Smiles, shoes and lots of sick: she’s 2 months old!

This month all your efforts will be rewarded with beaming, toothless baby smiles. Your baby’s first genuine smiles will be among the most heart-warming milestones.

In a sense it’s payback time. You’ve been nappy changing, feeding, bathing, kissing, and cuddling without much response from your new baby. But one day, it happens. Your baby smiles, and you’re certain he wasn’t just passing wind. This will delight you, even if you’ve just had your worst night yet.

You can encourage your baby to smile at you by pulling funny faces at him and making noises. As your baby grows, he will start trying to copy you!

http://www.babycentre.co.uk/a717/your-two-month-olds-development#ixzz34LbESHbt

Well.. that’s true enough. The past week or so, we’ve been treated to some absolutely beautiful smiles, such as –

 

And that little grin just melts my heart every time I see it. It can usually be encouraged by just saying ‘Hello’ to her, so I think we may have a smiley baby on our hands if she’s that easily pleased! At the minute she’s a dream. She feeds in routine, poos are rare (but that’s normal, we’ve checked), loves her baths, sleeps well and smiles so much, it’s hard to imagine she ever cries (but she does, trust me – she just saves it for when she’s just with D and I!)

At the minute it’s really warm outside, so inside our flat – a new-build, so it’s like a greenhouse at times! – we’re sweltering. We’re hitting 25 celcius inside a lot of the time, which doesn’t sound warm to those of you from sunnier climes, but for us, it’s hot. It’s even hotter for poor SB, whose ideal room temperature is 18C. She’s spending so much time in just a nappy, or just a vest, and even then she’s warm. We’ve had to find some good ways of getting her out and about while keeping her cool – obviously a parasol has come in handy, and a fan when we’re inside. We’ve also taken her swimming for the first time – which she absolutely loved, although it gets cold quickly so all we can manage is 10 minutes in the pool – and are taking her for walks as often as possible. That leads me to the next picture – SB’s little softie shoes!

(I understand that softie shoes are a subject of contention for many mums, because babies don’t need shoes, they’re not walking etc, but she had them on for half an hour while we were out – it’s not as if she’s wearing them all the time)

And as for the third section of this blog’s title, I am proud of my kind, generous daughter. She loves sharing her sick with me at any given opportunity. Yesterday’s highlight was – hours after being fed, so we were well into the supposed ‘safe zone’ where you can move your baby without projectile milk sick everywhere – putting her on my chest because she seems comfiest there. Sure enough, within 10 minutes my top and bra were in the wash and I was crying out for a shower!! She’s constantly coming up with new ways to keep us on our toes – not all of them goodness and light!

We had a bit of a worry at the start of the week – according to the health visitor, she isn’t putting on as much weight as she should. Baby weight is all measured by their centiles, so if you lined up 100 babies of the same age, the centile your baby is on, is where she’d be in the group. SB has gone down from the 50th at birth, to the 9th at 8 weeks, which is obviously a fair whack of a drop. The thing is though, she’s so active and seems so happy and alert and active, that it’s difficult to be too worried about her weight. D has such a ridiculously fast metabolism, and I can’t help but wonder if maybe it’s the same for her – she just burns it quicker than she takes it in? We’ve upped the amount of formula we’re giving her, but she isn’t taking much more than before, so I don’t think she was desperate for more particularly. We’re just going to keep an eye on it – but maybe she’s just a 9th centile baby, and that’s where she belongs?

I’m getting more and more used to looking after SB on my own when D is at work, but being without her isn’t quite as easy. I think all in all I’ve had about 2 waking hours apart from her since she’s been born – once for a uni lecture, and the other for a 5k charity walk last week. It’s really tough being away from her, and distraction is key, but I know that we need to start practising me being away from her – otherwise going back to uni in October is going to be really tough, when she goes into the nursery and I’m spending 2 and 3-hour stretches away from her!