OMG I sprung a leak...

Funniest thing happened to me this morning...I woke up about 4.20am to discover that I had sprung a lesk during the night. My top and bra were completly soaked with breast milk! So much so that I had been lying on my side and I had even leaked into the bedsheets! Holly went to bed early last night and was still asleep when I woke up. Breasts were full up to overflow, hence the leaking. So after a quick wardrobe change and new breast pads I wandered out to the lounge to express some milk. Sorry am not a believer in waking a sleeping baby, so expressing wad the best option for me at that time of the morning. Then it was back to sleep for awhile before Farmer Brown was up for milking. Holly finally woke up about 5am, which was a massive sleep for her. So we are now enjoying some mother and daughter time until Farmer Brown comes back from milking.

Its The Small Things...

You know every day I am amazed at our little girl. Even though she is now 10 weeks old, I really can't imagine my life without her. Every day she gives me yet more reasons to love her more and more!

She has started "talking" to us now. She is really funny as she works out all the different noises that she can make. These of course are not limited to gurggles and gag gags. She has also discovered that she can increase the pitch of her cry now. So now if she feels that I am not paying her enough attention or if she is have a "fake" cry and she feels then need to really make me run into the room, she amps up the pitch of her cry! She is such a tart, but so funny to listen to as she makes all these discoverys.

She is smiling at us heaps now, which is a real treat. It is nice to know that she has more reasons to smile at us other than needed to burp, fart or poo! There is nothing better than when you have had a crap day and you pick up your little one and she cracks the biggest smile in the world! It really makes you put things in perspective and most certainly improves your day leaps and bounds!

I went to visit a girl friend today, who has a 18 month old. She has started talking. Man she was so funny, to hear her trying to work out how to form the words to get across what she is trying to tell us! Funny how everything with fur and four legs is called "Meow meow!" She is also into everything in their house. Her mum is not precious enough to have removed everything from grasping distance. I like this idea, I feel that they need to learn to live in our environment too, but within reason I would remove things that she could break or could swallow. Anyway, Christie was telling me how Ruby knows where the photo draw is and how she loves helping herself to loose photos as well as albums. She also enjoys pulling out the soft drawers in her room and emptying out the contents on the floor. These of course remain on the floor until the end of the day when it is time for bed! We had a great visit with them and I enjoyed learning of all the things that I have yet to look forward to with our little one!

I guess you never get this time again so I should make the most of it. I am lucky that I work here on the farm and do my volunteer ambulance work and that I don't have to go back to work and put her in day care, as I would miss out on so much and that would really be stink. It must be really hard for those that aren't as lucky as we are.

Each day is special with her, especially when we hear of such horrible events like the shooting in the USA over the weekend. Make the most of every moment that we have with our little ones.

Bloody Baby Eczema!

So one thing I have learnt as a new parent is that your babies body has a mind of its own and we don't really know how to interpret what it is doing!

So to start with Holly got this red spots all over her face. Took her to the doctor and they told me she had baby acne. Ok so now the spots have a name, what do I do. Well for starters don't believe what products promise. For example, most of us in NZ were brought up with Johnson & Johnson products, especially No More Tears, which I remember as a kid. Anyway we had been using a baby bath lotion for when we bath Holly. The doctor tells me that it is a really strong product, even though it is recommended for babies!

As a result we have been using a cream for Hollys acne and don't add anything to the bath water or for washing her hair.

So her spots have cleared up and she looks a beautiful as ever.

However...now her skin is really flakey and dry. Waited until we saw the plunket nurse at our appointment, to see what she had to say. She suggested going to see the doctor just to have it checked. So off we went later in the day.

So now she has baby eczema! So now we have another cream to put on her skin! Well at least the eczema doesn't seem to bother her. She isn't scratching at it or upset and grumpy at all. The cream has made a huge difference as once again her skin is back to its beautiful self!

I guess thats the life of being a baby. They are so lovely and fresh into the world after being on the inside for 9 months. It must be a real shock to their system to burst out into this world. There is so many things they need to get use to very quickly after birth. I am told that all of the sensitivity can last until they are appoximately 6 months old, as I guess by then they are old hats at being exposed to the outside world!

I have come to realise that each day is a learning day when it comes to bringing up a little one! Each of those days are precious and should never be taken for granted!

We love our little one more and more as each day goes by. I must also say that those days goes by so fast. All the more reason to make the most of them!

I survived the night...

Well Holly spent her first night in her own room, in her own cot! She is a big girl now and is too big for the bassinett so she has upgraded to her cot.

Man she looks really funny in it as she is so small! Funny really considering she looks so big in the bassinett! She was really good. To be honest I think I was more concerned about her being in there than she was. I mean afterall she is happy anywhere as long as she gets a feed when she needs one!

I tried out the GoGo Bag for the first time, but I think I will go back to the swaddling her. The GoGo Bag is fine but as she is used to being swaddle up with her arms tucked in, I found that she woke more times during the night than she has been over the last week and a half. I was up to her crying at 1am, 3am and 4am! After the 4am feed I took her out of the bag and swaddled her again. Funny as she slept right through until 7am. So tonight we will go back to swaddling her. I think the combination of being in a bigger area to sleep in and the fact that her arms were out, were the main reasons for her waking. I have to keep reminding myself that she is on 8 weeks afterall not 21! Holly has the tendancy to smack herself in the face when she has her arms out, hence the reason why she kept waking last night. I noticed she had a scratch on her face, which backs up what I had thought. Swaddling will help with this no doubt. Plenty of time for her to go back into her GoGo Bag.

We had our visit with Brenda the Plunket Nurse today. Holly was great as usual. We looked at her head circumference, body length, weight and her eyes, ears, arms and legs. They were a little concerned that she hasn't put on enough weight according to the "charts". They were happy with her appearance and how settled and content she is, so that ruled out that she wasn't getting enough food. They like babies to put on at least 100gms per week. Since birth she should have put on approximately 800gms and she has only put on 500gms. We decided that we would give her a top up of formula in the evenings. She is sleeping for 6 hours at night without waking but there is no need to wake her up to feed her. I was thinking: "No way in hell am I waking her up during the night to feed her, especially when I am having such a great sleep!" Hence the decision to top her up in the evening.

Personally I don't have any problems with the use of formula. I know that some get quite hung up on this subject, but for us we decided ages ago that if that was what was going to be best for our wee girl then thats what we will do. She will still be getting almost all of her feeds from breast milk so one feed a day of formula is cool with me. This also means that when I go back into the cowshed and back on Ambulance duty in the New Year I can get her Nanny to give her a bottle of formula and it won't make a difference to her feeding patterns. I know that breast is best but I also think that not starving my child is also important, so will do what ever if needed to keep her in good health.

Tommorrow Holly and I are picking up Nanny and hitting the shops in town. We thought that we should go during the week and sooner rather than later, as the shops are only going to get worse the closer we get to Christmas! Nanny hasn't been out with us before so I am sure that she is looking forward to pushing Holly around in the pram. She is such a proud Nanny!

We are looking forward to our shopping trip tomorrow :)

Where is the time going?

Well our little Holly is now 8 weeks old! How did that happen? She has changed so much and yet she is still our little girl! It seems like she has been part of our family forever. She is such a great baby and a really breeze to look after and love.

So we are now under the care of Plunket. We have our second appointment with them tomorrow. I am looking forward to seeing how much she has grown and what she now weighs. Our plunket nurse Brenda is really lovely. She seems to really enjoy her work, which is just fabulous for us! Brenda came to visit us at the farm the first time, however this time we are going to see her. It is a great reason for me to get out of the house or off compound, as we sometimes refer to the farm as!

Holly has had her first lot of immunisation jabs. She had these at 6 weeks and was very brave. She only squaked a bit but was soon satisfied with a feed. The nurses loved her coming to visit and look forward to seeing her at 13 weeks when she has the next lot of jabs. Holly also got the all clear with the GP, who we saw first. No clicky hips, great heart and lung sounds, all the important things, ticking all the right boxes! What a little star she is!

We have also had a photo shoot with a local photographer. This was done way back when she was 2 weeks old. The photos were just amazing and it was so hard to choose which ones we wanted from the selection available to us. We went with a 5 photo package with digital files included. She is just so photogenic, there were so many great shots of her. Anyway we finally managed to get it down to the 5 we liked and man do they look great now that they are printed out. Her Grandad said the other day, that they won't have to worry about doing the wallpaper in the rest of our house as we will be able to plaster the walls with all the photos that we have taken of her!

Holly is getting into routine now which is just great for the amount of sleep that I am getting! We normally go to bed between 930-1030pm and she now sleeps through until about 4am! Then we are up and about for the day about 6-630am. This is so much better than the two hour feeding pattern that we started out with!

Today is another big day for Holly as she is graduating from her bassinett to her cot in her own room! I don't know if I am ready for this step just yet, but she is just getting too big for the bassinett now. As I swaddle her at night, she is almost as long as the bassinett. When I put her in the cot she looks really tiny and way too small to be in there! I think I will start her out in her Merino Go Go Bag tonight too. This means that I don't have to use blankets on her. I think my main concern is that I won't hear her when she wakes, but I know for sure that her lungs work fine and she is able to cry out when she is ready for her feed in the morning. I have got used to hearing her breathing beside my side of the bed, and to not be able to hear that will be strange. I guess on the positive side of things I may get more sleep as babies are noisey littel critters and I hear her every move, burp, fart and wiggle in the bassinett. Not having her in the same room will be strange, but I am sure that it only bothers me and not her!

We have had a couple of episodes that can only be described as "explosive poos"! OMG who would have thought that something so little could create such a huge mess! I would also like to mention at this time that Farmer Brown is yet to change a poo nappy! I guess I am just too easy on him or maybe its just that she seems to decide to do this event when he is out working his bum off! Maybe they are ganging up on me! The first two time she did this she ended up having a bath as that was the easiest way to deal with the clean up! The second time she did it she happened to be having a nap with Farmer Brown in bed, lying ontop of his chest. He woke and brought her out to me saying "clean up in isle 4, clean up in isle 4". Man it had gone everywhere, including all over the sheets in our bed, so guess who had to clean that up too! Last night she decided that in the middle of the family bbq dinner that we were at was the prime time to unload again. It went all through her clothes, and thank goodness I had a change of clothes with me in the nappy bag. However giving her a bath wasn't really an option so half a packet of whipes later, I had her all clean up and sparkling just like new! What a legend my daughter is!

 

She is right now "calling" out to me, or practicing using her lungs as full volume would be another way to describe it! So I must be off, as it would appear that a mothers job is never done!