You may or may not have come across these before....

But I think this lady is very clever at turning photos of infants into funky looking art. Her name is Adele Enerson and she has a whole blog full of more of this stuff.

And as a mother who is spending today remembering how quickly her little newborn has grown into a big one year old, it is nice to be able to spend some time oohing and aahing over newborn photos. They are pretty cute, aren't they?

Typing one handed

Very limiting for blogging efforts, unfortunately.

Cuddling Rowan with the other hand, however, is enormously rewarding.

Not much happening here. Feels a bit weird actually. Usually this is a crazy time of the year but I am feeling surprisingly un-stressed about it all.

Breastfeeding entertainment for the week is Love My Way series 2 and 3. A bit too much bad language and bed-hopping going on between all the lead characters, but other than that it isn't too bad.

Time now to feed unsettled Rowan...

Looking forward to...

...the return of "It's A Knockout" on television tonight.

Sad, I know. But I think it might be a bit funny.

On reflection, I think I'm watching a bit too much television at the moment. After reading "Don't Waste Your Life," this makes me feel guilty. It would be much better to be able to say that while breastfeeding, I've spent time reading the Bible and catching up on my quiet times. Watching mindless entertainment on the television isn't a great use of time.

I keep telling myself this is only for a limited season of my life. But it is a wasted opportunity in some ways. And when extreme tiredness kicks in and it's the middle of the night, it's easy to revert back to the mindless entertainment....

Back on track

Feeding dramas (mostly) sorted. Now to wait for the weigh-in on Monday just to be sure. But he seems content, he's feeding, weeing and pooing like a champion, and latching on is getting much easier. And he looks bigger, I think.

Relief.

Just when I thought I had this newborn feeding thing together

Feeding dramas are back. After having to take motillium and expressing for months last time around because of worries that my milk supply wasn't enough to meet Rosie's needs, this time it seems that I have been blessed with too much milk.

Which is proving hard to get out efficiently with a relatively small newborn mouth. After gaining 110gms in the first couple of days after coming out of hospital, Rowan has slowed right down with his weight gain and only managed to add another 50gms in the next six days since his last weigh in. And he is becoming fussier with his feeds, and taking a lot longer to get through them.

Sigh. So it was back to the lactation consultant today. The good news is that this should be a quicker fix than Rosie was, but I was so hoping for an easier run this time.

One feed at a time. One day at a time. And after this many babies with different feeding issues, I at least have a multitude of solutions hiding in the cupboard. Bottle teats that are the closest brand to the shape of a breast (in case we need to express and bottle), nipple shields for the reluctant latcher, the list goes on. Luckily I hadn't gotten around to throwing any of it away yet.

We will get there. I am determined.

How quickly one forgets....

....how nocturnal newborns are.

He's happy to sleep all day but seems to come alive after his night feeds. So far he's not too bad to settle. But it's still early days. I don't think he's quite woken up properly yet.

Introducing...

...Rowan Patrick. Born 9/11/11 at 2.20pm. Not quite as an impressive a birthday as the 11/11/11. The local newspaper even managed to find a baby at the private hospital up the road who was born at 11 minutes past 11 on the 11/11/11.

But we think he's pretty cute even without the super-cool birthday. And doing very well. He started breastfeeding while I was in recovery after the Caesarean (the first time I'd been able to have a new baby with me in recovery so that was very exciting for me) , his blood glucose levels were excellent for the first 24 hours, and we are now home getting used to the new addition. A thunderstorm is passing over but it doesn't sound like it will amount to very much.

Rowan is now sleeping soundly in his new bed upstairs. So now let the sleepless nights begin.

Whenever I have come home with a new baby, it always feels a bit weird for the first couple of days. Remembering that last time I was at home, I was pregnant. There was one less child to deal with. Realising that the new one is going to be with us for a very long time. But I always get a teeny bit emotional when I arrive home and it's all new and changed from what it was before.

Hope everyone else out there has had a good week.

Snappis

For those unfamiliar with these, Snappis are used to fasten cloth nappies.

A lot of modern cloth nappies come with snaps or some other kind of fastener already sewn in. I have a few newer ones that I bought when I had Rosie, but lots of my cloth nappies are older ones since I've had them since the boys were babies. The old ones are fitted nappies but need the Snappi to hold them closed.

In the past I've always been able to find Snappis at the supermarket in the baby aisle. We recently lost one of Rosie's so I asked Chris to look at the shops for another one when he was picking up milk on the way home from work a couple of days ago. He came back with a pink one and said it was the very last one in the shop.

So then I thought I should probably buy a few more since we'll need them for the new baby. So yesterday I went out and checked most of our other local supermarkets and a couple of chemists as well. No luck. I guess the demand for these isn't as big as it used to be.

Thank goodness for eBay. I came home exhausted after the shopping trip and looked online. Found someone selling them in packs of six, and for the first time I discovered they actually come in two different sizes (birth to 18 months, and 18 months upwards). $16 for a pack of 3 small and 3 larger sized ones. I like the bright coloured ones in the picture, especially the purple and lilac ones, but the ones I'm getting are mint, yellow and white...I think. They are advertised as "unisex" colours anyway.

And they will be in the post today. Hooray for online shopping.

Me, myself and Mad Men Series 2

This afternoon, Chris has taken all the kids to my nephew's ten pin bowling birthday party in Brisbane. They are having dinner at my Mum and Dad's house so they won't be back until at least 7.30 tonight . I couldn't go because I had to go to my booking in appointment at the hospital.

Not that I'm sad about it. I've had a great afternoon. After I was finished at the hospital, I went and had an iced coffee, a melting moment biscuit and read some newspapers in a cafe overlooking the river. It's a beautiful sunny day here, so that was very pleasant. Then I went and wandered around our local Tender Centre to see if there was any cool stuff I could put a bid on (there wasn't, but it was nice to wander around slowly and not have to worry that children were getting into things they shouldn't be). I was hoping to find the second hand bookshop open but unfortunately it was closed.

And now I'm blogging. I'm about to go and get the washing off the line, think of meals to eat this week and write a shopping list. Some ukulele practice for tomorrow morning. And then an evening with my Mad Men Series 2 DVD that was waiting for me at the library today. Hopefully I'll be able to stay awake.

Solitude and stillness are blissful things when you don't get them very often.

So perhaps now might be a good time to tone down the controversy

....and make an announcement.

We're having a baby. It's due in November.

And we're a bit anxious about it. This wasn't we planned to do this year. I was feeling really happy with the three kids we had. It felt like our family was complete. My pregnancy history hasn't been fantastic. I don't really want to go through having a premature baby again and to deal with feeding issues. No one knows why Rosie came early so it's not like I can do something to stop it happening this time around.

But we're slowly getting used to the idea. The scan on Monday made it all seem a bit more real. The baby was wiggling around and waving its hands. It was kind of cute to watch.

And I guess I have to keep remembering that God is in control of all this. Last year I posted this which attracted more comments than anything else I've ever posted. So maybe all of this is actually God's way of trying to tell me something....

I just want to say as well that when we went through many months of struggling to conceive a few years ago, that announcements of unplanned/unexpected pregnancies often felt like the hardest ones for me to hear. I am so conscious of those who might read this who are trying unsuccessfully to have a child. I am actually re-reading Just the Two of Us at the moment, which gives a really helpful Christian perspective about infertility issues. It is such a good book to read to remind me that getting pregnant isn't always an easy road. I'm continuing to pray for those people I know who are struggling with infertility and praying that I'll be sensitive to their feelings right now.

Babies Documentary

This movie was reviewed by Margaret and David on At the Movies last night. It looked interesting, but then I am someone who finds babies and infant development fascinating from a professional viewpoint (and once my own babies were through those first few months where it all just seemed like a hard slog, I found it was also personally quite rewarding to see them growing and changing).

I'm not sure it's particularly representative of cross-cultural family-infant relationships. But who really cares? The babies are cute to watch. The opening scene of this trailer with the two babies playing together was pretty funny.

I think if you name your baby Angel....

....then you are probably asking for trouble.

Just saying.

Impressive

A friend of mine gave birth to a new little daughter last night, her third child. She was booked to have a Caesarean today (eleven days past her due date, nothing's been happening) because the doctors were worried that the baby was too big, but she was very keen to deliver naturally.

So I texted her this morning to wish her luck for the delivery today.

She responded to say she'd gotten her natural delivery....and the baby weighed....

......drum roll...

......5.3 kg (11 pounds, 11 oz in old scale).

Around two and a half times what Rosie weighed at birth.

Impressive work.

Now that I am starting to pick my jaw up off the floor, I might see if I can find out what they have named her so I can write the congratulations card.

I am not in any way "alternative" in my parenting style...

....but I do love wearing my baby (now almost a toddler!) in her baby carrier (an Ergo). When she was tiny, we used a pouch style sling to carry her. I used these partly because she was born prematurely and I wanted to be able to hold her close and curled up to compensate a bit for the last few weeks of being in utero that she missed out on. Other reasons for using it were purely practical, for example, I found it quicker and easier for ducking in and out of the shops and we live at the top of a hill so walking to school and back was easier without a pram.

My boys were carried around in the sling a little bit when they were babies, but we mostly used the pram for them as they got older and larger.

Rosie, however, has only been in the pram once since she was born, when I took her to an all day seminar at work and I thought she would be more comfortable sleeping in the pram. As it turned out, she wasn't, probably because she had never been in it before.

So we continued to use the carriers, since they seemed to be working so well (and my big old 4wd pram was looking a bit worse for wear so I was a little bit embarrassed to take it out among all the new compact and trendy looking prams). I thought I might buy a folding stroller if we needed it when she was bigger. But we haven't had to. Rosie still occasionally sleeps in the Ergo, not as often as when she was tiny, but sometimes if we are at school doing reading and she is getting a bit tired, she will go off to sleep if I put her into it. She will also sleep in our arms sometimes if she's very tired, but the Ergo is preferable because then we can be hands-free while she sleeps.

I have been blessed with having children who like sleeping. This is something I am very thankful for since I know that not everyone is similarly blessed. Yesterday, Chris was talking to a couple that he works with who have two non-sleeping children. Their theory was that you could tell parents of sleepers from parents of non-sleepers by whether they had a third child or not. I'm of the opinion that children's sleeping has more to do with temperament than anything their parents may or may not do to encourage it. Rosie has been the best sleeper of all of our children. She does have a placid and laid back kind of personality, but I do think that carrying her a lot may also have helped.

Now that she is bigger, I keep getting comments like "she must be getting heavy in that now." She is, but it is still really comfortable to wear her in the Ergo. It has great lower back support and I haven't had any back pain wearing it at all. I will confess that I don't walk to school with my kids every day, but when I do and I carry her back up the hill in the carrier, it feels like I get a great work-out.

Wearing her on my front (like the above photo) still works quite well but my next challenge is that I want to work out how to put her in it in the position where she is carried on my back. Supposedly you can use these things until the child is 3 or 4 years old. I'm pretty sure I'll be making Rosie walk by herself much earlier than that but we have definitely got our money's worth out of it already. It has been used almost every day since we bought it. The only change since we got it is that it's faded a little on the front from too much sun.

Newborns are amazing

... and great if you can give them back after a lovely cuddle. Today I visited a friend and her newborn little girl. I was using a newborn assessment that I have used in the past at work and try to practise when I can so I don't lose my skills in doing it. My skills weren't very good to begin with (I only just scraped through the certification exam) so I figure that the more typically developing newborns I can do it with, the better I'll be if I use it at work again in the future with babies who may actually be at risk of developing problems.

Newborns can do lots of things despite the prevailing view that they don't do much except eat, sleep, poo and cry. For instance, they are very good at protecting their sleep in that they will adjust to a stimulus presented repeatedly, for example, a torch that shines into their eyes. They have amazing reflexes that precede movement development. And they can be very social if they are in an alert state, following an adult's face or turning to their voice.

It's fascinating to watch them and see the many things they are able to do. I found it hard to do this with my own baby because I was so sleep deprived, and in my case, feeding difficulties meant that much time in Rosie's early months was spent dreading her next feed and praying that she would gain weight.

But when I have the opportunity to observe someone else's newborn, I am in awe of how God has made us.