I just want to start by saying – how on earth are we already at six months?! It seems like only yesterday we arrived home from the Birth Centre with a tiny, delicate newborn that somehow we had to figure out how to look after. Fast forward six months and we now have a bubbly little bundle of joy with a chubby belly an infectious giggle and who loves nothing more than to be chucked in the air.
Darcie seems to be a pretty average baby in terms of development, which is pretty handy really as whenever I google ‘When do babies…?’, she seems to do it near enough to the day that it comes up with. She can sit very well unaided and only topples occasionally, it doesn’t seem to bother her even when she does, so long as she lands on a soft surface of course. She has been rolling over for a month or so (according to my Facebook post it was the 6th October so she would have been a week away from 5 months old). She had been trying to do it for a while so when she finally made it over it was such a celebration. I rang Dan at work crying and babbling about Darcie and accidentally terrified him thinking something had gone wrong. She still only really rolls to the left and goes from her back to her tummy,she has rolled the full 360 a couple of times but it has mainly been momentum carrying her over rather than a deliberate attempt. As much as she loves rolling, she hates being on her tummy so I can spend rather a long time watching her roll, picking her up, watching her roll, picking her up. This is cute for about ten minutes but then I tend to try to encourage her to find a new game.
She absolutely loves her Walker, she can move around very well on the tiled kitchen floor and loves the new freedom of being able to explore all the different corners she wouldn’t normally see. Her Nanna has bought her a Jumperoo which we are getting next week, I am very excited about it as I’m sure she is going to love it. Other things she has loved in this six months are her Play Mat/Baby Gym and her Bouncy Chair which has probably been the most useful purchase so far as it has been an excellent place to put her and was the only place she would nap for the first six weeks except when she was being held.
Her favourite songs to sing are The Grand Old Duke of York because she loves being thrown in the air, Elmo’s Song because it’s pretty much the only telly she is ever allowed to watch and Wind the Bobbin Up because…nope no idea! She also loves playing Peekaboo and blowing raspberries. She’s even added raspberries into her bedtime routine which now goes bathtime, milk, raspberries and eventually sleep. If it was anyone else I’d find that annoying but she’s just the sweetest so she gets away with it.
She’s gone through quite a shy phase recently, she is so loud and playful at home with us but when we are out and about she just prefers to sit quietly and observe for a while before she likes to get involved. The lovely cashiers at Sainsburys make her cry on a regular basis by trying to be her friend. To be fair I would probably find it pretty scary if there was suddenly a giant in my face saying Hello and expecting me to smile. At first I was worried that she was going to grow up being scared of everything but from what I’ve read online it is quite normal for them to go through this phase, apparently it’s to do with her loving her mummy so much that anyone else just won’t do. That made me feel better.
We are still breastfeeding which I am very happy with, I feel so proud of us both for making it to this point but I’ve written more about that in My Breastfeeding Journey so you can read that if you are interested.
We are going to two main baby groups a week, one is a Sure Start group where they also have Health Visitors to talk to and have you baby weighed as well as the Stay and Play. Then we also go to Jiggy Wrigglers which is a lot of fun, very interactive for the babies and a nice outing for the mummies as well.
She is very talkative and has been through many different phases with the noises that she makes. We are currently in a growling stage which is very cute but can get extremely loud! We have also been very lucky in that she only got her first cold about a week ago so hasn’t had to cope with an ill baby.
The last thing I’ll mention is sleep. Her bedtime is 7ish, I will feed her and rock her to sleep and she tends to wake up anywhere between 2 and 5 times before 7am when she is ready to start the day. She has slept through the night a handful of times which were amazing, although I found myself waking up anyway to check she was okay! Most of the times when she wakes up I will feed her for a few minutes until she goes back to sleep. I don’t think she actually is waking up because she is hungry, it’s probably more for the comfort aspect of it but to be honest it is just the easiest way to get her back to sleep and at 3am I am definitely going to take the easy way. She has been in her Moses Basket this whole time but we are now transitioning her to her cot, still in our room though as neither of us feel ready for her to move out yet. She has been too big for her Moses Basket for a while but we put off transitioning her into the cot because it is really tight squeezing it into our bedroom, but as my Mum said- her friends would have laughed at her when she turned up at University with her Moses Basket!
There is so much more I’m sure I could say about her six months but this is already a very long post. I have loved every minute of this journey so far, of course it has been tough too, there have been moments of sheer exhaustion and I have doubted myself more than ever before it my life but mostly it has just been so rewarding and exciting. I feel so ridiculously lucky to have my life right now.
