Time for Little Miss Sunshine!

It's that time of year - we have just entered Daylight Savings so we now get an extra hour of sunshine each day!  I am still fairly new to this concept, having come here from South Africa where it wasn't a thing, and so it still gets me every time we need to change clocks forward or backwards, and now we have to ensure Emily's body clock changes too!

I followed the Sleep Store's suggestion for Daylight Savings routines for little ones and it worked well.  I found the hardest part remembering each day leading up to Daylight Savings (well, Thursday, Friday and Saturday) what time Emily's routine had to be actually!  Plus I had to set an alarm to get up each of those mornings as everything was a little earlier than our usual timings ... a slightly foreign concept to me at the moment!! 

But it worked well and she seemed to have a good night last night, even though she was chatting from time to time in her sleep.  Usually, once she is asleep, we don't hear a peep till morning, but there was a little bit of chatter going on last night.  However, she woke just before 7am this morning and that was the main goal of the exercise!

Around lunchtime though today, when she usually has a fairly Epic Baby sleep for 1.5-2hours, she was pretty unsettled and I wondered if it was Daylight Savings catching up with her, as we have technically lost an hour?  I have certainly felt tired today!  

But I think it was her teeth!  She already has one bottom tooth, and a second bottom one is coming through now too, but I actually think it may be a top tooth too!  One of Emily's baby friends has suffered with his teeth, poor bubba, so I got a feeling of that today.  It is awful seeing your baby in pain (or thinking they are in pain) and not really knowing what to do.  I tried a little Bonjela (teething gel, tastes like toothpaste) which is meant to temporarily numb the gums and that seemed to calm her down, phew!  And after a walk and a snooze in the pram she was her usual smiley self again thank goodness.

There is something new to learn every day!

Happy little bubba! 

10 things I never thought I'd say / think / feel / do / wear since having Emily

It is amazing what having a child does to your life.  You go from a loving couple, who had plenty of disposable income and could do things at the drop of a hat without a thought for anyone, sometimes even for each other; to becoming a loving couple of parents, 100% committed and responsible for this new life that YOU have created.  

It is SO adult!

It really got me thinking as to how different things are now, and the kind of things I think, do and say now that darling Emily is in our lives.  I wanted to share a few with you... thank you for reading!

10 things I never thought I'd say / think / feel / do / wear since having Emily.....

• Say:
• "Chris, come and look at her poo!!  Look at her poo!  It's the biggest she has ever done!"  Surely all parents are this proud of their child's achievements?!
• Have entire conversations with my mummy friends about our babies.  Their sleeping.  Their eating.  Their pooing!!  We literally talk of nothing else.  It is so sweet when I tell Chris about my day and he asks if we talked about our husbands when I saw my friends, and I honestly have to tell him "No, all we talk about is babies"!

• Think:
• I can't believe how I worry about Emily.  Is she warm / cool enough?  Is she happy?  Is she full?  Who will look after her if I'm not around?  The worry is constant.  My Mom told me that and I didn't believe her.  She was right!
• All I want is another baby!  Isn't that crazy!  I have one amazing, Epic Angel baby... and all I want is another one.  Right now!  I never thought I would feel that way and so soon after Emily arrived.  I probably started to think about it when she was 8 weeks old!  

• Feel:
• Immense, bursting, crazy, mad, incredible, unreal love and amazement every single day that this little being was created by me and Chris.  And that she looks at us with such awe and happiness.  It is truly breathtaking!
• Amazingly overwhelmed when looking back at the videos and photos we have taken, with how far Emily has come.  From a tiny wee pink blob, to a real little person.  A little girl.  With personality!  How has this happened so fast?  How can I freeze time, or go back to those mad first few weeks and relive it.  Every second.  I miss it.

• Do:
• Use formula - it all began when we started solids.  At my Plunket course, the teacher was adamant that you could only add breast milk or formula to baby rice cereal.   I was in a panic.  Emily is NOT having formula.  You don't know what's in it.  She needs me, she needs MY milk.  But I wasn't interested in expressing milk.  Hmm!  However we decided to try formula, and blow us down, she gobbled her first taste of rice cereal up like it was her last meal!  
• Use a bottle!  I had envisioned I would breastfeed Emily until whenever, when we decided to stop and then she would drink cow's milk.  However, when she goes to The One (her carer), she will need to drink something during the day - not cow's milk yet - and as I wasn't too keen on expressing, we tried a bottle of formula recently.  Again, our little Epic Baby surprised us and took to it almost immediately!  So easy!  So she currently has one bottle of formula a day, but soon I will increase this to 2 bottles a day, while breastfeeding her morning and evening.
• Express my milk!  When I decided to give Emily a bottle of formula at the 10.30am feed, I didn't really think or realise what what happen to my boobs!  They are used to being fed from, and needed some help to go from 7.30am - 2.30pm with no feed in between.  So I used a friends' pump and expressed a teensy bit, just to help my boobs cope!  It worked really well, I think I only did it 3 days in a row for about 10mins a time, and now all is well.  I will need to do this again when I drop that 2.30pm feed.

• Wear:
• My work clothes and pre-pregnancy jeans so soon after having Emily - yay!  It feels great to wear normal clothes again!
• Trackpants quite so much.  I am a firm believer of looking nice even when you are at home, why slum it when you can glam it?  However, no one is looking at me except Emily, and it is SO comfy in my trackpants!  So why fight it :)

I'm sure there will be many more of these to come, every day brings something new in this household!

Magical Moments

On our daily walk recently, I thought it would be fun to write a post about the interesting things I have done while being on maternity leave.  They always bring a smile to my face...

• Starting this blog!  I am really enjoying writing it - so thank you for reading!



My Angel

• Reading my Woman's Day mag while breastfeeding, in my bed, in the 'early days' at all hours of the night

• Not worrying about anything other then Emily, thanks to Chris and all of our support network, for at least the first 3 weeks, then I surfaced from the 'baby fog' and begun to focus on life again

• Attending my first ever coffee group with my very first mummy friend and her baby at a midwife's house

• Emily being very, very unsettled the night my Mom left to go home (after being with us for a week!), and we wondered what on earth had happened.  Chris and I tried to give her gripe water through a syringe but nothing seemed to help.  Wonder how much sleep we got that night?!  Actually it happened the next night too!

• Going to the Family Centre to get help with Emily's routine / day sleeps, along with my first new mummy friend and her baby.  A really useful day out and such helpful Plunket nurses, full of interesting advice and information

Playing with Lucy, thanks Nana!

• Attending both my Plunket and SPACE courses and getting to chat to other new mums about the same things I was facing with Emily

• Lots of walks to help baby sleep initially, then it just formed part of our daily routine, helping me get fit and move towards yummy mummy!

• Getting caught in the rain on more than 1 occasion on a walk - the worst was probably over the Easter weekend when Chris was working, and Emily was only 2 months old and I had to take her for a big lunchtime walk to help her sleep and I got totally drenched!  2 people stopped in their cars to ask if I was ok!  Lucky it wasn't all that cold!

Loving her food, in the highchair!

• Both my Mom and mother in law spending heaps of time with us all, buying and making us things - dinners, knitted jerseys, toys, books, baby food, nappies, wipes etc!  We have been truly spoilt!

Loving Dumbo - 7 months

• Always having a load of washing to do!  Especially using cloth nappies, and then there is always the folding of it all!

• Being invited to join a second coffee group and meeting such a wonderful group of mums and babies

• Attending 2 baby photo shoots, to allow my friend to take baby pics of our coffee group

• Going to Wriggle and Rhyme with my new friends at the local libraries



Our little cupcake - 6 months!

• And then there are the firsts... that first smile is probably my most precious moment, apart from seeing Emily for the very first time... I will always remember that day!

• Having to deal with my first poo explosion while out and about!  I ended up changing Emily in the boot of the car as we were about to head home when I realised what had happened!

• Starting to knit Emily a blanket - and heavily relying on my Mom and YouTube for help!  I think I have pulled it out 6 times, but it's looking good - just in time for Summer haha!


• Mine and Emily's recent roadtrip to Paihia to see the Grandparents - what a relaxing, special week that was!

Me and my roadtrip buddy on our way home from Paihia

Let's go Mum, I'm ready!  Sophie is too!

Operation Carebear - Update!

So ... after a few weeks of visiting home-based carers and daycares, learning all the ins and outs of them both, we have found The One!  

We have decided to go with a home-based carer, but she only looks after one other wee baby girl who is around 4.5months old, and then Emily.  As she is an older lady, she doesn't have children at school to drop off / pick up, and with the babies she doesn't go to the activities provided by the company either, so - it's perfect!  The One also gave us loads of confidence that she would keep Emily safe, secure and loved, plus the opportunity to get to know the other little baby too!  Baby friends, yay!

I am fortunate also to work 2 days a week from home, so Emily will only be with The One 3 days a week in November and December, and 2 days a week January to October as Chris is off on Mondays during that time, so they will have have  beautiful Daddy / Daughter days together :)

We are really thrilled and now I can get back to my enjoying leave!

Ahh Carebear, you are sorted :)

Operation Milkies

Another little project that Emily and I are working on right now is Operation Milkies... getting her to drink from a bottle in preparation for me going back to work and someone else feeding her during the day.  Emily has never had a bottle till 2 weeks ago!  I guess I have just wanted to be really selfish and feed her myself, and haven't been that keen on expressing milk or using formula either.

However, needs must, and so we attempted this recently using formula at the 10.30am feed.  When I went to buy the bottles at the Baby Factory, one of the staff said it would be very hard for Emily to take the bottle as she has never had one and now is an 'older' baby (older??  But she is still my little poppet!).  Oh dear I thought.  How hard is this going to be?!  I had not anticipated having any struggles at all, Emily is such a darling and nothing has been hard for us with her.  We feel so lucky about that!

But, blow me down, she was intrigued by it all and even on seeing the bottle's teat in the kitchen, separate from the bottle, she opened her little mouth like a little bird, ready to eat!  Phew I thought, hopefully we won't have any trouble.

Mmmm... Milkies!

And amazingly, she accepted it fairly willingly!  There is definitely a fair bit of mess with it all but she is drinking around 100mls a time, which seems to fill her up enough to last to the next feed, so we are thrilled about it!  I definitely felt much more relaxed about her going to a carer/daycare as she drank so well.  In fact, I initially started this post as a draft a week ago or so, and Emily is hungrier now and recently drank 150mls 3 days in a row, like her life depended on it!!  Which is great news, so we are really relieved it's all working well. 

I am also giving expressing a go..... so strange!!  And expressing a little, around 50mls, at the 10.30am feed, to eventually drop this 'breast' feed altogether, and manage to go from the 7am breastfeed to the 2.30pm breastfeed without breastfeeding inbetween.  I'll probably express for a few more days and then I plan to drop the 2.30pm breastfeed in the same way and replace it with a bottle of formula, again in preparation for returning to work.  So far so good which is great!  Well done my Angel!