Bigger and better adventures

At her 8 month (corrected) paediatrician appointment Talia was making very few consonant sounds, so we were told she would be given another hearing test.  Three months later we still hadn’t received our appointment, so I phoned the hospital to ask what was happening.  Less than 2 days later the audiology people were hastily offering us an appointment for early the following week (today).  Ho hum.

Unfortunately Talia currently has a cold, and the audiologist decided that this was likely to be blocking her ears at the moment.  She was able to determine that Talia hears loud noises (we knew this) but could not get down to the 20 decibel level they would be happy with.  We will need to return for a second appointment in a month’s time, a week before her 12 month (corrected) paediatrician appointment.

At the moment she does babble, and uses da, dee, ya, wa, ba and sometimes na, ma, ga.  Not to mention lots of “oooh!” which is very cute.  The only word in her vocabulary that I am certain of is “cat” but she does struggle to say it.  The audiologist said that, given her other delays, it’s likely that speech will also be delayed (so no surprises there!)  As long as she has no physical impediment (like a glue ear) to hearing then I’m really not too fussed.

The big day arrived on Saturday 17 May. Daddyfeatures and I were enjoying a morning coffee and Talia was playing on the carpet when she suddenly seemed to move slightly further than expected. “Was that crawling?” I said (for about the fourth time in the past week). “I think it was,” he replied. So I grabbed the camera.

She was playing with balloons left over from the birthday party last weekend, and one of them floated out of reach. It was just the encouragement she needed… you can see what happened next here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDbqWoRBsnk

I could feel the tears of joy welling up in my eyes as I went back to finish my coffee.

We went out shopping and bought ourselves some sushi to celebrate - and Talia ate a slice of Tobiko roll. Later in the day we hastily finished putting up the custom security gate we have made for our kitchen. My parents came over for dinner and the celebrations continued.

WOO HOO!!

Talia has been having some extra physiotherapy to help with her gross motor skills and in the past week it seems to have really come together for her.

At 6 months corrected she was able to sit, lean forward, and roll from front to back, but then she failed to make any significant progress for several months.  She couldn’t move out of the sitting position, or off her back.  At 9 months corrected we started the physiotherapy, and within weeks she had started turning to the side, an important first step in being able to shift her weight from her bottom (while sitting) onto all fours (ready for crawling).

Now, at nearly 11 months corrected she has finally started to pull herself up (not successful yet but definitely trying), she is rolling from back on to her front, she pulls herself onto all fours from both a sitting and a lying position, she is starting to rock on her knees and looks like she will crawl very soon.

Today I held her hands and she was able to take a few wobbly steps with very little assistance.  We have her 12 month review coming up in another 5-6 weeks and suddenly I feel confident that we won’t be a complete disaster in the gross motor skills department after all!

I have lots of warm fuzzy mummy feelings today.

Last year was my first Mothers Day.
It felt much like any other day in the weeks before or after it - trekking in to the hospital, reading the chart to see how much Talia weighed and how much milk she’d been fed, watching the nurses take care of my baby. It was hard sometimes to even feel that she was really mine, when all I could do was change the occasional nappy, express my milk via a machine and hope for a cuddle once a day or every second day. I worried about her, I shed plenty of tears.
Taking her home and leading a normal life seemed a distant dream.

This year it is the NICU which is a dream, dimmed by time but not forgotten.
Pictures of premature babies on the news bring tears to my eyes but for us, so much has taken place, so much has changed in a year. My beautiful daughter finally allowed to go home. Breastfeeding, settling, weigh-ins. First smiles, tummy time, growing out of clothes, starting solids. Sitting, rolling, turning the pages of a book. Our first birthday celebrations.

Another Mothers’ Day.
We shared it with my mothers’ group, holding a joint first birthday party for our babies, born between March 20 (Talia’s birthday) and June 22 (the day Talia left hospital) last year. I made party food, sewed a gift and helped decorate the venue. Yes I am a real mum - I can walk the walk (while pushing a pram) and talk the talk and have the t-shirt to prove it (almost certainly with baby food smeared onto it). I still worry and I still shed tears from time to time, and maybe I always will. It seems to be part and parcel of being a mother.

Daddyfeatures suggested we rename Talia “John West”, in keeping with the quantity of food being rejected at the moment.

There is a lot of discussion on the forum about how to deal with babies who don’t want to eat.  Some mothers see it as a fight but we are pretty determined not to take that path.  Some mothers are concerned about feeding disorders but I think our issues are merely a combination of small appetite (not much we can do about that), teething (ditto) and early onset of rampant I’ll-do-it-my-way individualism (no comment really!!)

I decided today I would take before and after photos, as Talia has been doing some impressive rearranging and redistribution of food from highchair tray to floor.  So I laid out and photographed a beautiful little bento box of nibblies in an ice cube tray and put it on the high chair. And do you know what? The little imp either ate the contents or left it exactly where it was. Out of the entire spread she dropped a single cheerio over the edge. So there was no aftermath to photograph.

Some days I swear she must be able to read my mind.

The second upper tooth is nearly through, and in the mean time the second front lower tooth (what a mouthful!) has made it’s way up into the world.

The rolling was definitely not a fluke - she was practicing it again today, and just before dinner she rolled over and over and over across the floor.

Woo hoo! So far she’s tried slithering, bum shuffling and rolling.  Crawling cannot be far away… fingers crossed.

At the start of January Talia figured out (with a little help) how to roll from front to back.  We assumed it wouldn’t take long before she rolled from back to front.  We were wrong.  Rolling has never been a form of locomotion, or even a tool to reach items only a little way out of her reach.  (Heavens, that’s why one has staff!)

Four months later, the penny has finally dropped.  Yesterday I found her on her tummy in the cot (I always put her down on her back), and this evening she rolled from back to front on the floor as we ate dinner.

Better late than never! And yet again we can rejoice in a little milestone that I imagine many parents just take for granted.