The only memory that detracts from the joy of how well everything turned out is going home on at the end of the day after she was born. The doctors and nurses were convinced that she would be with her mummy later that evening as she was so strong, so I went home to get some rest and prepare for our first proper day together as a family. When I think about what Milly had to go through that night without her Mummy or Daddy, it tears me up and I struggle to forgive myself for leaving her alone and sitting at her side through the night. I am well aware that this is irrational, that there was no way I could have known if the Doctors didn't. But that is how it makes me feel, and I have promised Milly that she never have to be on own like that again.
Milly's First Year
Saturday, 1 December 2012
The First Year: Part 2 - In the blink of an eye
The only memory that detracts from the joy of how well everything turned out is going home on at the end of the day after she was born. The doctors and nurses were convinced that she would be with her mummy later that evening as she was so strong, so I went home to get some rest and prepare for our first proper day together as a family. When I think about what Milly had to go through that night without her Mummy or Daddy, it tears me up and I struggle to forgive myself for leaving her alone and sitting at her side through the night. I am well aware that this is irrational, that there was no way I could have known if the Doctors didn't. But that is how it makes me feel, and I have promised Milly that she never have to be on own like that again.
Monday, 5 November 2012
The First Year: Part 1
Over the last couple of months, Milly has become a speedy little mover, a keen communicator, and a devilish practical joker. She has really cracked the art of crawling, her elaborate system of rolling everywhere has been usurped by moving on all fours. It seems like every day she gets stronger and faster. With this ability to move freely, comes the exploration of once out-of-reach places. There is barely a corner that has not been examined, or a table crawled under, all seemingly in search of some magical bounty that she has yet to find. There is also the added excitement of being able to eat anything that she finds on the floor. We can check all over for the tiniest of specks, yet Milly finds everything and pops it in her mouth without a moments hesitation. Over the last few weeks, we have fished no end of things from her mouth, but she needs watching like a hawk. It has actually become a little game that she plays. If she now finds something on the floor, she will crawl up to it but not pick it up straight away. She'll keep looking at you, hoping that you look away, and as soon as you do, in it goes. Quite smart really. A recent development is her ability to pull herself into a standing position using whatever is near by. She has even started to try it unaided in the middle of the floor. She seems to get braver everyday, which isn't doing our nerves any favours, but I don't think it will be too long before she starts taking a few steps.
On the talking front, Milly is doing really well. She is not shy of letting her voice be heard, happily babbling away to herself, or demanding more attention, she is never short of something to say. We have also heard some words quite clearly. She has cracked 'Mum' and 'Dad', and is getting really good at 'Car', 'Ball' and 'Bear' (in fact 'Bear' is so good that 'Old Macdonald' only has bears on his farm!!!). We also occasionally get a 'Gran' and a 'Hello', but by far her favourite seems to be 'Bye', normally accompanied with a cheeky grin and a wave. Over the last couple of months, Milly has been getting her tongue around pronouncing 'L'. This ends up with Milly sat yodelling constantly, which is very amusing.
As for the practical jokes, we've always known that Milly has a wicked sense of humour from the twinkle she gets in her eyes when she is about to do something naughty. But she has taken this to a new level. First of all, there is the sock game. This is a simple game that brings great amusement, and all it involves is you putting a sock on Milly's foot and her removing it as you put on the next. This game can last a while!!! The next is one Milly plays with Mummy. This game involves Milly dropping her food on the floor, and as Mummy bends down to pick it up, Milly grabs her hair with hands covered in whatever she has been eating (Beans, Dairylea, Chocolate pudding etc.). The last one she saves for me. Having taught Milly how to 'Hi-Five', she will readily offer up her hand when prompted for a good old handslap. But she has developed her own little joke where she will offer up her hand, as you raise yours in anticipation of the 'Hi-five', Milly removes her hand and turns away grinning. This will be repeated over and over, until she eventually delivers on the promise, leaving you guessing when she will, and won't go through with it. She loves it!!!
More to follow....
Monday, 6 August 2012
Time for Nursery
Milly starting nursery has given me mixed feelings. On the one hand, I wish that we were in a position to be able to look after Milly ourselves, especially for her first few years. She is not even a year old, and she is having to spend a lot of her time away from Mummy and Daddy. On the other hand, Milly loves the company of other children, and I'm sure that it will do her good to be in a different environment, learning things that she won't pick up spending all her time with us. But I do have to admit that I don't like the idea of her being looked after by someone else. This is not a question of the quality of the care that nurseries provide, rather a gut feeling about Milly being anywhere that we are not in control of. I'm just putting this down as one of those feelings that we'll have to get used to, as I'm sure it will crop up again and again.
It was one of those coincidences that, just as Milly was approaching 8 months, and Elaine was starting to think about returning to work, Milly started to become aware of when we weren't around, and becoming very vocal in her displeasure of such circumstances. Having cuddles with various people would often end up with an upset baby and a hurried exchange back to Mummy or Daddy. While we had expected some separation anxiety, as it is something that all babies go through, it made the prospect of Milly starting nursery a daunting one, especially for Elaine, who would be the one who had to leave Milly and see her face as she did so (I am spared this as I get to bail out early due to the location of my library!!). While we had never intended to just dump Milly at nursery on her first morning and let her get on with it, we decided that a better approach would be to take Milly in to meet the staff, get used to the environment and leave her for short periods to get used to the idea. I must confess that this was mainly Elaine's idea, I hadn't really thought about the practicalities of the situation, and the nursery were really accommodating during this period. It is actually their preferred method of introducing a new baby to the nursery, and so had a structure in place for Milly's induction (for want of a better word!!). As with everything else, Milly took to it brilliantly, wowing the staff with her smile, and enjoying the opportunity to play with other babies. This certainly helped to put Elaine's mind at ease, knowing that if she had to leave Milly somewhere, it was somewhere she could have have fun, and with people that she responded well to.
When I returned to work after my paternity leave, I didn't have too many problems with it. I had always expected to only have a few weeks off, and the circumstances surrounding Milly's arrival meant that, for me, it was a relief to return to work and start getting things back to normal (the day she was born, returning to work seemed a long way off!!). For Elaine, however, although she also expected to return to work, she had had nine months of building a routine with Milly, getting to know her, and enjoying every second of it. I can still remember the feeling of that final day of the summer holidays, dreading the return to school, and hoping for 4 more weeks off. I can only imagine how Elaine felt (and probably still feels) returning to work after 9 months, something that too, seemed a long way off. Despite being understandably upset at times, Elaine has coped with it in a way that I'm sure I wouldn't have been able too. But Milly has been the real star in all of this. She has those teary moments when being dropped off, but apparently gets over it quickly enough, and gets on with having fun at the nursery.
It seems that despite all the changes that Milly has gone through over the last few weeks, it is Elaine and I that have had the most adjusting to do, and probably me more than Elaine if I'm honest. I always came to work knowing that Milly was safe at home being looked after by Mummy. I was secure in this, and it never caused me any distress. But this last few weeks have been testing for me. I always knew that it wouldn't be easy to leave Milly in the care of relative strangers, but I have found little things really annoying about what they do. The one thing that has really bugged me though is that they think that Milly is a handful, simply because she won't sit quietly playing with the same toy. Milly is a baby who constantly enjoys interaction, and she gets this at home. She watches everything that we do and is learning all the time, even when she does sit playing on her own, she likes to look around and know that we are paying attention. Apparently, this makes Milly a handful...I can think of worse things!!!
Wednesday, 27 June 2012
Roll over Miss Milly
Over the
last few months, Milly has been starting to roll over. While her efforts have been epic, for someone
starting the movement process, they have taken time to yield the rewards of
potential freedom and the opportunity to explore the larger world…well, our
floor. For that reason, I have yet to
really discuss Milly’s efforts, in the process of rolling over, to any great
length in this blog, but now the time has come.
One thing
has struck me in watching Milly work out the right sequence of movements that
get her from her front to her back, and that is how easily we take for granted
the our ability to move around. Milly
has had to learn how to position her arms so they aren’t in the way as she
rolls, but are there to catch her when she gets over; which leg to move in
order to pull herself over; how to arch her back to lift her shoulder off the
floor; and how to do it all in reverse to get back onto her back. The other important thing to learn is how to
avoid landing flat on your face on the way down. This, unfortunately is something that
everyone has to learn the hard way.
Milly certainly did, but happily she learned this quickly and was soon
making controlled landings on her front.
While Milly’s upper-body strength
took a little time to develop, she would only be able
to hold her head up for a little while once on her front.
As soon as she would start tiring, her head would go down on the floor,
and she would begin to get frustrated.
Unfortunately, frustration would bring a lack of clear thinking, and she wouldn't be able to roll herself onto her back.
This meant that we went through a period where she could roll from her
back to her front, from her front to her to her back, but it would only be on
the rare occasion that she could put it all together and position herself how
she wanted.
The
beginning of the rolling process showed Milly that by rocking herself from one
side to the other, she was able to wriggle herself towards anything she
wanted. This caused a few heart-stopping
moments when, left safely in the middle of our bed, she would move herself
towards one of her toys as soon as we turned around, and we would find her off
towards one of the edges. Needless to
say, we have to keep a close eye on her now (I’m sure she already has a few
places eyed up for when she is fully mobile!!!). One of the great joys of Milly learning to
roll has been the games we can play with her to encourage to roll over. Strategically placing her favourite toys out
of her reach to give her something to aim towards seemed to yield the best
results. It was also quite amusing to
see her working out what was needed to get her to go that final inch. The first few times that she rolled over, she
must have had a cough which jerked her onto her front, because she went through
a period of fake coughing when she got onto her side, to help her get
over. Watching that was really
funny. But eventually, as she continued
to grow and learn, she has now mastered this art, and gets enormous pleasure
from rolling over and over.
In the last few
days, Milly has started to put together the beginnings of a ‘commando’
crawl. At the moment, it is completely
inefficient, and she very often pushes herself backwards rather than forwards,
but there is certainly the beginnings of a crawl. For a few weeks, she had been moving her arms
and legs but going absolutely nowhere, but she has started to move her arms and
legs together now, and is slowly starting to drag herself forwards. Her determination to reach certain toys seems to
have no bounds!!!
Tuesday, 15 May 2012
Instinct or the learned way?
Over the last few weeks I have been thinking about the
way that we have been bringing up Milly.
This started because of a pair of Peregrine Falcons that have chosen the
Newton Building of Nottingham Trent University to nest atop of, and rear their
chicks. They have doing this
successfully for the last 10 years, but this being my first year working at
Trent, this is the first time that it has really come to my attention. As some of you may know, the University has
installed a webcam near the nest so anyone can see the coming and goings of the
falcons, and the development of the chicks, it really does make for compelling
viewing, but I should warn that if you watch long enough, you are likely to see
plenty of dead pigeons being ripped apart!!!
If anyone is interested, http://www.ntu.ac.uk/ecoweb/biodiversity/falcons/index.html.
Being in the midst of the weaning process, it was
watching the falcons feed their chicks that I related to the most. It made me think how we had known that Milly
was ready to move onto more solid food, but delayed because everything told us
that you had to wait until 6 months, and that we had to bear in mind Milly’s 'adjusted' age. Yet the falcons just got
on with it. They didn’t care that one of
their chicks was smaller than the others, it got fed the same way, and the
parents let them all dictate how much they ate.
At no stage, did I see them charting how much each chick had eaten that
day, and calculating whether that was enough based upon their weight. It just made me think that we should relax a
little bit, take comfort from the fact that we knew Milly, could see how she
was developing, and were getting good at giving her what she needed. Trust in our instincts. Elaine and I actually had a discussion about
the virtues of relying on instincts, in which I said that humans had raised
children in caves for thousands of years, so there must be something inherent
within us that makes sure that we provide whatever is necessary. Don’t get me wrong, we were not discussing a
radical overhaul of what we were doing, we just found it interesting thinking
about how approaches had changed.
The very same weekend that we were talking about this,
was the same one when it rained pretty much constantly. I remember looking at the falcons on the
webcam and seeing the mother sat on the nest looking wetter than I have ever seen
a bird (there is a picture on the falcon blog if you select it from the above
link). The next day we found out that 2
of the baby falcons had died due to the extreme weather. A couple of days later, a third one
died. It was pretty sad viewing over that
week, the parents seemed to pick the strongest chick and focused their
attention on it, giving it extra food while the other survivor slowly faded
away. All because their instincts told
them to do this. As you can imagine,
this gave me a renewed appreciation for raising a baby with the learned
experiences of medical professionals, and generations that have gone before. The advice is there for a reason,
there are some scenarios that you can’t be prepared for, and a little extra
guidance is needed, like what to do when a six-week premature baby can’t cope with food. In a world where all we have are instincts,
we wouldn’t have a baby and I wouldn’t writing this blog, chances are I wouldn’t
have a wife now either!! I take comfort
in knowing that our instincts as parents have often been right, we have been
able to give what Milly needed when she wanted it. But it is also nice to know that we have that
safety net behind us, just in case.
Friday, 20 April 2012
Food, Food, Glorious Food...
We have now reached the stage where we can start giving Milly proper meals mushed up. We bought a couple of weaning books that are full of recipes, and I'm not joking when I say that she will be eating better than us!!! Last week, we spent a day making up 4 different recipes that covered most of the bases. Over the next few days, Milly will be trying Cauliflower Cheese, Chicken and Parsnip, Beef and Sweet Potato, and Salmon and Pea. The preparation of these meals involved a lot of dicing, slicing, sautéing, boiling, and finally blitzing. What was remarkable, however, is that no matter what the ingredients were, by the the time they had been through the blender, they were all pretty much the same colour. It was good fun though, and the food was smelling good as it simmered away, it didn't taste bad either. Over the last few weeks, it has been great fun watching Milly get to grips with meal times. She is loving her high chair, even joining everyone at the dinner table for Easter lunch, and watching her expressions when she tries new flavours is often amusing. However, the downside to all this is the nervous tension created by the smallest cough. A tiny little splutter and we are anxiously waiting to hear if she is breathing OK, or starting to choke. Luckily this has not happened, but Milly is clearly a lot more relaxed than we are!!!
Saturday, 24 March 2012
Daddy is Still Learning
It is a
while since my last blog. One of reasons
for this – aside from watching too much sport on my days off – is that I wasn’t
sure what I wanted to write about. My
initial intention in writing this blog, was to describe the experiences of
being a first-time Dad, and relate the things that I have learned along the
way. I haven’t quite lived up to that
brief at the moment, partly because I have been keen to avoid clichéd
anecdotes, but also because Milly has provided me with plenty of other things
to discuss so that I haven’t really had to discuss how I’m finding the transition
to fatherhood. So, as Milly approaches
the 6 month mark, I figure that it is time for an assessment of Daddy – I’m not
sure that I’m going to come off very well at the end of this!!!
Since
returning to work at the end of my paternity leave, the one thing that I looked
forward to every night was coming home and having a cuddle with Milly. Every night, after her last feed, she would
lie on my chest, wriggle until she had got herself comfy, and fall asleep. Needless to say, this was my favourite part
of parenthood. The fact that my little
girl felt safe and secure with me felt great, and I used to love just letting
her lie on me. This was our special
little routine that we each shared with each other at the end of every
day.
One thing
about Milly is that she hates to be confined.
If she feels that she is in anyway constricted, then she lets us know
about it. This was noted when Elaine
took her out in the carry cot. She HATED
it! She screamed, and shook
herself! It was not good. This meant that as soon as she started to
fill her Moses basket, she became less comfortable in there. So we took the decision to move her into her
own room and let her sleep in her cot.
The ease in which she falls to sleep in her cot made us realise that she
had been frustrated in her Moses basket for a while. Despite the move, Milly and I continued our
bedtime routine, and when she fell asleep, I would move her to her cot. This continued until a couple of weeks
ago. The more alert that Milly has
become, the more she seems to enjoy our company. When I arrive home from work, she is always
excited to see me and eager for a cuddle.
However, her eagerness to see me is coupled with a desire to play just
when she should be getting ready for bed.
The result of this is that she no longer wants to cuddle up and go to
sleep, but wants to play. This makes me
the bad guy for not letting her play, and makes Milly cry at the merest
suggestion that it is time to settle down.
Her bedtime routine now consists of putting her in her cot under her
mobile and letting her fall asleep of her own accord, which usually happens
after 10 minutes. This is good. We have not made her dependent upon us to
cuddle her to sleep. But I miss our
cuddles. It actually made me quite sad
that Milly no longer wanted to end the day this way, but also proud that
already she is an independent little girl, that will settle down in her cot on
her own, and who just wants to play with Daddy when he gets in from work.
Asides from my parental failings, Milly has had an exciting couple of weeks. She has started to have baby rice in the mornings, which she seems to enjoy, and we have just started to give her some vegetable mush in the evenings. The vegetable mush has had varying results – the sweet potato went down a treat…the broccoli didn’t!! – but Milly is getting used to taking food from a spoon, and seems to have fun in the process. We also bought her a high chair, which has gone down well. She likes being able to sit up and have look around, she likes to know what’s going on and that she is not missing out on anything!!!
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