bringing you up to speed

this will be a longish entry i guess. it's gonna start right back about May 1 2003. the day i got that elusive BFP on a pregnancy test. clive and i had only been trying 3.5 years.

shrimpy started measureing sga at about 32 weeks. i held off a c-section with the blessings of all the midwives- "bodger" as she was then known was not in distress at any time. clive had some holiday coming up and was entitled to 2weeks paternity leave as well. so i went into the OB and told her wehn he was off and asked if she wanted to try and induce me- can you tell i was sick of being in and out of hospital for CTGs at this point?!

i went in on the monday before christmas.. and nothing happened right up to christmas eve so i asked my consultant to let me home for christmas day- which she did :o) i went back in boxing day and at 05:12am on Dec 27th 2003 Siân Louise entered the world weighing in at 3lbs 13oz and measureing 45cms- see how she got the nickname "shrimpy"?

for the first two months it felt like ALL i did was breast feed. i've been told this is good lol. then suddenly at 8 weeks old shrimpy started burbling. it was lovely. and her smiles were even more so. it takes alot to get one out of her, but it's SOO worth it!

on March 21st 2004 (mothers day UK) shrimpy slept through the night in her crib for the first time. what a mothers day present that was! she kept up a 7.30pm-5.30am pattern till she hit a growth spurt at about 9mos. then she started to wake up just once in the night. extra solids didn't change the pattern of this so we went back to co-sleeping some of the night. it kept me warm too!

mobility of a sort came right at 5mos when she could roll around a hwole room in under a minute. she also started to walk holidng onto her daddy's fingers, we didn't think she'd crawl at all after that. then at 6mos or so she army crawled, and just got faster! at 7mos she crawled properly and at 8mos she'd sit up for a few minutes wtih out going to explore- she suddenly realized she could explore things just sitting still.

we started going to baby sign classes when shrimp was 4.5mos old. she signed 'milk' at 8mos, waved 'hello/goodbye' at 10.5mos and 'all gone' out of the blue the week before her 1st birthday. in 2005 we're going to work on 'please/thank you', 'more', 'food', 'drink' 'mama' and 'daddy'

it's christmas time again now. and it's our first as a family.. there was a HUGE pile of gifts for shrimp from her friends, god parents and family. then two days after she had another huge pile of gifts for her birthday. the girl doesn't really need much in the way of toys in 2005, clothes now, they're a different matter!

at 1 year & 2days.. weight: 14lbs length: 69cms

the computer clock tells me it's bed time in england. i'll come back to you during the week wiht more about me and the family.