8000 words . . .

. . . or 26,000 if you click through to see them all!

Bus to Painswick

Going to Painswick on the bus

In the bouncy chair, for a change!

What gorgeous jeans - mummy wants a pair!

Jungle gym

Playing under her gym

In the bouncy chair, for a change!

What gorgeous jeans - mummy wants a pair!

Having a cuddle with Great Granny Goddard

At Great Granny Goddard's flat, having a cuddle

Playing with Great Uncle Alun

At Great Granny's flat, playing with Great Uncle Alun

Having a cuddle with Great Granny Goddard

At Great Granny Goddard's flat, having a cuddle

On the train with Tia Eva

On the train down to Wales with her Auntie Eva

If a picture speaks a thousand words...

... moving pictures, with sound even, must speak a million - or maybe even a billion:

Playing in the dining room

On the train down to Wales

Visiting with Great Granny Goddard

Playing on her playmat

Tummy time!

Sunday 12 November through Saturday 18 November

Sorry, folks. I've been very busy working, so haven't managed to do regular updates. As previously, I've frequently been working one-handed while doing the morning feeds, so haven't been able to do one-handed updates of this blog. And pretty much every single moment Rosemary has been asleep has been spent working. (And, yes, that includes a lot of her night-time sleeps, too.)

Sunday was nice, though. I spent Rosemary's morning sleep updating this blog and uploading photos and videos (hope you liked them). Then we got the bus to Painswick to visit Granny and Auntie Eva. Granny was actually on the bus as she'd been out for dinner at Pete and Vicky's the night before and had stayed over in Stroud. So it's a good job she was catching that bus and not a later one. Rosemary fell asleep almost as soon as the bus started moving and I was a bit concerned that she'd spend the whole visit asleep, but she woke up when we got to their house.

Eva had fortunately had to cancel her lesson with Liam, so we got to spend some time with her, too. We showed Rosemary the whole house and she was fairly overwhelmed with all the different things to look at. I think she'll love going to visit there when she's a bit older as there are so many toys and things to look at and play with. Granny was a bit upset that I hadn't warned her we were coming as she would have wanted to clean the house from top to bottom!

We only stayed for just over an hour, because Eva was getting the bus into town and Granny needed to have her siesta, because she'd had very little sleep the night before. We would have stayed a bit longer, but the next bus wouldn't have been for a couple of hour and that would probably have been too long, considering I was sneezing constantly and unable to take my allergy pills when breast-feeding. (I must double-check that one, because I know there are anti-histamines that are safe for babies, so I would think there must be some that are safe for breast-feeding.)

We went with Eva to Tescos. Rosemary again fell asleep on the bus and she stayed asleep all round the store and all the way home, too. It seems that we're making it a regular thing to go with Eva to Tescos on a Sunday. She has quite limited time these days, now she's working full time, so it's handy for her to combine doing her food shopping with spending some time with me and Rosemary. I do miss going for lunch with her in Woodruffs and things like that, though. It's a shame she isn't working in the centre of Stroud where we could meet for lunch. I also don't find time to phone her and talk to her so much, because when she's available to talk (i.e. early evening), that's the time when Rosemary and I have a good long play together. And generally I end up going to sleep when Rosemary does in the evening, unless I have to work, in which case... well... I'm working.

Most nights last week I either worked for a few hours after Rosemary went to sleep, or got up super early (e.g. 1 or 2 am) to work instead. I worked every morning from her early feed (usually around 5 or 6 am) and then also got a bit of work in while she amused herself under her gym - which she's enjoying a lot more these days. She's really starting to explore and she talks to her reflection in the mirror a lot and to the silly looking elephant and giraffe that hang down. She also manages to move around a bit, when she wants to concentrate on one of the animals, for example. She sort of shuffles somehow while lying on her back. She's happy to spend 30 to 45 minutes under her gym amusing herself, and I think it's important for her to have a bit of time to explore things on her own, so I'm not too worried about that. (The gym is living mostly in the office so it's put down next to my desk, by the way, not in some other room or anything!) That's about it for the day, though. She might spend 15 minutes under it in the afternoon or evening, but for the most part she seems to like one big chunk of time under it each day. Then, as already mentioned, I worked every moment that she slept during the day.

Except Wednesday. On Wednesday we went to Stratford Park cafe to meet up with Emily, my friend from the August club who lives locally, and her baby girl Madeline (think I spelt that right). We had a lovely time. Rosemary woke up (she'd fallen asleep just before I left the house) in time to be awake while walking through the park under the trees, which she loved. She adores walking under trees. She was then awake most of the time we were there (which was about 2 and a half hours). She spent a lot of time sat on my knee looking at Emily and Maddie and looking around her and even chattering a bit. She tried to pick up my muffin (!) at one point. Well, she touched the wrapper and pulled it towards her slightly. I think it was just general exploration, rather than a desire to eat this chocolate that mummy seems to like so much. She also had a couple of feeds while there and had some cat naps on me afterwards.

I really enjoyed myself. I found it really easy to talk to Emily. Much more so than any of the mums at the mums and babies groups I've been to. Chris pointed out that this is probably because I already knew her, albeit it virtually. It was also lovely to meet Maddie, who is only a few days older than Rosemary. She's quite small too, though still bigger than Rosemary. She also has loads more hair than Rosemary. And she has some different sounds, too.

Wednesday night I stayed up after Rosemary went to bed and worked until about 1am, then got up when she had her early feed at 5am. On Thursday, Grandad came round in the morning to spend time with Rosemary while I worked and then Granny came round to do the same in the afternoon and early evening. She was very good for both of them. She was actually asleep when Grandad arrived and I was concerned that she would wake and see a strange face and be freaked out (as I'd carried her downstairs in her chair while she slept), but instead she saw him and gave him a big smile, which made him very happy.

To be honest, though, workwise, I didn't seem to get a huge amount done. I think it was a combination of being tired and listening hard for Rosemary. I probably went downstairs to make tea a lot more than I would normally do, as well! I definitely got more done than I would have without Granny and Grandad there, but not by a huge amount, I'd say.

We went down to the surgery at 12.30 on Thursday to get Rosemary weighed. She now weighs 9lb13oz (4.32kg in new money). Unadjusted for her prematurity she's a teeny bit below the bottom line, but adjusted she's just below the next line up, so there's nothing to worry about. She's definitely growing - as evidenced by her growing out of her 0-3 month clothes - and she's healthy and having plenty of wet nappies and regular healthy poohs. And she is growing, just not at a super-fast rate. She's just petite and not a chubby baby. I wasn't a chubby baby and nor was my sister, so it's not really that suprising that Rosemary isn't, either. I'm certainly not worried about her weight gain, and nor is the health visitor. As she said, she'd rather she gained a bit slowly but on nice healthy breast milk, than gaining huge amounts on formula, but not necessarily getting the goodness.

I went to sleep at the same time as Rosemary that night (about 10pm), but got up again at 1am and worked until about 5pm in the evening on Friday. I had breaks when Rosemary was awake, but she did have a rather convenient sleepy day (unsurprising after having slept very little the last couple of days) so I did get a lot of work done. We got out to the shop for some fresh air around lunchtime. Rosemary had two longish sleeps - one in the morning and one in the afternoon and she slept quite late in the morning, too. I think she was catching up on the sleep she'd missed during the day on Wednesday and Thursday, to be honest.

Friday evening we spent downstairs, reading, singing and so on. Generally having lots of quality time playing together, because I felt I hadn't had enough time with her over the couple of days before. I had a rather bizarre pasta-based meal, which involved throwing a bunch of things in with some pasta, as I'd forgotten to think properly about dinner when we went out to the shop, and the soup was past it's 'sell-by' date.

When we went up to bed, I was so tired that I had to do her final feed lying down (she has a tendency to have a feed, fall asleep, wake up, have another feed, fall asleep, wake up, have another feed and then fall asleep properly - very occasionally she'll fall asleep properly after the first one, but not very often) where we both fell asleep. I woke up a bit later when Chris came in and picked her up and put her back in her crib. I then fell straight back to sleep again until she woke at 5am. That was the first time she'd slept through this week, after having slept through pretty much the whole of the week before. This might have been the 3-month growth spurt.

We both went back to sleep after that feed, although Chris got up. I woke up at about 7.30, but she stayed asleep in her crib until about 9am. She woke up in a fantastic mood. Really happy and talkative and smiling at both of us. Not that she isn't often like that, anyway, but it felt particularly good after the long hard week Chris and I had both had. I got her dressed and she had a feed while Chris had a shower (I had one after getting up and before she got up, as I didn't have to worry about making sure I worked every second of her sleeping! Very nice indeed, though I'm still suffering from hearing her crying when I'm in the shower. I'm getting it less when boiling the kettle, now, though, so that's progress.) Then we all went into town together.

We went to the library first, where we took Rosemary's books back and got some more out and Chris got some out for himself too. Amazingly, he found the new Terry Pratchett book there, so we don't need to buy it. We're both making a concerted effort not to buy books in hardback these days, rather than buying the new books by our favourite authors the minute they're out. But it was particularly pleasing to find it in the library (and on an ordinary loan, not a fastback) so we can still get to read it when it just comes out. (And, yes, we do know it's possible to order/reserve books from the library, but we're not really organised enough to do that!) I'm actually going to go back to the library next week and change the books I got for Rosemary, as I got similar ones to those I'd got the last time, which was 3 weeks before. I got a pile of board books, which were the right ones for her a few weeks ago, as she was mostly only interested in the bright colours. However, now she's really enjoying books with rhyming stories in. We got a few lovely old Ladybird books from Granny, when we went over to Painswick and she adores them. So, I need to go back to the library and find some books with rhyming stories in. Might go on Tuesday afternoon, as that's Storytime at the library.

We then went round the market. Bought some organic veg from Gilda's stall for Chris' Sunday roast and for my pasta that I want to make (am a bit sick of soup and stew, although they are ideal because I can make a big pot one day and then just heat up as and when I need to, rather than having to a cook a new meal every day). We picked up a few cheap children's book at the book stall (although I'm really not supposed to buy books, as that's Granny's role!). I did find a lovely copy of The Night Before Christmas, which I had to get. It was only £1, and it's ideal because of the rhyming. Oh, and we also found a copy of The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, by Alan Garner, which is a book we both really loved as children.

We wandered round the farmer's market, then, but didn't get anything. Oh now, Chris got some cider to try, though he apparently found it a bit too rough. Fortunately, it didn't seem to be hugely alcoholic, which is how I imagine non-shop-bought cider, for some reason! We went into Blockbusters to see if there were any films we might like to see, but there weren't. Then popped into Somerfield to get dog food, milk, pasta and tinned tomatoes.

Then we went and had lunch in the Greyhound. Their non-smoking section is downstairs, so it's 'safe' and the do really nice food. I had spaghetti with goats cheese, sunblushed tomatoes and rocket and Chris had mackerel pate, with toast and salad. I also had a banana split and hot chocolate for pudding. We sat on the sofa, rather than at the higher tables, which was quite cosy. Chirs went and got a paper, thinking that I might be able to do bit of Saturday paper reading, which is something I miss quite a bit. I managed to read about an article and a half, and that was all. But I wasn't bothered, as Rosemary was being too much fun!

She's really getting good at sitting up now. Not that she can do it on her own yet, of course, but she loves sitting on my knee looking around at the world, or on the table looking at me. She loves sitting and being read books. She loves singing and dancing and she really does join in with the singing. She's really exploring things with her hands a lot now - which can sometimes be a little embarassing when I'm feeding her out and about, as she has a tendency to grab onto my top and move it about! She's also started pulling my top down if she's sitting facing me on my knee! She's got herself another new noise, which is kind of 'Huh' but she repeats it quite fast - 'Huh huh huh huh huh'. It's a little disconcerting, as it's very close to her upset/fed-up sound. She's making it a lot when she's under her gym or on her changing mat, and I have to keep checking that she's happy, because it's so close to her 'I want to get up, I'm fed up of this, now.' sound! She's also quite enjoying spending a few minutes looking at the TV, so I think it might be an idea to get some Baby Einstein DVDs soon. ER and the Paramount Comedy channel aren't going to be suitable for much longer!

It's now Sunday morning. She slept through last night. And really slept through, too. From 10.30pm to 7.45am. No early morning feed. I'm not sure what to do if she keeps on sleeping through to that extent. I'll have to start using the alarm to get up at 5am so I can get a good chunk of work done. But will that wake her up? We'll have to experiment. Of course, it might have just been fluke and she won't do it again, so we'll just have to see. She went back to sleep for about an hour after having a feed, getting washed and dressed and having a kick about and chatter with me on her changing mat and then another feed. She's now woken up again and having a bit of time under the gym, before she has another feed and we go off into town to wander round the Sunday market and then go to Tesco with Eva.

I am realising that I would be very happy to be a traditional SAHM (stay at home mum). Being a WAHM is mostly OK, but causes me to stress out often and feel resentful towards the work and towards Chris, sometimes, too (for the most past unfairly so!). It's such a shame (in some ways, at least) that society has changed so much that it's difficult to be a SAHM. A single wage is no longer enough to support a family - at least not with ease - wherease 30 years ago or so, it was expected that a single wage would support a whole family. Women fought hard to be able to work, but now it's quite difficult not to. And many of us have to do all of it - work full-time, be a full-time mum and be a full-time housekeeper, too. At least I have Chris at home and I don't have to physically go out to work. I really don't think I could bear to leave Rosemary with a childminder or in a nursery, so am extremely happy that I don't need to. Now, if only we could win the lottery, so I could just be a mum and nothing else, that would be perfection. (Or maybe I should just find a time machine and go back to the 50s!)

Video post

Nellie the Elephant

Daddy time

Play mat

Friday and Saturday 10-11 November 2006

Well, I did manage to pretty much take the day off on Friday, other than answering a couple of emails. Chris's cold got quite bad, after he'd thought he was better, so he wasn't up to going into town. Rosemary and I did go into town, however. We went to the market and got some nice veggies from Gilda's organic stall and got some tinned beans and some nice granary bread from Sunshine.

We then went to Costa Coffee, where we had coffee with Granddad (well, I had hot chocolate and chocolate cake - it's so difficult to resist!). Rosemary was quite nicely awake for Granddad, which was good. I then thought we only had half an hour until Rosemary's jabs, so rushed round the supermarket and then round Mackays (or M&Co as it now seems to be called) getting some 3-6 months clothes for Rosemary, as she's grown out of the majority of her 0-3 months clothes (does depend on the make though, there are a few Newborn size clothes that she still fits).

We then got to the doctors surgery only to discover that I hadn't changed the time on my phone yet, so we were actually an hour early. So we called Granddad to see if he was still in town and went and sat with him outside the pub. I had a coke and Granddad had a sparkling fancy fruit juice (can't remember what it had in it, but it was very nice) as he's not drinking again now, because he's on Interferon (think that's how it's spelled!) and other medication. Granddad gave me the money for Rosemary's clothes, as he'd been wanting to buy her something put couldn't think what. So that was nice. Granddad held Rosemary for about 3 minutes while I nipped over the road to the pet shop to buy some anti-flea shampoo for Wesley (they only had the natural stuff, not the chemical stuff, but I got it anyway). By the time I got back she was crying for me. However, it seems that was probably more to do with being hungry, as she then had a feed for about 20 minutes.

We then went back to surgery, a little bit early but not too early. There were saw one of the women from the post-natal group with her baby and husband who were also there for jabs. (I can't remember their names - I'm dreadful at remembering anyone's names!) Rosemary had a similar reaction to the first lot of jabs. She screeched for about a second and then cried 'normally' afterwards. We went back out to the waiting room and I fed her for about 10 minutes (you have to wait 10 minutes, anyway, in case of a bad reaction), which soothed her quite quickly.

Rosemary slept quite a bit after that. She fell asleep on the way home and pretty much stayed asleep from then until about 6.30pm. Instead of working I sat on the sofa and watched ER and read a Mother and Baby magazine. I did also do a couple of loads of washing, a couple of loads of dish-washing, some hand dish-washing and emptied the bins. Put a bunch of washing away, too. Didn't get around to making soup as I'd planned, though, so just had the carton of fresh soup that was in the fridge (it needed eating anyway) and Chris had a tin of Chicken Broth.

While Rosemary was awake for a bit in the evening, she was not her usual alert and talkative self. She had another nap downstairs for an hour and a half and went to bed properly at just after 11pm. She slept through to 5.45 am, when she had a good feed, but wasn't too keen on going back in her crib, so she came upstairs with me and had a half hour chat and sing, before going back to sleep until gone 10am, during which time I did a bunch of work. (No more than 1 day off a week for me!)

We then went into town again, where we wandered round the market. We went into Adams to look for long-sleeved vests, but they didn't have any. We did get 6 pairs of tights, though, in 3-6 months size and a bit more funky than the ones from Wilkinson. We also went to Woolies, where we got the last pack of long-sleeved 3-6 month vests (yay!) along with a couple of outfits. (Well, I'd been planning on spending money on clothes for her the day before, but Granddad paid for them, so...) We popped into Somerfield for a few bits and bobs and then started walking home, but saw that there was a small French market on. Rosemary had actually fallen asleep just after we came out of Adams and had slept deeply through going in the other shops. Bought some Tartiflette (think that's how you spell it) from the French market, which is a Savoyard speciliaty that I never had when living there because it always had bacon in it. This stall had a veggie version as well as the bacon one, though. I wasn't that impressed though, although Chris did polish off his bacon one.

Didn't do any more work though when she slept in the afternoon. I sat on the sofa watching more ER, but mostly reading the Baby Signing book that finally arrived. I also had a little nap myself on the sofa! And did more loads of washing and other houseworky stuff. We had lots of fun in the early evening when she woke up. And Chris came downstairs for a bit and played with her, too. I love watching them together now; it's so adorable when she smiles up at him or starts cooing and gurgling at him. Awww. Ooh, very exciting... she picked up a book! It was just a plastic one that I'd given her more for the purpose of chewing than reading, as I think she's teething at the moment. I had read it to her as well. Anyway she picked it up and held it up for a bit in a similar way to what she did with Nellie the Elephant (see the video post that will be posted a bit later when the videos have finished uploading). It was, of course, just a case of her picking up something that was there when she was ready to pick something up - because she's exploring in that way - but it got me particularly excited, purely because it was a book!

She started looking a bit tired at around 9pm, so I put her in her bed clothes and she had a good long kick about on her changing mat, with her nappy off and chatting away to Nappy Monster. Then we went into the bedroom and turned the little light on and the big light off. I put the TV on, very quietly. Unfortunately, the Sky box had frozen, so I was stuck watching 'Meet the Fockers', although it was interesting/embarassing to see the Granddad doing babysigning with his grandson and being generally overly enthusiastic with the intellectual stimulation. Hmm, I'm not that bad am I? (I know I'm not, actually, so that was a rhetorical question!) She had a very good long feed (about an hour) and went down to sleep about 10.30pm. And slept through to 5.45 am again, then went back down in her crib at 6.15am. She's still asleep now, at 9am.

Instead of working (oops), I have been writing essays about baby development (see earlier post) and uploading photos and videos (see earlier and next post). I'm now going to try to get a bit of work done, though I imagine Rosemary will be waking within the hour, so I'll probably be doing some work during her afternoon sleep today (assuming she sticks with the pattern of having a long afternoon sleep, of course!). I'll probably pay for this later in the week and will end up having to have a couple of nights of only three hours sleep in order to get all my work done. Hopefully not, though.

Alternatively, I could get a few extra hours by having Granny come round and play with Rosemary one day. I need to start accepting that this is an OK thing to do now and then, and not something to feel guilty about. Then again, I really don't want to make it into something that happens all the time, because I have to work 10 hours a day or similar. Because I want to be the main person looking after Rosemary - alongside Chris, of course - and not be always handing her over to other people, even if those other people are her grandparents who, of course, would happily spend every moment with her and are perfectly capable of looking after her!

Yeesh! This blog seems to often end up with my expressing motherly guilt about something or other. Ah well, I'm told that it is inevitable to feel almost constant guilt and worry when you become a mother, so I'd better get used to it.