DUE DATE BEEN AND GONE

As not in the least bit unexpected - we have passed our due date for Twiglet. It was yesterday, and - just as when expecting Charlotte - we had fun stuff planned to focus on instead. We went out for a really nice meal and to the cinema while Grandma babysat. Sadly, not even a second fix of James Bond brought on any sign that Twiglet's coming any time soon.

Last time round I was able to do quite a lot of walking - but the past week has been reallly snowy and icy, and as I'm pretty clumsy at the best of times I've been hibernating a bit. Not been totally lazy though - impossible with a 19-month old - so running around after her at home and at various playgroups means I'm on my feet quite a lot of the day. Time to break out the Raspberry Leaf Tea, I think.

Got a sweep booked for Tuesday, which is how it all kicked off with Charlotte so we'll see if that works this time. It's difficult not to get too fixated on it all being exactly the same as last time, so perhaps we should have something nice planned for Tuesday evening or Wednesday that's easy to cancel.

The one thing that's preying on my mind far more this time round than last is the knowledge that things can still go very wrong even at this very late stage. Not a day has gone by since last March when I don't think about what happened to our friends. The post-mortem inconclusively suggested the placenta just 'ran out of time' and stopped working, so of course the more overdue you are, the higher the risk. Those sort of thoughts tend to go through my head on the rare occaisions that I've got really comfortable in bed and suddenly think "I don't even feel pregnant" - just for a moment.

And of course sod's law - Charlotte's started sleeping much better through the night (had a couple of full nights recently), while I'm up every two hours for the loo or to get comfortable again! But she's refusing her daytime naps more and more, so getting rest in the day is at a premium.

Here's a cheeky picture of Charlotte enjoying the snow:

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...

SECOND BABY WORRIES

I feel like I've hardly mentioned my current pregnancy over the past few months. It's been all very straight forward until this week, when I had a second vomiting bug in three weeks and ended up in hospital.

I just couldn't keep a thing down for 12 hours - not even water - and so I was understandably concerned about how it would be affecting Twiglet. A quick trip to my GP and she rang the ante-natal clinic who saw me immediately. Everything was fine with Twiglet - we got to hear his/her heartbeat, and he/she was constantly on the move for what seemed like 24 hours (a bit of a worry in itself, but it's settled down now).

They kept me in for about 8 hours until I could keep down a few bottles of fluid - and thankfully I avoided the anti-sickness pills and a drip. But it meant that my OH had to take an important day off work (again) and we had to rely on grandparents to look after Charlotte. All which made me feel really guilty.

And that guilt got worse later in the week when Charlotte's nasty cough got worse and worse. After two pretty much sleepless nights (on the part of OH as he insists I sleep because I'm 7 months pregnant) her Dad took her to the doctors. They couldn't find anything really wrong, but gave her an inhaler to help just in case. He then took her to nursery, but they called a few hours later for her to be picked up as her cough was causing her so much distress. And through all of this, where was I? At work. Feeling increasingly guilty.

Because I'm self-employed if I don't go to work I don't get paid. If my OH takes (yet another) day off to help with the childcare he at least does still get paid. So on top of feeling guilty that it should be me looking after Charlotte when she's poorly, distressed and can't sleep, there's also the guilt  that he seems to be doing it all  (including battling to get her to eat anything once again) while I swan off leaving them to it when he's also had the bare minimum (if any) sleep.

Only working for one more month (and then it's only one or two days a week) - and then we'll have a whole world of new worries with Number Two. To be honest, the only thing that's really concerning me at the moment is breastfeeding the tiny one with a toddler demanding my attention at the same time.

In the early months it would take Charlotte at least an hour each time to feed - every couple of hours. I have no idea how I'll be able to do that AND look after Charlotte. But people manage somehow - hopefully she'll start playing a bit more by herself when she realises Mummy is busy. And hopefully the next one will sleep better in the day than she did so I can give her plenty of attention when her brother or sister is napping. That's a lot of "hopefully"s!

TV... YOU CAN COUNT ON IT

Is it normal for a 16 month old to nearly be able to count to ten? Charlotte's latest party trick is (usually while looking at the numbers up the side of her bottle at bedtime) "two, see, sore, ive, six, eight, nine, TEN" said with a massive grin and an "aren't I clever" look! One and seven are usually sadly lacking!

For a while she's wandered up to the TV when the weather or Sky Sports News has been on and pointed at numbers - usually 2, 3 or 8 - and said them. But now she's nearly there with reciting 1-10 at various points through the day. She's been obsessed with her little number/picture books since she could sit up and hold a book, so I guess it's all come from there.

And now one of her favourite TV shows is Numtums. It's only 5 minutes long and she'll happily sit transfixed. I'm loathe to say "one of her favourite TV shows" because I'm afraid the honest truth is she does end up watching a bit more than I'd like some days. Her bedtime routine has always started with half an hour of TV before bath - usually a combination of Abney and Teal, Waybuloo, Peppa Pig and/or In The Night Garden.

Charlie and Lola and the more recent 74 Zoo Lane really haven't caught her attention - so thank goodness for Sky Plus! But by far and away her favourite show of the moment is Raa Raa The Noisy Lion. It doesn't matter how grumpy she is, it always cheers her up. She's even started to sing along to the theme tune and knows most of the characters' names (as she also does with Night Garden). The best thing is that you can download podcasts of it from the CBeebies website, so car journeys are also less fraught when she's fed up of her Children's Songs CD.

But the point is we (almost) always watch the shows together, so we're interacting, talking about what she can see etc. Rather than using it as a babysitter. And I'm still definitely reading to her more each day than she watches TV. Given that she has a vocabulary of way more than 50 words, I can only assume the TV that she does watch is complimenting the reading.

Oh, and her sleeping is still rubbish and after another spell of hunger strike her feeding's picking up slowly again - but the less said about all that the better.

I PUT SOME NEW SHOES ON (and suddenly everything is right)

Reading back over my last post, I can't believe Baby Number Two has become something of a footnote - and the fact that Charlotte took her first steps got just a glancing mention. This post is going to be much more celebratory and positive of my 15-month old's achievements this past week!

We've been on holiday in Sussex for the last week - house-sitting at my parents' - and within a day Charlotte's walking literally just took off. She's tottering everywhere now, albeit with the odd tumble that doesn't phase her at all, so we bought her first pair of shoes.

During our week away, we took in a brilliant kids' farm and the Sea Life Centre in Brighton - both of which she genuinely seemed to enjoy for at least the first hour or so.

There was also the obligatory parks and swimming. I'm not sure who enjoyed the week more - Charlotte or her Daddy! And in our quest to get her to eat more than easy-to-eat baby/toddler meals, she even ate a few chips:

Charlotte's speech is continuing to come along at great pace still, too. She's now putting a couple of words together. As we left the house to try a new playgroup this morning she said: "Bye bye Daddy, see soon"! And everything is "hello" or "bye bye" - "hello bear, hello door, hello car", "bye bye book, bye bye cow, bye bye park!"

15 MONTHS OLD

Blimey - life's just so busy at the moment what with working, raising a 1-year old child and being pregnant with a second I just don't have time to update my blog very often.

At the risk of sounding repetitive, the past month has seen us dealing with yet more eating and sleeping issues. At one point about three weeks ago, Charlotte stopped eating almost completely. She wouldn't even touch her favourites - cheese and fruit. We eventually put it down to a tummy bug as she was a little bit sick, and slowly re-introduced easy purees and pouches of food.

A few days after she started eating something she perked right up and started eating us out of house and home for a couple days. Thankfully with the food 'sign' and her saying "Ooof", we know when she's hungry now which is useful.

Her appetite's levelled off now, and we still have days of struggling to get her to eat an awful lot, but that's more about keeping her attention rather than things she does and doesn't like. One day even the old favourites get pushed away, and only banana and a petit filous will do. One thing we have found that she loves is Tesco's Goodness microwave meals for over-1s. They seem pretty nutritious, and it's nice to have found something that bridges the gap between 'baby food' and 'proper meals'.

The last ten nights Charlotte has also been testing us to the limits with sleep deprivation once again. She's been up at least once a night, usually for at least 2 hours before she'll settle back down. We've tried letting her cry it out, holding her hand, nightlight, teething gel, paracetamol - one night one of those might work, the next night they don't.

But last night, she slept right through with just a couple of murmurs. No idea what will happen from here - whether a couple of nights of tough love letting her cry a bit more have worked, whether it was a one-off good night, or whether she's over this latest phase. Who knows? Guess we'll find out tonight. Really hope it's the latter.

Oh, and she's taken her first steps. That was a pretty big one that I nearly forgot. It's a fairly wobbly half dozen steps or so, but she loves trying to walk between me and her Daddy! "Again" she keeps saying - actually she says that  A LOT - usually for a book we've already read 14 times.

Had our 20 week scan a couple of weeks ago - although was 21+1 weeks. All good - and unlike last time, my placenta's not low-lying. I've had far fewer "skinny days" than I did with Charlotte - I'm feeling Twiglet several times a day, which is so reassuring. We were tempted, but we DIDN'T find out what flavour he/she is - so best start sorting the 'neutral' baby clothes from last time pretty soon!