Baby Haul

I went a little mad at the Pumpkin Patch online sale! Most of these are in 6-12 months ready for summer. Mia is nearly 6 months now but is still in 3-6 months with plenty of room to grow (in fact the dungaree set shown at the end of this post is 3-6 months and is huge still on her!) By the time she is in 6-12 month clothes it will probably be June/July which will be perfect for the hottest part of the summer...providing we have a hot summer this year in the UK of course! The Monsoon dress however is 12-18 months as I bought this for her first birthday. I think it will be too big for that but it may be OK for christmas or my birthday otherwise.

Pumpkin Patch - £17 reduced to £9.99

Pumpkin Patch - £20 reduced to £11.50

Pumpkin Patch - £19 half price at The Baby Show London - £9.50

Monsoon Baby - RRP £45 Reduced to £13.50

Pumpkin Patch - £20 reduced to £9.99

Pumpkin Patch - £20 reduced to £9.99

Pumpkin Patch - £18 reduced to £11.99

Pumpkin Patch - £9.50 reduced to £5.50

Toy Collection

A collection of some of Mia's favourite toys!

Do your babies have any of the same toys?

Weaning

So we are looking to start weaning Mia soon onto solid food! She will be 6 months in a couple of weeks so I have been shopping and bought her 

This book was bought for us by a friend at our baby shower.

It gives you lots of a recipe ideas

It gives you step by step guides to food groups and what to feed your growing baby

We bought the Tommee Tipee bowl and storage pots. These were half price in Tesco and cost us £2.99 for the pots and £2.50 for the bowl.

Any advice or tips you have about weaning I would love to hear them. Please leave them in the comment box below...

Outfit of the Day

Today I am wearing a maroon dress with patterned tights. This is an outfit I wear often for work.
(I realise I have no shoes on! haha! Usually I would wear either black ballet pumps or black suede ankle boots.)

Makeup - MUA and Dior

Dress - Monsoon £45

Tights - Primark £3

Found my name!

C-Section Recovery

I wanted to do a post about recovering for a c-section/cesarean. 

I had an emergency cesarean with my daughter and was completely unprepared for how long recovery was going to be. I wish that I had read about cesarean recovery before so that I would of felt a little more prepared. 

Straight after the operation I was taken up to recovery for a few hours. There the nurses gave me my first meal in hours and had me hooked up to monitors. After the first hour or so I began to feel my legs again and could wiggle my toes. Later that day I was moved downstairs to the ward and was given a painkiller in tablet form and also a drink which was mixed with peppermint oil and a strong dissoluble painkiller. The nurses continued to give me these painkillers three times a day while I was in hospital and then sent me home with the same ones once I was discharged. 

The next day I tried to stand for the first time since the operation - this is where I wished I had done some research. Standing up for the first time was agony. I lent on Adam and cried because I was in so much pain I didn't want to stand straighter but I also didn't want him to lie me back on the bed because I knew it would be agony either way. I am quite a strong person who is not a wimp with pain but the pain I felt standing and moving around the first few times was unreal! I would not wish that feeling on my worst enemy!

Later the same day I was made to go to the bathroom if I wanted to be sent home the following day. I had to use the wheelchair the first time because I was never going to be able to walk across the hall to the bathroom. I managed it and it did not hurt to pass urine at all which I was relieved about. 

That day I continued to practise standing up and manoeuvring myself from the bed to the chair. Sitting down hurt for a week or so after as well just because of the bending on your stomach muscles used to sit. Each night I had to have an injection to thin the blood because you are not very mobile it ensures you don't get a blood clot. 

The first week is painful getting up out of bed and sitting on a chair and walking for more than a few paces but gradually it gets better. By the third week I was feeling pretty much back to normal. My incision area would still hurt if I was moving around a lot and even now on occasion it will ache especially if I am outside and it's cold. 

If any of you have had a planned cesarean after an emergency cesarean or more than one cesarean was the recovery quicker the second time around?

Co-sleeping

Co-sleeping is a really controversial topic that I wanted to discuss in my blog today and invite any of you guys who have co-slept or who are thinking about co-sleeping to share your views and opinions.

We co-slept with our daughter for her first 4 months and in doing so we received many comments on forums and in public;

'I know a friend of a friend who did that and hurt her baby...' 

'if you don't get her out your bed now, you never will!'

'It's really dangerous!'

We were not planning on co-sleeping at all, we had bought the moses basket and cot and when we first came home form the hospital she slept in her moses basket for the first 4-5 weeks. During that time none of us got much sleep - which is to be expected with a newborn but she longed to sleep on our chest and also to sleep on her tummy (which again we are advised against.) How the co-sleeping began was we were all so tired and I had just recently returned to work that one evening I decided we would all have a lie down in the bed together to get her off to sleep and then move her to her moses basket. She fell asleep straight away and so did we...she slept from 9pm - 6am! She had started to sleep from 9pm- midnight for a final feed then again till 6am but never straight through without the midnight feed! This allowed us all to get a better nights sleep and because we were both working meant that we were not so tired for work and generally were all in a better mood with one another as none of us do well with little sleep!

We just decided to continue with the sleeping arrangement and bought a bed rail for one side of the bed to ensure baby didn't fall off - these are not recommended until 18months because they can get their limbs trapped down the side but we rolled a blanket and shoved it down there to prevent that happening. We also removed all pillows and used blankets instead of a heavy duvet. I only let baby sleep next to me as my fiance is a heavy sleeper and we were both worried he wouldn't be as responsive as he doesn't have the mothers instincts like a mummy does.

It is true for me that I didn't sleep in a deep sleep because I was always aware of where our baby was on the bed and every time she made a noise or moved I woke up instantly but it was lovely to fall asleep with her and wake up to her beautiful smiley face each and every morning staring at me!

I do miss co-sleeping but for over a month now she has been in her cot and we didn't have any problems with the transition to the cot, we haven't experienced any bad nights where she has woken up all night and she has never indicated she wants to come back in our bed.