Eliza Archives - A Baby on Board blog

Eliza, eight months

Gillian — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 11:27:52 +0000

Oh, baby! What a month. Hands up; who replaced tiny Eliza with a miniature person? She’s growing up – and crawling – at a lightening speed and it seems there’s a new development every single day. It actually all feels like a lot more fun now, especially on a good night’s sleep, and it’s amazing to watch the whole world unfold in front of her. And talking of sleep, it does seem like this month more than any I’ve been SO TIRED. I know being a parent means you’ll basically always be tired – of course, right? – but recent teething-related activity resulted in multiple wakings, all on top of eight months of getting up at least once in the night. It seemed to really catch up with me. Yet the payoff for the bad has been the universe of good things; crawling, crawling really quickly, clapping, laughing lots, actual teeth, always moving and moving and being curious about everything. So on balance, I’ll take the tiredness (although this post has taken a while to write and I think we may have turned a corner with more recent good nights than bad; I’m no longer fantasising about the sleep cure clinic from The Valley of the Dolls). So here’s eight things about my eight-and-a-bit-month-old: There’s a crowded calcium convention going on in her mouth. Tooth one caught us completely by surprise and tooth two followed shortly after, and was no less of a shock. Tooth three – top front – was last week’s newest unexpected visitor in her mouth (you’d think we’d be used to it by now, but no…) Attracted, as all babies seem to be, by the exotic lure of the forbidden, her new favourite places to crawl to and hang out are the TV stand (I recently watched her make her way to Alex’s PlayStation, turn it on, remove the game and lick it) and the bookcase, where she’s just discovered how much fun it is to pull the books out. Again and again So we’ve done a mammoth amount of child-proofing this month, as well as lower the cot after she figured out that she could stand up in it. Yikes Although she’s been doing the incoherent baby babble for a while now, dada was probably her first recognisable word-sound… …followed shortly by her second, the much-repeated bob (no idea why!) Eliza, you’re brilliant. Bring on month nine (which is in about ten days, it’s taken me a while to get round to writing this…) Eliza, six months Eliza, five months Eliza, three months Eliza, one month

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Eliza, five months

Gillian — Sun, 08 Jul 2012 21:01:15 +0000

We were sat waiting for baby clinic last week, and when I looked around the waiting room I saw that we were surrounded by shellshocked mums and their newborns. I suddenly realised something I’ve been vaguely aware of for a while; Eliza’s really, really grown. Where did my tiny baby go? Parenting is bittersweet, but the trade-off of losing the tiny baby is the delight of watching her grow and develop as we put together the pieces of the proper little person she’s becoming. We’re really starting to see flashes of her personality and she’s now so much more interactive, alert, and well, fun. Recently we’ve had the discovery of her feet and her voice, and she now happily squawks away like a pterodactyl, as well as coming out with proper giggles. She’s obsessed with putting things in her mouth, and at the moment her meal of choice is our hands, which she gnaws on like a giant rib bone, Flintstones-style. And once she tentatively started rolling she now won’t stop. She flips over in seconds on whatever surface I place her on, leading to me coming out with something I never thought I’d hear myself saying – “Don’t lick the changing mat!” On the not-so-positive front, Eliza’s sleep went haywire approaching the middle of month three (I never want to hear the phrase ‘four month sleep regression’ again, ever). Some nights she sleeps well; we have a magical next day, the sun shines, the birds sing, and we have a spring in our step. Yet some nights she wakes up every couple of hours all night; I revert to biscuits for breakfast, everything is foggy, and it’s a massive effort to coordinate getting us both dressed before lunch. It does help to stop stressing about it and just surrender to the unpredictability of it all (but far easier said than done at 3am when you’re awake…again). She seems to be turning a corner though with more good nights than bad recently, so fingers crossed. This month marks my mid-point through maternity leave, but to put a more positive spin on it, it means I still have half as much time left and really I’m so lucky to be able to take a whole year out to spend with her. And there’s so much more to come even within the next month; we’ll be starting weaning, and Eliza also becomes a cousin, which we can’t wait for. Eliza, three months Eliza, one month

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Eliza’s birth story – an unexpectedly quick induction of labour

Gillian — Sat, 05 May 2012 22:02:19 +0000

I thought I’d post my induction of labour birth story (a propess induction story) today to coincide with International Midwife Day. I received such amazing care from midwives, both in the hospital (despite it being incredibly busy) and from the community midwife team at my doctors surgery (who came out to our house for three weeks after we’d taken Eliza home from the hospital after our induction of labour). I’m lucky that I had access to such great care, as I know that so many people aren’t so fortunate. “I have to tell you; you’re already 10 cm dilated, and your baby will be here before your epidural. You are going to have to deliver her without it,” the midwife said to me to my horror, mere minutes after we finally made it to a delivery room. “Now, do you feel ready to push?’ But before we move on to Eliza’s imminent – and unexpectedly speedy – arrival, let’s rewind back to the start. It actually began with a false start, on my due date, with an propess induction story that progressed as far as the King’s College Hospital labour ward waiting room. At this point I’d had two sweeps and everyone was convinced I’d spontaneously go into labour. But she stayed stubbornly put, so we went in for a propess induction of labour as planned – but were then sent straight home due to an unprecedented south London baby boom meaning there were no free beds. “You didn’t expect to actually have a baby on your due date did you?” a midwife said wryly. The next day we were back, although I was convinced we’d be turned away again, right up until Alex and I were ushered into one of the beds in the induction bay. After monitoring, they gave me the induction of labour drugs via propess and told us to expect a long wait as nothing was likely to happen for at least 24 hours. Yet the early evening dinner brought with it back-ache and stomach cramps. “Sounds promising!” said a midwife when I mentioned it, although she was soon contradicted by the doctor, who said it was too soon to be anything more than pre-labour pains and Braxton Hicks. The pain quickly got so bad that I couldn’t get comfortable at all, and nothing – lying down, walking, my long-practised labour breathing – seemed to help. Alex tried using the contraction timing app we’d downloaded, but as there was no start or end point to the pain, we figured I couldn’t possibly be in labour. Wrong, wrong, wrong, as it turned out. The midwife gave me some paracetamol and hooked me up to the monitor; the delivery ward was still so busy that she was needed elsewhere and left us alone until midnight. After one look at the monitor printout she called the doctor back, as it turned out that the pain was actually off-the-scale back-to-back contractions with no gap in between, and I was now 3cm dilated. We all had a laugh about how I was a ‘difficult’ patient, as the doctor said that due to the method of induction they wouldn’t have expected anything to happen until morning. It stopped being quite so funny when she told me even though I was in so much pain I couldn’t have an epidural until I was 4cm and a delivery room was free; however, they said they’d check me again in four hours and let me have gas and air. This really helped, and encouraged by the tantalising promise of imminent proper pain relief, I lay on the bed feeling blissfully relaxed. Alex even had a brief amount of sleep on a special ‘dad mat’ on the floor. This didn’t last long. At about 2am I realised that I was no longer feeling any relief from the gas and air and the constant pain was getting worse. There were still two hours to wait until my next examination, but the midwife reluctantly checked me, and was as surprised as we were to find that I’d actually dilated to 6cm. Epidural time, at last! However, at that point there were still no available labour rooms as the hospital was so busy, so we had to wait. By the time they moved someone out of a room – one of the longest hours of my life later – I was pretty convinced I was going to give birth then and there, on the induction ward, with three other women in the beds around me (sorry! to these women, I was you a few months earlier). As they finally pushed my bed down the corridor I started feeling the most intense physical pressure, and my body started automatically pushing. My waters broke in dramatic fashion as we got to the room, and I was pretty sure this didn’t bode well for any more pain relief. I was right; the doctor swiftly checked me again and it turned out I’d gone from 6cm to 10cm in an hour and would just have to get on with it. So push I did. I was so focused on getting the baby out that I don’t remember this part being anywhere near as painful as the lead-up (even though they took the gas and air off me, to my absolute horror). Pushing took either five minutes or five hours in my head; Alex says it was more like half an hour. Towards the end the midwife was concerned as the baby’s heartbeat kept dropping off the monitor and she calmly instructed me to “get this baby out NOW.” So just before 4am I gave the final push, and, with both hands by her face, out flew Eliza. It’s funny, I had planned and prepared so much in the weeks leading up to the birth; all the usual first time mum worry about random things like what to wear and what songs would go on my pushing playlist. However, when it came down […]

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That’s my boy…

Gillian — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 22:34:48 +0000

Today Eliza and I took a trip back to King’s College Hospital for my final post-pregnancy appointment at the haematology clinic. It was strange being back with a baby this time, especially considering the amount of time I’d spent there before she put in an appearance. Anyway, here’s a conversation which took place today, with the doctor who had met her pretty soon after she was born: Doctor – peering into pram: “Oh look at YOU, you’ve changed so much – you look like a proper little boy now!” Me: “She’s a girl…” Doctor: ‘I know!” Mistaking her for a him has been a common theme recently; it happens a lot when random strangers stop and talk to us in shops when we’re out and about (people are so lovely when you have a baby, it is most un-London like). I think it’s mainly because she has a more-than-healthy head of hair, and unless she’s wearing top-to-toe pink people assume otherwise – and I much prefer to dress her in a whole spectrum of bright colours and patterns. However, following the conversation today at the hospital I think it might finally be time to bring out more drastic measures, such as her completely ridiculous giant hairband (bought from H&M – such brilliant baby clothes). Poor Eliza, or, as Alex is fond of ironically saying at the moment, “that’s my boy”.

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Cow / baby

Gillian — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 21:10:55 +0000

Eliza in her Cowshed baby towel (from my Shiny Red workmates). Possibly one of the cutest things ever; also, one of my favourite photos of her so far.

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