Eating dinner in one of the world's top hotels...with a tiny baby using a dining chair as a playpen.
Firefly toy response training!
Thursday, 3 January 2013
Friday, 21 December 2012
Leila at two months
Loves
Leila is enjoying lying on her playmat although she doesn't really do very much on it at the moment. She is also fascinated by lights! She loves to gaze at the main light in the living room and to the light outside the window. When we put up the Christmas Tree and its lights she loved that too!
She enjoys her mobile which is on her cot and she gazes at it when we change her - this makes changing her a whole lot easier!
We have found that Leila likes white noise. We found this tip online and have found it really works. We have an app on the ipod and use this to play her white noise to help calm her down when she is really crying, and to help her nap during the day.
Leila really loves the sling. We are using the kari-me wrap at the moment, as the ergo baby sling is a bit difficult to get used to as we need to use the infant insert that is a bit cumbersome. She enjoys sleeping in the sling, but she also enjoys looking ot at the world from it when she is awake. Having said that, she really doesn't like the sling if she hungry or windy as then she fidgets and cries.
Leila tolerates bath time, her car seat and bouncer.
Hates
Leila is a windy baby and she hates having wind. Every evening is taken up by trying to wind her and calm her crying down as she is in so much pain from it. We have started giving her Infacol and this seems to help. We have also been seeking advice from other people through the Mums and Baby Group at the CSA that Alice goes to each week.
Leila also hates being left alone more than a few mins. She always wants someone around and this makes being a parent a full-time job as you can't get anything else done! Not that there is much time in between feeding, changing and burping to do anything in anyway!
Leila doesn't seem to get hungry gradually, but suddenly realises she is hungry and then starts really crying.
Leila tolerates the hiccups that she seems to have nearly every day. She had hiccups when she was in the womb which was quite exciting at the time as it meant we could feel her moving every day. Now that they have continued though it means that she gets them a number of times a day and while they don't cause her pain they can't be all that fun for her!
Leila seems to have inherited her mum's nose....and her sneezing! Leila has cute little sneezes, but like her mum she doesn't just sneeze once, but twice or three or four times in a row! The cutest though is her final sneeze which doesn't quite materialise and ends up as an "aaa-ch-oh" as she almost sighs at the end.
Eating
Leila gives us two clues that she wants to feed when she is hungry. The first is her cry which is a "la, la" sound developing into a longer "laaaaa" if we ignore her. We say this makes her a proper Egyptian baby because she is speaking the language already! Her other clue is 'bobby' which is that when we pick her up she starts bobbing her head onto our chest/shoulder
Feeding has been going well but Alice has had blisters and blocked ducts which has meant needing to focus more on the latch and making sure that Leila has had a full feed. Overall we've been able to work through the problems and luckily nothing has been too major.
Feeds are still taking a long time and we've found that in the evening Leila wants a lot of feeding - almost constantly - but that this does mean she sleeps for a decent stretch at night.
We've started now to pump so that Leila can have a bottle. Leila is happy with the bottle and dad enjoys giving it to her in the evenings. Leila is also taking the bottle happily enough from Gina when Alice needs to go in to work. Pumping itself is going OK but Alice is so tired at night that she doesn't always want to get up to pump.
Sleeping
Leila struggles to nap during day unless she is being walked in a sling, or is in a sling with white noise playing. This makes the days very tiring as the old saying "sleep when the baby sleeps" doesn't really work when you have to walk around with them! We do really enjoy taking her out in the sling though, so this isn't too bad.
At night Leila sleeps on her front in the moses basket with the movement monitor on. We have found that more babies than we expected sleep on their front, as other parents come out of the woodwork to say that their babies prefer this. The movement monitor is really important to us though as it gives us reassurance that she is OK. She will sleep on us in bed sometimes, but she (and us!) is less comfortable like this now. Maybe this is because we have got used to having her in the moses basket, or maybe she's grown!
Leila tends to fall asleep nursing. She has only managed to get herself to sleep once or twice, as tends to be wide awake until the evening nursing even if she is doing her tired cry. Once she is asleep we have perfected the art of transferring her from our arms into the moses basket without waking her!
Playing
Leila has started smiling now which is really lovely :-)
Leila is still enjoying her play mat amd spends her time 'batting' her toys around. She also really likes her new toy, Princess Crinkle, who makes a great crinkle sound and made with brilliant contrasting material.
As we are doing lots of walking in the sling we are finding that we are making up songs as we walk along (or making up new lyrics to songs). This is fun but we have found that some words are more difficult than others to rhyme!
Leila tolerates bath time still, and even tolerates mum and dad painting her feet!
Thursday, 20 December 2012
Wednesday, 19 December 2012
Leila meets Santa!
Today Leila came into work for the seasonal concert and managed to meet Santa! Leila was very well behaved in the sling during the concert; she was very alert but quiet!
Thursday, 29 November 2012
Leila and the mobile
Leila was bought a new cot mobile, and here she is very much enjoying it after being changed.
Wednesday, 21 November 2012
Leila - one month old
So Leila is now one month old - it's all gone so fast and those first few days seem a world away from life with Leila now.
Since being discharged from the ICU we are really thankful that Leila has continued to be healthy. The first week at home wasn't easy as she was still on anti-biotics which gave her diarrhoea (TMI probably, but it was watery green - almost like a runny mint sauce!!) and can't have been nice for her. For us it meant that nappy changes were somewhat a baptism of fire (!) and it meant that we didn't really know what was 'normal' or what to expect - in terms of nappies, and in terms of how she was feeling too.
The antibiotics were given by injection which again wasn't going to be great for little Leila, but the doctors from Tabibi 24/7 were amazing. They came to the house to give the injections and were great with her. We're so glad that we found and decided to use Tabibi as our doctors as they have a doctor on call on the phone 24 hours a day and will do house calls which means we don't have to take Leila to a clinic and sit around in a waiting room. They must have about a dozen doctors on their 'books' and we have had a different doctor every time we have had them out, but all of them have been great. We have had a few house visits so far for general health check-ups and to give her injections but we have also taken advantage of their "24/7" feature as we did call them at 5am in the morning in the first week she was home! We were worried because she was 'snuffly' at night and we were worried about her breathing. We managed to speak to a doctor on the phone within half an hour and he reassured us that this was probably not a problem and that we could give her some saline drops to help dissolve the mucous in her nose.
Feeding
We knew that we wanted to breastfeed, but had been worried about it working because of flat nipples. When we were in the hospital Alice first expressed milk for Leila to be fed by bottle in the ICU, but after a few days they allowed Alice to try breast feeding her. The first time doing this was really hard as not only was Leila hungry (and therefore cry-y) but it was difficult for her to latch on. The hospital advised us to try nipple shields as a way of providing a nipple for her to latch on to. With practise this worked and Leila was able to feed off Alice directly - we just had to sterilise and prepare the shields for each feed. The shields not only provided a teat for Leila, but also started to draw Alice's nipples out. You're not really meant to use the shields for this (!) or for extended periods of time, and so after the first week we were trying to stop using the shields. This was really hard at first as Leila just couldn't latch on, and so we were trying to start with the shields and then swap part-way during feed. Gradually we have got there and now Leila can latch on herself.
We've been experimenting with different pillows and cushions and seats for feeding to find the best position for Alice and for Leila for the latch. The body sleep pillow that we bought in the UK was meant to be a feeding pillow too, but doesn't seem to be of much help. After trying various combinations this month Alice is now trying to feed without a pillow and just supporting Leila on her arm as this is the least complicated option!
The feeds themselves are taking a long time and as she feeds every few hours it seems like Leila is constantly feeding! We're glad we had the tip-off about Lanisol as Alice has needed it!
Sleeping
We've been really struggling with sleeping. The first night home Leila slept in her moses basket beside our bed, but on the second night she just wouldn't sleep there and kept crying (this did coincide with a mozzie in the room that we tried to rid using the fancy organic citronella patches, which rather than putting the mozzie off probably put Leila off with the scent). The only way we could get her to sleep that night was lying on our chests and so we took it in turns to sit up in bed with her on us.
Since then we have been trying her in the moses basket, but she wakes herself up every time she "Moro's" It seems that she is really sensitive to the Moro reflex and shocks herself awake. The only way around this that allows her to get some decent sleep is for her to lie on us, so for the first two weeks at home we were taking it in shifts to be 'up' We then found that she would sleep if she was lying on her front (in the same way that she lies on us) but all the advice is that babies shouldn't sleep on their front so we have been in a real pickle. We have ended up having her on us (mainly having her on Alice since Scotty went back to work) to sleep for the majority of the night and only getting her into her moses basket for the final sleep.
At the end of the month Nanny came out to visit and brought with her an Angelcare monitor that we have started to use. We had rather snorted at these monitors that have a sensitive pad you place under the mattress to monitor every movement (i.e. breath) that the baby makes, but in this case they seem to be the answer. The other thing that we have found from all this is that despite all the advice being for 'back sleeping' there are a number of people out there whose babies will only sleep on their fronts - it's just that people don't like to talk about it.
Leila tends to go to bed around 9pm and we tend to do with her as she is sleeping on us. For her naps in the day she sleeps on the play mat in the living room.
Crying
Like all new parents we are trying to figure out what her cries mean. We tend to just go through the list of options until we find the right one; feed, change, wind. Her main cry though seems to be "La! La! La!" so she is truly an Egyptian baby! We have been taught a little trick by the main doc at Tabibi which we use if we need to distract her or temporarily stop a cry - the finger suck! We just give her our little finger and she can suck away at it while we do what it is we need to (i.e. one of us gives her our little finger while the other one changes her). It is also proving a good way to figure out if she is hungry or not depending on how hard she sucks!!
Since being discharged from the ICU we are really thankful that Leila has continued to be healthy. The first week at home wasn't easy as she was still on anti-biotics which gave her diarrhoea (TMI probably, but it was watery green - almost like a runny mint sauce!!) and can't have been nice for her. For us it meant that nappy changes were somewhat a baptism of fire (!) and it meant that we didn't really know what was 'normal' or what to expect - in terms of nappies, and in terms of how she was feeling too.
The antibiotics were given by injection which again wasn't going to be great for little Leila, but the doctors from Tabibi 24/7 were amazing. They came to the house to give the injections and were great with her. We're so glad that we found and decided to use Tabibi as our doctors as they have a doctor on call on the phone 24 hours a day and will do house calls which means we don't have to take Leila to a clinic and sit around in a waiting room. They must have about a dozen doctors on their 'books' and we have had a different doctor every time we have had them out, but all of them have been great. We have had a few house visits so far for general health check-ups and to give her injections but we have also taken advantage of their "24/7" feature as we did call them at 5am in the morning in the first week she was home! We were worried because she was 'snuffly' at night and we were worried about her breathing. We managed to speak to a doctor on the phone within half an hour and he reassured us that this was probably not a problem and that we could give her some saline drops to help dissolve the mucous in her nose.
Feeding
We knew that we wanted to breastfeed, but had been worried about it working because of flat nipples. When we were in the hospital Alice first expressed milk for Leila to be fed by bottle in the ICU, but after a few days they allowed Alice to try breast feeding her. The first time doing this was really hard as not only was Leila hungry (and therefore cry-y) but it was difficult for her to latch on. The hospital advised us to try nipple shields as a way of providing a nipple for her to latch on to. With practise this worked and Leila was able to feed off Alice directly - we just had to sterilise and prepare the shields for each feed. The shields not only provided a teat for Leila, but also started to draw Alice's nipples out. You're not really meant to use the shields for this (!) or for extended periods of time, and so after the first week we were trying to stop using the shields. This was really hard at first as Leila just couldn't latch on, and so we were trying to start with the shields and then swap part-way during feed. Gradually we have got there and now Leila can latch on herself.
We've been experimenting with different pillows and cushions and seats for feeding to find the best position for Alice and for Leila for the latch. The body sleep pillow that we bought in the UK was meant to be a feeding pillow too, but doesn't seem to be of much help. After trying various combinations this month Alice is now trying to feed without a pillow and just supporting Leila on her arm as this is the least complicated option!
The feeds themselves are taking a long time and as she feeds every few hours it seems like Leila is constantly feeding! We're glad we had the tip-off about Lanisol as Alice has needed it!
Sleeping
We've been really struggling with sleeping. The first night home Leila slept in her moses basket beside our bed, but on the second night she just wouldn't sleep there and kept crying (this did coincide with a mozzie in the room that we tried to rid using the fancy organic citronella patches, which rather than putting the mozzie off probably put Leila off with the scent). The only way we could get her to sleep that night was lying on our chests and so we took it in turns to sit up in bed with her on us.
Since then we have been trying her in the moses basket, but she wakes herself up every time she "Moro's" It seems that she is really sensitive to the Moro reflex and shocks herself awake. The only way around this that allows her to get some decent sleep is for her to lie on us, so for the first two weeks at home we were taking it in shifts to be 'up' We then found that she would sleep if she was lying on her front (in the same way that she lies on us) but all the advice is that babies shouldn't sleep on their front so we have been in a real pickle. We have ended up having her on us (mainly having her on Alice since Scotty went back to work) to sleep for the majority of the night and only getting her into her moses basket for the final sleep.
At the end of the month Nanny came out to visit and brought with her an Angelcare monitor that we have started to use. We had rather snorted at these monitors that have a sensitive pad you place under the mattress to monitor every movement (i.e. breath) that the baby makes, but in this case they seem to be the answer. The other thing that we have found from all this is that despite all the advice being for 'back sleeping' there are a number of people out there whose babies will only sleep on their fronts - it's just that people don't like to talk about it.
Leila tends to go to bed around 9pm and we tend to do with her as she is sleeping on us. For her naps in the day she sleeps on the play mat in the living room.
Crying
Like all new parents we are trying to figure out what her cries mean. We tend to just go through the list of options until we find the right one; feed, change, wind. Her main cry though seems to be "La! La! La!" so she is truly an Egyptian baby! We have been taught a little trick by the main doc at Tabibi which we use if we need to distract her or temporarily stop a cry - the finger suck! We just give her our little finger and she can suck away at it while we do what it is we need to (i.e. one of us gives her our little finger while the other one changes her). It is also proving a good way to figure out if she is hungry or not depending on how hard she sucks!!
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