Kat Is a Ham

Kathleen advises me that she has been updating her blog recently, and wants everyone to know about it.

http://katisaham.blogspot.com/

Cheers,
Megz

This entry brought to you by the letter "B"

It has occurred to me that everything to do with babies starts with the letter B. Even the word Baby starts with B.

First of all they begin life as a Bump. They then go through Birth and are Born.

Their little lives revolve around four main things:

* Breastfeeding / Bottlefeeding - or Boobie-time as Peter calls it.
* Burping, which closely follows the feeding.
* Bedtime, which for some babies occurs in a Bassinette.
* Bathtime in either the Baby Bath or the Big tub.

When it's time to go outside, they get strapped into a Buggy.
When it's time to play they may get strapped into a Bouncinette.

Popular toys are Bears, Buzzy Bees and Blocks.

Even the dummy or pacifier is sometimes called a Binky in the US.

About the only thing in babies lives that doesn't start with B is their Nappy or Diaper. However these items are intimately associated with baby's Bottom, which does start with the letter B. Perhaps we should rename them Bumpers.

-Megz

Three months

Kathleen is now three months old. The first six weeks seemed to drag on, but the last eight weeks have just flown by. That's probably helped by the fact that in that time she and I have been to Wellington twice for nearly a week each time, to visit family and friends.

The biggest news we have is that Kathleen has finally learnt to self-settle (i.e. fall asleep by herself after being put to bed). It wasn't until week 10 or 11 that this happened but since then she does it almost every time she goes to bed. It literally happened overnight - I had begun putting her to bed and letting her cry for five minutes before going back to rock her, and then one day she cried for 2 or 3 minutes and then stopped and went to sleep. I was so surprised. The first night it happened, Peter and I were both sitting in the living room saying "now what?" and "what's wrong?". I think there were several things that contributed to her learning to sleep - the fantabulous curtains from Tina that keep her room dark, the basinette I bought that hangs inside her cot and swings, but mostly I think it was just part of getting older and learning how to sleep. It sure has made our lives a lot more pleasant and easier to cope with.

The only issue we now have with Kat sleeping is that quite often she will only sleep for around 40 minutes at a time and then wake up. I will usually try and rock her back to sleep when this happens, which can sometimes be a frustrating and fruitless task. You can usually predict when you put her to bed when she is going to wake up, as she is very consistent with her 40 minutes. The reason for this is because a sleep cycle in babies lasts for around 40 minutes. In adults this is around 90 minutes (ref Wikipedia - Stages of Sleep).

So now that Kat is getting plenty of sleep when she needs it, she is a lot happier whenever she is awake. She will play with you or by herself for short periods of time. She loves watching TV. She is now getting to the stage where she will reach out for things if you put them in front of her, and if she gets hold of them they go straight in the mouth. She's really good at holding thin things like bibs and sleeves, but anything bulky like toys usually gets dropped.

She went through a stage of being very chatty, but this stopped when we went to Wellington at Easter. Now she has started gurgling instead and sometimes squeals (which is SO cute).

We thought for a while that she may have had reflux which was causing her unhappiness. We tried her on Gaviscon for a while but I don't know if it helped or not. I think the biggest improvement came from me changing my diet. I never knew so many foods could affect babies - the breastfeeding diet is even worse than the pregnancy diet. Most fruit and vegetables are off the menu, which makes life very boring. The hardest thing to give up was tomatoes, but since I stopped eating them I have noticed an improvement in her. It is very hard not to eat tomatoes though - go to a foodcourt and have a look at how many meals contain them - just about every sandwich or salad, all hamburgers and kebabs, most pasta dishes, all Mexican food. And I love tomatoes!

Kathleen is growing up well and life is getting easier for Peter and I. My days are no longer filled with trying to get her to sleep and I can actually get things done (so why no blogs for ages? you ask). I go out with two different coffee groups and its good to exchange ideas with mothers of babies the same age.

Peter, Kat and I went to Wellington for Easter, and Kat and I also went there for a week in March. Both times were to visit Peter's family but were also beneficial for me to observe Kat out of her environment and I learnt more each time about how she behaves in different situations. It was also great to be able to leave Kat with her grandmother and go out with friends for a change (thanks Marty & Tania).

We are still wanting to move to Wellington but Peter has yet to find a job there. He has had a couple of leads but no offers yet. So we continue living in Auckland in the meantime.

Photos on Flickr have now been organised into sets ... photos of Kathleen can now be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/repete/sets/72057594123678289/


-Megz

PS: Here's an addictive little game to keep you busy for hours: www.planarity.net

A Milestone?

Well here we are at the six week mark. Kathleen is growing big and healthy and now weighs 4.3kg. She is no longer considered a newborn and has been discharged from the midwife's care. By far the biggest issue we have had with Kat over the past few weeks is with her not sleeping and being overtired, and as a result crying and screaming all evening.

Everyone has said to us that the first six weeks are the hardest (and they have indeed been very hard), but what does that mean?
* Is a sudden change going to come over Kathleen today?
* Or am I just going to become used to being a parent?
* Or is my brain going to implode in on itself?
A bit of all three I think......

* A big change did come over Kathleen recently. All of a sudden her eyes came into focus and she was able to see and react to things and people. We have been getting some of the biggest smiles from her now. And she has started making the cutest little baby noises :-) It is great to see her responding to you when you talk to her.

* Being a parent is a lot more difficult than I expected. When they say it's a 24x7 job I didn't realise that meant feeding and rocking and carrying and cuddling and pram pushing 24x7. Literally! Apart from the hours between 11pm-approx 7am when she is sleeping (although she will wake up once during this time for a feed). Who needs the gym!

Kat's sleeping problems came to a head a couple of weeks ago when we had several days in a row of her screaming continuously all evening. She was so over-tired but was so worked up she could not sleep, and nothing seemed to calm her down. Our grocery list that week consisted of only two things - Panadol and Whiskey! I sought help from Plunket and have also enrolled in a class at North Shore Hospital (more to meet other mothers than anything else). Both of these have been an enormous help to us and we have learnt some strategies to cope with Kat's sleeping issues.

The first lesson was learning to recognise Kat's tired signals, and to start winding her down and putting her to bed as soon as they appear. She is a social baby who wants to take everything in, with the result that she becomes over-stimulated very quickly. One of the keys is to remove the stimulation before it gets too much.

Lesson two is to be consistent and have a routine for putting her to bed so that she learns when it is time to sleep. I.e. swaddle, cuddle and sleep. Eventually we want to get to the point where she can fall asleep in bed by herself once she is drowsy, but for now we are just trying to teach her to fall asleep. This means rocking her until she falls asleep. It can take a week or more for a new thing to become learned so it will be a long process.

The third lesson was to be persistent in what we do and not give up after five minutes if something isn't working. She's not going to fall asleep instantly just because she's tired - I don't, so why should I expect her to. So that means rocking her for five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, whatever it takes until she dozes off.

The frustrating part is when 15 minutes becomes 30 minutes and 30 minutes becomes an hour and she still hasn't slept. And then she's starting to get hungry again and I still haven't gotten done the things I wanted to do an hour ago because I've been rocking her to sleep (things like having lunch or going to the toilet). And then I know that if I feed her it will be at least another hour before I will have the chance to do those things. The hours in the day go by very quickly - but the minutes drag!

* And having said that, yes some days I think I am going to go insane.

Here are some links to some recent videos of Kat, showing her dual personalities:
Angel Baby.mov
Devil Baby.mov

Now don't get the wrong impression, Kat's not screaming because she's alone on the changing table. She was doing that before she got put down for the video and continued after she got picked back up again as well.

-Megz

PS: As an update to the last post, I have to take back what I said about Kat disliking having her nappy changed. She now loves it because she can look around at everything and there is SO much for her to look at. Her eyes get so wide these days just taking everything in, all the time!

Three weeks

Kathleen is three weeks old today. She is growing so quickly, she has already gained 400g on her birth weight. It has been a very long three weeks but at the same time it feels like just yesterday she was born. But of course I have had her for 21 days AND 21 nights so it does feel like a long time. Every day is different, yet every day is the same as well - consisting of feeding her, trying to get her to sleep, trying not to wake her up, and washing masses and masses of nappies.

Peter has been great and has helped out so much. Especially last night when he fed her overnight so that I could sleep and he then slept during the day today. Looking after Kathleen is so much harder than I thought it was going to be. Everything sounded so much easier in theory than it is in reality. Of course everyone has different advice and it's now a matter of trying everything until we find something that works for us. Some myths that I have found:

Myth: I'd been getting Braxton Hicks "practice" contractions since early on in my pregnancy and I thought 'If this is what contractions are like it won't be so bad'.
Reality: Braxton Hicks contractions are NOTHING like real contractions.

Myth: If they're tired, put them to bed and they'll go to sleep.
Reality: If she's tired she'll let you know by screaming and crying and kicking and wriggling and fussing and grizzling. In fact she'll do everything EXCEPT fall asleep.

Myth: All newborns do is sleep, eat and pee. If she's crying it will because of one of the above.
Reality: She cries if she's tired. She cries if she's hungry. She cries if you change her nappy. She cries if you put her down. She cries if you don't cuddle her. She cries if you DO cuddle her.

Myth: They will feed until they are full and then stop.
Reality: Yes she will feed until she is full, or until she falls asleep, whichever comes first. Most likely she will fall asleep first and then wake up 15 minutes later still hungry. And tired. And grumpy.

Having said all that, I am exaggerating a little bit. She doesn't cry all the time, but she certainly isn't shy about letting you know if she doesn't like something. In three weeks I have learnt a little bit about what Kathleen does and doesn't like.

LIKES:
- Cuddles
- People
- Going for walks
- Showers
- Daddy

HATES:
- Being put down
- Being left alone (i.e. in her cot)
- Having her nappy changed
- Baths

She is very good at nighttime though. Yes, she still wakes up in the middle of the night wanting a feed, but she will usually go straight back to sleep afterwards for a few hours. It's only during daylight that she doesn't want to sleep and then gets over-tired. She likes going for walks though and they usually put her to sleep. In the last couple of weeks I've walked around Beach Haven more than I ever have in the four years we've lived here. And have met more neighbours than I ever met in the last four years as well. And they all look at her and say "Isn't she beautiful. You forget how small they used to be".

More pics have been uploaded to Flickr in the last couple of days.