Sunday, February 6, 2011

Month 5: Food, Sleep and Orange Therapy

I can't believe that over five whole months have passed since Abigail was born. Where did it go? The last major milestone was rolling and now things have moved on again. At 20 weeks she had her first taste of solids: carrot puree. At 20 weeks + 2 days I abandoned carrot because it's too damn orange! Now she's progressed to a varied diet including sweet potato, apple, baby rice, mashed potato and sponge cake. Admittedly, sponge cake doesn't feature in Annabel Karmel's baby weaning book, but what can you do if your baby grabs it from the plate?! This morning, Abigail made a lunge for my toast, so I gave her some baby porridge, which she wolfed down.

All this extra food has given Abigail lots of energy, which she is using to spring around in her Jumperoo. She's also started rolling over and over and over and is really pushing up from the floor. She is able to push up onto her knees and shunt forward a few inches, but she normally ends up rolling over onto her back as she can't quite get the co-ordination right for crawling. In literally the last 2 days she has gone from not being able to sit up, to being able to sit unaided. I'm amazed at the strength in her back and abdominal muscles, but then she always liked doing little sit-ups! When sitting, Abigail can even turn a little bit from side to side, but if she stretches too far, eventually she wobbles and falls over. It looks like crawling is not far off, so it could be time for me to baby-proof the house.

Sleep is the biggest source of most new parents' woes, and sadly I'm still tearing my hair out on this one. Abigail's gone through various phases, including a wonderful patch where she slept from 7pm to 7am solid. Unfortunately, at the moment, this is a distant memory. The little monster is very unsettled in the evening; we're normally up and down from 8pm to midnight trying to re-settle her. She's also taken to waking in the night - maybe once on a good night, but it could be up to three times. In her defence, she's had a cold complete with snotty nose and tickly cough for the last week. She's also had a touch of diarrhoea, which the various professionals have ruled is probably a virus rather than the result of her weaning.

I've always had a short fuse at the best of times, and I must say that the sleep deprivation has done nothing to improve this, as my poor hubby will testify. Last night, after a good screaming fit from young Abigail and a throwaway comment from Dom that the stuff coming out of the steriliser smelt of sewage, I flipped and threw the entire contents of the steam steriliser across the kitchen, followed by a couple of mandarin oranges for good luck. Well, what else can you do with all those Chinese New Year oranges anyway?! So I'm keeping my fingers crossed that when Abigail gets over her cold and dicky stomach, her sleep will improve. Of course, by then we will no doubt be into teething - and by default, more sleepless nights. Oh happy days!

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