A quick catch-up

Well, it has been a while since I last had a chance to post on here – life has been very busy in the last six weeks!

First of all, we enjoyed a lovely holiday at Center Parcs with the inlaws when Eve was three weeks old. It was the first time we have gone with other people, so we were able to do some activities ourselves with the extra help with the girls – which meant that Tony got to go Quad Biking and I tried Tree Trekking! And the girls had a few adventures including a dance class for Lilly and the tots play zone for Isla (and Lilly, who wanted to join in, despite being a little bit too big!). I also took Lilly to her first Pantomime which she seemed quite impressed by. The weather was lovely so we even managed a barbecue on one of the days!

We returned home from Center Parcs on Friday, and on Saturday, we moved house! The whole family helped us – either by minding the girls or lifting and shifting. Three van loads later and all our things were in the new house! I made sure the girls new room was one of the first things to be properly unpacked and ready, so in the afternoon when they arrived all their clothes and toys were in their room ready for them to find. Lilly had seen the house before – she came round with us when we viewed it – but Isla hadn’t been here before. We had worried that she might find the transition a bit stressful, but she has taken it all in her stride. In fact, when she walked in the front door, she said: “WOW!”, and Lilly was also impressed: “I knew it was going to be nice, but I didn’t know if was going to be THIS nice”.

And on the Monday after we moved, Tony returned to work – back to his old company on the early shifts – so he has been getting up at 4.30am everyday and getting home for around 1pm. Looking after the three girls on my own has been (how shall we put this…) challenging at times. It has been made very much easier by the fact that there is now plenty of space for the girls to play – they even have their own playroom (what should be the dining room) and in the first couple of weeks after we moved the weather was glorious, so they have been able to play happily outside in the nice big garden.

Eve is growing nicely and we have had first smiles! She is sleeping much longer stretches at night. However, she is a NIGHTMARE to get to sleep – she fights tiredness something chronic (just like her biggest sister) and ends up getting overtired very easily. The last four nights she has been up til 10pm ish screaming on and off. She still prefers to be held and will fall asleep in your arms… but if you try to put her down she will wake up and resume screaming so the whole process has to start again. Very tiring. I am hoping that this little phase won’t last too much longer!

Eve's preferred place to sleep

And of course we have just enjoyed Easter weekend – something Lilly has been looking forward to ever since her birthday at New Year! The girls have had so many Easter Egg hunts I suspect that the novelty might actually have worn off a bit! We also did our first ever baking session with Isla, making Easter nests. She seemed to enjoy it – especially licking the spoon (and just eating handfuls of the mixture generally).

So, that’s where we have been and what we have been doing. If we ever manage to get Eve into a more favourable evening routine I will be blogging her birth story… it already feels like a long time ago as so much has happened!

Read Full Post »

Operation Shared Bedroom – 10 Nights Later

Well, it started pretty well. Once, they even both slept right through to 6.30am without a single wakeup. But, a week and a half later, overall progress has been mixed.

Yes, we are currently trying to settle Isla and Lilly into sharing a bedroom. We only have a two bedroom house, so this is an inevitable part of life, albeit one that we have been dreading and trying to put off.

Bedtime is now working pretty well. We start about 6.30pm with teeth brushing and PJs. I usually give Isla her milk while reading Lilly her bedtime story (currently Dear Santa by Rod Campbell every night) Then sit in the room until Isla drifts off to sleep. Sometimes this takes a while, and Lilly will sometimes fall asleep before her, but usually will be awake until her sister is quiet. On Saturday, Isla just wouldn’t go to sleep, and I was sitting there until gone 8pm. In the end I gave up and brought her downstairs for an hour then put her to bed in our room.

At the moment we seem to be on an alternation between Lilly waking up and disturbing Isla, and vice versa. The problem really is that Isla seems to struggle to re-settle herself in the cot like she can in the moses basket. It takes a long time and she is quite noisy in the process. The longer it goes on, the more awake Lilly is. So, usually when this happens, I give it as long as I dare and then, if she’s not asleep again (which at the moment, she usually isn’t), I give up and bring Isla into our room again. 

She is now officially the same length as the moses basket, so there is only so long this can go on!

It has now been a few nights since they actually shared a bedroom, except maybe for a few hours at the beginning of the night. Last night, Isla woke up about 9pm and seemed wide awake. I wasn’t sure how I’d get her back to sleep, so I just took her into our room almost straight away before Lilly woke up. The night before that, Lilly’s crying had woken Isla in the early hours of the morning, and, after she didn’t resettle for a while, I’d done the same thing.

So, all in all, we’ve been having a few broken nights sleep. Tony is ready to give up and move the cot into our room but I want to persevere and hope that things get better. I think we will give it a few more weeks before we decide…

Read Full Post »

Operation Shared Bedroom

We only live in a small two bedroomed house. Back when we were a family of three, and Isla was just a twinkle in our eyes, we used to say we couldn’t have another baby until we moved. But then (as you may have heard) moving got a touch difficult in this world of ours, and we decided we didn’t want to wait for the world to get its head sorted before giving Lilly a brother or sister.

“They can share a room”, we said. “Lots of people do it, and it’s fine”. ”In the olden days they had ten children in the same bed, let alone the same room!!”

So, that was decided (brushed under the carpet) and we decided to have Isla. After all, you can’t base family planning on sleeping arrangements, can you?

Anyway. Since Isla’s been here we have been super blessed by the fact that she is a great sleeper, sleeping through from 10 weeks, even if she is fairly fond of waking up at about 5am.

Lilly’s sleeping has been awful this last year. We have spent so many nights sleeping on her floor. She wakes up several times a night and runs into our room, or bursts into sudden, loud cries. If you’re lucky the wakeups might involve her getting out of bed quietly and standing outside the room, or in the bathroom. The sound of the wind scares her and wakes her up, so do noisy cars or motorbikes, and obviously fireworks and thunderstorms are not too popular either.

As I blogged yesterday, in the last week or so her sleeping has dramatically improved, we think partly because of the impending visit of Father Christmas, and partly because of the morning reward of hot chocolate she can have if she’s slept well.

So, last night, I decided to take the plunge and put Isla in her cot in Lilly’s room. At first Lilly cried and said: “Isla’s too noisy!” (the cheek!) but I told her how fun it would be and how she would never be alone at night if Isla was with her, and she warmed to the idea. I sat with them until Isla fell asleep (L was fast asleep by that point too) and then left, wondering what kind of sleepless horror of a night lay ahead.

A few hours later, Isla started crying, pretty loudly, in her sleep. Three loud cries before I managed to fly up the stairs and into the bedroom. I was stunned to find that not only was Lilly still asleep but that she had not so much as flinched!

Luckily, Isla was still half asleep really, and settled back again really easily. And that was it, until 5.20am this morning when I heard her stirring and dashed in to pick her up and bring her back to our room for some milk. Once she’d had that, I popped her back in her moses basket next to me and she remains there now, sleeping happily.

Lilly woke up at 7am, and we are now downstairs drinking hot chocolate (her) and coffee (me). I can’t believe how well #OperationSharedBedroom went on day one! I know there will be many hiccups along the way, and I’m not expecting it to always be this easy, but its given me so much hope that it CAN and WILL work… eventually!

Read Full Post »

It’s been a busy week…

It’s been all go this week with appointments here and there for both girlies.

On Monday, Isla had to visit the hospital to have her hips checked. This was a routine appointment for any babies who were breech late into the pregnancy – she was only breach up to 36 weeks and then turned, but I was still referred. We were literally in and out of the hospital in less than 5 minutes, consultant checked her over, said all was fine. She barely woke up!

Tuesday’s appointment was a bit more traumatic – Isla’s first jabs. I was dreading it! In reality it wasn’t too bad, the poor thing did cry, which was awful, but she got over it fairly quickly with a compensatory bottle in the waiting room afterwards and was fine for the rest of the day – if anything she just slept lots.

Yesterday (Thursday) was Lilly’s 2 and a half year check-up with the Health Visitor. Our old HV has retired, so we met our new one for the first time. She seems fine, and mentioned that she once had three children under three, so at least she has had children of her own so might talk some sense (occasionally!). Again, all was fine, she just asked me whether Lilly could count, recognise colours, name body parts, walk up and down stairs, that kind of thing. Yes, yes yes, was the answer. Lilly also demonstrated her more “willful” side by having a lie on the floor tantrum at the prospect of being measured against the height chart. Cue me climbing on there myself giving a demonstration (fail), attempt at distraction technique (fail), promise of trip to the park (fail) followed by threat of confiscating crayons (success!!) I was starting to sweat a bit at this live demonstration of my parenting skills while HV sat and “observed”. Was SO glad when Lilly piped up with a butter-wouldn’t-melt “Sorry mummy, I won’t do it again” and took herself over to the height chart good as gold (aaaand relax…). After all that palaver I noticed this morning that HV didn’t even write the height into Lilly’s red book – seem to recall it was about 99cm but I wasn’t taking that much notice!

Aside from all our appointments, yesterday morning I took Lilly swimming.  It has been a long time since she went (probably our last holiday to Center Parcs, which was November, I think) and it was just so strange to be swimming with a little girl and not a baby! Wearing her new waterwings, Lilly was able to float in the water just holding onto my hands, instead of needing to be held in a cuddle or around her waist. It has made me think about how I begin teaching her to swim. I managed to encourage her to kick her legs but not sure where we go from there? Anyway, she really loved the pool experience and said she wanted to stay “for ever and ever”! It took a chocolate button bribe (the ultimate bribe which is only used in the most desperate of situations) to get her out!

I was also very proud of her because half way through the swim she said: “I need a wee wee. We get out and go to the toilet, and then we get back in”. So that is exactly what we did, and Lilly went on the “big” toilet without needing her seat adapter or anything. What a good girl!

I had also been thinking about taking Isla swimming. I was too scared to take Lilly on my own when she was a baby because I worried about all the logistics. But lately I had been thinking “what was I worried about, it can’t be that hard”. But having a quick glance around yesterday I realised why I had been reluctant. What do you do with the baby while you are getting dressed? How can you carry a baby and operate a locker, let alone put all your stuff in or out. There are only two “family” cubicles, the others are the size of a kitchen cupboard. If somebody’s using the family ones, where do you go? And, how do you get in and out of a pool on your own while carrying a baby? I continue to have a lot of respect for those mums and dads who do complete this amazing feat on their own week in week out – think I am still not quite brave enough and Isla’s first swim will have to wait for a few weeks until we are at Center Parcs again.

And, on the sleep front, Lilly has been a little better the last two nights. She has only had one or two small wakeups, although she has started getting up at about 5am, which isn’t too great. And, two nights out of the last three Isla has been asleep for the night by 8pm, which has given us a couple of more relaxing evenings to ourselves. Great!

Read Full Post »

Sleep glorious sleep…

… we’re not getting any!

It’s a pretty round the clock parenting thing going on in our house at the moment. At least one of our little darlings is always keeping us busy, it seems.

Our days begin bright and early with Lilly waking us up anywhere from 5.30am to 7am (only the later end of that scale if she’s had a bad night’s sleep – more on that later!). One of us will get up with her and come downstairs with her. Isla will usually be awake sometime between 7-8am and wanting a feed & nappy change. She’ll then have an hour or so awake before having a long morning nap til about midday. In the meantime we are breakfasting, bathing, dressing, making bottles etc, so by the time that is done it is nearly time to think about lunch. After lunch, Isla will want another feed but probably drop off again for another couple of hours. This is when we either try to leave the house and go somewhere, or try to think of ways to keep Lilly amused in the house.

Tony goes to work at about 2pm. At about 3pm Isla will be up for a few hours. This is usually a blur of feeding Isla, changing her and keeping her amused on her playmat or bouncy chair, simultaneously trying to organise toddler activities like baking cakes, drawing, playing in the garden, reading books etc, while also coordinating trips to the potty, mopping up toilet accidents or spilt drinks, the fallout from toddler meltdowns, constant requests for drinks and snacks, making Lilly’s tea and trying to tidy up the house every so often to try and minimise the amount of devastation being caused!

Bedtime is a bit of a juggling act. If I’m lucky, Isla will be having a nap when I want to put Lilly to bed. If not, sometimes she has to be left to cry while I try to brush Lilly’s teeth and read her a bedtime story. Luckily, Lilly is quite good with her bedtime routine, and 99% of the time, she will be in bed and on her way to sleep with no fuss at 7pm.

Isla is another story, as evening times are her most alert times. She is more wide awake than any other time of the day, wanting to be constantly held – although she will go on her playmat or chair for a while. She might fall asleep having a feed but she does not want to be put down in her pram or her moses basket! Even pushing her in the pram hasn’t worked the last few nights, and at 8 weeks old she is already starting to reject the dummy. The last few nights I have just sat on the sofa with her until bedtime when a final nighttime bottle usually gets her off to sleep. This time is, on the one hand, lovely. It’s great to have one-on-one time with her when she is wide awake and totally alert. She has started to give out really gorgeous big smiles and it’s nice to have some peace and quiet with just us two to cuddle. However, on the flip side, I can’t do anything. I don’t seem to have time to even take out my contact lenses and put my pyjamas on, let alone do things like wash up baby bottles, change the steriliser, and definitely not to make dinner!

When Tony gets home, around 9pm, he’ll help out holding her until we think she is tired enough to sleep. Usually by that time, we are also tired enough to sleep, so we might all go to bed together!

At sometime between 2-4am, Isla wakes for her first feed. Usually she will feed for about half an hour before going back to sleep again without much trouble. Usually just as I drift off to sleep, I hear little feet on the landing, or crying, coming from Lilly…

Lilly’s sleep has been awful for a while now. She wakes up crying and comes running into our room. This can happen several times a night. Sometimes she will settle back down with just a tuck in. Sometimes she will be hysterical and difficult to calm down. Sometimes she’ll start whinging and asking for various different toys from downstairs, or ask for a drink. Sometimes (the worst times) she’ll simply say: “I’m not tired” and have a temper tantrum when we try to get her to go back to sleep. This usually results in Tony sleeping on her floor to try and pacify her, with varying degrees of success.

5am, and Isla is awake for another feed, which is a breastfeed, but sometimes she fusses so much and feeds for so long that I end up going downstairs to make her a bottle. She’ll usually be asleep again by about 6am…. a few minutes before Lilly wakes up and the day begins all over again!

It’s pretty full on at the moment. Our current parenting challenges are to get Isla’s awake times to happen in the daytime, not in the evening, and to try and get her down to sleep around 7pm. And secondly, to try to stop these nighttime wakings of Lilly’s.

I don’t think we’re too sure how to do either of these things. But we’ve got to try!

Read Full Post »

Encouraging signs?

Well, here we are at 40+6 and baby has not made her appearance yet!

Yesterday, Tony, Lilly and I went to Chester Zoo for a family outing. We thought we’d try some tempting of fate, and go as far away from the hospital as we dared! (However, as we now have the hospital bag and notes etc in the back of the car permanently, it wasn’t much of a risk I suppose!)

It was a scorching hot day, and the zoo, although busy, wasn’t too hectic. We’ve taken Lilly to the zoo about 5 times in her life so far, and each time she has been more and more enthusiastic (going from “very underwhelmed” on her first visit!!). We told her on Monday we were going to the zoo, so on Tuesday morning she was playing with her Noah’s Ark animals and telling us she wanted to see the elephants!

We did indeed see the elephants, and Lilly also enjoyed the monkeys – best of all though the chimps – we happened to be in their house when they were fed – basically the keeper throws barrels full of fruit and veg through a grill at the top – and it was brilliant watching them all getting really excited about their food and then scoffing it down… Lilly was fascinated! She also liked the giraffes but wasn’t so keen on the penguins this time – there is a viewing window where you can see them swimming underwater but I think she thought they were gigantic fish and found them a bit worrying!

Anyway, it was a very hot day and we did a fair bit of walking, which I wasn’t sure if i’d be up to but managed ok in the end.

On the way home from the zoo I started to be aware of these period pain type feelings coming every so often – not particularly close together and not particularly in any order. I didn’t say anything to Tony until later on that afternoon when we were sitting at home and I realised that these pains were still coming regularly – not hugely strongly and not very close together – but still with that contraction-like style of building up and fading slowly away.

Tony’s face was classic. “Oh my god”, he said. Then: “It’s the England game tomorrow”.

We started to make a note of how often they were coming. At first it was every 25 mins, then 30 mins, then 35. Then 10. Then 10 again. Then 8! Then 10 again. Some where definite contraction type feelings, some were less pronounced, leaving me unsure as to whether they “counted” or not.

We carried on timing them until the end of Big Brother at 11pm then we went to bed. It took me a little while to get to sleep, mainly because of my mind being too awake, rather than any pain or discomfort. Before we went to sleep I said to Tony that I thought I would more likely have a good night’s sleep and wake up tomorrow with no contractions at all…

… and that is exactly what happened!!

Today so far (it is 2pm) i’ve had a few aches and the occasional pain a little bit like last night, but not as strong. But the contractions have not started up again yet.

It could have been “false labour”, or it could be my body gearing up to do something more constructive soon. I hope it’s the latter. Last time, with Lilly, I had contractions at 10 mins apart all night, then dozed off about 6am and when I woke up they had gone. I had nothing all day and then the contractions suddenly came back, much more strongly, at 5pm that night. So hopefully the same will be true here!

Lilly’s at nursery today, so Tony and I have been for a nice lunch followed by a walk around the local area to see if that might kick-start things. If all else fails, I have a consultant appointment tomorrow morning which will include a sweep so hopefully that might get things started if they haven’t already.

And, as the England game kicks off in an hour, I’d say it’s a safe bet that Tony’s not going to miss it, after all!

Read Full Post »

28 weeks 1 day

Well, if I wasn’t feeling particularly tired last time I blogged, I certainly am now!

In the last week I have been feeling very pregnant indeed! I feel huge and I feel slow and I feel lazy!

I’ve also had some kind of strange bug which left me feeling a bit strange and slightly sicky – it still hasn’t really gone and it’s been a few days now. Tony has had it too so i don’t think it’s pregnancy related! When i eat it makes me feel slightly worse, so i’ve been off my food slightly for three days – nothing too major, although it’s been toast for dinner the last three nights!

We are now a week and a half into the Big Girl’s Bed for Lilly – it got a lot worse after the last post. In fact, a few nights ago, she was essentially awake for four hours through the night and T and I took it in shifts to stay with her. But last night – praise god! - she slept all night til the respectable hour of 6am!!! It felt amazing, and Lilly was rewarded with a cuddly Waybuloo which her daddy had promised her if she managed to sleep all night!

It’s now 8 weeks til I finish work. That feels like quite a long time. I could quite happily finish today, especially the way i’ve been feeling the past week. I’m just hoping that it will pass and I will get some energy back. I definitely cannot remember being this tired and slow and just all-round pregnant at this stage with Lilly – but then, I never had a toddler to look after too!

I’m hoping I haven’t been too ambitious with my plans to work until 36 weeks – I only worked to 35 weeks with Lilly but as she was 2 weeks overdue it felt like quite a long time. But this time in hindsight that extra week would have been lovely!

Note to self: In future, if contemplating number 3, start Mat Leave EARLY!!!!

Read Full Post »

Seven weeks four days – feeling bleuurrrghhhh!

The queasiness and inability to face the thought of many foods has really got a lot worse over the last few days. This is worse than I remember it with Lilly – although I suppose last time I didn’t have a lively little toddler to look after and I got more sleep and could take things slower I suppose!

Yesterday it reached a peak. Luckily, it was a Sunday and Tony was here because I was just feeling shattered and so queasy. Everytime I ate, it made me feel worse. Eventually, when Lilly went to bed at 6pm (she hadn’t had her usual nap, because the noise of the wind outside scared her, so she went to bed a little earlier) I went to bed too, and slept for a couple of hours. Bliss. I felt much better when I woke up, but still a bit icky.

For the last few days I’ve also felt ill at the thought of tea and coffee – something which never happened last time. I know it must be so obvious in work when I’m turning down teas and coffees – usually I’m a caffeine monster – but I don’t really care if people work out what the reason might be – the thought of a cup of coffee makes me feel really sick!

Today I’m feeling a bit better though, so I’m hoping i’ve turned a corner. I even had a sip of tea this afternoon, without ill effect! I’ve got a constant nausea underneath everything, but at lunchtime I managed to go out and find a sandwich that I actually liked the look of and fancied to eat, and managed to eat it without feeling queasy or bloated. So that was a small victory!

I think the morning sickness has actually helped make things seem a bit more real. I probably do believe I’m pregnant now (finally!!) so it has had some useful effect.

We might not have the early scan now (i’m a ditherer, i know…) as we are on holiday in Center Parcs next week and then i’ll be nearly nine weeks by the time we’re back, so not all that long to wait until the 12 week scan which is on December 2. So we’re trying to be a bit patient and resist temptation!

Oh, and my personal prediction about this baby – a boy! Based on a strong hunch I had on the day of ovulation and still have today. Only time will tell!

Read Full Post »

Has it really been so long?

Goodness, me! Lilly is now coming up to eight months old and this is my first post since she was born… (bad, bad blogger!)

Having a baby is certainly a full time job, and somehow you just don’t seem to have the time on your hands you did when you were pregnant – funny that!

Lilly is now a very bouncing happy little girl of seven and a half months. She smiles, laughs, sits, stands (with help), eats dinners in her highchair, rolls front and back and loves playing peekabo! We aren’t quite at the crawling stage but i don’t think she is far off. We are preparing ourselves for baby proofing the house and spending a fair bit of time chasing round after her.

All the baby cliches are totally true… they aren’t newborns for long (only about a month!), and they do, literally, change week by week. They are exhausting, but they are the most rewarding thing you’ll ever do. Our lives are unrecognisable from what they were, but we wouldn’t swap it for anything in the world.

I am posting this thanks to our new laptop which enables me to spend some time on the internet while Lilly is asleep, so who knows, i may even post on here a little bit more regularly again. Not making too many promises though…

Read Full Post »

Is something happening?

After receiving a jiffy bag stuffed with raspberry leaf tea from my mum (who swears its what got my little sister shifted at 13 days overdue), I drank five cups of it yesterday and then we went out for a curry.

I couldn’t sleep at all last night… what started it was worrying about being induced and not being able to sleep the night before that! Anyway, just before 4am i felt a pain which made me look at the clock to make a note of the time. After that, these sensations which could have been contractions were coming every 10 minutes, fairly regularly, for over two hours.

At about six o’clock, they even started to be about eight or nine minutes apart. But then, after one at 6.15, the next two weren’t quite as strong, and i drifted off to sleep. I woke up an hour or so later, worried that they had disappeared, but i seem to remember feeling one and going back to sleep. I woke up again at just before 9am and woke Tony up to tell him. The feeling still seemed to be there, but nowhere near as strong as in the night.

I’m now up, had my breakfast and shower. They seem to have subsided for now. We’re going to get ourselves out and walking and see if we can kick start them.

Watch this space…

Read Full Post »