'm gutted. There's nothing like the intimacy of breast feeding, and the feeling of providing all she needs from my own body as I did in pregnancy. I also love the naturalness of it (although in reality my milk will presumably have a higher pesticide content than Cow & Gate organic formula).

So I'm hanging on to it while I can by expressing milk every time she rejects it, to be fed to her later, and to keep up my milk supply.

Having said all that, it really doesn't matter in the slightest, and thank God for formula. If I find it upsetting to have babe screaming at my breast, when I can just get some formula out of the kitchen cupboard, how do mothers find it when there is no other way to feed their baby?

Too thick to pray
16 weeks tomorrow

Yesterday was mostly horrible - I'd had very little sleep as usual and just could not see a solution to, or even a cause of, babe's evening wailing. It had happened at the same time of day, every day, from Wednesday to Sunday. I spoke to two pharmacists, a health visitor, a Paediatrician's Hotline (turned out to be for GPs only) and a hospital walk-in clinic. I concluded it wasn't constipation because the health visitor said babe's tummy would feel very solid if it was. But I wasn't sure if one more dose of Gaviscon would make a difference. Finally it occurred to me that after the drama of the birth, and the chaos of all the crying in the first few weeks, I haven't asked God for much help with babe. So I apologised, mentally handed her back to him, put my hand on her tummy, prayed for healing and then had a nap (feeling much better). The scheduled evening scream did not materialise, and it still hasn't. Make of that what you will!

However, she has managed to lose an ounce in the last week and barely gained anything the three weeks before that. I saw the lovely health visitor today who first encouraged me to try Gaviscon. (She's called Faith, so perhaps my whole life is just a sort of Pilgrim's Progress analogy.) She says that babies do sometimes stop gaining weight after they start sleeping through the night because they have dropped a whole feed. I need to cram in as many as I can in the daytime now... Or we'll have to go with babe's plan, which is to wake up for a night feed again. She's done it for the last two nights.

Antics for Dummies
15 weeks 5 days

Babe is very skilled in dummy control, therefore a budding footballer according to babyfather. Here are some of her moves, all performed while lying down:

- the chomp: picks up dummy from mattress by pouncing on and closing open mouth around teat in one swift action
- the 180: swivels dummy 180 degrees in mouth to acheive correct position (often combined with chomp)
- the flick: inserts finger in dummy handle and flings across room
- the seal: juggles dummy in mouth precariously while turning head from side to side
- the multi-tasker: sucks dummy and fingers simultaneously.

Babyfather observed a slightly self defeating move yesterday when she grabbed hold of the dummy handle, yanked it out of her mouth and held it at arm's length while wailing because she couldn't suck it any more. Still, this could be used to confuse the opposition.

4 seconds in the life of babe
15 weeks 5 days




Cats on blackboards

The last entry was the start of a downward trend - every evening at about the same time, babe gets very distressed and can't sleep through most of her last naptime of the day. If we sit next to her, rocking the crib and making sure her dummy doesn't escape her, she screeches intermittently like a scalded cat. Or like nails on a blackboard. That cry has got to be one of the most grating noises known to man - I suppose it's designed NOT to be ignored. So she gets picked up and carried around til our backs ache.

Something's obviously amiss - is it the reflux? If so, more Gaviscon would be the answer. Or is it constipation, caused by Gaviscon? If so, the opposite is true. We might instead try Carobel, a thickener that hasn't been linked to constipation as far as I can see on the internet (thank you Jeeves).

Big Bottom Girl

The washable nappies arrived yesterday. They are a delicious array of lilac, pink, green, yellow and orange terry towelling. I aready have the waterproof 'wraps' (not pants, thank you very much) that go on top. These nappies are the size below the ones I tried previously so her bottom is not so bulky. However, I worked out that she has to wear this size for the next 16 weeks at least before the cost works out cheaper than disposables. Of course, if I want to make a spectacular saving I could put my next six babies in them.

Baby love
15 weeks yesterday

Another unsuccessful evening out last night, when we tried to put babe to sleep in a bedroom of the flat where our church housegroup meets. She slept for the first hour, then woke up and got steadily more upset. I wonder now if we should have just taken her into the sitting room with us. She'd probably have chatted away happily. As it was, we were embarrassed about the noise she was making and, probably much to everyone else's relief, went home.

At one point I peered down at her in the carry cot and she turned towards me, one handing reaching out in my direction. I thought it was just another random movement until she did it again, and when I got close enough she touched my face. It was the first time she has done that.

Trauma
15 weeks today

Being a mum does weird things to your insides, and not just your pelvic floor either. I tried to coax the babe to sleep without her dummy yesterday. It worked for two consecutive naps, then she woke up in the middle of a sleep and screamed at me until I gave her dummy back. The look she fixed me with as she sobbed inconsolably left my stomach tied up in knots for literally hours afterwards. A few days ago I left her with babyaunt for an hour and a half thinking she was bound to stay asleep, only to come home to find she'd been awake and crying for nearly half an hour. The thought of neglecting this tiny, dependent being made me feel almost physically sick. I was jittery for the rest of the day. That night I dreamt I was rushing home to feed her and found her to be only three inches long and having an experiment performed on her by men in white coats with clip boards. (Slightly better than the dream I had when I was pregnant, that she was so small I could keep her in the cap of a feeding bottle.)

Anyway, today was our first baby massage class (how middle class is that?) and I've come away feeling soothed. Bit like stroking a cat to lower your blood pressure. Babe tolerated it all stoically.

Sleeping like a baby
14 weeks 5 days

At 4.30am babe emitted 3 piercing shrieks as if she was being murdered in her bed and then fell back into a deep sleep.

Babyfather and I have been awake ever since.

Territorial Army Training
14 weeks 3 days

Today's day out was not to Tate Modern after all, as we decided to indulge babycousin and visit Big Ben. Ben obliged us with 11 DONGS and babycousin did a special celebratory dance on the pavement. Then some orange juice from a stall to watch the cogs go round and squash the oranges. Babycousin agog.

That was the sum total of our day, plus a quick lunch in the courtyard of the British Museum where we met babyuncle and babyaunt_2 before heading home again. Doesn't sound like much, but as babyaunt_1 pointed out it felt like we were starring in an episode of 24. Having a 3 year old, a baby, a bump (babycousin is going to have a sibling) and two pushchairs between us made everything into a sort of mental and physical assault course. Getting to the station on time (we'd have missed the train but mercifully it was late), getting to Big Ben before the hour, finding a taxi, packing child, car seat, both pushchairs, fiddly raincover and dripping chocolate pancake into taxi on busy Westminster bridge whilst explaining to child what the little red light does and no he can't have milk and a story...By the end of the day we had clocked up 8 separate flights of stairs, as many escalators, one train, two taxis and four tubes.

Then we got to the British Museum and discovered that our only phone had gone flat. In the meantime babyaunt_1 had lost her phone, so had no idea that we were waiting for her or how to contact babyuncle. The fact that all the aforementioned people met for lunch at all only happened as a result of divine intervention.

Anyway, all of this is small fry to babyaunt_1. She's getting a plane with babycousin back to the Land of Oz tonight :-(

Child Psychology
14 weeks 2 days

New insight into babycousin's mind: He was playing with some glass beads, putting them into a small ceramic pot. He came to show me the pattern they formed at the bottom of the pot. 'It's a flower!' I said, because they were arranged in a flower-like pattern. 'No,' he said crushingly, 'it's a plughole.' Babycousin's favourite things: washing machines, boilers, fans, plugs, plugholes and overflows (you know, that hole the water goes down if the sink gets too full). Especially overflows - he mentions them a LOT.

babymother, Holstein

Babe got the upper hand in the Routine yesterday. I was just wondering how she manages to thrive on the same amount of milk and the same number of feeds per day as she did over a month ago, when she answered the question - time for an increase. She rearranged the schedule to feed every three hours instead of every four and then woke up, ravenous, at 1.30 this morning, for good measure. She fitted 7 feeds into 24 hours in place of the usual 5. Fortunately I remembered that greatbabyaunt had told me there can be a day of chaos while the baby puts in an order for more milk. It's a bit like leaving a note for the milkman, only it's a bit more like grabbing the milkman by the neck. Anyway, today she went sweetly back into the Routine as if nothing had happened.

Science
14 weeks tomorrow

Babe visited the Science Museum today - have to start her education somewhere, after all. Actually the trip had more to do with babycousin (aged 3) and his mum babyaunt_1, who are visiting from the land of Oz. Babyaunt encouraged me to break out of the house despite the risk of playing havoc with babe's beautiful sleep routine. To my surprise the whole thing did not end in tears - babe's eyes glazed over at the point when she would normally have gone down to sleep, but she remained peaceful so long as the pushchair, or the train it was on, was in motion. She even smiled politely at some of the exhibits and took in the invention of the steam engine, space travel and a display of dancing hot water bottles with the same unruffled gaze.

Anyone with a three year old - head to the basement of the Science Museum. Great stuff and it's all free. Babycousin spent a busy half hour with a kind of child-sized canal where you can float plastic toys, pump water up a pipe, turn a water wheel, open sluice gates, and watch the water spiral down a giant plughole. He remained dry throughout thanks to the waterproof aprons they provide, then undid it all by sticking his finger up the spout of the tap in the disabled toilet. The four of us were crammed in there to change nappies and we all got soaked. However, his favourite exhibit was the toilet in cross section which you can flush, complete with floating poo.

This Saturday: Tate Modern. A public forum for babe's views on art, at last.

Come back Mr Gaviscon. all is forgiven
13 weeks 5 days

She's back on 4 doses a day. Don't ask.

A friend at church said her baby's poo went solid suddenly as well, so possibly nothing to do with Mr G.

All Growed Up
13 weeks 4 days



Last night babe slept all alone in the nursery. [3 months earlier than recommended by The World Health Organisation.] Our door and her door were open and it seemed to work, i.e. I heard enough to get up once when she cried but was not kept awake by her dummy-juggling antics.

3 months is definitely a big milestone. It's as if she's woken up. She seems to be drinking in everything with her round blue eyes, following people's movements across the room, goggling at and reaching for toys, recognising and beaming at babyfather and I. She acted almost wary of a new person today. She knows what she likes and what she doesn't, and isn't backward about expressing opinions. The way she shouts at some of the pictures we show her makes me want to take her to an art gallery soon. Day and night are two different things now, thank God, and I'm starting to think about what real food to give her. Before we know it we'll have a little girl on our hands...

More to the point, she's sporting a pair of pink dungarees with a bunny rabbit on the front, and matching shoes. How grown up is that?

Mr Gaviscon has his drawbacks
13 weeks 3 days

Babe slept in til 7.30am - this is getting ridiculous. Possibly it's genetic, as her father slept in til 11.00. I didn't do so well. Got to bed not long after 11.00pm, became ravenously hungry, tried to fight it, ate some muesli at midnight, took ages to get to sleep, woke at 4.08am to hear babe sucking her dummy vigorously for half an hour and totally failed to get back to sleep. I was too hot, too cold, too thirsty, too awake, and then too full of milk...

Anyway, the Gaviscon plot thickens. (If you knew that Gaviscon is a thickener, you'd find my pun really funny.) We upped her dose to 4 sachets a day over Christmas, because she started having distressed episodes in the evening again. They were in no way as bad as the screaming of the old days, but she would wake up in the middle of her naptime in obvious pain and carting her up and down the stairs seemed to be the only thing to calm her.

However, now she's on the bigger dose IF YOU DON'T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT POO LOOK AWAY NOW her poo has gone solid. Breastfed poo is meant to look like diarrhoea and hers has done so far, but now it looks like - well, cat poo or something. (Still has that delicious lime and coriander smell though.) I'm wondering if the distress is to do with constipation now rather than reflux. I did some research on the web and found that Gaviscon does indeed cause constipation 'if the dose is incorrect'. We'll cut it down this weekend and see what happens. I also found out that reflux can sort itself out at about 4 weeks, so it's possible that the original problem has gone away and now it's just her wretched mother bunging her up with medicine.

While we're on the subject

of poo, I've taken a half-plunge and ordered a handful of washable nappies from the Nappy Lady. I'll do a trial for a few days. Apparently they sell well second-hand so the sixty-five pounds I've just spent may not be totally wasted...

Babe's first bib
13 weeks 2 days





You may have guessed that this was taken on Christmas Day... babyfather hacked my blog again and posted it. I must change my password. You might want to look at the 23rd December again if you like this photo.

Bibs are great. I thought you only used them once you started trying to get proper food down the babe, but for one as dribbly as her it saves washing a lot of baby-gros - we only take it off when she goes down to sleep. Rest assured we have more than one.

Apologies to Nanny and Noo-noo who supplied a rival bib. The only reason she was not sporting Rudolph (complete with squeaky nose) for Christmas dinner is that her parents are incompetent and we left it in London. Sorry!