What Rose thinks of the new baby

In many ways, Rose has no idea about the big event that is going to change her life forever. Lots of people have told me to start preparing her for the new baby’s arrival by explaining it. Good luck! Since she doesn’t really understand why she needs to wear a hat when it’s cold outside, or why cats run away from her, so I think something as conceptual as “you’re going to be a big sister soon” might miss the mark.

For her birthday Dave, Laura, and Kate gave her a beautiful baby doll, one of that is very lifelike and closes its eyes when it’s laid down. When she first saw it she was freaked out by it, walked away, then came back to wave at it and say, “bye bye”. Fortunately, her affections for it have grown and she often hugs and kisses it. But she’s definitely not “motherly” towards it. She pokes her fingers in its eyes and laughs, and is not interested in baby care such as changing its nappy or singing it lullabies.

She really doesn’t understand (or maybe it’s care) that I’m starting to become quite pregnant and aren’t up to the same physical feats as I used to be able to. In most playgrounds I have to pick her up to get her to the top of the slide as she isn’t able to climb ladders and so forth. I can usually do this, but struggle to do it over and over again. “Rosie, my back hurts, I can’t lift you up again,” I say. She remains resolutely at the bottom of the ladder, shifting her weight from one leg to the next and making this “neeaa, neeea, neeaa” sound (the usual noise she makes when she wants me to do something).

But she’s certainly noticed the change in my physical appearance. Lately she’s taken to lifting my top up and rubbing my belly. It doesn’t bother me in the slightest – rubbing seems to be an affectionate gesture for her.  She often rubs my arm absentmindedly when I’m sitting with her reading a book. The most alarming thing she does is laugh at my scary pregnancy nibbles (replace the two b’s in this last word with two p’s and you get what I mean- I don’t want to attract any weirdos from search engines). If I’m getting changed in front of her she points and laughs and laughs. She fails to understand that the objects of her mirth actually sustained her for the first year of life, and the least she can do is show a little respect!

Where’s Rose?

It’s been another of those busy weeks without much to account for it. Rose has been super cute this week. At the moment she loves putting her hands in front of her face. We then make a big play of “Where’s Rose? She was here a minute ago!” and then looking under chairs and so forth. Then she takes her hands off her face triumphantly and you say, “There she is!” One of the funny aspects of it is that she’s started putting only one hand on her face and covering one eye, so that she can watch your reaction. She looks a bit more like “pirate baby” rather than “hiding baby”.

The downside is that she wants to do it all the time. I’m starting to understand why repetition is the foundation of so much children’s humour. She never tires of it.

Early in the week she stole one of Chris’s shoelaces out of his shoe, but left a dried apricot in the shoe. (As a gift or bailment, we wondered?) Things go missing all the time, and we’ve learned that she has a few reliable keepsake spots. One is in drawers. I keep finding my toothfloss container or night creme in her chest of drawers.

And by god it’s difficult to keep all the pieces of her toys together. I had a bit tidy up on Wednesday and tried to repatriate all the parts of her learning home, blocks, shapes, and Little People figurines. I still can’t find several key shapes for her shapesorter, even though I got down on hands and knees and looked under the couch and chairs. I did find more floss, though.

Granny Anne is awesome!

Rose’s Granny Anne has been visiting us for the last few days and it’s been absolutely fantastic. Chris and I took advantage of the free babysitting and went out to dinner last night by ourselves. It was so fantastic being able to walk down the road holding hands, and have a sustained conversation over dinner, just like the old days!

In addition to babysitting Anne has been doing so much to help us out. She’s been taking Rose to the park, giving her meals, and helping with household chores. I went out this afternoon to meet up with a girlfriend and got home to find that she’d scrubbed our deck down on her hands and knees!

It’s been wonderful seeing Rose and her Granny re-establish contact. They’ve been having so much fun together and Rose absolutely loves getting her Granny’s full attention.

Rose, the book

I recently found out about this company called Blurb who can turn photos and text into printed books. One of their specialities is turning blogs into books, and I had the idea to create a book of Rose’s first year of life, with photos to go along side the text from the blog. I downloaded the blurb software and imported my blog, and it turns out that her first year alone constitutes 280 pages! It’s taking a lot of work to arrange the text and photos, but I’m really enjoying it. I can’t believe how much we did last year!

It’s been a good week this week. Rose suddenly worked out how to sleep during the day, and has been sleeping for at least two hours every day. This means I’ve been getting a nap of at least an hour during the day, and it’s made all the difference. I feel so much more rested and happier. Also, I took the day off work today to have some “me” time, and I’m enjoying sitting here at 10am, still in my PJs, enjoying the feeling of not having anything in particular to be doing. Bliss.

Look who’s coming to dinner?

We’re slowly learning new ways to cope with the new independent personality that moved in just after Rose learned to walk. We’ve discovered that the more you let Rose do herself, the happier she is. For example, she’s recently learned to eat a banana and pear herself (although you have to hang around on “stand by” because she often turns the piece of fruit over and starts gnawing on the wrong end, to comic effect in the case of the banana.)

Also, she’s not very happy about going into the stroller, so we’re teaching her how to walk along with us holding one of her hands. She’s not big on the hand-holding, it wasn’t one of the ways she learned to walk, and she seems to find it a hassle. However, we do have our rules, and a big one is that on the street she can either walk holding mummy or daddy’s hand, or she can ride in her stroller. She complains about her limited choices, but until she graduates high school, that’s the way it’s got to be. It certainly makes for slow-going because she wants to stop, look and touch everything from large scary-looking dogs, to discarded coffee cups. The world sure is a curious place.

The 19 week scan, and the week in review

We had the big 19-week scan this week and it was really exciting getting to see that baby again, and looking more baby-ish, too! Everything went really well, although Chris and I agreed that we wouldn’t be taking Rose to any more scans. She got bored sitting in the dark room and wanted to run all over the place, and Chris got stressed out trying to control her, so he didn’t get to focus on the scan so much. Everything looked good, according to the ultrasounographer, but I’m seeing my obstetrician in a few weeks to review everything properly. The sad thing was that the baby was quite uncooperative and we weren’t able to find out the sex. We even tried having a break for a while in the waiting room to see if the baby would move in the intervening time, but the baby went to sleep at that point because I was chasing after Rose up and down the hallway (babies in utero tend to be lulled by lots of movement). We may not have another scan, so it might be one more excitement on the big day!

It topped off a pretty bad week for me. Rose hasn’t been getting much sleep during the day, leaving me feeling very tired. I have been having some pregnancy-related sleeping issues, too, so by the end of the week I felt exhausted. Fortunately, I slept well last night so I’m feeling refreshed, and Chris has taken Rose to do the grocery shopping this morning so I’m enjoying a couple of precious hours on my own this morning.

Coldest day of the year

Okay, so the coldest Sydney gets is 14oC (53oF), which it hit today. It’s not bad at all, but it’s cold enough to send Sydneysiders out with their gloves and hats. Here’s a picture of Rose all rugged up:

Interesting games

One of the most interesting games to play when you’re a parent is “What will our baby be when she grows up?” The current speculation in our household is that Rose is going to become a basketball player. Why? Well, first of all there’s her height. Her tallness is commonly observed by both strangers and friends alike. Ever since we’ve been measuring her she’s been in the 98th percentile – and she’s long and lean with thin legs, so we’ve ruled out a career as a rugby prop forward. So good basketball genes, no?

And then there’s her love of balls. Her favorite toy hands down right now is this big yellow rubber ball with nobbles all over it. She loves it so much. She bounces, kicks, and rolls it. She loves to chase after it like a puppy. At the playground she doesn’t want to swing, slide or twirl, she just wants to chase her ball.

Today at the playground she was absolutely absorbed by watching two boys play basketball. An old Chinese man was talking to them in a strange way about how to play better. It turns out he was a Kung Fu master, and he was trying to teach his grandkids to play better basketball using Kung Fu techniques. He kept shaking his head, “These kids don’t know how to draw energy from the ground.”

I’m not sure if Rose does, either. But every Friday after work I pick her up from her caregiver’s daughter’s basketball practice. When I arrive Rose is usually charging around chasing the ball, completely unaware that the other girls are at least 10 years older than her. It gets her really excited.

The only other type of job I can imagine for Rose is one that requires morning shifts. Lately when she wakes up it’s like she’s had three red bulls and two double espressos already.

First independent eye witness verification

We just got back from a lovely walk this afternoon. On the way back to the car Rose started crying (a bit overtired, we think). A dog walker passed us and said, “Don’t cry baby – your mummy and daddy love you!” Then he saw me and said, “And your mum’s got another one on the way – be happy!” Anyway, it’s been a long five months of people not getting up for me on the bus or train, so it was pretty exciting knowing that my pregnancy is now showing to strangers!

Also, a couple of cute things Rose has done this weekend:

• Licking her fingers after finishing a vegemite sandwich
• Saying “goodbye” as well as “bye bye”
• Sneezing, then copying herself sneezing. The copy is identifiable because she makes an “O” with her mouth and goes “Uh, Uh, Uh” It’s not really like a sneeze at all, but she does it any time anyone sneezes around her!
• Brushing her own hair with the hairbrush
• Coming up and giving us lots of hugs – at least 20 times a day. She’s been such an independent little girl up until now – but all of a sudden it seems that she’s realised she needs us!

The pregnancy

So a lot of people want to know how the pregnancy is going and I’m aware I haven’t really talked about it too much in the blog.

Part of the reason for that is that there are lots of times I forget I’m pregnant. The nausea and tiredness is (mostly) over, and I’m definitely showing, but apart from that it’s not something I think about all day long. Partly it’s because life is so busy right now. Looking after Rose is really time, mind and soul consuming. She demands full-time attention when she’s awake. And when she naps? Well I’m either shovelling in some food or taking a nap myself.

But there’s something else. A few weeks ago I heard about a woman with Graves Disease who had a miscarriage at 16 weeks. Then I went on to a Graves Disease website the other day and heard about a woman with Graves Disease who miscarried at 24 weeks. Now I know that there might be a 101 reasons why these women miscarried and I haven’t (taking more medication than I am, more active disease, etc), but I can’t imagine a person alive that wouldn’t be shaken by this if they had Graves Disease and were pregnant (let alone deeply sympathetic to the women going through it). Does this mean it will happen to me? No. Neither do I worry about it night and day. But it’s there. It’s there every time I feel a muscle twinge, or have a weird stomach cramp, or a practice contraction. It’s especially there when I think about the future and check myself to take each day as it comes.

This reminds me of a woman I met in London last year. We sat next to each other at a mums and bubs movie session two weeks in a row. It turns out she was a medical doctor. I remember saying, “Wow, it would’ve been great being a doctor when you’re pregnant. You wouldn’t have worried so much about every little ache and pain.” She basically coughed up her latte and said the opposite was true. Her biggest fear was having a child with schizophrenia, and she’d read some recent research that heavy head colds in the first trimester can be a predisposing factor to the disease. And what happened? She got a heavy head cold at week 8.

So I’m deeply thankful I’m not a medical doctor – I know way too much already. Last night on the news there was a news story about new discovers about new discoveries about stillbirth. Then there was the story a few weeks ago about a listeria outbreak. Honestly, when you’re pregnant sometimes it seems like the world is out to get you.

The good thing is that each week that goes by makes me feel surer about the pregnancy. Next week I’m having my 19 week morphology scan where we might get to find out about the sex. Yay.