Paediatrician's 6wk Check

So here is Harriet getting her 6wk check-up from the paediatrician (Dr Parker) - he was there at her birth. She did us proud by screaming for the whole time we were waiting, then all through the appointment itself (which made it very difficult to hear what on earth he was saying!) and then all the way through the hospital out to the car. If you look closely you can see her mouth wide open and screaming in this photo - she truly didn't stop the whole time!!

Dr Parker was quick to realise that there wasn't anything wrong with her lungs, her weight is now 5.4kg (up 1.2kg from 4.2kg from four weeks ago) and everything is going well. We didn't get much of a chance to discuss much else since her volume precluded intimate chitchat.


One of the benefits of all this yelling was that she then slept for hours and hours last night. Yay! Another great night's sleep for us!

Mandurah

So it was a long weekend in WA this weekend. Saturday was spent renovating the roof on the side of the house, Sunday was a family day at James' parents' house and then Sunday we had to ourselves - yay! So we decided to go for a drive since it was a really glorious spring day. Harriet was being a bit grizzly so we decided not to risk going anywhere that we had to walk around a lot and instead focussed on having a nice long drive instead. So we decided to drive down to Mandurah.

Harriet slept all the way down there which was great. When we got to the foreshore I fed her on a park bench but there was a lot of sun so we tried to keep her in the shade (didn't work to well). Then Papa Jimbo strapped on the Baby Bjorn (which we affectionately call the bondage equipment) and we went walking around the shops near the water. All the older ladies were murmuring their approval at Jimbo walking around with Harriet - I felt like saying "Why don't I get excited responses when I'm walking around with the baby? He's only doing what he should do". Grrrr...stupid old-fashioned way of looking at the world.





But we finally thought to take a self-portrait of the three of us. As many of you may know, James and I have a full collection of self-portraits taken all over the shop. So it was important to initiate Harriet into the family (one of us...one of us..). You can see her head in the bottom right corner and the charming Mandurah carpark behind us - not really the most salubrious of locations for a first, but there you have it.


After all of that excitement it was time to drive home. That night she proceeded to sleep for two long 4hr periods. YAY! As if all that sleeping in the car wasn't enough. Well, we'll take the sleep wherever we can, thank you very much!

Sleeping...sometimes

Here's a photo of Harriet sleeping on her Papa this morning... She is being quite fractious but sometimes we get the cuteness we've come to expect!

So just in case you were wondering why we called this blog 'spy the harriet', it's after the fantastic children's book called 'Harriet the Spy' by Louise Fitzhugh. It was one of my favourite books when I was little and I made Jimbo read it when we decided on the name for the little monkey face. If you haven't read it then you should, it totally rocks.

Mr Croak

Well last night we got some sleep - amazing! Apparently the growth spurts can last for a couple of days and it sounds like that's been Harriet's agenda for the past few weeks; each week there have been a couple of days of grizzling. Considering how fast she's growing and how big she is, we have to think that she's growing at some time.

Here you can see her looking with great concentration at her new favourite toy, Mr Croak, that Aunty Bernadette bought for her. The other day she was on her playmat but kept on looking behind my shoulder - I turned around and there was Mr Croak looking back at me. So I plopped him down next to Harriet and she went psycho! All flailing limbs and gurgling excitement, she kept trying to touch all the bits of her Mr Croak. Then when she finally got to touch him, she kept going for the crackly bit. So cute! So she now has some playmat + Mr Croak time in each play session and she loves it.

She also can stand on her own two feet and push off on your legs when she's being held. Strong little monster, I tell you!

For Sale...

FOR SALE: One baby, slightly used, good prospects, no health issues. Guarantee provided for - sleepless nights, screaming attacks, kicking/flailing limbs and occasional periods of major love.

As you may have guessed, last night was not one of Harriet's shining moments that her Mama and Papa want to remember for too long. It was a night with a couple of bouts of half an hour sleep for me, whilst Jimbo tried to get some sleep for work. Then Jimbo offered to take over at about 5am when I was able to grab a couple of hours sleep after having a shower. Ah babies, who'd have 'em?

Anyway you can see below the cutest little doll that Sabina made for Harriet. Isn't it cute?! We predict that this is the toy Harriet will insist on dragging behind her everywhere until at age five we are forced to remove the sodden, filthy mess of material that barely resembles a doll anymore away from her. She has already had a good suck of the leg today. Yum!

Hi Guys

Here are some photos of Harriet that have been cluttering up my computer. Goddamn if she isn't the cutest baby ever.






In this one you can see how much she takes after her Papa! She's playing on the playmat that the girls from work bought for me as a leaving present. Harriet *loves* it and usually has a play on there in between feeds. Since she turned 4wks old she has become very adept at batting the toys that hang down - she's very proud of herself.








This photo was taken last night. She started off sleeping on Papa's chest and gradually slid down...down...down until finally she ended up sitting beside him like this! She didn't even wake up to our loud laughter!

























This is a highly attractive photo of Harriet just out from the bath. She's wearing this cute towel hood that Lou sent her in a parcel and it has a gorgeous embroidered giraffe on it. I think she looks like she's been out on the town in this photo.





Doesn't she look peaceful in this photo? It was taken when I was on my way home from a power walk down to Mt Lawley (neighbouring suburb). I'd taken along a book cos I thought it was such a beautiful day that I would sit in the park on the way home and enjoy the sunshine. This is what she looked like when I stopped the pram.
























This photo was taken about half a minute after the previous one. I thought to myself "Aww, what a cutie, she is having a little yawn". I took this photo and then opened my book (in case anyone is interested I'm attempting to read Wild Swans but it is a very stop-start process at the moment as I'm sure you can imagine!).



















Of course I don't know what needs to happen before I finally learn. I mean, come on, as if she was going to look that cute for that long! The yawn morphed immediately into a full-bellowed cry and I had to race home with a screaming baby. Horrible, incompetent mother that I am.









So there are some photos of our little chubby-cheeked monkey. People keep asking us whether she is a 'good' baby'. I'm not too sure what that means, but as far as sleep goes we've been so lucky. She's had a couple of bad days where she won't settle and in week 2 she had a number of nights where she didn't really know whether it was day or night so had to be settled all night and would then sleep all day (*sigh*!!). But her idea of a routine is to go to sleep at 10pm after a feed, fall asleep and wake for her feeds at about 1am, 3am and 5am. She falls asleep straight after these and so do I! During the day she enjoys walks out with her Mama, playing on the playmat and with any of her number of toys. Aunty Bernadette sent her a very cool 'Mr Croak' toy that she has just become aware of and she stares at his drunken face for ages.

As for me, I wrote up my birth story but it ended up being (gulp) 8.5 A4 pages in Word, so I figured that no-one would want to read that epic. Will have to write up an abridged version for the blog (and without too many gory details for those faint at heart). Suffice to say in short that the labour was actually really empowering and I, bizarrely enough, found the whole experience fantastic! I laboured at home for 9hrs (12am to 9am) and when I arrived at the hospital I was fully dilated and the delivery occured at 10.02am. I was the talk of the midwives because they couldn't remember the last time someone waited until they were fully dilated to come into the hospital. So I only used the TENS machine and some gas during the pushing part and that was it, no other drugs. Yay for me, just like I wanted!

The freakiest thing about having a baby is definitely the language associated with it. Seriously. You prepare yourself for most other stuff when you're pregnant but then suddenly one day you have to ring up the paediatrician to book in your check up and you find yourself for the first time saying the words "my daughter, Harriet Ryder" out loud. WOH! That really and truly freaked me out. I was almost as freaked out as when Jimbo said to me "One day I'd really like to have a baby". Plus people start referring to you as 'the mother'. A total spin out I tell you.

The cats are just slowly coming around to the change in the house. Smellie took a bit longer than Squeezmo, but the other night I got to give Smell-Smell heaps of love on the lounge and she has since come into the bedroom and slept at the foot of the bed in her normal position which is great.

Other details that people may be interested in - I'm exclusively breastfeeding and will express once I'm back at work. I go back to work in about 4wks (when she is 8wks old) for a Thursday and every second Sunday shift. Jan (James' mum) will look after her on the weekday and Jimbo will obviously look after her on the Sunday. We can differentiate between Harriet's major cries now which is a relief - about to do a poo or fart is my fave one, she starts kicking those legs like crazy and has a really whingy sort of cry, not very loud. Afterwards she does the best grunts. This girl is a major snorer/grunter! So cute.

Any other questions? Just leave a comment!

Welcome!

Welcome to the blog about Harriet! You can check out some pictures of me here.

These pictures will get updated when new ones are available.