Week 16

10th - 16th April 2005

Emma's Entry

Evan looking all smart

I haven't been able to take Evan to the mother and baby group for the past 2 weeks due to his injections the first Wednesday and then me having a tummy bug last week, so I was really looking forward to weighing him this week. He's certainly eating well and I knew he had put on some weight because he's now starting to fit into his 6-9 month clothes and he's only 3 and a half months old now! The last time I weighed him at week 13 he'd just crossed over the 1 stone mark and Caroline was betting he'd be 15llbs at least by now. She was right! Evan weighed in at 15lb 4oz this week :).

I was invited to a weaning workshop this week to give me all the information necessary for when I start to wean Evan at 6 months. I've decided to leave it as late as possible to wean because I want him to get all the benefits of my breast milk and I know at 6 months old, he should be able to eat most food groups. I even got to try baby rice and "mmmm yummy" wasn't that lovely.... The health visitor described it as wall paper paste and to only use it as an introduction before moving them on to something like potato. I am a bit weird and even though it wouldn't be my choice of food, it wasn't that bad - it just tasted like really bland porridge or ready break. I can just imagine Caroline's face as she reads this as she hates porridge and always refers to it as puke when she sees me eating it :).

"I like my swing still :)"

I was really nervous of the idea of weaning at first, but the weaning workshop was really informative and now I am not so nervous at all. I was originally just going to let Caroline handle the cooking and preparation but I don't think it would be a problem if I had to do some of it now. It might actually mean I get to eat more vegetables because we'll be introducing them to Evan and I may as well just make some for me. Hopefully we'll get Caroline to try some as well because I do miss my veggies :(.

I went to Mothercare on my own this week and I managed to avoid the temptation to spend loads of money on clothes and toys for Evan! I think I only managed that because I knew I was going into town at the weekend to buy some :). I stuck to my shopping list quite well and only came out of the shop with a few extras, though I still managed to spend £20! I bought the big boy bottles for Evan's evening feeds and I thought we'd try him on the medium flow teats but they turned out to be too free-flowing for Evan as he likes to have these little cute pauses as he feeds because he gets out of breath from all the guzzling. I bought this "gummy teether" as the idea is great, but unfortunately as with any dummy at this age, your baby can't really hold onto it and it just falls out. The gummy teether allows us to put some teething gel onto the rubber and then you place it in your baby's mouth and they can bite down on it. I also found some pacifiers that Evan can actually suck on, the others were too big and made him gag a bit. These dummies are angled to fit up at the roof of his mouth and are flatter. I still only plan to use it as a last resort for soothing as I don't want him to become addicted to a dummy!

My favourite buy at Mothercare had to be the cute toy :/ that I was not supposed to buy... It's cool though and hopefully Evan will be able to hold it soon and bite on the plastic when his gums hurt. It reminds me of a "Rubix Cube", instead of being a cube it is a plastic tube that is easy for a baby to grip with their hands and you can move the tube around to make all sorts of shapes and it has different textures for Evan to explore. Caroline and I like it even if Evan chooses not to :).

Emma

Caroline's Entry

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Practicing for the Commandos!

What's your worst nightmare when you have a new baby? Well, I suppose there are a million things but one of them might be a washing machine breakdown. Our washing machine has been making strange noises for a while now and it finally packed up at the end of last week. We rushed down to the local store the next morning to buy another one but we had to wait until Thursday for delivery which left us without a machine for almost a week!

Now this coupled with our little poo problem is not a Good Thing! For some reason, over the last week or so just about every poo that Evan does leaks big time - all over his legs or up his back and of course all his clothes get saturated in the yellow stuff. Not nice. Add this to the usual puking episodes and that adds up to a lot 'o washing! Thankfully we have really nice neighbours and our neighbour Anny offered to do our washing for us (poo 'n all!). It probably looks rather strange seeing us wandering up the road carrying a basket of washing...

Evan has been getting grisly in the evenings of late. This could be a number of things and teething is probably one of them but Emma felt that she wasn't able to give him good feeds in the evenings so we've started to give him one bottle of formula each evening now. He's now moved onto the big-boy bottles and has a full eight ounces. According to the weight chart on the back of the formula packet, he's at the weight for a five month old! The funny thing is, he's guzzling down his bottle but it doesn't seem to have had any effect on his other feeds - he's still waking up every 2-3 hours in the night wanting more boobie! Poor Emma :/

Caroline