Happy, Healthy Pixie

I had some nice news today. After months of fretting about Baby’s weight and wondering if I am doing something wrong, got her checked at the hospital to find out that she has grown at a steady weight and height for the last three months and there is nothing to worry about. It seems that she has taken to weaning and all the food I have been shovelling down her, regardless of protests, has done her good.

I enjoyed my fourth baby Darling so much and found being a mum to her so easy that I thought my fifth would be a cinch that we would sail through her first year and have a big, bonny happy baby at the end of it. I underestimated the task and found myself at the baby clinic week after week being asked why the baby was gaining weight at such a slow rate that she was dropping lower and lower on the health chart each week and threatening to drop straight off it. I tried nursing on demand, nursing by the clock, shorter times between feeds, introducing formula milk sooner than I would have liked, adding fennel seeds to the kettle when boiling the water for formula to avoid trapped wind, offering infacol between each feed to relieve wind (I don’t think she ever even had any wind, but one of the health visitors suggested it). One health visitor suggested I started waking her up twice every night for a feed when she was sleeping through and another told me I should stick to formula.

They referred me to the doctor who checked her over, found her alert and didn't think there was anything to worry about but gave me a hospital referral long enough in the future to give me a chance to get her to gain weight. I stopped going to the baby clinic because I was at my wits end with different health visitors and different advice each week and a week was hardly enough time to show a decent weight gain. I also didn't like the feeling of being interrogated and judged. In the end a good friend of my husbands who is a doctor advised me to give the baby clinic a break too.

That was three months ago, in the intervening period, I dropped everything else going on in my life and concentrated on getting as many feeds, formula as well as breast milk, into my little doll. We started weaning as soon as we hit five months and that seemed to make all the difference.

After her check today, the doctor declared she was beautiful, healthy and there are no concerns. So I am going to stop being anxious now and relax a little.

She is six months now and because of her neat features and big eyes, has been nicknamed pixie. She is trying to crawl and manages to roll all over the place. The kids have a game where they put something just out of reach and try and get her to wriggle her way to it. Mash’Allah she is my soul twin more than any of the other children – quick, full of energy, happy and always smiling and a chatterbox.

Subhan’Allah I look at each of my children and imagine them all grown up, I wonder what Allah (SWT) has in store for them and pray they will use every good thing He has blessed them in the path of His beautiful religion.

Like Darling before her (who managed to pick off some of my laptop keyboard keys) Baby is obsessed with my laptop and keeps chasing my mouse across the bed.