Bigger and better adventures

Earlier this month I volunteered to help out on the National Premmie Foundation’s stand at the Pregnancy, Babies and Children’s Expo when it was running in Perth.  It was great to meet some premmie mums from interstate, as well as catch up with local mums.

Since then I was thinking more about what I could possibly do to help other parents of premature babies in Perth.  I’m not really an organiser of events or other people, as I prefer to take a “behind the scenes” approach.  So I thought about what had worked for me, when I was looking for support.

In a nutshell, what I did at the time was turn to the internet.  It took me several months before I found what I was looking for (and it turned out to be L’il Aussie Prems!) so I decided that maybe I could make that journey shorter for someone else by having a local site.  My hope is that if anyone goes searching on the internet for premature babies and includes the word Perth, hopefully they’ll find me - and I can provide links to LAP, other national support sites, and any local groups in Perth too.  I will also post information that I think is interesting and relevant to premmie parents.  In the longer term I hope to be involved in more than just providing information, but I figure this is a good start.

So here is my site:  www.preminperth.net

Of course it also gives me another opportunity to show off my amazing little daughter.  And yes it does owe a lot to this site… once again I would like to say thank you to Jules for providing this great resource - forum, blog space and all - and being an inspiration!

Daddyfeatures and I are natural born couch potatoes. We were the kids who had no natural co-ordination and always got picked last for primary school sporting teams. In short, Nerds ‘R Us.

As a result of our own miserable playground experiences, we’d really like Talia to be a life-be-in-it, have-a-go sort of child. Given her genetic inheritance and her prematurity, we figure it will take a bit of effort on our part to help her gain the confidence and the skills that we seemed to miss out on. So we’ve started by giving her experiences in the playground beyond what she might get if we worried too much.

Fortunately for us, she loves it! The swing is a daily delight and she shrieks with happiness as we push her until the chains of the swing are flying out almost horizontally. (I give thanks to the person who invented the bucket swing for toddlers!)

The slide was tolerated and she didn’t seem to mind sitting at a height almost 5 feet above the ground and sliding down on her bottom while holding my fingers. Then a couple of days ago I decided it might be interesting for her to go down on her tummy, feet first. A stroke of genius, even if I do say so myself. She was exhilarated and couldn’t wait to do it over and over - and then she climbed back up the face of the slide, for the first time ever - and not only that, but she managed to clamber all the way to the very top, twice!

As you can imagine, she was very pleased with herself, almost as proud as I was!

At this rate it will be no time before she’ll be in the front carriage of the roller coaster at the show with her eyes open and both arms in the air. If my hair isn’t grey by then no doubt it will be soon after!

Now that Talia has teeth next to each other (4 at the top and 2 at the bottom),  I realised I ought to make more of an effort with brushing them, something I had always intended to do but hadn’t quite made part of our daily routine. I had been taking her into the bathroom so she could watch me brush my teeth before I ran one of those little slips-over-your-finger brushes over her gums.  Then this week I actually bought a proper baby toothbrush, gave it to Talia to hold while I gave a demonstration… and she got the message!  She put the brush into her mouth and waggled it around in a convincing imitation.  For a baby who vary rarely mimics anything we do (like waving or sticking tongue out) it was particularly good.  I called Daddyfeatures in to take a commemorative photo.  And here we are:

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.