Wednesday 28 July 2010

Nature - The Gallery

Its week 21 of The Gallery and this week's theme is 'Nature'.

This week Pop Princess, Rock Baby and I went for a walk to the local park and we went on a little nature trail. Whilst Rock Baby snoozed in the buggy, PP set about collecting as many fir cones as she could and she found a handy little hiding place for them in the tree.

We don't have a large garden, its more like a concrete slab the size of a postage stamp so we are lucky to have a beautiful park and river right on our doorstep.

Here are some pictures from our recent outing













Don't forget to pop over to Sticky Fingers / The Gallery and check out the other posts.

Monday 26 July 2010

Rock Baby Starts Treatment on Monday



Rock Baby is booked to go into hospital on Monday as soon as I rang up this morning and confirmed the appointment I felt sick and I have a strange feeling which just won’t go away.

I also feel guilty as to what I am about to put her through. She is going in to hospital to start treatment to remove her strawberry birthmark which is on her forehead. She has to have blood tests, ECG’s, organ function tests etc to check that she is able to cope with the medication.

They then administer a drug called propranolol at 2pm, the first half hour is the most critical to see if she has a reaction. If she is ok she is given more doses at 6pm and 10pm then 6am and 10am the following day. If all is ok she will be allowed home and then we continue the treatment three times per day until the birthmark disappears. They estimate worst case scenario it can take up to 9 months.

Apparently the results are almost immediate with a reduction in the birthmark as soon as the next day. Propranolol has been used for up to 40 years and is more commonly used for treating high blood pressure.

We are very lucky in that our local hospital has become one of the first in the country to have a paediatrician that specialises in this treatment for birthmarks as the usual route is laser removal. However with Laser there is a risk that the laser will not go deep enough to the roots of the haemangioma.

We have obviously weighed up the pros and cons of this treatment and agonised whether to go ahead and after two consultations with the specialist we decided to have the treatment. I am obviously worried in case something should go wrong and there is no medical reason for her to have it and it is more cosmetic. I think we have made the right decision and I just hope it all goes ok.

Sunday 25 July 2010

Secret Post Club

A couple of weeks ago I took part in my first ever Secret Post Club which is the fantastic idea of Heather over at Notes From Lapland. The idea being you take part in an international secret Santa type swap and you get to receive a lovely surprise present though the post and get in contact with fab new blogs.


Mine came through the post and the post mark on the front was from Hawaii!! It’s the first time I have ever received anything from Hawaii and it’s a place I would so love to visit we were thinking of going there for our honeymoon at one point but settled on Mauritius in the end.

Inside my parcel was a gorgeous necklace with a shell on it and a big pack of chocolate Macadamia nuts which are apparently the taste of the tropics, and my were they tasty! Pop Princess and I devoured them in just two days!

The Parcel was sent by a lovely lady called Sarah Mae who blogs over at www.sarahmaelennox.blog.com and www.littlestitchesfromsarah.blog.com. If you get the chance pop over and read about her recent move to Hawaii!

Thursday 22 July 2010

I've solved the crime!

The other baby in my life Finnie went for her check up at the vets recently and we were told she was over weight and would have to go and see the weight watchers nurse and join the disgraced dog club. We got a lecture and went away with slapped wrists to try and sort out her weight ourselves without her having to endure the humiliation of weekly weigh inn's.




The Wii Fit has come in very handy and we have been keeping tabs on how much she is losing on a weekly basis and she has been doing really well..... until recently.

We could not work it out. She had been on daily walks, her food has been cut down by half and she has not been getting any treats. She started off sulking and looking at her dried food in disgust to see there was no fresh ham on top like we used to give her but just recently she has a certain sly and happy look on her face.




By a strange coincidence Pop Princess has been eating all her lunch and dinner and after notoriously being a fussy eater seems to have turned a corner and for the last few weeks I have been praising her so much when she looks at me so delighted and chimes "I've finished, look I've ate all my dinner!"

Mmmmm something doesn't add up here does it?!

Finnie keeps sloping off licking her lips at every meal time and with further investigation Pop Princess's little hand disappears as quick as a flash under the table I'm no Sherlock Holmes but I think its now dawned on me I have a clever little toddler and a very cunning dog.

Finnie is now banned from the dining room at meal times, so she is back sulking again and Pop Princess? well she has become fussy once more.

Monday 19 July 2010

My Breastfeeding duties are coming to an end...

I have spent the last few months in a state of breastfeeding limbo. I have been whittling on and on about how Rock Baby would not take a bottle and how it was making me feel trapped and restricting me from getting on with my life.



I tried every bottle out there and all reduced her into a screaming mess so I gave up on bottles last month and instead have been trying her with a cup. This has been more successful and what began as most of the milk going down her top she is now managing to take about 5oz so I have now dropped her 11am feed and replaced it with formula from the cup. Today I have started to also cut out her 3pm feed and replace that with formula too so in effect I will only be BF her first thing in the morning and last thing at night.

So I should be elated she has finally accepted that there is another alternative to me feeding her and I can see me getting back to normality. Why then do I feel incredibly emotional about it all? It's after all what I wanted but for some reason I feel upset and confused by this.

The same thing happened when I switched over with Pop Princess. I said with her and the same with RB that I wanted to BF till she was 6 months exclusively and then cross over, she was easier as she took a bottle with a little less fight but the transition seemed smooth.

BF has such a powerful hold over me its by far the greatest bond making factor for me personally and it's the one area of total control I have, I am or was the only person that could provide her with what she needed and now that's slipping away. But more deeper than that I guess its the fact that she isn't that little newborn any more like her sister before her she is growing up fast and she may well be the last baby I will have.

I have enjoyed BF for the most part but I know I am now ready to move on and as she is no longer crying when offered an alternative to me feeding her I know she is ready too.

So as I write my boobs are sore and huge, I am feeling every so slightly hormonal and I hope I'm not being too selfish for wanting to give up and have my life back. But yes the time has come and I hope that this time next month when she will be weaned off me completely that I wont' be feeling as guilty and I have one happy little baby.



Unfortunately I'm going to need to keep covered up for the next few days as I look like I have a pair of water melons growing out of my chest!!!!

Wednesday 14 July 2010

The Gallery - Can you see what it is yet?

This weeks Gallery theme was Can You see What it is yet?


It was supposed to be a photograph of an every day item, taken at a funny angle now I did try but everything I took was so obvious! So I came up with this picture of pop princess playing on her bed with her teddy bears take a close look all is not as it seems!




Hope I haven't bent the rules too much and get booted out now of next week's Gallery!

If you want to check some really good pictures of people that have stuck to the guidelines hop over to Sticky Fingers NOW!

Further to the above I would like to add another picture yes I think i have been clever now and this is from the same shot as above



I got there in the end!

Sunday 11 July 2010

Decisions, decisions......

Its been an interesting week I have made a lot of decisions in the last month about returning to work. I have been incredibly lucky as I have a very supportive boss and after meeting him this week I now know what I am going to do and its very exciting.

I'll be going back to work in November but will be employed as a consultant, I'm going to be doing PR again for established acts and celebs but more excitingly I am allowed to also set up my own company. Rock and Roll Baby World will also be a specialist marketing agency specifically related to mummy blogging!

Over the last week I have been so bowled over with the amount of support I have had from fellow mummy bloggers. I've been picking their brains, sending them questions and they have all come back so enthusiastically and with feedback and advice which will help set me up and I can't thank them enough. If I've had any questions they have been answered straight away and I just feel extremely lucky that I have come across so many genuine people that want to help. This just doesn't happen in the 'real' world but I really feel that the mummy blogging community is such a special place and its great to be part of.

I hope I can now repay the help and support I have received with some great products / exciting trips and acts for them to meet. If you want to know more about my venture and be involved click on my mummy blogging database at the top of this page.

Being a consultant and having my own company will mean I can work from home more and spend more time with the girls and have an added flexibility to my work hours which is really important to me.

So now I am in the midst of setting up a website, designing logos and putting together company information and I feel so excited and positive for the future. Being a mummy blogger and pr I hope will set me in good stead to build on the already fabulous relationships I have made already.

On another note I am back to the hospital tomorrow for our second visit about RB's birth mark. Its a bit more complex than I had originally thought and I have lots of questions still but tomorrow we make our final decision as to whether to go ahead with it.

PP has just spent the weekend with her grandparents and had a lovely time. She adores it over there as my dad has a big garden with chickens which she loves to feed and chase! We don't have a big garden its more of a court yard so she has great fun over there. Soon RB will be able to go too when she is less reliant on me feeding her, but she has been doing so well recently taking milk from a cup and I can now leave her for half the day!

Wednesday 7 July 2010

The Gallery - Holidays

This weeks The Gallery theme is holidays. As I don't have a scanner at the moment I had to use what pictures I had on the computer already and so I've chosen this one:



It shows me and my hubby and our little dog Finnie. This was taken pre children on a holiday we went on in Devon about 5 years ago. I chose it as that was our little family us and our dog who we treated like a baby (still do!). We look younger, happy, relaxed, not too many lines under our eyes and it just feels like a life time ago. So much has changed since then, we have two beautiful daughters now, we have a mortgage, we have responsibilities. We are proper grown ups now!

Don't forget to hop over to Tara at Sticky Fingers to check out the other posts!

Monday 5 July 2010

We survived the POX!

A quick post just letting you all know what’s been happening at Rock HQ these last few weeks.

Well Rock Baby did indeed get the pox and oh my gosh she got it bad! As a second time mum I really should be used to illness now and have an inbuilt rational switch that comes in to play when they do come down with something.

However I do not. RB was so poorly, she was covered from head to foot and I thought babies under 6 months were only supposed to get a mild version, this definitely wasn’t the case.

She was so uncomfortable one night at 2am in the morning I was on the phone to NHS Direct as she wouldn’t stop screaming and was thrashing around in the cot as they were so bad on her lower back and nappy area she was trying to move around to rub them and was very distressed.



This was a week ago and now she is back to her bright and cheery self and the spots are beginning to fade. So it’s been nearly a month inside in isolation, so been a pretty miserable time all round!



Today we have been to the hospital about RB’s birth mark and had our first consultation with the paediatrician who will do the procedure, we saw pictures of other babies before and after and the results are really great. However it will involve blood tests, an over night stay and putting a drug in her body for the next few months and so we are now weighing up the pros and cons of everything. On one hand it would be good to wait for a year to see how much it goes down on its own but on the other if we do wait she will be pop princess’s age and would remember the procedure and get quite distressed at least now she doesn’t really know what’s going on.

On a brighter note we are looking into holidays for a last minute break end of July and boy we need the break! I’m also having my first tattoo next Monday I’ve been in to see them today and they are designing something for me, I am following the old celebrity band wagon and opting for one on my wrist and its going to be an amalgamation of the two girls names, I was nervous as soon as I set foot in there today so goodness knows what I’ll be like next week when I go in to have it done.