Bigger and better adventures

Adam Gilchrist isn’t the only big retirement of the season; my boobs have definitely played their last Test for Australia too. Talia is pleased to see them - but only for about a minute each side, and only before breakfast. After that there is plenty of smiles and giggles but no more sucking.

So here for the record is our last breastfeeding song, to the tune of Old MacDonald.

Young Miss Talia had a mum, e-i-e-i-o
And on that mum she had a boob, e-i-e-i-o
With a suck, suck here and a slurp, slurp here
Here a suck there a slurp, everywhere a suck and slurp
Young Miss Talia had a mum, e-i-e-i-o

I don’t feel the urge to sing while she’s bottle feeding - and these days I make up a bottle and hand it to Talia who holds it with both hands and feeds herself. Clever cherub!

New foods since last week: lentils, spinach, parsnip, fish

Corrected age: 7 months, 0 weeks
Weight: 6.375kg
Diet: a slurp of pre-breakfast breastmilk; formula; fruit with yoghurt for breakfast; chicken with spuds, carrot, peas or corn, followed by fruit for lunch; and something similar again for dinner. Sometimes 4 meals a day!
New foods since last Monday: peach, chicken

Today was the first chance I’ve had to weigh Talia since the feeding penny dropped and she started scoffing solids like a chocoholic let loose in a Lindt factory. It was no surprise at all to discover she had stacked on the grams - up 405 g in 2 weeks! Wow!

Worrying about Talia’s weight is now officially “so last year”.

A month ago I posted about being advised to start Talia on extra physiotherapy. Since then she has made absolutely fantastic progress, so I was feeling much more positive about it than I did on December 6. Still, I took my mother along for additional support - and it made sense that two of us learn about any extra exercises Talia should be doing.

Well, the physiotherapist could hardly believe it was the same baby who wouldn’t do anything other than lie on her back and cry the last few group sessions. She sat up confidently, reached for toys and demonstrated her “stuff tummy time” rolling action. We learned a few useful ways to play with her which will help build her core strength even if she is not on her tummy, and then we were told that we don’t need to continue with one-on-one sessions unless I feel she is having any problems. Hoorah for my little superstar!

As a bonus, we dropped off a bag of clothing to the hospital op shop and then bought a few more items from the same place. I love charity shopping, everyone benefits, and the clothes I bought are gorgeous, I can hardly wait until she grows into them.

Growth seems very likely. I missed my weekly weigh-in with the child health nurse this morning, but I’m certain Talia is getting heavier. She might even be having a growth spurt. Since I posted a week ago to say that she wasn’t eating consistently or very much, she has decided that solids are GOOD. I have gone from one serve of mush per day to 6 serves, and she is guzzling formula like there is no tomorrow. Current favourite: pumpkin and avocado. I’m also serving pumpkin with carrot and pea, banana with milk, banana and pear, apple and farex.

Talia the kitchen fairy would like to make three wishes for all premmie babies for the New Year.

(Talia became a kitchen fairy by accident, after she discovered a fabulous magic wand in the cutlery drawer. It has special holes in it to make sure the magic comes out nice and evenly.)

First wish: to all premmie babies still in hospital - may you breathe strongly, grow healthily, receive the best possible care and come home soon

Second wish: to all premmie babies at home - may you eat to your mother’s content, play joyfully, sleep with your head full of growing dreams and find wonder in everything

Third wish: to all premmie angels - may you be remembered always with love

And a little bit of premmie magic to everyone who reads this!

(This post also on the main LAP blog)

Corrected age: 6 months, 2 weeks
Weight: 5.970kg (so close to 6kg!!)
Diet: breastmilk, formula, a couple of small spoonfuls of fruit and vegetables. Since the last Café post, I have introduced apple, avocado, banana and corn. She still doesn’t eat regularly or very much, but more goes in than comes out again.

The child health nurse was open for the first time in 3 weeks so I went and had all her measurements done for the first time since early November. In the past two months, she has grown!

Weight: up 1.36kg to 5.97kg - and finally back on the shaded part of the graph, the 3rd percentile

Length: up 3cm to 63cm - just above the 10th percentile

Head circumference: up 1.5cm to 43cm - just above the 50th percentile

So it’s all good. I am a happy mummy today.

Upstairs, downstairs in the pram

Talia (and I) featured on the Lil Aussie Prems January newsletter. A copy is available on the LAP blog.

As another blogging mother I know said recently, there’s an advantage in being lazy. By the time you eventually write a post, there is so much more news to put into it!

Well, since the excitement of Talia sitting by herself a few days before Christmas, we’ve had all kinds of excitement.

• the sitting just gets better and better
• she can now say da da (dai dai)
• she has been in a swimming pool for the first time
• she is grasping objects with both hands
• she held a bottle by herself for a time while drinking from it
• she is using one object to hit another object (usually the formula tin, which makes a good drum)
• she has discovered her lower legs and reaches down to hold her shin/ankle
• her shrieking volume has increased (ouch)
• and now, she can roll over from front to back!

At last, a way to avoid the dreaded tummy time - roll straight over onto your back!! I think she would have done it sooner if she had figured out how to move her arm out of the way. Daddyfeatures showed her how to do it 2 days ago and now she remembers the trick and puts it into practice.

We are officially declaring the last two weeks as “wonder weeks”. So much change in such a short time, it is just fantastic to watch Talia’s development happening before our eyes.

Happy new year everyone - 2008 is going to be just amazing.