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2005-05-10 - 11.50pm��previous entry��next entry
6 months old! - first solids, and last entry!
Well, the day finally came! Arthur is six months old today!! Happy half birthday to my little Boo. It has been a busy day. We are still trying to babyproof the house and Arthur had his first solids at lunchtime!! And we saw the physio this afternoon. And um. I can�t remember what else but it feels like a lonnnnng day.
This will be my last entry here for a while. So sad. Please continue to keep up with me and Arthur at my new diary arthursmummy!! I will probably update here every now and then to keep this diary open, probably with thoughts on the next baby, etc (yikes!) or if I haven�t updated in ages and I need to keep it from disappearing, I might update with an Arthur update :) But yeah, we are officially moving to the other diary now. Boo-hoo. Except it�s supposed to be yay.
I have such mixed feelings today.
Okay, first things first! Solids!! Here�s the promised photo :)
I am soooo proud of myself that I held out giving Arthur his first solids till today � six months old at last! After all of that palava before, I feel a sense of relief that we made it to six months without any detrimental effects, and Arthur is now �safe� to start solids now that he�s past the time that there is an increased risk of allergies. Yay!! I�m so pleased. I still hope he doesn�t get any food allergies though. Time will tell!
He didn�t have a great night, for sleep. Like always I suppose. Mainly, *I* didn�t have a great night for sleep. I went to bed at 11ish (too late I know) to nurse Arthur, and he nursed for a short time and then pulled off the breast and scrunched his little cheeks up with his eyes closed � his way of showing me he has had plenty of milk, thank you, and would like to focus on falling asleep! It�s the sweetest thing. I love to watch him do that. He sometimes turns his head quickly from side to side at the same time, as though he�s trying to nestle into the bed with his head and get cosy for sleep. He only does this when lying on his side after nursing in that position though. He tips his chin right back and clutches his hands together under it! He�s so so so lovely. I love him in an achy sort of way today.
Anyway if I am super tired and my legs are restless, I often start the night by nursing Arthur to sleep in the big bed and then going to the spare bed to catch some decent Zs, or else just let my legs jump around as much as they need to before I can sleep. But last night I couldn�t leave Arthur�s side. Our tummies were pressed up together and his face was just inches from mine. I could feel his chest rise and fall against my tummy as he breathed. His hands were laid against my breast and his face just looked so so beautiful and peaceful. I lay and watched him sleep for the longest time. I felt like freezing time and keeping him my little baby who totally depends on me forever. But yeah I know that�s stupid. I just FELT that way, that�s all. I know that not much has really actually changed, but to me it�s a big deal. I watched and watched him. For more than an hour. Even though I was sooooo tired and normally would have fallen asleep. I found myself thinking back over my pregnancy and over his birth especially. Thinking about how he was as a tiny newborn. His birth was so vivid in my mind. I could almost feel the sensations. It was weird to be gazing at him so intently while I relived him being born in my mind. I didn�t know him then at all. Not at ALL. I had no idea how much I would KNOW him in the months to come. I thought I could know him instinctively from birth, but I didn�t. Now I know him. And he�s the most precious person I ever met. It�s lovely to relive his birth again now that I KNOW him. It makes it so different somehow. I wish I could go back and do it all again, pain and all. Such a precious thing to be privileged to experience.
Hmmm, er, thanks (?!) Eiluned for pointing out that the surgeon ended up being right that I didn�t cope with the pain of labour and ended up in hospital with an epidural!! He wasn�t exactly right actually. I coped fantastically well with normal labour, and I�m proud of myself for it. Labour stopped being normal and THEN it became too much to bear. The surgeon had thought I wouldn�t even cope with normal labour. I knew he would be wrong, and I was RIGHT. My lovely midwife said if labour had continued progressing normally I would have had no trouble, and I feel confident in myself that she was right. She told me how impressed she had been with how I was doing up to 8cm when Arthur turned and everything stalled. Things changed for me quite suddenly at that point � it wasn�t that I was gradually finding it too hard. I was finding it fine. Painful, but certainly manageable with my tens and breathing. I know exactly what I will do next time too � without a doubt I will book for a homebirth. I feel that my transfer to hospital has nothing to do with whether I could manage normal labour, and even at the time I felt confident that I would be fine with a homebirth the next time. My community midwife came to visit me in hospital the next day, and she told me that I shouldn�t worry about next time, that I should go for a homebirth again because I would do fine. She said it was just one of those unlikely things that meant my expectations weren�t met this time. She said my labour was unusually smooth and well managed, and I was progressing on the fast side of average for a first baby, so I could have a comparatively easy time of it next time. I believe her, and I know I will have successful homebirths yet! I�m glad and grateful for the hospital intervention and the pain relief that I needed, but I won�t plan on using those next time, unless something unexpected happens. I hope that answers your ponderings! But that surgeon wasn�t right, in essence, and I still find it annoying that he presumed I wouldn�t cope. Tsk. I am confident in my birthing abilities!
Well anyway, a bit off-track there! Last night I watched Arthur sleeping for so long, and couldn�t sleep till he next woke to feed, so I didn�t get to sleep till like 2am. I am so tired today. So tired. Arthur woke at 5.30am (having fed again around 4am) happily shouting LAY-LAY-LAY-LAY-LAY-LAY!!! Bless his heart! He�s so sweet! But Mummy and Daddy are so tired. I felt gross and my IBS started being mean, so I dragged myself to the spare bed and attempted to sleep through much lively chatting and shouting on Arthur�s part (!!) while Neil lay with him and dozed on and off. I didn�t get to sleep till Neil brought Arthur a toy to play with in bed, and then he went quiet enough for us both to sleep a while. I guess I got another hour, but Neil was up for that time. So then of course Arthur was exhausted by 8am, the time we were sort of expecting to give him his first solids. So I nursed him to sleep and he slept a short while, but woke again tired and cranky. It took over an hour to help him get back to sleep. Sometimes I wonder if we are trying too hard, if all this fighting to get him to sleep is setting him up to resist? But then he finally gives in and falls asleep, and he is out for an hour or more and wakes up at last all cheery and smiley. So I know he needs it. But why is it such a fight? Anyway, so he woke around 11am full of beans and he beamed and cooed at me as I went in the bedroom to pick him up :) Lovely boy. Neil played with him for a while and then around noon we got him ready for SOLIDS!!
I got the packet of baby rice and Neil and I were both saying how weird it was to be opening a packet of actual food for Arthur to ingest, since that has never happened before! I have always been his food source. I slightly resented the packet of rice for that, and gave it an evil look, but oh well. They have to grow up don�t they! And I can�t hang on to stuff forever! ;)
So I spooned a teaspoonful out (such a tiny amount!) into one of his new bowls, and then got to work hand-expressing some breastmilk directly into it. I stirred it now and then to check the consistency. After a couple of minutes it was just right (pretty sloppy) and we put him in the highchair, Neil got the camcorder, and I put a bib on Arthur, and off we went! He did really well. He was interested in the bowl but mainly he just wanted to grab it and turn it over or pat it. He seemed interested in the food in his mouth, but didn�t get around to attempting a swallow for quite a while! He wanted to use the spoon himself, so I mostly gave it to him to put in his mouth (very messy!), and other times I put the spoon to his mouth myself. After about half the bowlful, he started leaning back with his arms up when I approached his mouth or hand with the spoon, so we backed off and cleaned him up a bit. He was so eager to bang the bowl all over the place, so I held it steady and let him bang on it and put his fingers in the food. After a while he was keen to have the spoon again and he ate several little spoonfuls quite well! He swallowed each spoonful but looked like he was going to gag a couple of times. Here is a little video clip of him at this stage of the process!..
I have been posting so many video clips lately! Maybe too many? I just wanted to take advantage of the 7-day free trial, but normally I wouldn�t post so many in such a short time. You all will get sick of seeing us! Plus I feel kind of�. vulnerable! Like you know me a bit tooo well for comfort now! ;)
Anyway Arthur did really well. He ate all but the last tiny spoonful from the bowl, and there wasn�t as much as I expected on the bib, face and hands! It�s weird to think that this wasn�t just a one-off fun thing to do today. Now it will happen every day, like forever! And get more frequent and varied. I�m looking forward to it, especially starting him on �real� food next week (I�ve decided we�re starting with carrot � I want to try a veg first and then a fruit, then a veg, etc), but somehow it wasn�t as thrilling as I�d hoped. It was so much fun at the time. But ahhh I miss just feeding him at the breast and nothing else. Why is this feeling so hard?! It�s not really that hard. It just feels weirdly so.
Well this afternoon we went to see the physio at the hospital and she is pleased with Arthur�s feet! I knew she would be, as they are looking a lot straighter now that he has been wearing the night boots (after she adjusted them last time to stretch his feet more). She said we can even stop using the one on his left foot as it is �perfect�!! Yay! But he will absolutely smash it to pieces with the shoed foot, so I think we�ll carry on using it anyway, as protection! She said that would be fine. She thinks we might not need anymore plasters! She is going to reassess Arthur when he is scheduled for his hip x-ray on June 13th, and then we�ll see what happens. She said that we can�t really tell if he�ll need another plaster on the right leg until he is properly weight bearing at around 9 months old. I hope he will be okay by then.
Oh I found three photos that I haven�t posted here yet. They were all taken on Thursday last week � voting day for the election here in England. Here we are all ready to go and vote! I wore Arthur facing out in the hug-a-bub (which he loved!) and marched down there. He held my polling card in both hands like a banner all the way, hehe! We got lots of smiles from passers-by and one lady pointed and said to her friend, �Aw, look at that baby!� I swell with pride when things like this happen. I know he�s cute but I like to be reminded ;) He did chew the corners of the card quite well, and it was very soggy when he (reluctantly) had to give it up to the lady at the polling station! Anyway, photo!...
And here is Arthur that same morning, in his ring at the top of the stairs. I was tidying up some of the piles of clothes that seem to gather on the stairs to be put away upstairs (!), and he watched me from the top. It was so cute to see his little face over the edge of the ring, watching me so closely, that I had to reach for the camera!...
Here he is again, thrilled that I rejoined him at the top of the stairs and gave him some attention! Isn�t he lovely? :)
Ohhhkay. I think I have pretty much said all I meant to say today. I meant to talk more about how I�m feeling about having a 6-month-old and stuff, but I ran out of time. It�s soooo late now and I�m tired out and headachy, and Arthur will wake soonish to nurse. I cherish nursing him now. Much much more than before. I wish I didn�t ever have to stop. Ever.
I am sad to finish this entry and close the door on my journey to motherhood that I have documented here for so long. It has been a long journey! I started this diary in January 2003, planning and waiting for the time we had decided to start trying to conceive. Then it didn�t happen for the best part of a year. Then I was pregnant for the best part of a year! Then a new mummy for six months. Altogether it amounts to quite a long chunk in my life. I am sad to put it behind me and move on, even though what I am moving onto is so wonderful and exciting and such a blessing. I am so thankful for what God has given me in all that I have experienced through the time I�ve kept this journal. A paragraph at the end of this entry is puny compared to what God deserves in thanks and glory for my journey and my precious little boy. But I need to say thank you to God. He has made all this possible, and all that I have, I have from him. Being a parent gives me a new perspective on how much God loves me, which uplifts me and draws me ever closer to him. I love Arthur I like I could never imagine loving anyone. It takes my breath away. But God loves me infinitely more. How awesome is that? I don�t know how to thank him for the gift he has given me, in Arthur. I am so thankful. So thankful. So blessed. And overjoyed at the many blessings he has in store for me still! More children I hope. The joy of bringing Arthur up.
Well I will finish here. I will be back!! Oh yes. My guestbook remains the same one at my new diary, so really it�s just a little hop from here to there :) See you on the other side! Thank you all for your support and for reading me all this time. I have so appreciated your love and encouragement. Like I can�t even tell you. xxx
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