Peg the second

Isaac, in true Turner fashion, has gone from one tooth to two over night! He also seems to have another one on the way. Poor little chap is starting to show it though. He has a runny-nose and a cough (which I think we picked up on the way home from our Spanish ordeal, both of us) and is funny about his food all of a sudden - not Isaac at all. Put it down to teething. So anyhoo, here it is in all its peggy glory!

I can't get over how quickly the other one has come through once we noticed it. That's some power pushing on Isaac's part!

My little boy has happy feet!

Slingin’ it

We love our sling. We use it every time we go into town. We've only used our push chair a handful of times. Where would we be without the sling-a-roo?!

Protecting the bonce with our new hat which ties underneath & everything; it's baby proof I tells ya!

Trying "one arm out" for size.

 

Peg alert!

Yep yep yep Isaac has a toothy peg on the way! It's broken the skin (as evidenced by tooth clinking on glass while slurping water) and is definitely a tooth rather than yet another Epstein's pearl (of which he's had 2). Whoop whoop whoop!

We haven't really noticed that he's been grumpier than usual or that he's drooling lots, maybe that's to come?  He is a little off his food at the moment, but we'll see.

I read somewhere that, as the teeth cut through the gum, the cells of the gum actually die & fall away to make way for the teeth - how amazing is that?

I'll have to start brushing it when it gets a bit bigger. Which raises the question of toothpaste. We use Kingfisher fluoride free fennel toothpaste, well Simon still does - I've discovered this! General Jack Ripper must've got his intel from somewhere about the dreaded fluoridation of the American water supply and the subsequent contamination of "precious bodily fluids"! On a more serious note, I found this in Juno (Spring 2010).

"I do not believe that fluoride has any major effect in reducing tooth decay, in spite of all the statistics presented by health authorities. Flouride is a powerful toxin that should be avoided. In the doses advocated for decay-prevention, it has a hypothyroid action (suppresses the thyroid gland), penetrates all bones of the body and accumulates in the pineal gland of the brain, causing it to calcify. Perhaps a better informed choice would lead to fewer parents using fluoride products."

K M Hajikakou, Holistic Dentist

No fluoride for us ta!

I thought that teeth would mean the end of breastfeeding, but no! Because Isaac's tongue will still form the airtight seal, it means my nipple etc is protected from teethies, on the bottom anyway. I guess by the time the top ones make an appearance he'll be more or less off boob for good :-(

 

I’ve been naughty…

I went into Polarn O. Pyret today...there wasn't a sale on...BAD SARAH!

I couldn't resist these, aren't they the cutest?!

So, that's me & Simon eating beans on toast for a week!

Random words

I said I'd write about Isaac in my last post, but I haven't posted anything since 6th April. With it now being 24th April I decided it was high time I pulled my finger out & wrote! Some of the delay can be blamed on our unplanned "extra holiday" in Spain owing to a certain Icelandic volcano and its ash emissions. We should've been home on the afternoon of 18th April, but made it back on the night of 22nd instead. Isaac was a little star the whole time. He really is a placid little thing. He made lots of friends on holiday and took the travelling (flights & hideous coach journeys) in his stride and didn't seem upset at all by the time change. It was only an hour - we'll see how he fares next month when we go to Florida. I'm sure he'll be fine. How can he not be? He's perfect :-) Having travelled a 20 hour coach journey with him has made me realise - we can do anything.

Before our [dreaded] holiday I kept a note of Isaac-related things I wanted to write about in my Isaac-related post and now I sit down to write it, they don't really make any sense - just words on paper: hair, solids, sleeping, clothes, interested and nappies. Hmm. I'm sure they all made perfect sense when I wrote them! So much has scrambled my brain over the past week that I'm just going to have to hazard a guess as to what each meant.

Hair - it can't be my hair because I wrote about that already in my last post. Isaac's hair is lovely. It's so soft and fluffy. He's developing a little mohawk that makes it's best appearance when he wakes up from his night sleep. His slightly frightening baby mullet that emerged from the womb with him has now gone and he has the perfect little boy do right now. I'm just going to let it grow I think, see where that takes us.

Solids - yes, he eats them. What did I mean?? Hmm. I guess he eats a lot more now than he used to (!) ? He isn't a huge fan of the baby led weaning and seems to want the food in his mouth RIGHT NOW! Hungry boy. Purée/mashing it is. Who am I to argue? The kid knows what he wants. I'm finding myself up against a brick wall with vegan weaning. At a recent weigh-in, when questioned about what to give him, the weighing HV said "well you're more qualified than me to say really". Thanks for your complete and unwavering help and advice. I feel so...supported. Back to the drawing board with that one. All suggestions gratefully received!

Sleeping - since the commencement of solid food, Isaac hasn't been sleeping through the night. We've had one or two nights of uninterrupted sleep, but otherwise he sleeps from around 7pm until between 1am & 4am, has a nappy change & a feed & then goes back to sleep until just before 7am. I still think we're incredibly lucky that he doesn't wake more often.

Clothes - he's still in 3 - 6 months sized clothing. See, he's very long, but not very wide. He's not a porker by any stretch of the imagination. The 3-6 month bottoms are so loose around his little waist, they'll do him for a while methinks. It's a good job summer is on the way (or are we having it now?) so that I can pass short trousers off as 3/4 lengths or turn them up into shorts. I'd love to know from where the basis for children's clothing sizes comes as I know a few other babies who find clothing too big for the size.

What is this noise machine??

Interested - Isaac is so much more interested in everything around him now! It's so lovely to watch. He still isn't overly fussed with toys, preferring household objects - measuring cups, pegs, his monitor (the parent unit), the telephone (he's particularly taken with speaker phone!) He does love his little jangly bell froggy and his cuddly squeaky dog. His little face lights up and he does this amazingly cute little grab and grin when I pull it out of my bag :-D He also LOVES Rinny. She's always doing something so he always has something to watch. He very much enjoys our play time with her which consists of *me throwing the ball for her & her chasing after it & bringing it back, (rep from * until someone gets bored). He can watch this for a very long time!

Nappies - I know this one! He's finally moved up a nappy size! Woohoo! I don't know why I'm so pleased, I suppose it's physical evidence that's he's gaining weight and growing. So, we're now on size 3 Bambo Nature nappies! Just before we changed sizes, his other ones still fit him, but leaked a couple of times so we decided to move up a size and it's all going swimmingly.

While I've been writing the above I've made a mental note of some more I'd like to add: weight, smile, character, squeal.

Weight - at the last weigh in he was 12lbs exactly. Now, that's still about 3lbs under any kind of "normal" on the breastfed baby chart in his red book, but seriously. Who cares? He's healthy and happy. I could understand the need for concern if he was all skin and bone and wasn't himself, but he is. So. I see nothing wrong with him being the weight he is. HV comments are like water off a ducks back now. In one and out t'other.

Smile - he's beautiful enough already without him smiling, but when he does, oh boy. I melt. My face explodes into a super smile and I feel so overwhelmingly full of happiness and complete adoration for my little Wiggler. He smiles. A lot. He even smiles when you can tell he's tired or not feeling so great, only not for as long.

Character - our Little Man is such a character. Over the past few days I've noticed his personality start to come out. I'm looking forward to seeing more of it!

 Squeal - he's developed a sort of squeal that goes so high pitched it becomes silent. It's not a bad thing, just something he does. Right now I have some sort of throat thing so I can join in the disappearing squeal making!

Here ends the random wordage.

Ok. One more. Maybe two.

Own room.

I put the blackout blind up today and Isaac has gone to bed in his own room tonight for the first time. I'm looking forward to going to bed in our room and having a little read before I turn the light out. Honest. I'm very sad that he's not in there with us anymore. In-fact, I'm a bit downhearted that he's gone, but we were disturbing him when we came to bed and discovered he sleeps better on his own while we were on holiday. *sigh* Our room feels much emptier now, although there are actually more pieces of furniture in it now we've swapped his cot for our chest of drawers etc.

And now for the final two. Promise.

Separation anxiety.

Little Man loves his Mama.

7 months a mother

Forgive my lack of posts, sleeping has been somewhat erratic recently. The clocks changed and it all went wrong. We're back to newborn uncertainty! Seems that bathing before bed  works a treat so we'll continue in this manner every night & see how it goes.

This post is a purely selfish waffle. I'm writing about me. Isaac's development will follow in due course. So anyhoo. I've been a mother for 7 months now. Some things I wasn't expecting have happened, well quite a few of those, but the main ones are: random hair and losing weight.

While my belly isn't this flat, my jeans were about this much too big

Regarding the weight loss. I was under the impression that, when one had a baby, one lost control of ones stomach muscles and got fat. I believed as much because there is a multitude of products available to "help you get your pre-baby body back" - exercise DVDs (Cindy Crawford springs to mind), diets, creams, therapies etc. I'll admit to being a little concerned by all this. My weight had crept up to an unacceptable (for me) level before I was pregnant and I really didn't want to get any bigger thank you very much. You can imagine my surprise, then, when the weight started to drop off before my very eyes. Within 2 weeks I was back to my pre-pregnancy weight and dress size. 7 months on I am exactly 2 stone lighter and 2 dress sizes smaller (on the bottom and 1 on top) when compared with pre-pregnancy figures. Needless to say I am delighted for several reasons. 1) I've lost the weight that's been steadily creeping on since my teens. 2) I didn't have to do anything to achieve said loss. 3) I had to go shopping to buy clothes that didn't fall off! It's lovely to be able to shop for clothes in the regular section of stores rather than the plus size bit, something I haven't been able to do for years now. Anyway, I feel great - I just hope it doesn't all come piling back on when the breastfeeding stops.

The Hair, nothing freaky don't worry. At about 4 months pregnant I noticed that I lost a small patch of hair at the front of my scalp. I didn't think anything of it & assumed it was part of the ageing process. Didn't even cross my mind that the raging hormones in my body might be responsible! I looked in the mirror the other day and, lo & behold, it's growing back! This I was not expecting. I was reminded of when I was about 8 or 9 and fed up with the same missing wispy bits of hair. In my infinite wisdom I decided to chop them off so that they weren't there any more. What I didn't realise, and what Mum told me (while smirking) would happen was that the hair would grow back giving me a temporary and horrific mini-fringe. Here I am at the ripe old age of 28, feeling the frustration of a 9 year old, only it's not self inflicted this time.

I've already had the freaky hair loss in the shower thing. I'll explain...I don't brush my hair apart from when I wash it so the way I keep tabs on hair happenings is the amount that comes out in the shower - anyone with hair that needs squeezing in the shower will know what I mean. During pregnancy I noticed that it all but stopped coming out in the shower. Again, I thought nothing of it and got used to it - it made the washing of hair very quick! At about 3 months post birth, my hairs appeared to be jumping ship! I didn't really know what was going on until one of the NCT Mums said that her hairdresser had mentioned it would happen at around 3 months. Phew. I wasn't balding! Massive relief. I guess my hormones are rebalancing because my hair loss is back to pre-pregnancy levels now and it's maintenance levels are too...boo! I could get away with washing it once a week during pregnancy. Back to every other day now.

Click image to zoom for full gory details!

I had my first menstrual period a few weeks ago. I was pretty shocked and a bit stunned! Blood loss has been something to worry about for so long now that I'd nearly forgotten about the monthly joy. It'll be interesting to see how regular it is. Before my pregnancy I was very regular...every 26 days on the dot. I wonder how well my body will return to it's baby-less state? I can always see my acupuncturist again, he who so very skilfully sorted my 'mental-menstruals' before!

The return of the periods also made me a little sad. It means Isaac is needing less milk from me. I know he'll continue to need about a pint a day until he's 1 or so, but still. I'm not his main source of food anymore. Initially I thought weaning was getting my son onto solid food. Now I think it's that as well as weaning me off him.

My caesarean scar has fully healed. It's quite smooth on the left side. The right side is less purple and more that reddy pink of scar tissue; it's nowhere near as bumpy as it has been. and I don't notice it anymore when I pull clothes on etc.

Spring is rolling along nicely. The crocuses and daffodils are shooting up in the garden, there's blossom on the way everywhere and next door's honeysuckle is starting to green. Our trees has little buds on them too. Simon's mowed the lawn for the first time this year and I'm planning raised beds in which to plant the  poor jasminum that's been sitting by the kitchen window in a pot all winter long. I'm shedding clothing layers as the season moves on. I'm wearing my own clothes again as opposed to last year's maternity mish-mash. It may seem trivial, but I didn't realise how much what I wear affects me. Last year I was limited to a range of rubbish maternity clothes; I really didn't have the energy or the inclination to customise. This year I'm back in my old garbs (that still fit) and new ones that I love. I can't even begin to tell you how much happier I am. I suppose the extra weight and hormone trauma didn't help either! I'm like a spring lamb with energy to burn....boing boing boing...waiting for Isaac to join me in running around like a loon - it won't be long!

I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!