Sitting and other Sophie stories

Life with this seven-month old is ... Fun!!

As of early this week, Sopie's sitting up on her own. Sometimes she just gets so excited about it!

Other times it's the perfect position for seriously studying toys- new and old and different. Her favourite toys today: the tupperware mini ladel, a paper towel roll, and a big empty can of formula. It makes the most satisfying sounds when she wacks it with things! When she makes a really good noise, she looks at me with so much pride and glee...my heart literally melts.

We are all about the games these days. Suddenly, everything is a game! Among her favourites are dancing with Momma (especially when she gets dipped!) and playing peek-a-boo. We like to play it anytime, anwhere, but most often we play it with this little blanket. I take turns covering our faces ("Where'd Momma go?" etc) and lifting up the blanket and exclaiming the expected "Peek-a-boo!" (or just to mix things up a bit, sometimes "there she is!"). Well, Do you know what she did today??! It was the best!

She was lying on top of a wide blanket on her changemat (getting wiped). Suddenly, she grabbed the corner of the blanket and covered her face with it! I looked at her wondering, and tried "Where'd Sophie go?" and out she popped beaming. she giggled when I said peekaboo.

And here's another game she loves... raspberries upside down. She comes back down laughing :)

(ok, so it's kinda fun for me too!)

Life at 7 months is full of people. Lots of family and friends. Here she is with her cousins Nikita and Sebastian.
Turns out this is a pretty good time for Sophie to be left with new people while I go to work. As hard as it was for me to get used to at first, she adjusted really quickly. She's beginning to recognize more faces that she sees regularly, and gets excited to see people like Nanna and Grandad, Bec, Aunty Pam and her very fun cousin Nikita. But she's still pretty happy for strangers, provided that they give her really big smiles and plenty of food.


Life at 7 months is full of outings. I have the occasional quiet day at home (like today), and they are rare. which is nice, cause I get to really appreciate them. But for me, juggling a part-time career and home means running errands and doing shopping on many of my home days. Sophie's going to get her fill of the shopping centres (malls). But so far, she still seems to really like it. These photos were from last week sometime, hanging out with Ryan and Bec.

Life at 7 months is Messy! Ok, I'm sure it will be from here on out. But she has just started to show real interest in helping to feed herself. Usually that means grabbing for the spoon just before it's about to enter her mouth, and trying to stuff it along with her whole hand inside.then she usually drops the spoon. At the beginning of a feed, when she's very hungry, she gets quite grumpy if I try to give her the spoon (or even an extra one of her own.) She grumbles at me with her mouth open wide and her arms flung out to her sides. "It's about eficiency Momma, I'm not doing anything, you just shovel it in!) But later, after she's closer to full, she suddenly starts getting quite excited and animated. That's when she starts trying to help ... which is funny and makes me laugh...which makes her laugh...which she inevitably waits to do until just as soon as I've put the next bite into her mouth...and the laugh sends food out everywhere. It's a hilarous mess.

And yes, she is very proud of her self when she manages to get a bite to herself.

This photo? Yeah, this mess is nothing. This is just with yogurt...I thought she looked cute trying to feed herself. You should've seen her with the veggies she had today! She's was covered head to toes. (a cute look!)

And did I tell you she splashes? Kicks and splashes in the bath...and had her first dip in the Kroes's swimming pool one of these recent weekends - she loved it! kicked and splashed so hard that she slept for 11 hours straight that night. (Still a mythical sleep number in our house.)

Going back to work is hard- mostly because of the stress of balancing and organizing everything and still trying to do everything well. And I miss her. But it's better than I thought it would be too. I'm enjoying my work, Sophie seems to enjoy her days away from me (though I like to think they're not full of quite as much fun or learning as the Momma days), and we I still have plenty of timeto enjoy each other. So it's not actually so bad. I think I'm getting used to it.

Oh, just in case you were wondering, It's perfectly fine to call her little again to your heart's content. She is still dainty and petite and adorable and all those things, but she's growing so well that we're not worried about her weight anymore. She's really healthy, so it's ok that she's small.

That's all for now. Sophie and I are going out to weed some of the jungle in our front yard :)

Our big American girl

Sophie had a very big week. She's dealing surprisingly well with Mamma going back to work at the moment. (It's a bit harder for mamma, but I'm slowly getting used to it).

Some good newses this week...
Sophie's a real live American citizen now...for better or for worse! (naw, just kidding - we're really happy for her!) On Thursday we had an exciting excursion into the city. Sophie took the train for the first time, she loved staring at all the people. and by the end of the trip she was singing away loudly to all of them. Made plenty of people smile, which is always fun.
We went into the city to have a very important appointment with the visiting American Embassy people, which lasted about 5 minutes. But they were a very important 5 minutes, which allow to be officially a dual citizen, and the owner of her very own American passport! yay!

The other great news is that Sophie's weight gain is fantastic again. She gained 700 grams in less than 2 weeks. That means she's finally broken the 6 kilo mark (we celebrated with a bottle of bubbly!), and she's back at the 10th percentile - which is where she was at birth, so right where she should be. The Zantac and all the solids she's eating are making a big difference! She's a healthy happy babe.

Oh, the week I had to go back to work, guess who decided she wasn't taking a bottle anymore. yeah. great. now it's just a toy and she won't take anything from it at all - not EBM or formula or water...but she is fascinated with the cup. so we are teaching her to use a cup now. It is unbelievably messy and but she gets at least as much into her tummy as she does all over the rest of her, so it's a good start.

Visiting the Doms.... cousin Nikita


And newest cousin Oskar ...born 22 Feburary, 2008. Such a cutie!!

Rolling over...
Ta Da! Happy February!

Sophie's Summer days

Hello!

Sophie says hi, and wants to tell you about her blissful 6-month-old life in the Smith house.

I like to play with mummy...we sing songs and I sit up like a big girl! Well, I still need help and I'm a bit wobbly...but I'm practicing.
I like to roll on the floor. Back and forth...and mostly to my back.

It's all about what I can grab! My feet, my toys... actually anything that's nearly within my reach is my toy. Especially if it's somebody's face or hair, that's the best! Grabbing Ryan is fun! He makes cool noises!

I'm not really sure what else to do with him... but he's loads of fun to stare at!

Oh, that Christmas thing was great! I got to rip paper (and I tried to eat it of course, but they just took it away and laughed at me. Silly grown ups. I thought it tasted very interesting!)

And then I got just the best toys. Bath toys, books...allll kinds of things that roll. This ball with a duck stuck in it is fantastic! I love to roll it around with my hands and feet. I haven't been able to fit the whole thing in my mouth yet...but that doesn't stop me from trying!

They put me in the strangest positions sometimes...but it's ok. I just sing for awhile and then roll off when I get bored.

I keep trying to work out how to move around on my belly, as all the best stuff is always just out of reach! Sometimes I seem to get somewhere, but I've no idea how I did it. I'm sure it has something to do with shaking those legs and arms around, which I do very intensly. And it's got to have something to do with my mouth of course, so I keep that wide open and moving! One of these days I've got to figure out this crawling thing!

This is my foot. It's delicious!

This is my book about airplanes. I am phenominal at turning the pages (after I've had a good thoughtful chew of course!)

This is my cot. It's a nice place to sleep and play and sing to my feet.

And they keep giving me new ways to make lots of noise!
Happy New Year! Hope your summer is fun and full of new experiences, like mine :)

The L word

There are many ups and downs in the lives of new parents... and in the month and a half or so since I've last written, Sophie has certainly given us our share of both. She has had so many wonderful moments...new skills and interests and sounds... and I do look forward to telling you about those. But first I need to write about the challenges, since I am a bit preoccupied with them as of late, and I have a bit of trouble talking about them.

The reality has struck me again lately, that Sophie has more challenges than some babies (although of course, she has far less than others.) When we were about to bring her home from the hospital after those 2 grueling weeks, doctors and nurses reminded us several times that her adjusted age would apply for the first year of her life. That even though she probably wouldn't suffer any permanent side effects from her early rocky start, that being a preemie would definately make its mark on at least her first year in one way or another, and that this should not surprise or upset us.

At the time, a part of me really didn't believe them. I thought "She's going home now, she's fine. She was always going to be a genius anyway, so she'll have no problem keeping up with her actual age. It's only one month anyway." What's one month, right?"
So now I have to remind myself that she really is doing very well when she can meet all the 5 month developmental milestones, but isn't quite meeting all of the 6 month ones just yet. (Even though she was 6 months old on Saturday - real age. She's not quite 5 months in adjusted age.) When her peers are crawling and sitting on their own and she's very interested and seems pretty close but just not quite there yet. I need to remember that she's not slow and there's nothing wrong with this, she's right where she should be. This is really my challenge, not hers. She's quite happy with all the things she can do, and is keen to do more. (More to come on those stories in another post)

But she does have other challenges.

The comments that Sophie collects have always been, "She's so pretty/gorgeous/beautiful!" "Look at those amazing eyelashes (and big blue eyes)!" "Isn't she alert and taking it all in?!"
and ...
"She's so LITTLE."
(tiny, delicate, petite,...any number of nice-sounding synonoms as well.) All of these are comments are quite true (And we're soo proud of her :), and the last one never bothered me until recently. Little has always been a big part of her life, and probably will be for a very long time. That's going to be just fine. But recently I've known that something was not right with her weight gain, and I've been a bit worried that she hasn't been putting on enough weight.

Now, I should warn you, this gets a even longer! I feel the need to write it out. but if you're not super interested in all the details just skip to the BOTTOM LINE at the end.... I'll see ya there :)

Sophie doubled her birthweight by the time she was 4 months, and she was growing really well. But she's been hovering pretty close to that same weight for awhile now. At first it didn't bother any of the health professionals we saw. They just said "keep an eye on it, she seems fine, babies grow at different rates, it's ok that she's little cause she's a premmie..." etc.

We took her to a highly recommended pediatrician with questions about her head shape (she's got a bit of a funny flat spot, but it's slowly getting better) and my concerns about her weight. He insisted that her weight gain was fine at that point, but he encouraged us to start her on solids and get her up to 3 feeds per day fairly quickly, and assured us that she would soon bulk up. He also advised us to take her off her reflux medication completely. "Many babies have outgrown the reflux by this stage, and if there's still any problem, the solids will probably fix it," he told us. You'll also notice she sleeps through the night better and is more settled on the solids." At that stage, she was already sleeping through the night quite well, but we took all of his advice.

Now, Sophie's reflux was a bit hard to diagnose and sometimes a hard one to recognise or even believe. It's called "Silent Reflux" because she doesn't actually upchuck. But after the diagnoses and the medication (at around 2 months), she was much more settled during feeds, seemed to be able to feed a bit longer than before (although she was still a quick eater) and started sleeping through the night for long, happy stretches of time. She was also much happier during the days.
Apparently it's not at all uncommon for preemies to get reflux - as their digestive systems are often not quite as strong and healthy as other babies'.

So back to 4 and half months or so - we took the doctor's advice to take her off the reflux medication (Zantac). We really wanted to believe him that she had outgrown the condition, and that solids would help her grow faster again. But in Sophie's case, he was wrong.

Soon after this, Sophie stopped sleeping through the night. For a whole month she woke up 2 to 3 times a night hungry. She was feeding 11 to 12 times a day between solids and milk. She was more unsettled during and just after feeds. When I worried that maybe she wasn't getting enough from me, we offered her top-ups of formula which she usually refused completely. I fed her as often as she seemed even a little big hungry, I tried all kinds of "tricks" to increase my supply (just in case that was a problem), but none of this made any difference to her behaviour, or to her very slow weight gain.

Last week I took her to a child health nurse for a 6 month check up, and while she had gained some weight since our visit to the pediatrician about a month and 1/2 ago, it was very little. I was alarmed but the nurse didn't seem too concerned. Finally, on the weekend I decided we needed to put her back on the Zantac. That very night she slept 7 hours again! Every night since we've had her back on the meds, she's sleeping much better, and each day seems much more settled at feeds, even able to eat a bit more than she did before.

On Monday she had to go to the doctor to get her 6 month shots. I finally saw a doctor who was able to look at her weight hovering around the same place for the last 2 months and say, um, no- that's not ok! (He's not the most encouraging or nurturing of doctors. He's a bit of a Doctor House, minus the limp and the clever rantings. He's gruff, but good.) He fully supported my decision to put her back on the reflux meds, and we're going to watch her closely in the coming weeks and work hard to get her weight up.

I don't know if the medication will be enough to get her weight up. We really hope so. It's a good guess that the silent reflux was interfering with her weight gain, but like so many things with babies...even the doctors have to guess and check. It's even trial and error for them. If this doesn't work, we'll keep trying other things until she's a much chubbier little bub.

So THE BOTTOM LINE ....
We are working closely with a doctor to get Sophie's weight gain up - to a good size for her (which will still be little, but much fatter than she is now!) We are trying not to stress too much about it...cause that would just be too easy to do!
We're trying not use the L word or any of its synonyms too often at this stage... for the sake of Sophie's super-sensitive and prone-to-worrying mother.

When you notice that she has gained weight, when you see that she has grown and is looking big and strong, please tell us! Tell me she is chubby and fat and healthy (when you really see that).
I think that's all I've got at the moment.

oh, on a totally random note... another language difference I run into all the time now: Americans say "Preemie", while Australians say "Premmie" (with the short e vowel.) I'm often mixing these up, so if you sometimes hear me say (or write) that word and think I'm just weird to have got that word wrong when my baby is one...your suspicions can be put to rest. My weirdness has nothing to do with it. Blame it on cultural diversity.

Good night :)