Our experiences flying with a one year old

We have just gotten home from our first overseas holiday as a family of three and Lilly's very first plane trip. To say I was anxious about flying with her is a massive understatement. Our flight from Brisbane to Auckland was only 3 and a half hours but the thought of having a crying and upset toddler for that long gave me nightmares. I spent hours trawling the internet for ideas of what to pack to ensure our flight was nice and easy.

I've put together a little post explaining what we packed in my husband's backpack to make the flight a little less stressful and a little more enjoyable. I hope you find these tips useful!

First let's discuss the backpack. Hubby excitedly purchased this while Lilly was in special care. He didn't want to lug around a nappy handbag when it was just the two of them so he wanted a manly bag. It was perfect and fit everything inside it comfortably, including her big coat for when we arrived in New Zealand! We attached her dinosaur toy to the zip because it was too big to put in the bag. It was her favourite toy while we were on holidays!

What was inside the bag?

 - A zipped up lunchbox with her sippy cup, packaged foods and disposable bibs. If you're going on holidays anywhere, do yourself a favour and get some Heinz disposable bibs. So good not having to cart yucky bibs around everywhere!

- Several nappies, wipes, nappy bags and an entire change of clothes in a zip lock bag. When we go anywhere, I always pack 2 more nappies than I would usually use if we were at home. We also learnt while we were away to always have a spare pair of socks. I won't go into too much detail...but...poo explosion.

- Entertainment! I packed Lilly's favourite board book and a zip lock bag of various toys. Most were relatively new but the wooden worm is one of her favourites at home. I take it with us everywhere! There's also a dummy in there even though she won't take one, it was good for her to chew on while we were taking off and landing because she wouldn't stay on the boob. I also packed the iPad which I haven't even turned on in the entire year we've had Lilly. It is still full of educational games and apps from when I was teaching so I figured it might come in handy. I was wrong. Lilly just kept pressing the home button over and over.

- A nice, thick blanket. Sometimes the plane can be really cold so this was very handy to have. I also used it to shield my boobs from other passengers as I fed Lilly to sleep. I had packed a light muslin cloth too but we didn't use it at all.

- Drugs. Not the illegal kind of course, but the 'what-if-she-gets-really-sick' kind. Lilly has allergies so I made sure to pack her allergy medication just in case. We also packed nurofen and bonjela because she's teething. I never leave the house without my thermometer because I'm a great mum anxious mum. Actually, this entire case never leaves my nappy bag!

So how did our flight go?

Our first flight from Brisbane to Auckland was at 9:30am which is when Lilly is generally sleeping at home. We let her sleep in the car on the way to the airport (about 40 mins) from 6am and then kept her busy and stimulated as we went through all the customs lines. Once we got to our gate, we had breakfast and Lilly crawled around/walked around to use up all that crazy toddler energy!

Once we boarded the plane, she was well and truly ready for a big breastfeed and long sleep. I had planned to wait until we were on the runway but she was starting to grizzle and I was very anxious about what the other passengers would think if she was 'already cranky.' I popped the blanket over my shoulder to shield her face (and my boob) from the view of other passengers and Lilly fell asleep feeding almost instantly. She slept for almost the entire flight! I think she would have slept for the entire thing if the passenger beside us didn't need to me to move so that she could use the bathroom. I even got to watch an entire movie with hubby!

We only had to entertain her for about 30 minutes! What a relief. The passengers behind us were amazed and didn't even realise there was a baby on the flight. That's a big win! 

Our second flight wasn't as smooth but was still a success in my books. I held off her afternoon feed and sleep for as long as possible as we were due to fly out at 4pm. Lilly normally maps at around 2-3pm so I was very worried when she fell asleep in my sling at the airport! She slept for about an hour while we ate lunch and walked through customs so it worked out quite well.

Once we boarded the plane, she was getting grizzly again so I ended up feeding her to sleep again, just like our first flight. She fell asleep as we left the runway and I thought to myself "this is soooo easy!!"  Fast froward to 26 minutes into my movie and Lilly's eyes were wide open! I spent the next 15 minutes trying to feed her back to sleep but she wasn't having a bar of it. She was happy enough though so out came my bag if tricks. She played with her toys and we read our books together which kept her happy for most of the flight.

Hubby and I took turns eating and Lilly sat with her Nana and Poppy for part of the flight too. When dinner came, she had a little feast and even played a game on the in flight entertainment system. The last hour was tough though. She was getting tired but just wouldn't settle enough to get to sleep. I tried shielding her face with the blanket but that just upset her more. She even threw up some milk because she was so full!

Overall, Lilly was fantastic to fly with regardless of whether she slept or not. She didn't cry or scream once and all my stress was for nothing!

Books for Babies

Reading is such an important activity to do with your babies and children. It helps to develop vocabulary and speaking skills and also fosters a love of reading from a very young age. As a teacher, it is quite obvious which students have been read to from a young age. 

Even though it feels kind of silly, I believe it's important to start reading to the youngest of babies. I can remember one particular day when Lilly was 8 weeks old. She was fussing and whinging a lot so I sat down and read to her - she instantly cheered up! My husband took a photograph of us together and it is one of my favourite photographs now.

So today I thought I would share some of our favourite books to read together at 9 months old! We started to incorporate books into a bedtime routine but found that normal picture books were a bit tough with Lilly and her busy hands. We now read mostly board books which is what I want to share with you today.

At the moment, Lilly is loving books with a sensory element to them - anything she can feel with her hands is a winner! We absolutely love reading the Hungry Caterpillar playbook and the dinosaur story book. The Hungry Caterpillar book is SO MUCH FUN! Lilly loves feeling the lion's mane.

I looked everywhere for the 'Guess how much I love you?' board book as it was a favourite of mine as a child. I often like to read this one at night time. It has such a sweet storyline and I remember my mum and sister often saying "I love you THIS much!"

The farm animal and ocean animal books were part of a big vocabulary pack that I found at Big W and are perfect for little ones who are learning to talk. 'I went walking' is a repetitive book that is commonly used in Prep and Kindergarten which I absolutely love because it builds animal and colour vocabulary.

So why is it important to read to your children lots and build up their vocabulary? It's a very well known fact that the brain develops most in the first 5 years of a child's life. Exposing babies and children to a wide variety of words in these early years will help develop important literacy skills down the track. Here is a fantastic article about building vocabulary with your little ones.

Our experiences with baby led weaning

My views on parenting have definitely changed since I had Lilly. Before her, I thought mothers that baby wore, coslept and breastfeed for longer than a year were crazy hippies! Now that she's here, I am definitely embracing the natural parenting and gentle parenting ways of doing things and that now includes baby led weaning. I had read a little about it before Lilly was born and thought I might give it a go and mix it with some puree food. My online mother's group have been very supportive and we have all been learning about the ins and outs together and I eventually found myself in a Baby Led Weaning facebook group which taught me a lot.

So what is baby led weaning I hear you say? It's basically letting your baby feed themselves finger food without the use of any puree's. There's a big emphasis on baby deciding how much they want to eat (and how much to moosh). There are lots of benefits in doing solids this way. It teaches them fine motor skills and boosts their coordination. Baby led weaning also exposes them to lots of textures early on which is supposed to help avoid having a fussy toddler down the track. The chewing motions are supposed to help with speech development which is a big win too. But most of all, it's a whole lot of fun! Lilly is always so happy when it's time for food and we always know when she's had enough because the smooshing, throwing and smacking of food begins. She is learning how much food she can handle and when she's ready to stop eating. 

 

With Lilly being a preemie, we weren't really sure when to start introducing her to food. Once she hit 6 months real age, we sat her up in the high chair and I gave her a little taste of my mango smoothie. To say she was unimpressed with being spoon fed is an understatement. The look on her faces says it all.

 

After that experience, I thought that maybe she wasn't quite ready yet. I did some more research and read that true baby led weaning doesn't involve any puree food. I read that babies are ready when they can pick up and move toys to their mouths very easily; can sit unsupported or with little assistance; and when they are making lots of chewing motions when playing. With this, I managed to convince my husband that we wouldn't know if she was ready until we tried. We decided to give her a little piece of toast one morning which she chewed and sucked on quite happily. Success! Later that day, we gave her some mango which she also loved. And so our baby led weaning journey began!

 

 

Over the next few weeks, Lilly tried lots of new foods. We had sweet potato, potato, pumpkin, banana, avocado, pear, carrot, spaghetti pasta and broccoli - her very favourite! I was very anxious watching Lilly eat. I would scoop any chunks out of her mouth that she happened to gnaw off. I knew it was the wrong thing to do but I was so scared, especially when she gagged. I tried to stick to relatively soft foods until we both built up our confidence. As you can see by the photos, she was always very happy as she ate.

We did have one minor set back when I introduced yoghurt. I was pre-loading the spoons for her and letting her feed herself. It looked as though she was loving it but a rash quickly developed. We raced her up to the doctors and found that she was allergic to something in the yoghurt. A few weeks later we sought another opinion and we are now waiting for further testing.

 

 

By Christmas, Lilly was 7 months old and we had been powering on with lots of soft foods and I had stopped scooping food out of her mouth. I trusted in her ability and she was doing so well! I even stopped cooking separate meals for her and embraced baby led weaning in the way it was meant to be.

 

We are now a month and a half into our baby led weaning journey (7.5 months old) and we now offer Lilly whatever we are eating most of the time. I have started packing lunches for her when we are out and about and we are generally having 2-3 meals a day and maybe a few snacks here and there too. I am mostly struggling with lunches though so I have started doing meal plans to keep me accountable and trying new things. At the moment, she is loving fruits! 

 

To begin with, we made sure all foods either had natural handles (meat on the bone, broccoli, banana with skin on the bottom etc) or was cut into my own finger length sticks. This was much easier for Lilly to hold on to and bring to her mouth. Now that we have been doing this for a little while, we is much better at manipulating foods so we don't worry as much with this. In the last week, we have tried some different shaped things like strawberries which she has LOVED!

 

I am so pleased we chose this path and couldn't be prouder of our clever little girl!

 

 

Keep in mind that this is just my experience with baby led weaning. Please follow the advice given from your own medical practitioner and make sure to read up on the benefits and disadvantages of anything you want to try.

Starting solids...but not quite

Lilly is approaching the 6 month mark very quickly, too quickly in fact! She is now 5 months old and solids have been on my brain for the past week or so. Under the current guidelines, we would be looking at starting solids in the next month or so...but Lilly is only 3.5 months corrected.

I have been googling like a mad woman and there are so many conflicting ideas - wait until she is 6 months real age...wait until she is 6 months corrected age...wait until she starts grabbing your food. It's all very confusing, especially with no guidance from the hospital we birthed at.

I know she still has the whole virgin gut thing going on and I don't want to ruin that. We are also just starting to kick breastfeeding butt so I don't want to ruin that either...but am I the only mum that thinks starting solids is the most exciting thing ever?

Hubby desperately wants to wait until Lilly is 6 months corrected around Christmas time but that hasn't stopped me from buying all of the food related things I can find!

This week alone, I trawled the baby food isle reading ingredients and deciding that we will puree' our own food to begin with and move into baby led weaning. I also hit Aldi and got some cool eating utensils to put in Lilly's Christmas gift hamper. Today I even added some baby teething rusks to my shopping cart.  By the time we are ready to start, we won't need to buy any supplies haha

You would think all this shopping would satisfy my need to give Lilly solids...but it hasn't. I decided to chop up some of my frozen milk stash and pop some cubes into Lilly's little mesh feeding toy thing-a-ma-jig that we got at the baby shower. And just like that, my desire to start solids has been met. Kinda.

Mummy guilt and the lies I've been telling myself

Before I fell pregnant, I knew I was going to breastfeed my babies. I didn't think there was any other option, that I would power through any issues we had and come out the other end successfully breastfeeding my baby. When my husband and I fell pregnant, I started researching and learning everything I could to make sure that I nailed feeding for our precious little bubba. I joined the Australian Breastfeeding Association and read their book from front to back. I signed up for their class but unfortunately couldn't make it because I got very sick towards the end of my pregnancy (due to pre-eclampsia). I was so determined to breastfeed.

But then Lilly was born prematurely at 33+6 weeks very quickly and very unexpectedly (which you can read about here). Suddenly everything I had learnt about breastfeeding went out the window. I couldn't have skin to skin with her immediately after she was born because she was rushed off to the Special Care Nursery and I wasn't awake for her birth. When I woke up from the surgery, my husband started collecting my colostrum with syringes with some assistance from my nurse. The following day, I started expressing using the hospital grade Medela pumps. I couldn't wait to start trying to breastfeed Lilly but she just wasn't strong enough yet.

Fast forward a week and we begun skin to skin. The nurses said that Lilly would find my nipple on her own but nothing happened. She just wasn't interested. I even tried putting my nipple in her mouth when she yawned and took our first fake breastfeeding photo to try and make myself feel better about our lack of breastfeeding. I told everyone we had started breastfeeding and how amazing it was and how clever Lilly was...I was such a liar!!

When Lilly was two and a half weeks old, we were finally able to get Lilly to attach and suck momentarily and things started improving. Each day she would suck just a little bit more and she would just have a top up through her feeding tube. Eventually we got one whole breastfeed and I was over the moon. I finally felt like I was a real mum! Her progress was quick and before we knew it, she was having 2 feeds a day with no top up! At the time, I felt like it was all taking too long but she really did get the hang of it pretty quickly, she just needed to build up her strength.

And then it happened. Lilly graduated from the Special Care Nursery and we were able to wheel her out into Maternity and room in together for the very first time in her four and a half weeks Earth side. I was so excited to begin our breastfeeding journey for real. But that's when it all fell apart. We got through the day no problems but by the time we got to her 5th feed of the day (she was on 3 hourly feeds) she was absolutely exhausted and wasn't latching or sucking correctly. We spent our 48 hours in maternity not sleeping and trying our best to breastfeed but with limited success. Whenever the nurses came to check, I lied to myself and the nurses when I told them what a great job she was doing. I guess I thought that if I told them I was doing great, we would do great...but I really just didn't want to lose her again...I just wanted to get her home.


Finally our 48 hours was up and the pediatrician did her release check-up...but she had lost a whole 100g in just 48 hours. They wanted us to stay but ended up letting us go home on the condition that we have her weighed again in another 48 hours and came back if there was no improvement. In hindsight, we should have stayed. We should have told them we were struggling but we didn't. We wrapped up our precious baby girl and left that hospital as fast as humanly possible. I kept telling myself it would be okay, we just needed to get away from it all.

When we got home, I relaxed a little but we were still struggling - I was so stressed that my milk almost completely dried up - I went from expressing over 200mls per 20 minute session to a terrifying 10mls. I saw my GP and started on some medication to help boost my supply (which worked practically instantly!) and I decided to give Lilly an expressed milk bottle...or two...or three. We started trying a breastfeed then topping up with my expressed milk. I felt better, Lilly went back to sleeping like an angel and life with a not-so-newborn was amazing....but I felt all this guilt. I felt like a failure for not being able to breastfeed her exclusively. I felt like after our shitty birth experience that I needed to be better and I needed to breastfeed.  I continued telling everyone what an awesome job we were doing breastfeeding and that she was a breastfed baby but I was a big fat liar. We were lucky if we did two full breastfeeds a day - that's not a breastfed baby at all!

Fast forward 5 weeks and we are still expressing and bottle feeding. I have since got my hands on some amazing Medela nipple shields and we usually try two breastfeeds a day and Lilly seriously kicks butt with them...but she takes an hour to feed which my lactation consultant says is too long for a little preemie with little energy. So at around 10am, we have one super long breastfeed and then we rock the bottle for the rest of the day. I am finally feeling at peace with our feeding and I no longer feel like a failure. When someone asks if we breastfeed, I still say yes but now I fill them in on the details. I think that lying about it just made me feel worse....I feel like everybody else either breastfeeds or they formula feed but there's a whole other breed of mummies out there just like me who express and bottle feed. 

I must say, I really love the connection Lilly and I share during a breastfeed and the way she pokes and prods at my boob to stimulate the milk..there's really no words to describe how amazing it feels and I can't wait for the day when she is much stronger and able to breastfeed exclusively....but for now I am loving the way she looks up at me when she's having a bottle...right into my eyes as if she's saying, "I know it's not what you wanted Mummy, but thank you for not giving up on the boobie milk...I love you" and that makes it all so worthwhile.

Lilly's first week at home

Our first week at home has been an absolute dream! Lilly has been sleeping really well and has even given us a few nights of 5 hour blocks which I'm told is counted as 'sleeping through' so hubby and I are feeling quite well rested. We were a bit worried that she would hate bath time - she absolutely loved it in hospital so we were kind of expecting her to absolutely hate it once we got home...nope, she still loves it! It's actually my favourite part of the day and hubby and I share the bath time jobs. He usually fills the tub and holds her then we take turns washing her and drying her...you wouldn't think something so simple could be so fun haha!

We also had our very first outing! First we drove over to my Mums house and then we followed her, my siblings, aunty, cousins and grandparents up to Maleny for morning tea! This was the first time my aunty and cousins met Lilly and also my Grandad's first cuddle. I love that we have all of these special moments caught on camera!

 

Overall, our first week at home was fantastic. I still can't believe what a good baby Lilly is - we can only hope she stays this content and happy! Though I think everyone is pretty excited to see her when her eyes are open when they visit!

Newborns are HARD but home time yay!

We have spent the last two nights 'rooming in' at the hospital and I won't lie...it has been really really hard. I guess you could say that I was a little naive. In the nursery, Lilly was being breastfed 4 times a day and tube feed for her other 4 feeds. I figured she was in such an awesome routine that it would be easy to move out into the ward and continue on with this awesome fairytale routine where Lilly woke 3 hourly for a feed and went back to sleep. Boy was I WRONG! But doesn't she look like a little angel here?

Problem 1: Lilly refused to sleep at night and I fell asleep with her either screaming herself to sleep on my chest or sleeping contently beside me in the bed...which was a big no-no in the hospital. 

Problem 2: She refused to stay latched to my boob for any longer than 5 sucks in a row. And then she would scream after coming on and off a few times and I'd have to put her to sleep with me in the bed and start the vicious circle again.

This crazy dance of scream-try to feed-scream again continued all night for both of the nights we roomed in. I spent a lot of the night sitting rocking her back and forth with tears streaming down my face...it was hard. So very hard. At 4am the first morning, I messaged my husband with a river practically flowing down my face, chest and into my lap telling him that he needed to take the day off and come in and help me or I'd have a mental breakdown. Of course he obliged and of course Lilly was a little angel as soon as Daddy got there...but we were still struggling with the feeding. I didn't tell any of the nurses because I just wanted to get her home with us where she belonged. Looking back at it now, I should have asked for help but I was just too damn scared. 

We finally finished our mandatory 48 hours of rooming in and just had to wait for the pediatrician to come in and discharge us. He took what seemed like the entire day...and when he finally got there and weighed Lilly, she had lost a whopping 100g in two days. We then had to wait for another pediatrician who wanted us to stay another night...but we declined and took her home anyway and looking back now, we definitely made the right decision! The hospital wasn't a nice place to start bonding with our baby and I found it so hard being away from my husband. We packed Lilly up and drove very carefully home.

When we got home, we introduced the fur babies to our human baby and they have pretty much stayed clear from Lilly since! They have found it really hard not sleeping in our bedroom with us and I really miss their warm cuddles but now I have Lilly to cuddle! I must say, being at home feels like a weight has been lifted from my shoulder - I just wish we could sort out these damn breastfeeding issues...but that's a whole other post!

Family time in the hospital

Miss Lilly is doing so well in hospital! Since my last post, she has begun breastfeeding and we have had so many cuddles with her - she's even had her first bath! We have basically been living at the hospital trying to get Lilly to feed for 4 of her 8 feeds in a day so that we can board in at the hospital and come home. I won't lie, it's getting so hard to leave her there at the end of our visit and it's becoming very frustrating that she's so tiny and not able to feed as well as some of the other babies...but we will get there. Today I'll just share a few pics from our last week in the SCN.