The Holy Grails...

Today I thought I would do a quick post on two items that pretty much kept me sane during the first few weeks after giving birth to Isla and even now 2 months on...

The Sleepyhead

Sleep is a basic human right, a human right that gets taken away from you when you have a new born. Unfortunately Isla was a nightmare the first few days at home when it was time to go bed and just could not seem to settle in her crib. I think we made a mistake getting a crib and should of gone for a mosses basket as she just looked lost in there. We tried swaddling, we tried warming the mattress with a hot water bottle and we even tried snuggling her in with a couple of towels rolled up either side. After numerous google searches 'HOW CAN I GET MY CHILD TO SLEEP BEFORE I TURN INTO A ZOMBIE' we stumbled across an absolute life changer.. THE SLEEPYHEAD. The Sleepyhead is basically a snuggly cocoon that fits into the crib to make bed time a bit of happier. The Sleepyhead can also be used for co sleeping, tummy time, in a travel cot and is also a brilliant way to help the transition from a crib to a cot.The Sleepyhead deluxe can be used from 0-8 months but costs a pretty pricey £99. I can honestly say it is worth every penny as after all a goodnight sleep is truly priceless.

Here is a picture of Isla trying it out for the first time!

The Tommee Tippee Perfect Prep Machine

 I had heard a lot about these magical machines but Tom and I agreed not to buy one as we thought maybe people would think we were being lazy (now I look back and think how stupid was I for even caring what they thought) My brother and his partner ended up buying us this for our baby shower gift and I honestly cant thank them enough. This machine is the 8th wonder of the world at 3am in the morning when you have just walked into the side of the bed and stubbed your toe and can barley see straight past the daze and confusion. The machine is really simple and it makes a fresh bottle at the perfect temperature in less than two minutes. It truly is the easiest machine I have ever used, all you have to do is press a button! I have seen them range from £60-£90 in price depending on where you shop so its worth looking around to find the best deal. Thank you Tommee Tippee for making 3am a little more bareable.

There are many other things that we've bought or got as gifts from friends/family that have helped us out but these two are the first that pop to mind every time someone asks us what we couldn't live without.

Do you have anything you couldn't live without? What products made the first few weeks and months with your baby a little bit easier?

Learning to love my post baby body.

I think this subject is something that a lot of expectant mums, new mums and every mum in general really thinks about (I know I sure do) and that's the post baby body. I'm 5ft10 (ish) and have always been up and down with my weight. Sometimes I was a size 12 sometimes I was a size 10 and for a little while I was a size 8 (didn't last long, thanks cake)

(Left is me at my biggest and the right is me at my smallest)

 

Since having Isla and even when It was towards the end of my pregnancy I have felt really self conscious; From the water weight around my face (Don't get a full fringe in pregnancy, it will accentuate the roundness) to the stretch marks I have been left with on my hips and stomach. I have really struggled to accept the way my body looks now to the way it looked a year ago. I used bio oil and tummy butters throughout my pregnancy and ate relatively well (23 weeks of morning sickness) but I have a mummy tummy. Its not awful, its just not what I have been used to. The first few weeks were the hardest, I didn't even want to look at myself naked in the mirror and I started to forget what I had just achieved. I had just grown a human being in my body for the last 9 months! For the last 273 days my body had been home to my little girl! and in my eyes that is pretty bloody impressive. I am starting to look at my stretch marks and my mummy tummy and I'm starting to feel proud of them. I'm not saying I'm now happy with the way my body looks, because I do want to loose the weight and get back into shape but on the other hand I am in no rush to head to the gym every day. I walk with Isla as much as I can, I have done the occasional workout from home and Tom and I have began to eat as healthy as we can (Minus this weekend.. and last and maybe the one before) We have decided to start taking Isla to swimming lessons after Easter and I am petrified to get into a pool full of people I don't know with my new body to the point I almost don't want to do it.. and then I listen to myself and I think oh god shut up Laura you're not doing this for you, its for Isla! To me that's what being a mother is all about.. not being a selfish cow. It's going to be a long journey back to loving my body completely but that's okay because all of my love is currently taken up by the little person I grew inside it.

 

 

 

 

 

 



What we learnt about Isla this weekend...

As the title suggests I feel like I learnt a lot about my sweet little Isla this weekend. Tom and I decided to take a trip up north away from our home in Hertfordshire to visit some of my family. I haven't mentioned in any of my previous posts that Tom is in the RAF and his family live in  Cornwall and a majority of my family live very close to us, but my mums side all live in Hull and Liverpool. We have decided this year we needed to make the most of my maternity leave and visit these places and our wonderful families as much as we can because we hate the idea of anyone missing out on Islas precious first year!

We set of on Friday which I was already anxious about due to the Friday traffic and as Tom had to go into work in the morning we wouldn't be leaving until 12. For some unknown reason I decided to pack on the Friday morning (What a tw*t) I spent a majority of the time running around like a headless chicken packing anything baby related in sight because obviously Isla is going to need 10 bibs for a three day trip.. (she used 5/10 bibs) once we had finally packed up all of our stuff it was 1pm by the time we had left. The journey takes around 3 hours but as Isla is only meant to be in her car seat for 2 hours at a time we had decided to travel for an hour and half and stop for some lunch and then continue on our way. The biggest lesson I learnt about Isla this weekend is that she is indeed a very good traveller, she slept the whole way minus the stop for a feed where she happily cooed and smiled away at Tom and I (god damn she so cute when she does that)

As we only had a short time in hull (Friday-Sunday) we had a lot of people to see but I couldn't go up to Hull and not visit The Deep. The Deep is pretty much my favourite place to go when I visit Hull as the oceans and sea life fascinates me. Tom had never been and Isla had never been to an Aquarium so we decided to use the Saturday morning and go. I naively thought my 2 month old baby would stay awake and look at the fish but the next lesson I learnt is that  Isla will sleep the whole way through the aquarium and only wake when we got to the café at the end (better luck next time) We then spent the rest of our day visiting my family and showing Isla of and honestly she is so unbelievably loved, everyone is infatuated with her. Before we knew it Sunday morning had arrived and it was time to pack up our things and try not to forget anything. Before we left we visited one of my mums friends pubs for a Sunday carvery (we couldn't travel on an empty stomach could we) I love my food, especially a roast and I'm very fussy with how I like it but I can honestly say WOW, it was delicious and we will be going back when we visit at the end of May. The journey home is always the worst because you just want to get back and settle back into your normal surroundings but once again Isla slept the whole way, only waking at the service station for a feed. Oh and the service station out of all of the ones we could of chosen from was DISGUSTING! It was a Little Chef Express and a Burger King and looked like it hadn't been cleaned in all the years it had been there. Isla decided to have an explosive nappy situation (Thanks Isla) and the baby changing/disable toilet was so dirty I felt I needed to be disinfected after.

Overall we had a wonderful weekend away but next time I think we would need one more day as doing so much travelling in a short space of time was pretty exhausting. We are going to Cornwall for Easter and that journey is around 5/6 hours so Hull was a practice run for us. Thank you my darling Isla for being such a good girl pretty much always (I hope I don't jynx us now) I was thinking about doing a travelling with your 2 month old post showing all the things we needed for Isla while we were away so if anyone would like to see something like that let me know in the comments below!

2 month update

I truly cannot believe our beautiful baby girl is 2 months old, ok it is  a couple of days early as she officially turns 2 months on the 22/03/15 but seriously.. could time slow down a bit? I keep thinking back to the day we brought her home and just how nervous Tom and I were. We got sent home from the hospital at 8pm on the 23rd January and didn't have anything ready! No bottles sterilised, her crib wasn't made up and only a few of her bits were washed. I planned on having everything ready to go once I reached 39/40 weeks because I was convinced I would go overdue. Here we are 2 months later, and I've got to say.. we are doing a pretty good job!



Height/Weight: I don't actually know her current length or weight as we haven't had her checked since her 6 week appointment and we are not due to go to the health clinic for another week but she weighed a very healthy 9 pounds 12 ounces (Her birth weight was 6 pounds 12 ounces) and her length was 55.6cm.

Routine: Isla is not currently in an established routine yet, we try and keep the days as structured as possible but I like to follow her lead and I  guess we are starting to fall into a loose 'routine naturally'.Isla is currently feeding every 3 hours and drinking 4 ounces and usually has an hour nap after most feeds, but as I said there isn't any set timings for those yet! The only real definite thing we have every day is a bedtime routine, Isla has a bath at 6pm and I then get her ready for bed in our room (where she sleeps in her crib) with the lights dimmed and some calming music playing, I will give her a 5 ounce feed once she's in her PJS and settle her around 7  and she tends to sleep  through till 11/12 for her next feed (That's on a good night, sometimes she's up long before that, or in and out of sleep)

Sleeping: Very hit and miss at the moment, someone told me that when a baby sleeps 5 hours at night without waking up its classed as 'sleeping through the night' I don't know what world the person who made that up lives in but I class sleeping through the night to be a lot longer than that! Sometimes she goes 7pm till 12am then till 6am and other times she is up at 10pm and 3am. It really just depends on how she is feeling! I don't really mind because I really love our late night cuddles in the lounge usually catching up on some TOWIE , she usually gazes up at me with her lovely eyes and its moments like that which you can never get back.

Sizes: Isla is out of her newborn and first size stuff (*SOBS*) and its all in the process of being packed away (*SOBS* some more) and is mostly fitting into her 0-3 stuff! Minus a few bits that are still to big. Baby sizes are ridiculous and in one shop 0-3 is tiny and in others it is huge. I keep buying her so many beautiful bits, she is one spoilt little girl! 

Milestones

• Isla has started to give us big beautiful gummy smiles
• She is cooing and gurgling, it makes me feel like she's chatting back to me.
• She is starting to hold her head up for short periods of times, still wobbles around a bit like a nodding dog.
• And she is also really enjoying her play mat now, she is starting to concentrate on the hanging objects and flashing lights and sometimes even smiles when looking at it! We have the Fisher Price Jungle themed one and I think she really enjoys the beautiful bright colours!

 

Overall I think I can safely say on my behalf as well as Toms that Isla has completely turned our lives perfectly upside down and inside out. I don't think any amount of reading and researching in pregnancy can truly prepare you for the day you bring your baby home and the best piece of advice I was given by my brothers partner (Thank you Katy) was to 'Just go with it'; which is 100 percent what we are doing and I think if Isla could speak she would agree. We love her more than words could describe even when she is screaming her head of for a bottle at 3am and I have just stubbed my toe on the side of the bed because I cant find the light switch.

 

 

Welcome to the world Isla Olivia...

 

Today I've decided (finally) how I want to keep track of my time with Isla, I am going to write it all in a blog so that in ten, twenty even thirty years time she can look back at it and see what we were all up to. Well that's the idea anyway, who knows if websites like this will even exist in thirty years time, we may all be living on mars. I tried writing it in a beautiful diary my mum bought me but I just couldn't get to grips with it, I unfortunately don't get on with diary's, my handwriting is messy and I get bored writing! (sorry mum, I am using it for appointments instead) Typing on the other hand I am very good at! (spelling and grammar not so much)

I am going to start at the very beginning, well not the very beginning because we all know how babies are made. Instead I'm going to write all about my labour and delivery before I erase it from my mind completely. I went into my local hospital on Tuesday 20th January 2015 for a routine check up, Islas movements had slowed right down and after reading all about 'counting the kicks' I started to be a bit concerned. If you know me well then you will know I suffer pretty bad with health anxiety, so much so that before I was pregnant I was in and out of hospital with what doctors ended up diagnosing as chronic stomach pain. So me being me, I panicked. Little did I know it would be the best decision I had ever made. I went to triage after speaking to the midwife on the phone and was put on a monitor. My 38 week bump was measuring small at only 33 weeks so they made the choice to refer me to have an ultra sound, I was taken down straight away and put to the front of the queue (Yes, I got a few dirty looks from other waiting expectant mothers). The sonographer told me he wanted a second opinion from a doctor and with those words my heart sank to the bottom of my stomach, I knew that was never a good sign. To cut a very long story short after various second, third and fourth opinions  I was told that I was going to be induced that day as my placenta was finished doing its job and it was time for my baby to enter the world.

HOLY SHIT (excuse my French) induced.. today. All I could think was I'm not ready yet, the washing hasn't been done, I haven't ironed her clothes, I've got meat out of the freezer for dinner! but whether I was ready or not, Isla was.

They took me up to the ward where I spent 2 long, exhausting days being induced. I was induced using a pesserie(which basically looks like a long bit of string that they put.. well I'm sure you can fill in the blanks) They did that at 3pm and 24 hours later they came to see if I had dilated, I'd been having contractions but nothing that was causing me pain. unfortunately I was only 1cm dilated so they left me for 6 hours to dilate some more. when they checked me at 9pm I had managed to dilate to 2cm so it was show time! or so I thought... I then waited 15 long, frustrating hours to be taken to have my waters broken. They broke my waters on the delivery ward at 3pm on Thursday 22nd January 2015 and my contractions started coming thick and fast, but again it got to 5pm and I was only 4cm dilated. The midwife and doctor made the decision to induce my contractions further using a hormone drip. I had heard a lot of things about the hormone drip and the fact it made your contractions pretty damn painful so she offered me and epidural then and there, I refused. I wanted to see just how long I could go on the gas and air (which I absolutely hammered by the way, so much so it made me sick several times) I was on a monitor to monitor Islas heartbeat and movements as induction can stress babies out pretty bad, this meant I couldn't bounce on my birth ball or even move around the room, I was pretty much strapped to the bed. By 10pm I wanted the epidural, I was only 4.5cm dilated and they told me I would be there till the early hours of the next morning, I was exhausted and in a lot of pain and I needed the drugs, I needed them so bad! The anethesist came and by 10:40 I was hooked up and waiting for the epidural to work. 5 minutes later the pain was back and worse than ever! 'I CANT DO THIS, GIVE ME A C SECTION' I screamed. The midwife looked a bit shocked and decided to check if I had dilated any further. 'Your 10cm dilated, its time to push' and from there on out its all a bit of a blur, I remember saying 'Really? I'm going to meet my baby?' and I remember the reassuring voice of the midwife telling me when to push and before I knew it I had delivered my beautiful baby girl in 10 minutes and at 11pm on the 22nd January 2015 she was in my arms. The moment from pushing her out to hearing her first cry felt like a lifetime, but there she was, Isla Olivia! Weighing in at a teeny tiny 6 pound 12 ounces. She was perfect in every single way, and she was mine. I had my partner Tom and my mum as my birthing partners and its safe to say that without them I don't think I could of done it, they were both amazing and took the abuse I hurled at them during my worst contractions brilliantly, Isla is 8 weeks old on Thursday and is the most happy, healthy and wonderful baby, I have loved watching her grow and I am so excited for the future with my beautiful little family.