Dear baby

17/9/17
Baby you’re growing big! You kick me a lot in the early mornings and I love every little squirm! It feels like such precious time, so much so that once I’ve woken up I can’t go back to sleep as I just want to lie there and feel you move. Some of your kicks are getting uncomfortable but weirdly those are my favourite as they show just how strong you are! You then squirm and kick on and off all day before your big finale at bed time when you seem to go bonkers in there! I wonder what you’re so busy doing. 

I get worried about your movements, it’s such a big responsibility to make sure you’re ok. When I’m working I’m so busy it’s hard to concentrate and I can’t wait for maternity leave to begin so I can just focus on you.

I’m 34 weeks pregnant with you now, it’s flown by. We get to meet you in a few short weeks and both of us are getting emotional about it all. Mumma starts her third year of uni around the time your due so it’s all go around here. We’ve decorated your nursery, our room and swapped the living room/office around so you have a safe space to one day learn to crawl. Grandpa is redoing our bathroom for us too, so the place is a mess but I don’t think you’ll mind. 

What else? We’re trying to teach your doggy siblings not to bark and every leaf that blows past so they don’t wake you constantly. I hope you’re getting used to woofs in there! 

All our lovely friends and family have been gifting us so much! And your aunties have been knitting non stop. Granny has found jumpers she knitted me 30 years ago! You’ll get to wear them soon but she wants them back after ok? 

We’re ready for you baby 💛

Buying for our baby; sleeping

I thought it may be interesting to record some of our baby preparations. Ok, well it’s interesting for me a least! We’ve started early with the aim of spreading out our preparations so as to reduce stress, ensure that the big items aren’t impulse or panic buys and spread the finachial cost as really I am the only earner at the moment. 

I am an inconsistent mix of practical and frivolous, but overall try and live to motto of everything should be both ‘beautiful and useful’, and so this has shaped most of my purchases so far. 

As we are having a surprise baby and hopefully there will be siblings to follow, I wanted to keep all items gender neutral so they can be reused (hopefully) in the future. We’ve chosen grey and yellow as our main colour for the nursery, so a lot of items we’ve bought so far reflect this. 

These are the items we’ve brought with safe sleeping in mind. This is something close to my heart due to my job, and a something we have some control over elements of. 

Moses basket. Some of them look so ugly to me, and so flimsy. We wanted a Moses basket for downstairs, so baby had somewhere safe to sleep in the day (a huge amount of cot deaths happen on sofas) and when I saw this one by mokee I fell in love! It cost far more than I actually wanted to spend (about £100) which now seems slightly silly especially as we have been offered a few freebies since! And now it’s arrived I’m unsure if I would feel comfortable using it for unsupervised sleeping as it is so deep and the material so dense that I would worry about increased risk of cot death due to lack of ventilation… but still, so pretty! Also it feels pretty sturdy which is important to us with two mad dogs running about. 

We also bought the Mokee cot which was much more reasonable cost wise especially as it is suitable from birth through to toddlerhood. It changes into a toddler bed, comes with a draw and a change mat that sits nicely on top. This was a bonus as I didn’t want a change table as there is no room for that in our room, and barely any room in the babies room. This way we can use the change mat top of the cot to save our backs etc but also can take the change mat downstairs and use as normal in the day. I also wanted a small cot so that we could fit it down the side of our bed and use for nighttime sleeping immediately. It needed a drop side so we could semi-bed share to support breastfeeding but without the risk of overlaying (slightly cot death obsessed over here). I didn’t want to use a next to me type crib as they are the same size as the Moses baskets and so I assume won’t last long. I intend on semi co-sleeping as long as baby seems to need, so didn’t want to have to get something else once baby started rolling and climbing about! 

Another area that babies seem to sleep a lot in is their car seats. It is a pet hate of mine to see a scrunched up newborn being pushed around the shops for hours in a car seat pram. There is so much research showing that babies oxygen saturations significantly drop after just 30 minutes in them and unfortunately many babies have died, with this as a contributing factor. Yet I totally see how tempting it is to leave the baby asleep and just simply transfer the car seat to the pram chassis. 

With that in mind, when I saw this car seat recommended as which Best Buy and endorsed by the lullaby trust I knew that’s what I wanted for the baby. 

This is the kiddy Evoluna i-size infant carrier. Again it’s pricy but it can be used in a lie flat position enabling the baby’s head neck and body to stay in line and therefore keep an open airway. This is (I hope) win win!

Our last (so far) sleep related purchases have been sleep bags. I’m not 100% convinced on the safety of these as to me it seems baby could overheat, but they come in different togs and I guess the key is insuring the room temperature is correct (room thermometer is on the to buy list). Lullaby trust have suggested in a talk I attended that baby sleep bags are protective against cot death as baby cannot squirm down and end up with covers over its face. 

Anyone have any other advice on sleep safety and what’s worked for them? 

💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛