Night feeding

This baby seems to be the one for trying out new stuff. I never got the hang of feeding lying down with either of the girls, but its working out this time. Yay. Especially "yay" for the first thing in the morning feed...

My big discovery was a way to keep my shoulders and arms warm and snuggly, while not completely covering the baby with the duvet. The solution is simple, once you think of it - I wear my dressing gown to bed! ta-daa. The duvet only gets pulled up to my waist, thus keeping the baby's head well clear of a soft, downy smothering, and I stay super-snuggly warm.

Image (and nice position instructions) from ParentingWeb

So that is what I do first thing in the morning - or if MrBaby doesn't re-settle after his normal night feed, which I still get up and do on the couch while listening to National Radio.

I know some people successfully bed-share with their babies all night, which theoretically makes feeding during the night a cinch. All good if it works for you (and if you never attempt it after consuming drugs or alcohol, don't smoke, and don't have too-soft, fluffy bedding - all of which dramatically increase the chance of SIDS when combined with bed-sharing). But, as Merl will tell you, I am a world-class fidget in my sleep.

I cannot stand to stay in the same position, or even facing the same side for much longer than about an hour and a half. But moving the baby wakes him up. And I don't want to turn my back to him. So total bed-sharing is out. When MrBaby was very very little he slept with us most nights, so I know of what I speak.

So we 'co-sleep' - he's in a bassinet in our room, which allows me to respond to him before he gets majorly distressed, and most nights he ends up in our bed sometime around 5.30am. Then he feeds, I doze off, and generally we have a good cozy start to the day/end of the night.

The 3am-ish feed is a different kettle of fish. If I feed him in bed at 3am then I fall quite deeply asleep while he's feeding and then he, quite naturally, doesn't want to go back to his bassinet - and who can blame him? But then I have the 'aargh, I can't fidget and roll over' problem I described before. Instead, I get up and feed him in the dark in the living-room while listening to the radio. He's much happier to go back into the bassinet this way, though I'm not entirely sure why.

The radio is great - it keeps me from falling asleep on the couch and waking up horribly stiff and sore, and there are some really interesting programs on - mostly repeats of interviews and documentaries from during the day when I don't have the radio going. Yay for National Radio. An added bonus is that our radio is also a flashlight, so I can briefly switch it on to get MrBaby properly latched without needing to turn the main lights on.

Our torch-radio (flashlight) (except ours is yellow)

After 2 months, it's nice to see that we're getting to know our little guy and working out how he's different from either of the girls, and learning the kinds of things that will work for both him and us.
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frozen embryos given a chance

I spotted this today, and thought it classified as good-news news (as opposed to ordinary 'news' which is almost never 'good').

Couple receive embryos frozen for more than 15yrs

By DEIDRE MUSSEN - Sunday Star Times | Sunday, 27 July 2008

Six embryos frozen for more than 15 years finally have a chance at life after an Auckland family donated them to an infertile couple desperately wanting a baby.

It is believed to be one of the longest periods of time that embryos have been frozen in New Zealand and later transplanted to try to create a baby.

The unique case challenges new fertility laws, which ban keeping embryos left over from in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment for more than a decade without an exemption.

The donor couple, who wanted to remain anonymous, adopted a son 16 years ago and had an IVF son in 1993. They decided they did not want more children but kept their 12 left-over embryos frozen at an Auckland fertility clinic. "When they asked what do you want to do with them, we realised these aren't just eggs, they're embryos. It means destroying them and after all we've gone through, you can't," the donor husband said... [click link in title to read full article]

Lovely to read of these frozen babies being given a chance, rather than just being 'thrown away'. Read more...

birthday photos

Miss1's birthday was last Monday and the week has gone by so fast I haven't gotten around to posting photos yet. So here they are - just a couple. I'll get some more from my Dad and my Aunt. Hopefully somebody remembered to take a photo with Miss1 and the cake - I completely forgot!

In other news, I found this great site for all about cloth nappies - Boise Cloth Diapers. It's got a great list of all the options, the pros and cons of different fabrics, how to look after the different types of covers, and most usefully, a good troubleshooting page with tips on what to do if your waterproof covers aren't waterproof anymore - which has been a problem in our house! The answer is to get some waterproofing stuff from an outdoors store. (well why didn't I think of that!) So I compromised and used some Dubbin - hopefully it will work as well on PUL as it does on leather! Thanks to Planet Green for the tip.

Am also immoderately pleased to have found the 12th Matthew Bartholomew mystery at the library. Medieval Mystery novels are a weakness of mine. So I will be neglecting my home and children for the next day or so until the mystery is resolved. Fortunately Merl and Miss3 are off to a birthday party this afternoon so that gives me a couple of hours for reading right there!

Oh I miss lying in bed on Saturday mornings and reading for hours and only getting up when I was too hungry to stay in bed. Unspeakable luxury! Read more...

home-made fitted cloth nappies

Or 'diapers' for those who live in North America.

Today I made some pocket-nappies all by myself :-) Out of some old flat cloth ones that were way too thin to be useful the way we normally fold nappies. I looked up a bunch of different free nappy/diaper patterns online and then figured I could probably manage it from scratch myself.

It's past my bed-time right now, otherwise I'd take some photos and do a big tutorial on how I did it and pass on the free-pattern goodness. Maybe over the weekend.

[Find later blog post with pictures and explanation here]

My friend AB who went into hospital on Wednesday has been told she needs to stay there until the baby is born - up to 11 weeks away! So her son JB will be joining us for three mornings a week until further notice. If you are interested in following her progress and musings while in hospital her Livejournal is here. She's writing a paper diary and her hubby is typing it in for her each evening.

My baby will be Miss1 on Monday, so preparations are afoot. Miss3 decided that she'd like to give her baby sister some 'tiger slippers' for her birthday - so we bought the fabric and yesterday and today we together sewed them up on the machine (Miss3 helping by pushing the 'reverse' button as required). I'll post a photo of them too - after monday, cos they're all wrapped up just now. Used a 'charity pattern' found here.

We've decided that the girls get lots of cool presents from everyone else, so we'll be low-key for birthdays. Something small but special. This year it'll be a name-plaque for her wall and a pre-loved book from the Sally Army store. I'm making the name-plaque - actually painting a store-bought shape and mounting store-bought letters. Mum had bought the letters and given them to the baby for Christmas, so actually getting them mounted on the wall will be quite special.

The birthday is going to be very hard without my Mum. Its just so wrong that she isn't here to see them grow up.


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When things turn pear-shaped

Well, once again, our own nuclear family is perfectly fine and normal - no major dramas within these four walls. However, my very oldest friend AB (we were first friends when we were in the same ballet class as 5 year olds) has had a bad day.

AB is pregnant with her 3rd baby, and it has been a very painful deal so far - she's had symphysis pubis dysfunction and is finding it excruciating just being upright for the day (okay in the mornings, but agony by the evenings). But yesterday it was discovered that she has a total placenta praevia as well. So now she is in hospital on complete bed-rest - probably until the baby is born, which could be 2 months away.

And she has 2 preschool boys. And her husband S has a major work deadline all coming to a head in the next 4 weeks, for which he is the lead programmer.

So, we are of course all rallying around. I had the boys here this morning and they all played very well together. This is not usual. Usually there is fighting and tears and sulking when the 4 kids get together (well, not really counting the littlest who is too small to be a problem). But today they were great. yay.

Fortunately kindy starts back tomorrow so her oldest and my oldest will be off there for each morning of the week, which will make things easier. And her #2 is on the waiting list to start.

So, I've put my hand up to look after her #2 for three mornings a week for as long as needed. It's tricky - I felt like I should offer to do more, but I can't really justify (for example) going and cleaning their bathroom when ours is so badly in need of a scrub.

But right now the most helpful thing I can do is go to bed and get some sleep I think. I just re-read this post several times and it is no longer making sense to me - a sure sign that I'm not only too tired to be reading, I am definitely too tired to be writing. Read more...

Death and Dying

Miss 3 and I went to the cemetery today. It is 2 years since my Nana died of cancer and I wanted to go put some flowers by her headstone. I wasn't sure about taking our child along with me, as the whole concept of death is a daunting one to have to explain - although it's not entirely foreign to her - she does know that people die, and that means that their bodies stop working and the bit that they think and feel with goes to be with Jesus. But what she might actually think that means I don't know.

I came to the conclusion it was a good idea to take her with me. You see, my Mum (Miss 3's beloved Nana) has cancer too, and will probably die within the year - it has spread through her liver and lymph system and is spreading very fast. She may even die within the week, having been admitted into hospital today and put in isolation to try and head off a terrible case of flu she's come down with while being on chemo.

So in the light of that, Merl and I decided that a trip to the cemetery to put flowers on my Nana's grave and to have a good cry and a talk about the good memories I have of my Nana would be good. So that's what we did. I had a cry and explained that I missed my Nana (her Great-Nana) very much and was sad that she had died, and also that she had been very unwell so when she died she had left her sick body behind and didn't need to be sick any more, so that was actually a good thing.

Perhaps this will help us all grieve a little easier for my Mum when the time comes. who knows. We just do what we think is best at the time. Read more...

TV and tots

I like this Salon article. It affirms my practice of settling Miss 3 in front of a couple of Berenstain Bears episodes while I get dinner ready. Basically says that so long as TV is age appropriate, for fixed time periods, mindfully watched and never just left on in the background it's ok. Also, no good evidence that kids who watch a lot of TV are physically inactive - seems to be very little correlation between TV time and physical activity in preschoolers.

It also, strangely, reinforces our decision not to actually own a TV. Any 'TV' watching we do is on our computer - a DVD or downloaded TV series. So it's never on as background noise - everything that we watch is a conscious decision. Read more...