Yo Momma!

So, hello there little blog of mine ...

Haha, yep it sure has been a while. But I'm back at work (Day 3) and things here are still pretty slow so I thought I'd take the opportunity to write a little update on my last 6 months. Hey, if you're really lucky I may even get around to writing up the last 2 Turkey 2014 posts!

Yoh, so I'm a mamma. Life sure is different since March! I had my gorgeous little baby girl on the 2nd April. She arrived at a tiny 2.64kg, 44.5cm. In fact I think "Oh my word she is tiny!" was my first sentence when I saw her. What you don't realise till you give birth is how rarely you actually see or hold a newborn ... usually by the time friends are up for visitors, it is weeks after the birth and their babies have grown.

And she did have some hair :) That was the thing I most wanted to know on her arrival - since these days her 10 fingers and 10 toes had all already been counted in many scans.

Fast forward to last week and my baby had her half-birthday! Yep, she is now 6 months old and still pretty tiny (well, to everyone except us because we can see how she has grown!). She is finally starting to wear 3-6mnth outfits and weighed in at 6.3kg and 60.5cm long.


It hasn't been an easy 6 months of mothering.

I struggled with breast feeding, which is not nearly as natural as you might've been led to believe. But we found a lactation consultant when the Babe Girl was 6 days old. We weaned her off her formula top-ups (encourage during our 3 days in hospital) and got her exclusively onto breast milk. But then we moved to Cape Town and my milk dried up (apparently the stress can do that) and by the time I got it back with the help of Eglonyl (and Castle Milk Stout), she was only interested in drinking from a bottle! Cue more time spent expressing. Which, let's face it was bound to get tedious eventually. So around 4 months, we switched over to 100% formula. It wasn't the plan in the beginning, but that is how life happens and everyone is fine for it. So, no mommy guilt here :)

We struggled with sleeping. Everyone said it'd get easier after 6-8 weeks ... I thought week 8 - 10 were 2 of the hardest! But we got a bedtime routine down and life got much easier :) Till we hit her 4 month sleep regression and ended up getting a sleep consultant in. Around that time, I also ended up starting cipralex because the lack of sleep and motherhood suddenly combined to give me severe anxiety. And it is no fun feeling permanently on the verge of a panic attack.

There are many perks of being an "older" mother, I had the financial flexibility to take a full 6 months of maternity leave (no idea how people manage with less!) and to adjust my working hours (leaving the office at 13h30 to collect the Babe Girl from daycare makes such a difference!). But, a serious downside, I discovered, was that at this stage of my life, I was used to being good at what I did every day. Being a mom definitely didn't come as naturally to me as I expected. I thought I'd be better at it. I took my confidence down a notch because most of the time I don't know what I'm doing. And I've been banned from Google because that didn't help make me feel any better about things either! Nothing like 50+ conflicting views on what is wrong or right to muddle you more!

Seriously, one of my most terrifying realisations was that 3 days after your baby is born, they send you home from hospital and say "Bye, see you in 6 weeks" (well, you'll see your paed & gynae). Like, really? How on earth can I be trusted to know what to do with this tiny little thing? (Clearly we figured it out tho ;) )

All that said, life is wonderful. The Babe Girl is quite amazing and far more easy going than I am about all this - haha. She is a complete delight and I adore spending time just hanging out with her, watching her get better and better at everything she does!

She's been sleeping in her own room since about 4.5 months and been sitting well on her own for ages already! She is a chatty little thing (wonder where she got that, haha!). And even tho she is a distracted bottle-drinker, she is a very enthusiastic eater (we start solids just before 5months because of this). Seriously, we call her The Hoover! It's like feeding a shark, haha. Her latest thing is to take the spoon from me and feed herself. She is pretty amazing, I'm more than just a little bit in love with everything about her!

Oh yes, and we moved to Cape Town. Because, you know, having a baby wasn't enough for us, we decided to move provinces when she was 3 months old too! That was smoother than one might expect and we're very happy here. We got extremely lucky and have bought a house that is 5-10 minutes from both my folks houses, has easy access onto the M3 and in walking distance to the shops (I barely used my car during my leave, would just pop the Babe Girl into her pram and go shopping!). It is also in a very family orientated neighbourhood, with lots of parks nearby so our afternoon Baby & Dog walks are great fun and varied!

Madam has been going to a nearby daycare for a few weeks now. We decided that since we had the time, we would phase her in slowly, starting with just 2hrs a day for the first week, building up to her full time there this week.

Righto, that's enough of an update for now. You're mostly all caught up ;)