I used to think that putti in baroque paintings looked absurd and unrealistic. Looking at Ingrid now, they no longer seem so outrageously chubby. She wouldn’t be out of place in a Rubens painting, if it wasn’t for her unfortunate lack of wings… and hair.
After 11 weeks dedicated to growing, the results are impressive. Ingrid has gone from stick figure to chubby.
In the beginning she seemed so small and fragile. I was afraid of breaking her fingers when she was struggling particularly hard against being dressed. Now she has become a sturdy little thing. She can actually use those limbs a bit, and hold her head up, so there must be some muscle there. Although I suspect much of it is fat – she appears to be made of nothing but folds and creases. She has deep creases at her wrists, even. Heck, her creases have creases!
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| 3 weeks |
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| 11 weeks |
This is, I think, our most low-key Christmas ever. We have the important ingredients: a tree, masses of gingerbread cookies, and julmust. But celebrations have been small and spread out. Most years we’ve celebrated either with my mother (who also lived in England for about 5 years) or Eric’s family in Stockholm. This year my mother is back in Sweden, and we thought Ingrid was a bit too young for long-distance travel, so we’re on our own and hadn’t planned anything particular for Christmas at all. Not even a Christmas dinner: a large part of our evenings is occupied by getting Ingrid ready for the night, which makes it hard to fit in any major dinner preparations. My father visited us a week before Christmas, so with careful organising we managed to have a Christmas-style dinner then (roast veg, a veggie loaf and homemade cranberry sauce – yum). I enjoyed cooking it – the first time in about 2 months that I cooked a proper meal – but that required a fair amount of planning, and right now I’d rather relax than undertake a project like that.
For Christmas Eve we were invited by a couple of friends to a Glöggfest in Brockenhurst outside of Southampton. Brockenhurst is 2 hours by train from London, which made it by far our longest trip yet with Ingrid. We’ve only been to Central London a couple of times. The trip there went well – she slept well in the sling, and ate well, even though she seemed to be quite distracted by the landscape rushing past.
The moment we set foot inside our friends’ house, Ingrid started screaming. Not crying, but screaming as if she was in terrible distress. She really, REALLY, didn’t want to be there. Since she got upset so immediately after we entered, we guessed it must have been the smell of incense in the house. And the only way to calm her was to take her outside… so Eric spent the first hour and a half standing outside in the front garden, with Ingrid asleep in the sling.
When Ingrid had woken and eaten, and the incense smoke had dispersed, she was content and social for half an hour, even smiling at the other guests! But then something went wrong again, and the screaming came back. This time she agreed to almost calm down in a quiet room far from everybody else, but even then she wasn’t happy. So we gave up and headed home pretty soon. She calmed down after only 10 minutes outside, and was perfectly happy on the train home. She was probably simply overwhelmed by the new sights and sounds and smells.
Conclusion: Ingrid doesn’t mind travelling, but is no more fond of noisy crowds than I am.
But the best part of this Christmas holiday has been having Eric at home for almost two weeks. I am so glad to not be alone all day, and immensely relieved to have someone to share the work of taking care of Ingrid. Eric’s been taking care of Ingrid’s long midday nap, which has given my back (and my patience) a very welcome break. Even though I’m not working, I get a Christmas vacation! I feel rested, and actually enjoy my time with Ingrid now.
I was getting worn out by the endless slinging (tired knees, tired shoulders and back, and tired of the whole thing) so last weekend we started to teach Ingrid to fall asleep in the pram, while we bounce / jiggle / rock it. In a way we’re just exchanging one prop for another – falling asleep in the pram that way is still nowhere near falling asleep independently. But if this works, I think it will be a step in the right direction: towards falling asleep in a bed. In the pram she will be further away from us, and she will be lying down instead of upright, as she is in the sling. So the pram is “closer” to a bed than the sling – an intermediate step.
Another good thing about the pram is that anyone can do it. Any generous friend or relative can take her out in the pram, whereas using the sling takes some practice – and willingness to wear a baby close to your body for hours, possibly.
And if nothing else, the pram will give us an alternative, for when the sling isn’t an option (for example in case of a back ache).
Right now it sort of works, but not as well as the sling. It takes longer for her to go to sleep, and she doesn’t sleep as long. Quite frequently she’s woken after about half an hour of sleep, which is not enough for her. When she is in the sling and starts wriggling, I notice it very quickly and can soothe her back to sleep, but when she starts to wake in the pram I rarely succeed with that. So we’re sticking with the sling for the important occasions (long midday nap, and evening sleep) and using the pram for the smaller naps in the morning and afternoon.
Ingrid is better and better at sleeping, though. Most encouragingly, she has started wriggling and almost-waking in the pram and in her Moses basket, but then gone back to sleep on her own. She’s very rarely managed that before. So perhaps she is now maturing (if one can say that about a 10-week baby) to slightly more independent sleep.
In the evening I try to move her from the sling to her Moses basket, but when I go to bed I give her a last feed and move her to our bed for the night. Initially, during her first month, I kept her in the basket all night, but that meant both of us were wide awake after each feed and had to somehow go back to sleep. Now I feed her without either of us being fully awake, and sometimes we both drift off to sleep before she’s done. I think that change – from basket to our bed – instantly gave me at least 2 extra hours of sleep per night. True, much of the time I don’t sleep very deeply with her right next to me – but light sleep is way better than no sleep!
Most nights she wakes 3 times for food, and sometimes half-wakes for other reasons (mostly wind). A while ago (maybe a month) she only woke twice in the night, but that passed – I suspect she wakes more often than she would if food was further away, perhaps because she can smell it (or me).
There was also a brief period when she would wake and be completely alert and awake for 2 hours, kicking and playing in her basket, but that was a temporary thing, luckily.
While Ingrid’s sleep is still my primary preoccupation, day and night, I think we are not doing too badly at all, and are slowly moving in the right direction. Fingers crossed.
Remember I said that Ingrid prefers to turn her head to the left? She still does that all the time. I try to encourage her to look to the right as well. I turn her head that way when I put her down, or put her in her chair. I’ve turned her the other way in the bath, so that I am on her right. I place her chair so that she has a window or a lamp or blinking Christmas lights to the right, and nothing interesting to her left. But none of this really works. She turns her head right back to the left and stares at nothing. Even when she has a choice between staring at a white tiled bathroom wall, and looking at me, she takes the wall – as long as it is to her left!
The one and only thing that she finds head-turningly interesting is her own reflection: if I put her down in front of the mirror and turn her to face that way, she is happy to remain there and make faces at herself.
What a vain creature!
Goodness – Ingrid weighs over 6 kg! She used to be in the 75th–91st weight percentile, but has now shot up into the 91st–98th. (I started keeping track because I wasn’t sure if she was getting enough milk, but then kept weighing her out of curiosity.)
But, as my father rightly pointed out, no matter how fast she grows, she won’t beat her performance during the very first weeks of her existence, when one cell becomes many within just a few days.
At least she’s putting all that milk to good use.
Two months (yesterday).
From Ingrid’s point of view, the second month was not much different from the first. She still spends most of her time sleeping, and much of her awake time eating. But she is awake slightly more than before – sometimes even an hour and a half at a time – and she no longer falls asleep instantly in the pushchair. She is definitely more alert when she is awake. Some sort of consciousness is developing in that little head!
Her activity is still limited to looking at things, waving her arms and legs around, and making faces. She frequently gives her tongue a thorough workout, moving it in all possible directions, and thus drools over half her face. Lamps and windows are still interesting, but she also looks at faces, including her own (in a mirror). On good days she even smiles at strangers.
Ingrid is a lot stronger than she was a month ago, and can hold her head up with no help, when she wants. So she is much happier in upright positions than she used to be. She has come to like her bouncy chair, which she really disliked initially, and has even spent some time in the pushchair with the seat in a semi-reclining position, rather than totally flat.
Ingrid’s favourite spot in the house is her changing mat. The mat is next to the wall, near the end of a bookshelf. For some reason, she really likes that corner, preferring it to other parts of the room that I would think should be more interesting. Sometimes when she is grumpy, she cheers up when I put her on the mat. She can lie there and coo and even smile happily at the bookshelf. Sometimes she smiles at the bookshelf but not at me!
Names I have frequently called my baby:
Notably, “Ingrid” is not in the list. I suspect she will grow up believing her name is Konnake Bergheden.
Before Ingrid arrived, I used to wonder why all mothers suddenly become so fond of long walks.
After Ingrid arrived, I realised that they don’t. They just do it anyway – because it puts the baby to sleep, and because it allows the mom to leave the house, and to get some exercise. I am not particularly fond of walking around in the city myself (hills and woods are a different matter!) but nevertheless I take substantial walks several times a week.
Most of the time Ingrid goes out in her pretty Stokke pram / pushchair. I love the pram. I feel a bit guilty about how much I paid for it (I’ve seen used cars advertised for less money!) but I figured, if I’m going to be using this thing every other day for several years, it better be good. I’m hoping it will be the only pram/pushchair that Ingrid needs.
And it truly is a joy to use. I really like going out with it. The big wheels go easily over bumps, and it handles so well that it can almost turn around in place. I can control it with one hand – I’ve even managed to push the pram and a shopping trolley at the same time. All parts are adjustable. The seat can face either forwards or backwards, and its position can range from almost-flat to sitting up. The rear wheels fold in so I can pull it up stairs and don’t have to carry it. There’s space for “stuff” so I don’t have to carry the groceries. And it looks cool – it often gets comments from passers-by.
The Stokke is easy to take on a bus, but Tube stations are a pain, with all those stairs. It wouldn’t be so bad if it was just one long staircase – I’d fold in the wheels and drag it up (or down), and be done with it. But instead it’s five steps here, then a straight walk, then another 10 steps, then another walk, then another few steps… Every time I need to fold in the wheels, and then fold them out again. I tried it on the tube a few times, and the stairs were driving me crazy. So when we go to town, I either take the bus, or leave the pram at home and take Ingrid in the sling. The sling is also good when I am in a hurry: I don’t have to worry about the abominable pavements with all their holes and edges.
So the sling is more convenient in a way, but on the other hand I then have to carry her weight all the time, plus a backpack with baby stuff (changing mat, nappies, baby wipes, spare clothes, blanket). That plus a baby a good 10 kg altogether. And since she spends so much time in the sling anyway, my back is starting to feel the strain. With the pram on the other hand I can wheel her until she’s asleep, and then just park her in a corner while I’m doing other things, such as having lunch, or browsing books. (That’s assuming she doesn’t wake up as soon as I stop – she’s started doing that recently.)
PS: Did you know that the word “pram” is short for “perambulator”?
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