The last few weeks!

The last few weeks have been hectic! My husband has had two weeks off on holiday and this is the first year we didn't really plan anything, we had the last minute panic of should we book something abroad or even a cottage in the UK but in the end decided against it.

I'm really glad we didn't book anything as we have had a fab few weeks, and the girls have really enjoyed having their daddy around as have I. He works long hours and so in the week he is rarely home to say goodnight to them and with Rock Baby he has struggled to bond with her.

Over the last few weeks I have seen their relationship blossom, RB has been taking much more interest in her daddy, he has been feeding her and giving her her bottles, giving her baths and playing with her and its made me so happy to see this. Pop Princess has been full of beans and making her daddy read 'just one more book' every night before bed.

Me and my husband have also managed to get some quality time with each other, enjoying our first night away since Rock Baby has been born to celebrate my birthday. We stayed in a gorgeous hotel in Cambridge (Hotel Du Vin), had a fantastic room with baths at the bottom of the bed!! My husband spoilt me rotten and we had time just to talk without being interupted and able to concentrate on the conversation and more importantly just to laugh together. We also slept in till 11am the next morning woo hoo, it was amazing.
The girls stayed with Nanny and Grandad for the night and had a whale of a time, feeding chickens, making me a birthday cake and eating ice cream. My initial worries of leaving RB for the first time soon disappeared with my stepmum giving me regular updates by text!

I'm really lucky that my dad found a lovely lady to remarry and she has has accepted the girls as her own grandchildren and they love her to pieces as they do their Grandad. They are always around to help us out and we do manage to have the occasional night out and lay in the next day thanks to them.



We've had lots of day trips including one to Wimpole Home Farm, with my sister in law and her husband and their three children. Pop Princess adores her cousins and they dote over her and Rock Baby. We also went to stay with our close friends in Oxford who have children about the similar age to us. We have been friends with them for over ten years and I used to live with Rebecca when we are at university. We had some mad times together from mud infested Glastonbury to raving all night till 6am the next day. Obviously life has changed a great deal and we were just pleased we managed to drink a bottle of wine and not feel too grotty the next morning when the kids were up bright and breezy at 6.30am!

I can't cook!

I can’t cook to save my life, I’ll give things a go, I want to be a good cook but guaranteed every time something will go wrong.

When I say every time, I mean every time. My mum was a rubbish cook too so I definitely inherited her genes, it meant I never learned any cooking skills growing up and the very little I did learn came from my Nan.

Pop Princess loves to cook and make cakes and I do try my best to do this with her, she often gets bored half way though and wonders off and leaves me to it.



Cooking is not something I enjoy probably because it nearly always ends in disaster. Now as I start to wean Rock Baby I feel like I’m pinned in the kitchen constantly and even her food goes wrong, for instance today I made her Leek, pea and potato puree but I forgot it was on the stove and when I realised the water had all gone and the vegetables were starting to burn on the bottom of the pan!

I tried to make rice pudding in the week in the microwave and the pudding rice and milk spilled over the bowl and exploded everywhere leaving a huge lumpy mess. I tried to make custard but that went lumpy and horrible when I was heating it up and then today a simple thing like baby rusks, I added milk and it still went wrong and wouldn’t go into a smooth paste. All my friends and family keep saying just blend up a bit of the food you are having for dinner but it’s not as simple as that.

I don’t cook in the traditional way, I often cut corners like tonight we had lamb chops, potato rosti’s and Mediterranean Vegetables. However the Rosti’s were frozen and the veg were ready to roast in a tin pre prepared so they just needed to be stuck in the oven. Pop Princess is a really fussy eater and I’m almost certain it’s because she doesn’t have a massive variety. She loves pasta and I can make pasta sauces and things like macaroni cheese but her food is very basic and traditional and I often cook for her and myself as my husband is really, really fussy.

I will eat anything but he is a real English traditionalist when it comes to food (meat, potato and veg), he is also often home very late from work so it’s easier for pop princess and me to eat together earlier.

When it comes to dinner parties it gets me in a right flap. Most of the time I will chicken out and we would order takeaway in but I would love to be confident enough to have a go and cook a really nice meal for my friends without getting into a state about it!



I talk about this with my friends and family and they all make a joke about it and say you can cook, of course you can but I really can’t and it does get me down as I would love to be able to have that natural flair but its something I lack so if anyone has any suggestions on how I can improve or simple recipes that I simply can’t get wrong then let me know!

Update from Monday's hospital treatment on Rock Baby

Rock Baby went into hospital on Monday to start the treatment for her birthmark, as you may be aware I was so nervous about this and was really worrying as to whether we had made the right decision to go ahead.

We arrived at 11am and she had her ECG, blood sugar test (heel prick), blood pressure and blood tests and she coped with these amazingly she obviously cried when they took the blood but no way near as much as I was expecting she was so brave. At 2 pm they gave her the first dose of the drug Propronal, which in effect is a beta blocker which constricts blood supply to the birthmark. They have to test blood sugar and blood pressure 45 mins after administering it and again 2 hours after.

Her blood pressure was notoriously hard to find, the automatic machines would not pick it up as she was just too small and when they did it manually they were struggling to hear so what should have taken minutes ended up taking longer making her very uncomfortable. When they did the heel prick two hours after her blood sugar level had dropped so they suggested giving her some food and milk to see if it would pick up. When they retested it had dropped even lower, not dangerously low but low enough to cause concern.

So when they gave her the second dose at 6pm they only gave her half a dose and they did yet another heel prick and her levels had returned to normal. We were getting her ready to settle her down for the night when the nurse came in and said she had spoken to the doctor and they felt that she should have a cannula put in just in case the sugar level dropped in the night and she needed a drip.



When we were weighing up the pros and cons of having the treatment this was never mentioned that this could be a possibility, so it was a shock to hear she would now have to have the cannula. I just couldn't understand it as her blood sugar was normal as was all her other vitals but on the safe side they wanted it in. In one respect I can understand why as its much more difficult to get a cannula in when something does go wrong but on a 6 month old baby I feel they could have waited for just another hour to see if anything had changed then made the decision as to whether to put one in.




I couldn't go in with her, I watched my husband carry her into the room and as I paced around I thought I was going to be sick as I could just hear her screaming whilst they put it in. It was heartbreaking and as if I didn't feel guilty enough this was the limit for me and I was so upset at putting her through it.

She came out of the room shaking and sweating it was awful her little hand was in a splint and all bandaged up but its amazing how quickly she settled and started smiling again. We got her to bed about 8pm but they had to wake her up every hour till 2am in the morning checking her blood pressure etc.

None of the nurses could get a reading on the blood pressure so what should have taken minutes ended up taking forty minutes and in the end they had to call the doctor to take it. 2am she had the last dose and then they left her alone till the morning.

She had another final dose at 10am the following morning and then we were allowed home. They got the student nurses to take out the cannula and do one last blood pressure check which did annoy me as they really hurt her and I know students need the practice but they knew the blood pressure was hard to get and the nurse was under pressure to get a reading and ended up leaving marks on her little arm where it was done up too tight.

I was just really upset by the whole thing, I just feel we weren't properly briefed as to what could happen i.e the likelihood that she may need a cannula and the amount of monitoring that was required. As we left we were also told she would need the medicine 3 times a day and it had to be spaced out every 8 hours, which means giving her a dose at 11pm at night. I wasn't happy about this as she has just started sleeping through the night from 7pm to 7am and the last thing we wanted was to disturb her and muck up her sleep.

However we tried last night and even though it did wake her a little she settled straight back down but if it does start becoming an issue I'm going to see if they can sort the dose out so she can have it 3 times in the day.

I think in the end she must have had about 10 heel pricks and in the night they were using her fingers, but you know she kept smiling and beaming at them in between the bits when they were hurting her. I couldn't believe how well she coped with it all and she already seems to have forgotten about the whole thing.

We were glad to get her home, she hasn't been unsettled and on Tuesday she slept for most of the day. I now just hope that it was all worth it and that soon we should see her birthmark reducing in size.



(Above Pic) - Recovering at home the next day