PAFT, bottles, sleeping through the night, and another visit from disease

Bah! The problem with taking an obscenely long time to complete a post is that a week after you start, certain things are no longer relevant.

For example, my bent on decorating the little dude's room with the most awesome wall art available on the market was circumvented by weeks of the little dude getting steadily more unsettled, sleeping less and less and finally bellowing solidly for several days and me therefore making a desperate dash to a cranial osteopath recommended by the little dude and my respective pals Niki and Luca, in the hope that we could do something to make him more comfortable or settle him down again, and in the meantime spent the decorating budget. Doh. Still, I'd rather have a happy baby, even if the monster decal I'd hunted down was the. coolest. ever.

I'd done an entire paragraph celebrating his sleeping through the night, but lamenting that it'd only happened the grand total of once, and was therefore most likely the result of nothing but sheer exhaustion from being decidedly ill (I swear, he's got a little stash of bottled germs under his cot mattress that he snorts whenever he's due for his vaccination jabs so that he can't have them for a couple of weeks. Tricky little ginger) with a spectacularly nasty disease of the ridiculously bad cold variety. Ridiculously bad. Said cold resulted in numerous incidences of projectile power chucking that soaked me to the skin, quite literally. Even changing my undies was required (I know. Too much information. And yet you keep coming back). His room looked like an abandoned haunted house for a few days - every surface was covered in towels, no furniture visible, just a furniture-ghosty look - set out in preparation for masses of flying puke, in whatever direction it should be fired. Poor little dude.

But then he slept through again last night. BOOya! I woke up with a cracker of a headache and my boobs aren't a fan (a fan? fans?), but man was it worth it. Sleep is awesome. I love sleep. Of course right now, I'm less concerned about whether the little dude sleeps through and more whether he'll go to sleep at all. I can hear him having a marvellous time rolling around in his cot with his Ugly Dog ... and I'm wondering to if perhaps it wasn't such a good idea to teach him how to squeal and playing screaming games with him all afternoon. Tis rather piercing through the monitor.

Aaaaand that leaves me with the disaster that has been trying to get him to take a bottle. That paragraph hasn't changed any.

It may never have been a successful thing anyway, but I blame antenatal classes for telling us not to introduce the bottle before 6 week because the kid would get nipple confusion. I guess in a way, they're quite right - he's not at all confused ... Doh. We've tried all sorts and nothing has worked. No-thing. Not a even a hint of working. There was one day where I thought he'd taken 20ml, but what I actually think happened is that I mis-read the bottle. Ergo, thought I'd put 50ml in and I'd put 30 sorta thing. Whatever though, he aint doing it. Aint doing it if we starve him, aint doing it if we give it to him to hold, aint doing it if we slowly introduce the bottle to him empty so he learns to put it in his mouth and be comfortable with it, aint doing it if we clap ourselves stupid and dance around in happy circles if we have even the minutest of success, aint doing it no way no how thank you very much.

I never got around to the PAFT paragraph, so that at least is nice'n'straight forward ... so long as I don't admit that we're having our second monthly PAFT visit on Monday. Woops. Maybe I'll tell ya about it on Monday. After a quick woohoo that there are 7000 babies in Manukau at the moment thereabouts and 400 places in PAFT. Go us for getting in!! PAFT is an acronym for Parents as First Teachers and the basic concept is that from 4 months to 3 years Cuinn will have monthly home visits from an educator who will teach us all sorts in relation to his developmental level, what to expect coming up, what we can do to encourage him, what to look for happening, observe in his development, and how to promote his development and learning. They do various other things such as encourage involvement in Mainly Music (which we'll do once the little dude has settled a bit, is generally more comfy is himself and is in a bit of a routine - otherwise he goes somewhere and basically goes AAAHHHHRRRGGHHHH!! there and then and for the rest of the day which completely negates almost all benefit from whatever it is he's done), and apparently among other things there is an annual visit to an animal farm in the area. Cool stuff. I'll blather more next week.

Right now, I'm going to go and put my feet up, look at my housework, and try to gather myself a bit before Cuinn gets his last lot of vaccinations (for the moment) tomorrow. Vaccination day is not too pretty. The day after vaccination day is just ugly. Ergo, I must celebrate an awesome day today.

Next osteo visit is Tuesday too so watch this space for progress reports.