Around ten days before she came down with H, F & M we
had taken her for her 12 month immunisations and just as she was recovering
from this god-awful virus she also developed some vaccine side effects that had
me very scared for my little girl. She coped incredibly well with the
immunisations themselves, hardly even a cry and no immediate after-effects, but
as we found out 5% of children develop a measles-like rash, fever and lethargy
around 7-10 days after immunisation. Of course Alice fell into the 5% and of
course I totally blew those side effects out of proportion. When you can so
easily imagine the dead weight of your lost child in your arms it becomes
harder and harder to convince yourself that adverse events are unlikely and improbable
and instead can too easily imagine the worst possible thing again befalling
you. If the death of one of your children isn’t a painful enough thing to carry
around for the rest of your life, the sense that you are cursed to suffer –
that every conceivable thing that could happen will happen to you, well it is
hard to maintain perspective sometimes, particularly in stressful situations of
high emotion.
When Alice went really downhill again last Monday afternoon
we assumed it was the H, F & M but by the time we got her to see the doctor
she had developed a full body rash, was pale, feverish and could barely stay
awake. Of course I’d forgotten all about the immunisations by this time and
thought that she was becoming seriously ill. I could not contain my anxiety, no
matter the doctor’s assurances that it would be short-lived and that she would
most likely be over the worst of it within 24 hours. By the time I’d taken her from
the doctor’s office to the car I had convinced myself that she was the one in a
million case who’d die because of her immunisations. I really had to try hard
that day to stay calm so that I didn’t stress Alice out any more than she
already was. As the doctor had said, the rash did begin to clear the next day,
although she was still very tired and irritable. It took a good few more days
for us to start to see her cheery old self again. Since her smiles and
silliness have returned I’ve been making an extra effort to just enjoy playing
with her, ignoring how much the floor needs to be vacuumed and the cleaning
washing needs to be folded and put away.
Given that Alice has caught so many bugs since she began in
childcare a couple of months ago I fear that we might be in for more illness as
the winter draws closer. I know it is unavoidable, and that it is good for her
immune system, and that most things she gets will not be serious (or as
unpleasant as the H, F & M) but so much of me still wants to pull her out
of childcare and keep her at home where I can better protect her. I have to
fight this urge daily and can only imagine how much harder that gets when your
children start becoming more independent and go off into the world without you.
I have to let her have experiences and freedoms, and I want nothing less for
her of course, but I also selfishly want to keep her with me always so that I
know she is safe. Someone very wise once told me that having a child is like
taking your heart and watching it walk around in the world without you – you can
no longer protect it from hurt or harm but become just a fairly helpless observer.
She couldn’t have been more right. But I know how important it is to let go.
Even at this early age, to teach her that she can be safe in the world without
me – that the world is not a scary place.
Being so ill has meant we’ve held off on a lot of transitions
we were planning to begin making after Alice turned one. Weaning her from
bottles and onto sippy cups and trying to cut out overnight feeds (she still
feeds at least twice overnight). Partly we have made that rod for our own back
because we feed her to sleep and use bottles to soothe her when she wakes
during the night. I find it really hard to think in terms of long term gains so
I always find myself doing the thing that is going to get the results right
now, and feeding to soothe and sleep is one of those things. I really don’t
mind feeding her once a night. I know she doesn’t need it, but I’d be happy to
do so, it is just that sometimes she wakes and cannot go back to sleep without
being fed and cuddled for a really long time, and those nights make it really
hard, especially as I no longer get the concessions associated with having a
newborn baby that does the same – naps when the baby naps, not having to work,
people generally expecting much less of you. I’m back in the world now and I need
to be able to function during the day and not be reaching for caffeine and
chocolate to keep my energy levels up when they begin to flag. I’m trying to
make some healthy changes and build some fitness up so I feel that all of this
also depends on me getting a decent amount of sleep each night.
Because her throat was so sore Alice also went off all of
her solid food, which worries me a little. She is not a great eater compared to
all the other babies her age I know. She refuses to eat anything off a spoon at
the best of times so she never really gets a good volume of food as she picks
around on her plate with her fingers. I’m trying not to put any pressure on her
as the last thing I want is to create a general food aversion but god dammit I
just want her to eat! It makes me so happy to see her eat a good meal, it just doesn’t
happen very often! We continue to offer her lots of food, whether she eats it
or throws most of it on the floor in disgust, but I have to admit it gets a bit
demoralising after a while when you go to so much effort to prepare food for
her and she won’t have a bar of it. I can’ t help but take it personally! There
are a few favourite things she will eat most of the time – scrambled eggs,
sultanas, rice snacks, carrots, but I don’t want to get into the habit of only
offering her things that are her favourite, so I’m kind of at a loss as to how
to proceed from here. How do you get a reluctant baby to eat?!
She’s become super playful over the last few weeks when she’s
been feeling well. She’s figured out how to play peek-a-boo and will often take
a piece of clothing and put it over her head to hide from you and thinks it is
the funniest thing ever when you act surprised to see her after she pulls it
off. She’s also taken to hiding around corners and then peeking around the wall
at you. It is so cute and she grins like mad while she is doing it. Her other
favourite game is putting her hands on her head and then you copying her or
vice versa. Sometimes she just comes out and does it while she’s in the middle
of something else and Leslie and I then have to race to copy her. It’s kind of
fun for us too and she enjoys it so much. She’s beginning to put her hands over
her eyes now as well and we are trying to teach her other parts of her face to
put her hands on.
We are really beginning to notice her interest and affinity
for music. She absolutely loves to dance and bop around and it makes my heart
melt so much to walk into a room to find her sitting there rocking from side to
side to the song from one of her toys or the radio. She doesn’t care how good
the song is either – she’ll begin to dance even to something silly that we are
singing to her! She loves to stand up against the TV stand where our stereo
speaker sits and dance right in front of where the music comes out. I’ve been
trying desperately to capture her bopping on video but she always stops by the
time I get out my phone and switch it to video mode! She’s becoming really hard
to photograph as every times she sees the phone or camera now she just takes a
dive for it and throws a big tantrum if she can’t have it. It’s making it hard
to get stuff like blogging done as I can’t use any electronics in her presence
without her stealing them off me, and if I refuse, her going into a crabby baby
rage!
Another of the cutest things she does at the moment is go
into her room, pull all of her books of the shelves, and sit quietly turning
the pages. I’ve been doing things in the kitchen once or twice and realised
everything has gone really quiet. I’ve rushed into her bedroom to see what kind
of mischief she’s up to and she’s just been sitting there reading. I find those
moments just extraordinary. Not just because I’m so happy she loves books but
just noticing that she’s beginning to choose which things she wants to do
rather than just do whatever is put in front of her. Her intentions and actions
are becoming so much more deliberate, which is a huge developmental milestone,
but also means she has very strong opinions about what she would or would not
like to do! Having her nappy changed or being dressed and undressed are about
the worst things we can do to her right now. It is really becoming quite impossible
and she is really strong and twisting and contorting to get away from you. We’ve
found only one thing that keeps her still and calm while being changed at the
moment and that is a slowly-deflating helium balloon left over from her
birthday party. Because it is on its last legs it is kind of floating down low
in the middle of the room and if we put it beside her change table she’ll look
at it and play with it for long enough for you to get the job done. She loves
balloons and always points up when she sees them. She knows the word ‘balloon’
now too and when you say it she will look up to see if she can see one.
She has a few words in her vocabulary now – mama, dada, cat,
nan, hiya. I can tell that she understands a lot more of what I say now though.
She listens really, really hard. We read lots of stories at home and at the
library and I talk to her all the time about what we are doing so I hope that I
am providing her with a really language-rich environment that will help her
learn to speak.
We’ve just started playgroup with a few mums and babies from
my mothers group and Alice is loving that. They have soft climbing equipment
and she’s quite brave about crawling up on top of things, which surprised me!
She’s also attending lots of her friends’ first birthday parties at the moment.
We’ve had one every weekend, and next weekend we even have two to go to!
I really hope that she stays in good health for the coming
months as I want the chance to have some real fun with her now that she’s
understanding more. I’m going to try to plan to take her to the Botanic Gardens
while Autumn is still here and the leaves are all crunchy on the ground. I have
very fond memories of doing the same thing when I was a child so I’d love to
see her crawling about in the leaves. She’s still not walking – doesn’t really
have any interest in being upright at all – but she’ll get there, and I’m not
exactly in a hurry to have her able to run away from me at any opportunity, so
I’ll happy have her crawling around for a while yet!
