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Jan 11, 2013

R2BC: Finding the silver lining

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This has been a bit of a challenging week. Little O started back at preschool on Monday after three weeks of holiday and countless more days off sick before that in December and it has been a slow start getting him settled back in. And Baby E is just starting on a Wonder Week, so is not in the best of moods. However, I’ve been trying to look for the silver lining everywhere I can.

  • Little O’s first week back at preschool has been a bit of a challenge; however, he moved up a class just before Christmas (which was handled wonderfully by the staff), so that can be part of it. They are not concerned about how he’s settling in and say it’s getting better each day.
  • The problem is that he’s challenging once I’ve collected him from preschool. He had his biggest tantrum to date on Wednesday – 25 minutes, of which 10 minutes was spent outside with him crying and screaming and then lying on the snowy pavement, followed by 15 minutes just inside the front door, so in the communal hallway for all the neighbours to hear. The silver lining here is that Husband arrived home early by surprise, took us all out for a walk and we ended up having dinner at a tapas restaurant, and it all went brilliantly, which restored my faith in us being able to handle these tantrums as they occur.
  • For each tantrum that occurs, we learn better how to deal with them and keep Little O feeling secure.
  • I had a lovely night last night with two friends, just catching up and having a laugh.
  • Although Baby E seems to have just started the Programs Wonder Week, we know that once it is over, he will be able to show us all his new tricks!

So, not the best of weeks, but I really am trying to look on the positive side of things.

Reasons to be Cheerful at Mummy from the Heart

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May 20, 2012

Photo challenge 366 – week 20

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Week 20 – woo hoo! I cannot believe that with some cheating last week I have reached week 20. This week we’ve had a public holiday here in Sweden. Yep, that’s right, Sweden, a country that has completely separated church and state, gives us a day off for Ascension Day (known as Kristi Himmelfärdsdag here). If I were going to make one complaint about it (but, of course, I wouldn’t quibble with a day off), it would be that it falls on a Thursday, but really, a day off is a day off if it means that Husband is home.

Day 135:

A quiet evening’s entertainment

I took this photo to show what I was planning to do next: paint my nails and then read while waiting for them to dry. Of course, best laid plans and all that, and so I ended up pottering about on the internet for too long to start on my nails and I still went to bed too late. Fail.

Day 136:

A head full of measurements and grand schemes

Another spent on the computer for far too long; however, this one was actually spent doing something that Husband would approve of. I had taken down quite a few measurements when we went over to our new apartment during the day, so I started to annotate the floorplan and start thinking about what we should actually be putting onto the walls come July when we get the keys.

Day 137:

My little star

Baby E seems to be continuing with his good growth. We’re not due back with the nurse for another weigh-in until the beginning of June but he really is piling it on. I love this picture because he looks like a little elfin, but actually when he doesn’t have a hood on, his face has chubbed up nicely!

Day 138:

Pappa and Baby E

You see what I mean about Baby E – getting nicely chubby!

Day 139:

Mamma and her boys

Husband managed to get this shot before Little O was on the move again. Seriously, sometimes it just exhausts me watching him on the go.

Day 140:

Going through a Wonder Week?

We had another few unsettled days with Baby E this week. We attribute it partly to Wonder Week 19 and partly to us forgetting his Biogaia probiotic drops. I had not been convinced before that these actually worked, but now I really believe in their magic. Luckily, my brother-in-law was able to take Husband out for a trawl around the villages and towns of Skåne to find a large enough pharmacy to buy the drops. I doubt either of them minded, given that they were in a Ferrari borrowed from a friend of my brother-in-law.

Day 141:

Sleeping beauties

Two of my three favourite boys, snapped early this morning after Baby E’s first feed of the day – and he allowed us a lie-in until 6.15am today. Thank you, Baby E! Typically, after feeding him, I was wide awake, while the boys went back to sleep. Oh well, I guess my early start means I should really get off the computer now and get to bed…

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

While I catch up on my zzzzzzz’s, head over to The Boy and Me and check out what everyone else has been up to this past week.

TheBoyandMe's 366 Linky

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May 15, 2011

A wonderful Wonder Weeks leap

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Photo © English Mamma

The leap that Baby O has taken as part of this latest Wonder Weeks development is quite astounding us. Not only has he started walking (yay! two weeks before his first birthday), but he is now suddenly understanding so much more of what we say, has started to wave (at last!), has begun to try and stack the rings on his pyramid and fit shapes into the shapeholder toy and, most recently, has taken a big leap forward with the sounds that he makes.

His first sounds were “mummm, mummm” and “da da da da”. Initially, I was so excited that he was getting close to saying “Mamma”, until I realised that he only said “Mummm, mummm” when he was hungry. This is now turning into “Nammnn nammnn” and I wonder if it will eventually be “yum, yum”, which is something I say frequently to him while he’s eating. “Da da da da” is also developing and is becoming more like “derr derr”. My mother-in-law thinks this will be the Swedish word “där” (meaning “there”) but I’m not so sure. At the moment, he’s exposed to more English than Swedish, but who really knows.

As part of his waving, he says something that sounds like the Swedish words for “goodbye”: “hej då”, pronounced along the lines of “hay daw”. Another of my friends here has heard her little one say something very similar, so perhaps despite all the English around him, Baby O’s first words will be Swedish after all.

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Apr 24, 2011

Baby steps

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Photo © English Mamma

Well, I had started a post about how easy it is to make Baby O laugh and giggle these days. I’d written out a first paragraph and had the structure of the rest of it in my head, when it all came to nothing. He has decided that going through the final Wonder Week before his first birthday was not enough; oh no, he has also decided that he wants to combine the Three Cs of a development stage (crying, clinging and crankiness) with trying to walk on his own.

So, unfortunately, not too much smiling or giggling this week – just a whole bag load of determination from him and a dose of exhaustion for us.

Luckily, spring has arrived (three weeks early, they say!) in Stockholm, so Husband and I are able to take him outside to try to walk with us and then we can concentrate on learning to walk unaided indoors where it is marginally safer.

During the early part of the week, he was taking three steps at most between cruising around the furniture. He decided to up the ante on Friday with four steps in the morning and five by the evening and he’s now at six (and a half) steps. So, the bets are now on: will he be walking by the time he turns one on 11 May?

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Apr 20, 2011

The Gallery – My blog

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Well, this blog started off life being about my pregnancy and gyermek – our name for the little one before birth. Then it also included pregnancy in Sweden in general. The gyermek arrived: he was Baby O, and since then the blog has largely been about him and me.

So when Tara set this week’s Gallery theme as My blog, I knew what my photo would be of:

Baby O and Mamma

(He’s looking a little grumpy as today we hit the final baby wonder week…)

It’s not often that we get a photograph of the two of us together, mainly as I am the one carrying the camera but now that Husband has an iPhone, I’m hoping for more pictures of the two of us together.

"Urgh, no kisses, Mamma"

You can also pop over to The Gallery and see the ideas that the others have come up with:

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Aug 24, 2010

What’s so wonderful about it anyway?

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Photo by BabyDinosaur on Flickr

Oh dear… I don’t really mean to do it, but it seems that whenever I find time to blog these days, it is invariably about a growth spurt or a wonder week.

So, yes, that’s right, you’ve guessed it: Baby O has just come through a growth spurt/wonder week. Although he was 14 weeks old last week, we think he hit Wonder Week 12.

Crying – check, sleeping problems – check, hunger – check, feeding problems – check. Yep, looks like it.

And this one I found more painful than the previous, mainly because I had a cold and as this was the first one we’ve been through when we haven’t been staying with family, family who were quite happy to pick up Baby O at his first cry and walk him round and round the garden and generally keep him entertained the whole day long. So, quite a shock for the poor little chap this time that he wasn’t being held for 12 hours. I was worried that he would catch my cold and also I did want to do selfish things like go to the toilet, take a shower, get dressed…

I think I might have been quite irritable about the whole thing. In fact, I know I was, otherwise I wouldn’t have posted a status update on Facebook saying that I had better see something bloody wonderful at the end as compensation.

Another first was that we were handling a growth spurt with bottle feeding rather than breastfeeding (that’s a whole other post there about how that came about). Let’s just say that by the end of it we had finally worked out the correct quantities to give but by that time the growth spurt had come to an end – just in time for Saturday - Pappa time. Hmmm, thanks for that, Baby O; I get a week of crying, grouchiness and refusing to nap in the day, and Pappa gets a little angel.

So, that’s Wonder Week 12 and/or the three-month growth spurt done and dusted. So, now I promise that my next post will be upbeat, cheerful even, and you can hold me to that…!

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Jul 12, 2010

The wonder weeks – part 2

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I cannot believe that my last post was about wonder week 5 and now we’re just (hopefully) coming out of wonder week 8 – bad blogging mamma…

We have had the same three Cs that are typical during a wonder week:

  • crying
  • clinginess
  • crankiness

Unlike week 5, Baby O has, thankfully, not had the same problems getting off to sleep. Instead, we have seen him switch from smiles to tears in a matter of seconds. And unfortunately for his pappa, Baby O has only calmed down in his mamma’s arms.

However, we are also seeing the fruits of this development week and he is now content to lie and play with his hands, which are a source of fascination to him, and chatter away to himself. He really is growing up so fast, it seems to us, and can do so much more than just a couple of weeks ago.

Phot by greens n cornbread (on Flickr)

In addition, the breastfeeding finally seems to be working itself out and is becoming much easier now. We took the decision a couple of weeks ago to switch from the cluster feeds that Baby O was doing just before bedtime and try replacing these with a bottle feed. So far, this has worked really well with him taking the formula in place of two or three cluster feeds. Part of our reasoning for doing this is that I will be going back to work in mid-October for a month and we wanted him to be able to take a bottle now so that there is no fear of him rejecting it when I am back working.

I do feel a little guilty about not exclusively breastfeeding but the breastfeeding has actually improved since we introduced one bottle feed that I have to tell myself that it seems best all round: he’s still happy; I’m happier; and feeding is not the struggle that it has previously been.

Also, I cannot say that I am ready to give up breastfeeding altogether, given how long the preparation and sterilisation of the bottles takes. It just feels good to have reached a stage where I feel happy satisfied with breastfeeding.

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Jun 14, 2010

The wonder weeks

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Photo © English Mamma

So yesterday we had a bit of a difficult day. O woke at his normal early morning feeding time (3am-ish) but then woke again every hour and a half not really wanting to feed but just crying, then screaming. I fed him to calm him down, but he just got more and more agitated.

We finally got him settled down to sleep after around six hours, only for him to wake again about an hour later. I got him to settle down after another feed by taking him out in the pram. That lasted just over an hour before he woke and became wound up again. I got him into the BabyBjörn carrier and after bouncing and walking him around for about 40 mins, he settled down again.

When he woke a couple of hours later, he fed and fed and fed, and when we went to settle him in bed, he cried and cried and cried and then screamed and screamed and screamed… for an hour and a half…

Being new parents, we were beside ourselves. We kept on going in to him to try and settle him by picking him up, rocking him to sleep (breaking many of “the rules” in the baby books), but every time we put him back down, he’d wake again and resume his screaming.

Eventually, I managed to settle him (thanks to Tracy Hogg, the Baby Whisperer) by gently patting and stroking his belly, but what a night…

Then this morning I heard about the Wonder Weeks from a friend with an eight week old. These are weeks in a newborn’s life when their development ramps up a few extra notches. They seem to follow a similar pattern to the growth spurts, which makes sense since growth spurts occur so newborns can develop further.

Well, looking at the symptoms for wonder week five (baby being upset, having problems sleeping, wanting to spend more time close to you and feeding more frequently), it seems that O is heading into this wonder week… [sigh]. Well, at least forewarned is forearmed!

This blog post by Sue Haydon at Bloggin’ About Babies gives some more info about wonder week five and offers some useful tips for how to deal with it. We will follow her advice and see if tonight proves better than last night.

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