After an April and May that were almost sweltering, June and July have so far turned out quite cool by comparison. Whatever weather there is at Wimbledon usually comes this way not long after and the tournament was a bit of a wash-out this year. But for the last few days official forecasts have predicted thunderstorms and even hail while the weather has actually turned out quite nice and sunny, although on the breezy side. I keep putting Jessica in a jacket before we go outdoors and I would’ve though the problem would have been to keep her cool enough this time of year…
Last night Jessica slept through until almost 6am, which meant I got 7 (!) hours of uninterrupted sleep – the most I’ve had in absolutely ages…!
Decided to go to the Health Visitor Clinic to weigh Jessica and also to ask about Vitamin A and D drops for her, as my sister told me that they’re recommended for all babies from 4 months of age in Sweden and I hadn’t heard anything regarding adding those vitamins here. Also, even though Jessica got weighed only last Friday (13th), as she’s 5 months on Friday I wanted to get a reading of her weight as near that date as possible. As it happened, Jessica was so busy happily kicking her legs and waving her arms that the scales couldn’t decide what they were supposed to show and after a few minutes I gave up (and decided to put Friday’s weight down as her 5 months one – it really shouldn’t be that different, should it?).
One of the Health Visitors advised me that for babies on formula feed they don’t recommend any added vitamins at all, for breastfed babies they recommend A, C and D from 6 months of age. She suggested that perhaps as there is less sun in Sweden during the winter months there might be greater call for especially Vitamin D there than here in the UK… I’m not sure what to do now – act on Swedish or English advice? I had noticed multi-vitamin drops in one of the pharmacies in town but I’m reluctant to just cram Jessica full of other vitamins unnecessarily, plus the drops I saw contained peanut oil and I’m trying to avoid that for her, at least during her first year.
Twice today she fell asleep over my shoulder while I was jiggling her up and down – dare I say it: could this be a trick I can use to get her to nap daytime…?! I’ve given up on the putting her in her cot and waiting for her to go to sleep on her own accord during the day – I think she’s one of those babies that are just never going to let that happen. When she falls asleep downstairs I now just put her on a blanket on the living room floor rather than trotting upstairs to the cot. She’s safe on the floor and I can keep an eye on her there, it’s fairly soft underneath (thick carpet and padded blanket) and she doesn’t seem to mind in the slightest.
Jessica had some mashed parsnip between her mid-morning and lunch-time milk. She grinned badly at the first taster but was still keen to have more. I tried some of it too. I’m usually a fan but it was a bit bland to be fair – a bit watery, as I guess it would come when boiled a bit too much and mashed…
Today I also bathed Jessica for the second time on my own. It went pretty well and she laughed several times – especially when kicking with her legs and splashing me – so she must have been enjoying it. She even got a bit of playtime in: apart from the splashing about, she grabbed the sponge I was washing her with (alas, not for the purpose of cleaning herself…) and the thermometer shaped like a yellow bath duck (which has ceased to function properly as a thermometer and now we’re just guessing the temperature, which seems to work just as well) waved them about and put them in her mouth.
We spent best part of the afternoon out in the garden, Jessica in the shade of a tree while I took some washing down and put some new up. And then we went for a little stroll around the garden, looking at the trees blowing in the breeze, the roses down the end of the garden and the sunflowers Ian planted about a week ago.
Gabriella