I thought since Anna is still at daycare full time I should write another entry for the blog. I took Jacob to his immunisation last Thursday. It's always hard to watch your child cry, but as always he surprised me with his resilience to pain. While we were there the doctor took the opportunity to weigh and measure him. Jacob is a healthy 61.5 cm tall, and he weighed 5.5 kg. He is placed at the 95th percentile for weight and he is off the charts for his height. David and I are good at making giant babies!
I also had my checkup at the gynaecologist and am happy to report that everything is on track with my recovery. I will have some follow-up appointments in the upcoming months but with how everything has gone so far I'm confident that I will recover fully very soon.
We also attended our first mothers group meeting last week at the early childhood centre. It was run by the health nurse who visited us at home: Cate. A few of the mums spoke about their birth experiences and some were a lot worse than ours, including one where the spinal block didn't work and she felt the first incision of her cesarean section. There were also lots of positive stories which really showed what a variety of different births one can have. I also shared my birth story and I found it really helpful to talk about it openly especially with other mums. I think mothers are the bravest people in the world and we all share a special bond. I also came across an episode of 'one born every minute' this week (an UK show filmed in the maternity unit of a hospital) which featured a birth with shoulder dystocia, here's a link to clips from the show.
One of the other topics covered was burping: to burp or not too burp. I've noticed that Jacob enjoys a burp much more than Anna so we've been trying to burp him with every single feed. But Cate suggested that if the burp doesn't come out in the first few seconds there is no need to try for ages, which makes sense because the gas either rises or it comes out the other end eventually. I think this tip has reduced my feed time dramatically again with Jacob: it now takes around 20 to 25 minutes to give him a feed, which means I can go back to sleep sooner with the night feeds.
I'm also not the only second-time mum in the group, there are three other mums with different aged kids. But I think I have the best age gaps between children as one of the mum has 13 months between her two kids and one has eight years between her two. I'm looking forward to sharing ideas with these mums about looking after more than one child at home.
While we were there Jacob started to become unsettled as he was overtired so I'm quickly put him in the pram, covered him up and started rocking the pram back and forth to settle him. He was asleep within five minutes. One of the first-time mums were so impressed with this she asked me for self-settling tips after the meeting was over. I'm so glad that Jacob is learning to self settle so well: at home, during the day, I would put him down when he gives me tired signals and it usually takes less than 15 minutes for him to fall asleep on his own (with minimal crying). He's doing this so well that I'm concerned that I'm not playing with him enough before putting him to sleep. But the more I read into self settling the more I'm confident that we're doing the right thing by putting him down when he tells us that he is tired.
Things on the Anna front: We just had a full on weekend with her. On Saturday we had some mum and daughter one-on-one time by going to the library with just the two of us. And yesterday she had a friend's birthday party at a soft play centre which she loved. In the afternoon she went to the park with David to ride her bike (with training wheels), she's getting so good at it now but she did have a fall and scraped her elbow which didn't seem to bother her too much. This week we will have Anna's three year check up so afterwards I can give everyone an update on how she is doing.
Until next time,
The 4 of us
P.S. This post was done by dictation on the iPad. It's still learning my preferences but hopefully it will help me get more efficient with blogging.
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