EIGHT MONTHS WITH EVANGELINE

I cannot believe that we have been parents for 8 months, Eve is flourishing every single day and she’s extremely clever which can be both a blessing and a curse! We are now officially 6 months into her teething and still have not one sign of a tooth, I feel like she’s going to wake up one morning with a full set. She is so greedy when it comes to food but we are battling a fussy stage at the moment, she loves any kind of fruit pureed but when we try her with anything savoury she doesn’t like it. She is extremely vocal when she’s eating something that she likes and opens her mouth wide like a baby bird but when you give her something she doesn’t like and she refuses to even open her mouth! We are getting her to try lots of food from our plates making sure we have as many meals as we can with her, I’m hoping she will just get better with it over time!

Evangeline has now had over one month of her sleeping in her own room, I can’t believe how much better she’s sleeping too! She has finally learnt how to roll over which was a nightmare at first as she kept rolling onto her stomach and crying so we would have to come into her room to turn her back over. After a frustrating week of intervening she started to naturally roll onto her stomach in her sleep which she found really comfortable and now she sleeps on her front every single night. She’s also started travelling up and around her bed in the night so every morning she’s in a different place at a different angle which tends to confuse her when she finally wakes up!

We are now a two parent working family as my maternity leave is over. I would have loved to stay at home with Evangeline but unfortunately we couldn’t afford for me to do that. I do think that it’s important for me to work and provide for my family as well as Paul, I didn’t find it fair for all of the responsibility to rest on his shoulders too. We are so fortunate that we have family who can provide childcare, it can be a bit crazy having to arrange every week but not having to pay for a nursery really helps. Although it’s difficult to be away from Eve a massive positive is that she’s getting more quality time with Paul and I absolutely love seeing her reaction when we are reunited after a few hours apart! When I was on maternity leave pretty much all of Pauls time with Eve was also spent with me, now I’m at work they get their own bonding time together which is really lovely. Every Saturday we take her weekly photos and now it’s his job as I’m at work, he also sends me photographs of their cute little adventures together!

Eve has definitely found her voice and her favourite thing to do is to scream our house down. This being happy, squealy screams of joy but you definitely need to prepare your ears for it. She has said her first word and I was very satisfied that it was Mama, she usually says it when she wants attention because she knows I get really excited. Her belly laughs are at another level now and she’s incredibly ticklish. She’s just starting to sit up by herself too which is both exciting but very daunting as I’m going to have to keep two eyes on her at all times. She’s definitely going to be on the move soon and she’s starting shuffling around and trying to escape from her bouncer too!

We have had a couple of our follow up Hospital appointments due to Evangeline being very poorly in December. I took her for an Ultrasound which was a very strange experience as she is SO tiny. I thought she would be a nightmare trying to constantly roll over but she was pre-occupied confused at the very dark room we were in! We then had to prepare ourselves for her Micurating Cystourethrogram. This is a procedure where they insert a Cather and fill your Bladder and Kidneys with dye to view on an X-Ray. We were informed that it was quite a traumatic process and quite uncomfortable for babies but they needed to do it for good reason. On the morning of the procedure we were anxious and I had major Mum guilt, I had decided that I wasn’t going to go in for the procedure with her but Paul would go. He went into the room with her and I was told that once her Cather was in they would call me into the room to explain what they would be doing. 20 minutes went by and the Nurses still hadn’t come out to get me so I was getting worried, when the Nurse finally came out she took me into the room and Evangeline was screaming and crying. They had attempted to put a Cather in 6 times with different members of staff but unfortunately they were unable to do it as she was just too small and it’s much more difficult for baby girls. This meant that they couldn’t do the procedure and it’s now been passed back to the Consultant for them to decide if there is another method of doing the examination. Due to them using anaesthetic gel it had started to wear off nearer her bedtime so she was really unsettled after her bath. She was uncomfortable and emotional for the next few days but she bounced back to her normal self quite quickly. She’s still on her preventative antibiotics until we go back to see the Consultant in March so it’s just a matter of waiting now.

And one of the most exciting parts of this month was the unexpected snow! Living in Blackpool and near the sea limits the amount of snow that we would get but as we live near the countryside and in a quiet area we had a few hours of thick snowfall. I got Eve straight into her warm clothes and we went for a play outside, she absolutely loved it! By the time that Paul was home the snow had gone and I felt bad that he had missed out. At the weekend he managed to find somewhere with snow and he took the cutest photographs of them together. Although I drive him mad with taking photos he knew that I thought it was important so he made sure to take them whilst I was working.

If you’ve enjoyed looking at the photographs then feel free to have a follow of Evangeline’s Instagram to keep up to date with the cute baby spam.