TONGUE TIE SORTED

James had his tongue tie clipped yesterday. I found it pretty traumatic because they took him away to do it, so I couldn't see what was going on. But I fed him as soon as they brought him back, which stopped the small amount of bleeding straight away - and the feeding seemed a bit better.

It seems to have had an effect already - the afternoon/early evening feeds seemed a lot more successful, though I'm still having issues with having him awake enough at night for the night feeds. With any luck though, we'll soon be able to reduce the amount of bottle top-ups (and therefore expressing) we're giving him.

But that seems to have brought his weight up over the past week. He put on 120g between Tuesday and Friday, and 110g since Friday to bring him to 8lb3oz, which is fantastic. No doubt helped by the top ups, but hopefully that weight gain will continue with more efficient feeding now.

One thing we're really lucky with is that he seems to know night from day. After his 9/10pm-ish feed (after a fussy couple of hours where's on and off the breast) he's mostly been settling himself to sleep for the longest of his sleeps (or it would be if I wasn't still waking him after 3-4 hours for a feed). And will go back down after his nightfeeds for nice long stretches until 8.30-9am-ish.

Still early days for getting him to go down easily for a nap - that's the only time we're using a dummy at the moment, when it's not feasible to take him out in the pram or we're not in the car. And he'll often wake after 25 minutes - just as Charlotte always used to do - but unlike her, mostly goes back down with a bit of help.

REFUSING TO NAP

Virtually nine months pregnant is not the best time for my 19-month old to start ditching her naps :(

As if I'm not exhausted enough from lugging her baby brother/sister around in my tummy, add to that a couple of really rough nights (combination of insomnia, Charlotte up at all hours coughing and Number Two doing the tango in there) - I'm now barely getting any rest time in the day.

Charlotte's been really really fighting her post-lunch nap for about a month now - needing to be rocked to sleep. I don't think we even did that when she was a tiny baby. But now even that's not working. After 45 minutes of just leaving her, rocking, lullabies etc I've given up (and invariably let her have some restful - for me - TV time instead).

My OH is very good at trying to help out by letting me have a nap or relaxing bath and he watches Charlotte for an hour or so - but with the impending arrival he's pushed with work to get as much done as possible before he goes on paternity leave. Plus he's doing most of the night duties with C, so is also knackered.

Charlotte always used to be a terrible napper - but it improved dramatically when she was about one. I guess it co-incided with her moving much more, but now that doesn't tire her out so much she's just not that tired. Having said that, on the occasions we do manage to get her down, she'll sleep for up to two hours, so she must be pretty tired.

It's just another battleground I could really do without - on top of the 'throwing all my food on the floor' battle, 'throwing all my toys' battle, Ronaldo-style roll-on-the-floor tantrums and a return to bad nights. I imagine it's only going to get worse once Number Two arrives and she's fighting even more for attention. Oh joy...

BOOK WORM

Hurrah - for the first time in ages I've actually managed to read Charlotte a bedtime story that wasn't either The Gruffalo, Gruffalo's Child, Room on the Broom or The Snail and the Whale. Alright - it was still a Julia Donaldson (Stick Man) - but every minor breakthrough....

The thing is, she can finish off nearly every sentence of any book we've read more than 3 or 4 times now - so she demands certain books ALL the time (the aforementioned, Ugly Duckling, Three Billy Goats Gruff and A Squash and a Squeeze are among the favourites). Hoping that the veritable library of books she got for Christmas might give us a bit more variety - but think that might be wishful thinking!

Not surprisingly perhaps with all the book-reading that goes on in our house, her speech continues to astound and amaze us. Forget the "expert" books that say early talkers will start creating three word sentences from ages 24-36 months... try 18 months! And loving hearing her starting to really sing along with nursery rhymes and other songs (e.g. all the songs of the various In The Night Garden characters) :)

Charlotte was an angel on Christmas Day - playing dutifully with every present for a little while, which made ALL the grandparents (and great-grandparent) that were at ours for the day very happy. 

C's even been sleeping much better the last couple of weeks (except for suddenly needing to be rocked every nap time - but I'm just grateful she's still having a decent nap time even if it takes a little encouragement, because at one stage she looked like giving it up entirely). 

As for Number Two - just three weeks to go... and I'm measuring big. So fully expecting it to be a boy. Feeling very heavy and slow now - so won't be entirely surprised if he/she is early. To honest, I'd be quite happy with that to put an end to the worry about how I'm going to cope with two - I just want to get on with it now...

DANCING QUEEN

Charlotte's started to boogie on down! When she hears any kind of music, mobile ringtones, or just when we say "dance" or "are you dancing?" she sways side to side and moves her head to the beat. It's hilarious, and so cute!

Elsewhere, she's keeping us on our toes as ever. Naps can be anything between 20 minutes and 1 hour 20 - there's just no guessing these days. And one mealtime she'll be good as gold eating my food, trying to use the spoon herself and wolfing down her finger food - and the next she'll throw everything  on the floor and spit out all her food. It can be extremely frustrating at times.

I've just got to keep telling myself SHE'S JUST A BABY - although she turns one in just six weeks. Can't believe it.

GOT A LOT OF BOTTLE

Grabbing a few minutes while Charlotte's napping to catch up on my blog. After several days of just two 25 minute naps all day, yesterday she threw me all off whack with a random hour and 20 minutes. No idea if it was her Daddy's tight swaddling or if I'm getting the timing right again, but I'll be very glad to see the back of those constant 25 minute power naps which run me ragged more than they make her overtired.

We've ditched her lunchtime milk, so now she's on just three bottles a day - with breakfast, mid-afternoon and before bed - usually totalling around 500ml. And while she's pretty good with the sippy cup taking water with her meals I'm not ready to attempt to give her her milk in it yet - for two reasons.

Firstly, she's forever throwing it on the floor, and secondly I'm enjoying hanging onto those last few months of her being a proper baby when I feed her from the bottle. It's a peaceful time when I get a bit of a cuddle and I'm not rushing Charlotte into doing 'grown up' things like eating food and drinking from a cup. She's not going to be a baby for very much longer.

And so, while she is, here are a few overindulgent cute photos:

wrapped up snug for the winter weather

that cheeky "am I going to get away with it?" face

I can glimpse the grown up girl that Charlotte will turn into here...

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).

FOUR MONTHS OLD

Everyone keeps telling me how quickly the past four months have gone since Charlotte was born - "gosh, hasn't time flown?". No - not for me it hasn't. I don't mean that in a bad way; it's just that I have felt every day of the past four months, it's actually gone quite slowly, and it feels like she's been with us for far, far longer.

I'm sure there will come a point in the coming months when on reflection things might have felt like they've gone past a little quicker. But right now I still have days that feel like a week and weeks that feel like a month. I guess it's just the repetitive nature of looking after a baby. Having said that, when I went to buy her latest nappies yesterday I no longer bought 'new born' ones, and I saw a tiny, tiny baby in a car seat that must have been only days old. It's moments like that when I realise how much time has passed, and that Charlotte isn't a tiny, newborn baby anymore.

She's started breaking her 25/40 minute nap habit over the past few days. We've had a few morning naps of 50 minutes, and even a lunchtime one of an hour and a quarter, which I'm really pleased about. 

But with one issue 'solved', along comes another. She's started to refuse to take her evening bottle from her Daddy. She just screams and screams and gets herself worked up into a right state to the point that only I have then been able to clam her down enough to feed her. It's not the bottle or the formula she's refusing as she'll take both from me - we're wondering if she's just starting to make associations with people. Daddy is for fun and Mummy is for feeding, and she doesn't like any deviation from that. However, right now she seems to be taking a bottle of expressed milk from him quite well, so fingers crossed it was just a brief phase.

GIVEN THE ALL CLEAR

We had a hospital appointment to have Charlotte's heart murmur checked out tody. I can happily report the doctor could find no trace, so - as is commonly the case - it's corrected itself over the past couple of months.

It was also a nice change to have a really good experience at a hospital after the conveyor belt and downright incompetence of our ante-natal and birth hospital appointments. The doctor and nurse were so lovely with both Charlotte and us, it was a more relaxed, personal experience, and renewed our faith in the health service a bit.

Charlotte continues to keep us on our toes (that's a polite way of putting it). After two nights of sleeping through from 7pm until just before 6am, she was up at 2.30 last night and nothing worked to get her back down until 4.30am. :(

On the plus side, in among her usual 25 or 40 minute naps she managed a whole hour and a half in the car yesterday. :)

WAKE TO SLEEP?

You could set your watch by Charlotte. Without fail she has exactly 40 minutes for her morning nap, and 25 minutes for each one after.

It doesn't matter if it's in her cot, her pram - even the car these days, which makes for very long car journeys (i.e. the six hours North we did at the weekend), as she understandably gets bored in her car seat for the hours she's not asleep and gets grizzly. And  in my book, 25 minutes is not nearly long enough - averaging out at about 2 hours of naptime a day, if we're lucky.

And she seems increasingly tired and ratty - making for fussy or sleepy feeds, and less happy Charlotte time. So what can I do about it? How can I get her to sleep longer than 25 minutes at a time in the day?

I've looked at the 'Wake To Sleep'  technique - but it goes against all my instincts, despite the fact I think it's worked a couple of times accidentally. For example when I've brought her out of the car just before she's about to wake up and she's stayed asleep for another 45 minutes in the flat in her car seat, or out in the pram when she's just about woken but I've rocked her a bit more and she's gone back down.

The thing I keep telling myself is that 10-15 years ago, Mums didn't have the internet or parenting books to turn to for advice or theories every time they thought their child was doing something not quite 'normal', They just got on with it and accepted that's how their baby is. And that's what I'm trying to do, in the hope that this is a phase that will pass and Charlotte will eventually nap for longer, or prove to me she doesn't need more than 2 hours in short spells every day.

She's also taken to waking at night, usually around 11.30pm, not for hunger. I'm not sure what's waking her - possibly very early teething or growing pains. We tried Calpol one night in case it was either of those things, but despite all other Mums telling me how brilliant it is at knocking babies right out to sleep for ages, it didn't work. For a few nights I ended up feeding her back to sleep, but I know that's a really bad habit to get into. Last night I put her dummy in (she goes to sleep without one usually) and soothed her - and on the third attempt she went back off to sleep for another three hours until she really did wake for a feed.

I have a new mantra to go with Patience and Perseverance... it's Relax and Enjoy. But that's proving harder and harder to tell myself the more she fights her sleep and sleeps on me instead of eating :(.

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.

GOING BACKWARDS

It seems a very long time ago that Charlotte was managing to settle herself straight to sleep - or with just 10 minutes' coaxing. The past three nights have seen a return to the screaming ab-dabs for up to 40 minutes as she fights going down to sleep. I don't think it's connected to the fact that we've started putting her in her own room, as she was the same on Thursday night when she was still in our room. And I don't think it's connected to her apparent growth spurt either.

Part of the problem is that she's so overtired after not having had enough sleep during the day, which is well documented in this blog. It doesn't seem to matter whether it's in her Moses basket, pram or harness these days - she just won't stay down for more than half an hour. We seem to be putting her down at the right time as it's not taking too much effort to get her to sleep, but after that it's up to her and she's just not staying asleep. She doesn't wake up especially grouchy or crying - usually she's quite playful - which makes me think the catnaps are all she needs. But then when she's barely had two hours in total all day, it's resulting in a nightmare evening.

She also seems to react to the moment we start to wind-down and make it 'nighttime' by making the flat darker and quieter. While we're told it's really important to have a bedtime routine so she knows what's coming next and helps her to sleep, it seems to have the opposite effect on Charlotte - she knows what's coming... bedtime... and she doesn't like it. Her baths have been great, but after that she'll scream the place down until her feed, and then again until we've resorted to white noise, rocking and/or cuddles to calm her.

We know this is just another phase that will pass, but it feels like we're taking another few steps backwards in her sleeping at the moment. And it upsets me that the image that I have of Charlotte before I go to bed is of an upset and unhappy child.

But it is nice to have our bedroom back!