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15/06/2008 |
SueArchdall
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Emily has now slept in her large cot in her bedroom two nights in a row. I really didn’t want to move her in there yet (she turned three months today) but she is now too big for her Moses basket. We tried moving the furniture in our bedroom around but we can’t fit her cot in, or if we did we wouldn’t be able to get to the bathroom or open the wardrobe.
But I am still not happy about her being in another room. Most of the new mothers I have spoken to still have their babies in their rooms. Others have put their babies in their own room, usually because their babies were very noisy sleepers and kept them awake. The Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths recommends that the baby sleeps in the same room as their parents until six months of age. If there is not enough space, they recommend you should have the baby in the next nearest room, with the doors left open.
I can hear her cries quite easily from our room. She is now sleeping through the night and wakes me up between 5.30am and 7am. We check on her before bed and I also still wake for a middle-of-the-night trip to the toilet so I check on her then. We are looking into buying a baby monitor but so far have been able to hear her quite easily with both doors open– that is one advantage of living in a flat.
We have finally started using the washable nappies that we had bought before Emily arrived. However, the nappy gets very wet and it is quite revolting to change. But hey I’m getting used to body fluids, if it is not wee or poo, there is leaking breast milk to clean up or boogers to clear from Emily’s nose.
I am slowly learning the words to baby songs and amuse Emily with my singing and dancing. She particular likes any of my poorly coordinated dance routines and my scarecrow impersonation is guaranteed to get one of her gorgeous toothless smiles.
We went to Rhymetime at the local library this week. It involves a group of mums and babies singing and doing the actions to a host of favourites such as Old McDonald Had a Farm, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and Incy Wincy Spider. I knew most of the songs but there were a few new ones for me – I can’t wait to go again.
Emily looked at everyone in amazement, she is too small to join in but it won’t be long before she is waving one of the percussion instruments in, or out of, time and making a racket with the rest of them. She had a particularly long afternoon nap afterward; I think all of the noise tired her out.
On Friday I went to an exercise class for new mothers run by Women’s Health Physiotherapists at St Helier hospital, where Emily was born. The class is full of new mums who bring their babies along and lie them down on a large mat while they take part in a basic exercise routine, to strengthen their pelvic floor and abdominal muscles.
It isn’t a regimental exercise class, the mothers routinely get up to check on their grizzly baby or can feed them if need be. At one point the sound of numerous babies crying reminded me of our time in the maternity ward, which must have been good training for Emily because when I checked on her she was fast asleep. The other mothers were well impressed.
My stomach muscles were checked before I could join the class. I was told that as your stomach enlarges in pregnancy, the muscles stretch and lengthen and often separate down the centre leaving a gap after birth. The physiotherapist measured my gap and the muscles have not returned to normal. She advised I do some stomach strengthening exercises and gave me a pamphlet with some useful movements.
I was interested to read that the uterus reduces in size by six to eight weeks and the ligaments will have tightened up by about five months after your baby’s birth. Some problems that can linger on include back and joint pain, stress incontinence and weak abdominal and pelvic floor muscles. Most of the new mothers I have spoken to, including myself, complain of sore knees or shoulders which are exasperated from lifting their continually growing babies.
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