NINE MONTHS OLD

Bleeuurrrghh - her mornings are getting earlier and earlier. 0530 this morning. No longer the more bearable 0710 that she was doing for so long. Over the past couple of weeks Charlotte's literally been up with the birds - no matter how dark her room is. Really hoping it's just a phase. Although I am very lucky that my OH works from home and most days is very happy to get up with Charlotte at first light and give me an extra hour or two in bed, so I really can't complain.

While some days and weeks can still drag, if I'm honest, I can't believe we've made it to nine months already. Over the past month or so, I can really see the little girl Charlotte is turning into - and she's definitely edging more towards toddler and much less of a baby.

We had a visit from a Health Visitor this week as we've only recently moved to the area, and while she was here she did Charlotte's 8-12 month development check. No concerns whatsoever - Charlotte 'performed' brilliantly with plenty of babbling (which at times can sound like full on conversations!), following some of our commands (clap, clap; kiss dog) and playing with her musical toys. She's getting so good at imitating some of our sounds - to the point where she's almost getting there with actual words (balloon, and definitely Daddy).

Not really any nearer crawling, but she's stretching further and further forward with her bum off the ground, and always gets to what she wants by rolling. She's also started pointing at things quite a lot. To be honest, I'm relishing being able to put her down in one place for a while and know she'll pretty much still be in the same place, and not yet needing the eyes in the back of my head!

Her eating's a bit more back on track after her illness. Still favouring the easier jars of food to my home-cooked, slightly lumpier stuff. And as she's still a small baby her portions are still pretty small. She's slowly getting a little better with finger food - no problem at all with her favourites: bread, cheese and some fruits - strawberries and melon particularly), but we're persevering with others like broccoli and carrot that mostly just end up on the floor.

Bizarre one today when we took her to the pub - she happily munched away on a pickled onion for ages. 

Perhaps some of my food is just too bland!

STANDING ROOM ONLY

Still reeeling from the horribly sad news of my pervious post, but just a few minutes with my incredible daughter guarantees to put a smile on my face.

Her grandparents came up to visit this weekend and hadn't seen her for five weeks, and it's then that we realise quite how much Charlotte is developing and coming along. Since they last saw her she will clap her hands when we say "clap, clap, clap"; she has a tooth (although it doesn't seem to have got any bigger in the past two weeks); and she's more interested in standing than sitting these days:

It suddenly occurred to us how strong her legs were when we were holding her up on our laps, so my OH decided to see how she got on holding onto furniture and things. Turns out she's really good at standing upright with very little support.

This makes us think that the chances are she'll be one of those babies that goes straight to walking and skips the crawling part - she hasn't shown any interest in crawling for about 2 months now and is happy just to roll and stretch to whatever toy (or remote control!) she's trying to get.

As one of my friends put it - where's Baby Charlotte gone? She's virtually a toddler now, albeit without the actual toddling... yet.

FIRST CHRISTMAS

Yes, I know Christmas was two weeks ago, but we've only just got broadband in our new house, so not been able to update my blog very easily.

So far as I was concerned, I've never felt less Christmassy this year. Christmas Day itself was just another day of making sure Charlotte was fed, slept etc., just with added relatives around and piles and piles of presents. As expected she was spoiled rotten by grandparents and aunts and uncles (just as well, as me and her Dad didn't really buy her much!).

There were a couple of moments when she was a bit grizzly from maybe too much attention and having yet another noisy toy thrust in front of her, but really she was very good.

She's still sleeping well through the night, and in the day we've gone full circle. From a few months back when I had to take her out for nearly every nap, she now gets her best daytime sleeps of up to two hours (but still sometimes just 25 minutes) in her cot!

Charlotte's equally fickle with her feeding too - one day she'll happily eat whatever meat and veg pureé very well from the spoon, the next she'll not take so well to the same flavours and play around with the spoon and bowl (very messy). She's now on three meals a day - breakfast around 7.30/8am, lunch between 1130-1200 and tea at 1730 with milk feeds with breakfast, lunch, mid afternoon and before bed. 

I feel like I'm making it up as I go along, and her milk intake doesn't seem to be reducing by very much at all. But as with most other stages so far I'm just taking bits and bobs of advice from various people, books etc. and fitting it with my gut instinct and what works for us. I think I'm guilty of what I often do, and that's trying to rush things and get her along to the next stage, when I know weaning is a slow process and I keep forgetting that she's still only six and a half months - I keep looking ahead to what she "should" be doing as a seven month old and beyond.

She's also sitting up without any support really well now - and so I'm now watching out for and encouraging her to crawl. (Like I said, guilty of looking ahead to the next thing too much).

FIRST HOLIDAY, FIRST TANTRUMS

I can't believe I haven't blogged for almost a month - we've been really busy, and have just come back from Charlotte's first holiday.

We went to Cyprus so she could meet most of my side of the family. She was an angel for the flight there and back - only grizzling when she was ready for a nap. Thankfully, a four and half hour flight worked perfectly to feed her on take-off and landing. The flight home was full so there was very little room to rock her to sleep, but I managed.

She was of course on my lap for the flight, but tried out her own seat for size.

Over there she revelled in all the attention from the family. And most days I really felt like I was getting a proper break as we were staying with my parents who were always willing to help out.

It got rather trickier towards the end of the week though as Charlotte appears to be developing separation anxiety, and we had several massive screaming tantrums with full on tears - particularly at bedtime when she wouldn't let anyone but me feed her. She would almost immediately calm down if I held her, or even came close - much to the understandable upset at first of my OH. I think her Grandma was a bit put out too, as she's usually very good at calming down babies. Hoping this is just a short phase as it's already getting really rather wearing on me, and I find it very difficult to let her cry and cry.

We were also sleeping in the same room as her which meant we never got a decent night's sleep. On top of her usual noises, she was up twice each night and difficult to get back to sleep - possibly because she realised we were in the room with her. The four nights of her properly sleeping through last month seem an awful long time ago and must have been a blip!

However, on the plus side, the holiday also saw a number of big developments. Charlotte's definitely found her feet and can spend ages playing with them - even managing to get one in her mouth! She's sitting with the bare minimum of support, and most excitingly I guess, rolled from her back to her front (and back again), which she's managed a couple of times since we've been back too.

Having her first paddle in the Med

Another significant milestone is that I have finally given up breastfeeding entirely. I feel very sad and emotional about the decision, and there will be a separate blog on this to follow.

But on the whole the holiday was a success, and Charlotte certainly stole the hearts of all the family over there who can't wait to see her again.

ACTIVE MONKEY

It's been a busy week for Charlotte. On Monday she totally surprised us by lifting her head and shoulders while on her tummy. It came totally out of nowhere, given that for the past three and a half months she's hated being on her tummy for any more than about 30 seconds. I just rolled her over to do up a dress and she was up, looking around, happy as anything for a good few minutes.

So she's been practising that all week - and we tried her in her door bouncer for the first time, too. She took to it straight away, seemed to really enjoy it - kicking her legs in a walking type motion and spinning round. I think she's still a bit too light to actually bounce yet, but it bodes well that she tried to use her legs to walk.

Shouldn't be too long before she's heavy enough to bounce properly - her latest weigh-in with the Health Visitor was a success. A nice healthy 5.5kg (12.1lb) - a steady gain of 500g in three weeks, heading further towards the 25th percentile and away from the 9th. The only change we've really made to her feeding has come in the last week when we've introduced a formula feed before bed. Not necessarily to 'tank her up' - but because she's so exhausted by 6.30 (I don't need to remind regular readers of her poor daytime naps/sleeping), she just keeps falling asleep on the breast before getting a decent feed. She falls asleep less easily on the bottle, and I'm happy to start introducing formula just once a day at this stage. In fact on Tuesday night she slept right through from 7.30pm - 6.50 am, so something must be working.1

And if all that wasn't progress enough, she had her first swimming lesson on Wednesday too. She was absolutely fantastic. Not a single grizzle, even though she was tired, and seemed quite at home in the water on her front and back. We're doing Aquatots lessons, and I really enjoyed it and enjoyed meeting some more new Mums as well. No photos, as with the sad state of society we're forbidden from taking pictures of our own children in a swimming pool, so I'll just have to wait until we're on holiday.

THREE MONTHS OLD

Well, we've made it to the magic three months - I'm told things should start falling into place from here on in!

To be fair, I think we're doing pretty well already. Charlotte's managing to nap more often than not in the flat now, albeit mostly only for 25-45 minutes; and she's virtually sleeping through the night. Most nights she's down by 7.30pm and she's been waking later and later for her feed... last "night" was 5.50 this morning!, then she went back down for another hour or so.

I'm really pleased I persevered with the breastfeeding, as that seems to be going OK. Keep wondering when I can lengthen the time between feeds (mostly still feeding every three hours, sometimes three and a half) - but if she's not up until 8am and then has her last feed around 6.30pm, there are only so many hours in her day to get another three or four feeds in.

I often get e-mails from various baby websites telling me what my 12 week old, or three month old, or whatever 'should' and 'could' be doing - always with the caveat that babies all reach different milestones at their own pace, and not to worry if my baby's not doing what others are. But you can't help but wonder "what if" - what if the fact Charlotte hates tummy time so much means she won't sit up/crawl/walk properly; what if her catnaps affect her development; what if she doesn't start talking in another year or so?

To be honest, I'm not really worried about the latter two examples, and even the first one is concerning me less as she's been making further strides in trying to roll onto her side - craning her neck, arching her back etc; and her back and neck are getting stronger and stronger when held upright. She'll be fine, and will do all the things babies are supposed to do - eventually.