3 – Number of teeth Baby O now has

2- Number of times she’s fallen off the bed  since this

Chxta reminded me that I hadn’t spoken about Baby O in a while, so I decided to do a lil’ update.

she’s now 8 and a half months old, and while she’s not quite crawling yet, she’s slithering on the ground with such ease and skill, it’s hard to keep up !! Her favourite ‘toys’ are wires and paper. Yup. That’s right. My daughter loves to crumble up paper, and she gravitates to every electrical socket in the house !!

Oh, and she can now pull herself to a standing position. We saw it for the first time this morning, an my wife and I were so excited, the poor girl was wondering what all the fuss was about.

Oh, and at her day care, her favourote past time is sneaking up behind the other babies, and climbing on top of them. Scares the hell out of the other babies !!

This is a true story. I haven’t even bothered to create fictional names and all that jazz:

Boso: “Hello, I’ve got a flight booked with your airline, and I’d like to reserve a sky cot for my baby for the flight please”

Agent: “No problem. Can I just confirm the names of the three passengers and their relationship to you please”

Boso: “Sure. There’s me, Boso, my wife, Mrs. Boso and Baby O, our 7 month old daughter.”

Agent: “OK, can I confirm with you that your daughter will not be over the age of two at any time during your trip”

Boso: “No she won’t”

Agent: “And which one of you will be requiring a cot?”

Insert insult here………………………………………………………..

OK, so where do I start.

Last Thursday, my wife and I were getting ready to go to work. Baby O was all dressed up and ready to go, so we put in in the centre of the bed. My wife went out of the room, and I was putting on my shoes. baby O must have rolling around as usual, but I had my back to her, so I couldn’t see her. Then it happened.

I heard a loud thump, as my baby girl hit the wood panelled floor.

My heart immediately broke into a million pieces. I screamed, and then turned around, to see my baby on the floor. She was screaming her lungs out. I carried her, and managed to calm her down. We did a quick check, and there were no obvious signs of injury. I took her to day care, but I couldn’t concentrate at work. I kept hearing the sound of her hitting the ground. Over and over again. I couldn’t take it anymore, I ran downstairs to check if she was fine. She was. In fact, she’d mastered a new skill, she started to drag herself along the floor to reach anything of interest, which was reassuring. I checked on her twice more that day, I’m sure the day care staff were wondering what was going on !!Anyway, we thought the worst was behind us.

Thursday night, we put Baby O to bed, and after a while, she did an almighty vomit. Picked her up, cleaned her up, and she proceeded to vomit on the bed. Friday I worked from home, so I could look after her. She seemed fine all day. She started being sick again at night. Saturday was pretty bad, first, she threw up all over me at a wedding, then again in the car park. During a conversation with a friend who happens to be a paediatrician, I was made aware of the fact that there was a link between head injury and vomiting.

Oh dear God. What had I done to my baby girl? Had I damaged her for life? I was a mess. I spoke to my mum that night, who’s also a doctor, and she said the same thing about the vomiting. Also, Baby O was sleeping a lot more than usual. I couldn’t sleep. I woke my wife up and told her. We woke up Baby O who had been asleep for hours. We tried hard to feed her, she couldn’t hold down any milk, but managed to take some baby rice. I was mortified. I felt useless. All I had to do was look after this little girl, and I’d let her down.

So Sunday, I called NHS Direct. The nurse said that it sounded like she had a stomach bug, but in case of a head injury we needed to see a doctor. So I went to see the Out of Hours GP. The out of hours GP said that she looked fine, but to be safe, we needed to see a paediatrician. So it was off to the hospital. The paediatrician said that she looked ok, but wanted to her the opinion of the registrar (sense a pattern?)

The registrar was a real stand-up guy. He explained that in today’s world where a lawsuit was more common that the cold virus, it was common practice to pass the buck. So he gave it to me straight. Baby O was as active as ever, pulling everything she could, dragging herself on any surface she was put on, fighting off the doctors, she was as healthy as any seven month baby could be. But he pointed out there was a small chance that she may have a small bleed in her brain. He asked me to watch her carefully over the next 2 days. Any signs of increased drowsinesses or bile-like vomit, I should call them starightaway.The one missing symptom was diarrhoea. He said that if we saw any diarrhoea, then we should be happy, because it meant she had stomach flu.

So, he was letting us go, but he wasn’t telling us everything was OK.

We got home. After all the activity at the hospital, she started sleeping again. As in all in the time. I was scared out of my wits. Fortunately, in a few hours, we confirmed that she had diarrhoea. So it looks like we have a stomach virus after all.

We’re still not out of the woods yet, she’s not eating properly, and she’s weak from it. She’s tired, and not as active, or happy as usual. But she’s getting better.

I still feel terrible for letting her fall. But a quick search on the web made me realise it’s not that uncommon, and more often than not, the kids always end up being ok in the end. Her drowsiness may be a symptom of something more serious, but I’m trusting God that she’s ok.

I’m writing this post on Monday, but won’t publish it till she starts again at day care, just to make sure she’s ok.

BREAKING NEWS: An epidemic in the day care. I just got the email. Symptoms are :

1. Listlessness
2. Vomiting
3. Diarrhoea

I have never been so relieved in my entire life !! At least we know:

a. Where she got it from
b. That the behaviour isn’t related to the fall !!
c. She will get better !!!

……or maybe just a warning?

Today, during a friend’s wedding. As the bride and groom were reading the vows.

Priest: Are you ready to accept children lovingly from God and bring them up according to the law of Christ and his Church.

Groom: I am….. 

Baby O then proceeded to throw up all over me. BAH !

Baby O and I are both out of commission with a stomach bug.

I said that to myself as I was giving Baby O water to drink. There was a sound as if something solid had hit the cup. Mmmmmmm…

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a tooth. You can just see the top of it, nice and white.

Baby O is doing really well, she’s eating solids now, mainly vegetables, and we haven’t found anything she doesn’t like, peas, banana, potato and even BROCOLLI. (Yuck!)

This week has been so busy at work, I worked US hours till Wednesday (2-10pm UK time), and today was MAD busy. Hopefully, things will calm down tomorrow.

so I thought I’d do an update on Baby O. Right now, I’m 3000 miles away from here, and I miss my little angel so much. I’ve got a few pictures of her on the digital camera, and a video, which I’ve been looking at all the time, wondering if she’ll change before I get back. It’s such a shame that after spending a week in Milan, I had to leave her for another week and a half. What if she doesn’t recognise me when I get back? Anyway, I digress……..

 Anyway, she started day care last week. Well, she started a 3 day phase in on wednesday, and started on Monday to be precise. Before I left, we went into the montesorri center together, and she started to play with the toys there, and looked content. The teachers were all excited to see her, and it was refreshing to see people who had worked with kids for so long, and yet were excited to see a new one. Anyway, she’s been going back, and according to my wife, she’s settled in quite well (apart from throwing up on the person who fed her yesterday).

She’s also managed to sit up now, every now and then. While in Milan, my wife noticed that she was sitting up inside the pushchair. She will sit steady for a few seconds, then gets bored, and decides to move, falling over in the process. She can’t roll over yet, well, that’s not really true, she can, but she doesn’t feel inclined to.

Anyway, my little girl is 5 and a half months old now, I can’t believe she’s grown up so fast !! When I get back, we’ll be going to ‘work’ together, the day care is in my office building. I guess it will be a chance for us to bond, and I’m really looking forward to it.

First of the month.

Great news on the Baby O front, after initially turning down WySoy, Baby O finally took it 24 hours later !! And she’s been gobbling it up every day since Tuesday. Well, it’s only been 3 days, but we are so relieved.

I upgraded the software on my blog to WordPress 2.1, only to find out that several plugins no longer work. The funny thing is that my other blog upgraded, but not in the same way, in fact, it’s close to un-usable. Thankfully, I blog effectively enough using the Windows Live Writer, so at least I’m happy.

Might be traveling for work in a few weeks, almost confirmed, should know for sure tomorrow. The trip has been in the offing for a while, but it kept getting canceled, postponed, etc, so I decided to keep quiet about it for now. But it looks very likely to go ahead now. I’m going to miss my wife, and my lovely daughter so much. Will she remember me when I get back I wonder?

Anyway, the first month of 2007 is already over !! Time flies, eh?

In the left corner, wearing yellow trunks, and weighing in at 900g, it’s Cow and Gate InfaSoy !!

And in the right corner, wearing green and white trunks, and also weighing in at 900g, it’s SMA WySoy !!

 

So wo will win the heart and mind of Baby O? Only time will tell.

First of all, my wife and I need the courage to try one of them on her, although at this moment, we’re leaning towards WySoy. Both quite expensive though, about twice the cost of normal baby formula.

 Let’s just hope she likes at least one of them !!

Baby O is allergic to milk protein.

We tried another formula on Saturday, and ended up in the Accident and Emergency ward 4 hours later. We were there for a while, but left after about 5 hours.

We were given a baby formula to try:

Allegedly, it’s free of cow’s milk. However, our little girl didn’t like it at all. My wife and I tasted it, it tastes like medicine. So it would seem like we’re stuck, given that she should be starting day care in the last week of February.

Well, we’re done a little research, and we’ve discovered this one:

So tomorrow, we need to look for it. God knows where we’ll find it. And we pray the baby will like it !!

OH THE JOYS OF PARENTHOOD.