Coffee mornings

Meeting up with other mum's at 'coffee mornings' is something that I really enjoy, and hopefully when Chicken is older she will too.  Sharing successes and challenges, getting and giving advice and generally having people around you who are in the same boat makes things a lot easier.  Most weeks I go to a few groups and I'm now starting to make new friends, very exciting!

On Tuesdays I meet up with the seven other girls that I went on my ante-natal course with.  The idea of the course was to prepare us for labour and childbirth so we could make informed decisions and make friends with other people in the same situation as us.  The first baby arrived in early December and the last in early February, with five boys and three girls.  We take turns hosting at our houses and chat and compare notes.  My Chicken for example is one of the worst sleepers, but has no trouble feeding.  The other girls offer some suggestions and generally lend a supportive ear, basically they make you feel like you're not alone, which is really important at 4am when you've been woken for the fourth time that night!  Its also a chance for me to indulge in my baking hobby, which the girls are always grateful for!

On Friday's I have my school coffee group of two.  Alice and I work together and had babies 9 days apart.

This is Robbie, Alice's boy who is staring adoringly at my little madam, while she screams at the top of her lungs!  We usually meet up at a cafe, and have lunch and then go for a walk around a park.  Alice is one of my closest friends in the UK, and its been great to have someone else to go through all of this with.

My final group is a breastfeeding group run by my local children's centre.  I first went to to get some support and the lady who runs the group suggested I kept coming and so I have.  I didn't know anyone there and Eilidh was quite a bit younger than the other babies, but I kept going and now I've started to make friends with some of the other mums.  Today I ran into two of them in town and we had coffee and have made plans to go to a singalong session at the library on Thursday.  I am very excited about this!  These groups don't suit everyone, but I'm enjoying the support and friendship of the other women, and its nice to get out of the house especially when it needs a clean, hehe.

PS Chicken had her month immunisations today and was a real trouper!

Immunisations

Yesterday I took Chicken for her first immunisations.  I was a little nervous, my friend took her son last week and she cried, and well if she cried, I was going to bawl!  I fully support immunising your child, to me its a very important thing to do, the only thing I was worried about was having my baby poked with sharp needles!  My fears were confirmed when a little boy in front of us screamed the house down.
Chicken had two shots, one in each thigh, they were:

• Diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (whooping cough), polio and Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib, a bacterial infection that can cause severe pneumonia or meningitis in young children) given as a 5-in-1 single jab known as DTaP/IPV/Hib
• Pneumococcal infection 

(thanks NHS for the info)

And then the screaming (her) and crying (both of us) began, poor girl looked so scared and I felt like the meanest mum in the world.  The nurses warned me she might get a temperature and would probably be quite ratty for the rest of the day, so I got prepared.  I did all my jobs straight after so we could get home and cuddle.  I was in the supermarket loading the groceries onto the belt and Chicken started to really scream so the nice woman in front of us unloaded my basket for me.  We were talking about how bad I felt, and then she said, "I know it hurts you to see her unhappy, but you wouldn't want her to get any of those diseases would you, so really you're doing a good thing"  What a kind thing to say!

Once we got home and Chicken was very subdued, sleeping on me all afternoon, with the occasional piercing howl when she was put down or bumped.

When Andrew got home I handed her over, and he commented on how clingy she was, not like our little girl at all.  All this time I (like any over-protective first time mum) was checking her temperature to see if we got to 37.5c, the time when Calpol could be given.  She got close (37.2) but just before bed it dipped, which coincided with her perking up a bit.  She was still quite quiet but did manage to flash Andrew a big cheesy grin! (which of course I didn't capture, this is just how she spend most of the evening, chillaxing with Dad)

She slept really well, and on the whole I think we got lucky, I mean most adults are slightly grumpy when they get shots!

On a completely different note, shes found her hands and is now stuffing then in her mouth to suck on at every opportunity!