Little Brain at 12 weeks.

When I had twelve weeks left of my pregnancy, I was already fed up with it and very impatient, and another three months seemed an impossibly long time to wait to meet our baby. Now, however, the twelve weeks that have passed since giving birth have just vanished! Miranda has changed and grown so much in that time but I still haven't got used to it all yet
We took her to see her Great-GrandNan (Big Nan) yesterday as she was vaguely in the vicinity for once. Of course, to her, Miri has grown enormously, as she wasn't quite a month old last time we did a great-grandparent visit. Nan had been a little optimistic though, knitting Miri a new outfit with a hat big enough to fit me! Never mind, it is incredibly cute all the same!

With Great-GrandNanny

The little brain in Miranda's head is now working overtime at the moment. She is sleeping through the night (Woohoo!!) and what's more, sleeping in her own room in her lovely tram cot, while I lay awake all night anxiously and obsessively listening to the baby monitor. This means, of course, that she is now awake for the majority of the day, and I struggle to find new ways to entertain her. I have been investigating the library again (during the Competitive Parenting classes, sorry I mean, Under 5s Rhymetime!) and we now have books in Spanish and English. Leo the naughty kitten and Lucia la Gatita are great fun, and Lucia learns a valuable lesson; if you save the little children from a TIBURON ENORME (huge shark), then Mama buys you a Helado Grande (a big icecream). Every child should know this. 'Augusto y su sonrisa' - about a tiger losing his smile is a bit beyond my level of Spanish, however but I remain confident in the fact that Miranda is not going to correct me. Yet.
I also envy Miranda's ability to be entertained for hours by her own feet. She has got the hang of reaching out and grasping things very well indeed now and grabs, glares at and bashes the rattly things hanging above her chair, and when she gets bored of them, she reaches for her feet and kicks the about. I've invested in an interesting array of brightly coloured socks just for this purpose.
Her motor skills, or lack of them, are beginning to frustrate her, however. She is so close to crawling! she can lift her head and shoulders with her arms, and lft her bum and wriggle with her legs, but she just can't get the hang of doing both at the same time. And she gets cross about it and shouts. She loves standing and walking though (with on of us holding her up, obviously) and showing off how tall she is. Babyzilla!!




***

At the twelve week mark I think I am just about qualified to hand out a bit of advice now too. Ahem. Well one friend of mine has she announced she's pregnant with her first, and another friend is now training to be a midwife. So to these at least, I suggest the following:

1. Breastfeed. Even if you think you can't, you probably can, despite what the companies who sell formula milk would have you believe. And stick at it - it really does get easier!

2. Do Not Read Parenting Books, especially NOT Gina Ford. The woman is draconian and utterly delusional! Babies, like everyone else, do not fit into nice neat little boxes, and find routines that suit themselves. Reading parenting books only leads to making comparisons between your baby and The Ideal, which doesn't actually exist, and then you just end up feeling crap and guilty and inadequate and worried. Trust in your own common sense and baby will be fine.

3. Set up a spam email account and then sign up for every single thing you can - it is possible to get tons of freebies this way!

4. Never be more than 3ft from a Yuk Cloth.

5. Buy a baby sling. Provided you tie it right, they are comfy, perfectly safe and infinitely easier than lugging round a pushchair, plus being so close to you is very comforting for the baby and will probably send her to sleep. Think "hands-free buggy".

6. Be prepared for Lochia. That is, the utterly humungous, disgusting flood of a period you get after giving birth. None of the midwives told me about this!!!! It is a period, basically, it's just huge and heavy because instead of all the lining that has built up over the course of a month coming out, it is what built up around baby for the entire nine months, and it goes on for weeks. Unless you are very brave and very quick to heal, you can't use tampons either, so you need the startlingly unattractive, mahoosive sanitary towels designed to be worn all night. I told Miri I had to go change Mummy's nappy too at times. I bled for ELEVEN WEEKS AND THREE DAYS.  It is soul destroying after a while, more so because I was never warned about it and worried constantly that it wasn't normal. Unfortunately, it is.

Any other Mums want to dispense advice that I haven't mentioned?

False Alarms

It's all kicking off!!

Or maybe it isn't.

I don't know!!

This is maddening.
I was woken up at 4am (a recurring theme at the moment) yesterday by EXTREME PAIN. Everything ached, I could barely move but whichever way I lay, I couldn't get comfy. Not nice. More worryingly, even though I did finally get back to sleep, the pain was still there when I eventually heaved myself out of bed. My whole bump had gone tense and rock hard, and I also couldn't feel Little Cheese moving about much. Usually she starts moving about to say byebye to Dad when Carl heads off to work in the mornings. Altogether, I got Worried. I rang the midwife, and she said she couldn't do anything without seeing me, so I had to head off to hospital since there was no one else free down at the clinic. After an enormous wait, I got prodded about a bit, and then had a CTG - erm, cardiotocograph monitoring. Basically hooked up the Very Important Machine That Goes BING! that measures mine and the baby's heart beats. Cheese's heartbeat was good - strong and pretty steady at about 150bmp. All perfectly healthy.
Turns out, the pain and aches appear to be because Cheese has now "engaged" - her head was burying into the birth canal, which causes a lot of pressure on delicate bits. Tensing up is not uncommon either, especially since this is my first and I haven't really been stretched like this before! (and obviously I had such strong muscly abs to start with. Ahem.) Finally, and most reassuringly, it was only because I was so tense that I couldn't feel her moving.
This morning I felt a lot better, not so tense, but as soon as I got up I suddenly felt sick and had to go throw up in the loo. Lovely. I also got a 'show' - which is a.) disgusting b) not a good idea to explain on a public blog and c) has Scary Significance. The midwife told me to come back into hospital this morning for the same thing again - another CTG, so I toddled off, still aching but nothing like as bad as yesterday. Cheese was far more awake today, I could feel her moving, and her heart rate made a much more wiggly line this time. All fine, anyway. I am just being paranoid.
The fact that I had a show, however, is far more scary/exciting because it can imply that Cheese Is Imminent, especially when she's already engaged and I am aching. The hospital confirmed this, saying I should feel free to come back as soon as something dramatic happened. It could now be DAYS, not weeks away.  EEEEEEK!!! I don't know, I really don't. I was honestly assuming she'd be late. I'll be 37 weeks at the weekend, so it doesn't even count as premature now. I toddled off to see the Chapmen by the seaside this afternoon, despite hospital trip  and nothing remotely exciting happened. I am feeling better - which is good - but I am not feeling anything out of the ordinary now. She's having a lie-in!

In case she does make an early appearence, thanks to wonderfully talented friends and family, we finally have the Cheese Room finished and fully furnished. It's AWESOME!!

The Sheffield Tram-Cot designed and built by my DIY-ing Dad. We love it!

 The Tram Map Blanket as embroidered by Mum (Halfway to Meadowhell?)

The truly amazing quilt designed and handstitched by the fabulous Julie

Mum has also knitted a mini Vampire cape and outfit (including tiny Cowboy boots just like mine!) for Cheese's First Whitby Goth Weekend in October

Suddenly the whole room seems so much smaller!!

Now of course, I am even more impatient than ever!!! More soon - I hope!