Daphne turned nine months old this week - I've officially had her now for longer than I was pregnant (actually, the maths of pregnancy always confused me so... hmmm, that could be complete bollocks). In some ways it's like she's always been here, in other ways it only feels like a few weeks ago that we were bringing her home from the hospital. Gah, how cliched. How true.

But yes. She's nine months old and the last few weeks have been pretty challenging as she's dropped her third nap. So her schedule, which was beautifully reliable before and actually bloody great as she slept through every night, has gone a bit haywire. For the last week or so she's been persistently waking at 5am (oh so fun!) and refusing to a) go back to sleep and b) shut up. She doesn't cry, bless her, she just kind of shouts and squeals and makes general noise which means there's absolutely no way we can sleep through it. She has double double blackout blinds in her room (blackout fabric suction-cupped to the window, a blackout roller blind on top and then blackout-lined curtains) yet still a tiny chink of light seems to find its way out (mostly at the top and bottom) and hence she decides that when the sun gets up, so does she. It's exhausting! HOW we managed for months of her not sleeping through the night I have no idea because my tiredness levels have been reaching epic proportions thanks to this early morning start.

To counteract the lack of third nap, she's now going to bed at 5.30-6pm - which I know sounds ridiculously early, but she can't stay awake any longer - if she does then we get into that godawful screaming-like-she's-being-murdered overtiredness thing, where literally the only way to settle her is to put a muslin over her face so she can't see anything (sounds horrible and it is), hold her little arms down to stop them thrashing, and shush and shush and shush until she falls asleep. Ugh. It's like I'm torturing her and I HATE it, but for some reason she just cannot settle herself if she gets overtired. Does anyone else's baby get like this? My mum seems to think it's a new phenomenon as apparently I never did it, but a few of my RL friends have had similar experiences with over-stimulated and over-tired babies.

She now naps from 9-10.30am and then again from 1.30pm to (ideally) 3pm. She often wakes up from her second nap a bit early though, but I can't push her to go down later than 1.30pm as by then she's red-eyed and whiny. I swear you could study baby schedules at degree level and still not get to grips with the ridiculous algorithms they seem to work to.

In other news, we had her developmental check up today. I will be honest here, I requested it a bit early (I think it's supposed to be between 9-12 months and most people have it at around a year) as I've been really worried about the fact that she has never, ever babbled. She can make plenty of other noises (screeching and growling are her specialities) but she has never made any 'babababa' or 'mamamama' noises. Of course, I asked Dr Google what this meant and the number one cause of lack of babbling seems to be autism. So that broke my heart, and sent me into a week-long spiral of obsessive googling, sleeplessness and Youtube-watching of autistic kids trying to see if Daph had any of their characteristics. I took her to the GP who suggested it might be a hearing issue and has referred her for tests but I am pretty sure she can hear really well as she responds to whispers and even someone creeping in the room behind her.

Anyway, she's also behind on her gross motor skills - most specifically sitting. She can sit alone perfectly and reach for stuff etc, but if she starts to lean back while seated she will always fall onto her back. I can't leave her alone sitting, when really at this age I should be able to. She sometimes falls sideways too. Of course, she can't crawl or pull up to stand or anything even vaguely advanced, but I am more worried that she can't sit alone - although I am noticing she's getting better at this day by day. Whereas the babbling is not improving (or starting!) at all.

My mum's friend, who's a speech therapist, suggested she may be dyspraxic, and the symptoms do sound really like her, but again, it's really too early to tell.

I asked for a check just to see if there was anything I could be doing to try to help her progress a bit. Anything other than tummy time that is - which all health professionals seem to think is the answer to every problem. However, it doesn't work so well if your baby rolls straight back onto her back every time, yes, I'm looking at YOU Miss Daphne Darley. Of course, the health visitor (bless her - lovely lady but as Oli said, it was just like getting advice from a maiden aunt, rather than an expert) was not really any help at all. She said she'd never heard of any baby not babbling by Daph's age, and just said wait and see how the hearing test turns out, and bring her back in three months for another review.

We had to do this massive questionnaire thing (Ages & Stages) which was quite interesting - she scored really highly in most sections - she's ace at the fine motor skills (picking stuff up, feeding herself etc) and good at problem solving (finding hidden toys) and also her personal and social skills were excellent (understanding 'no' etc), but she fell off the chart for communication (which is all about babbling) and was just below par for the gross motor stuff.

I'm relieved that (although of course it's far too early really) she doesn't seem to be showing any other early signs for autism as she's great at the joint attention things - she follows your finger if you point at something, has amazing eye contact and looks at you when playing with toys trying to get you to join in. She's also started trying to clap and wave. I realise now I sound totally neurotic, and I have in fact been told off by several family members and other mothers for googling too much. But it's just my nature to investigate things - I'm a journalist, I can't help but try to find out as much as I can about a subject. Even if it does just mean I'm worrying myself stupid for no reason.

But despite all this, and despite the Wonder Week Leap 6 being THE WORST SO FAR (for those who don't know about the Wonder Weeks, then check 'em out - only if you're a parent though, they're very boring otherwise), Daph is just so wonderful at the moment. She's super smiley, loves interacting and playing and has suddenly got a lot more sociable in the past few weeks. She's also started to get separation anxiety when I leave the room which is annoying but awfully cute and makes you feel very loved back.

And, truly, corny though it sounds, her little quirks and crazy attempts at growling 'vocalisations' (we're trying to resist the urge to nickname her the Exorcist baby) kind of make her a bit special, and make me love her even more...

In response to my post on sharenting, you'll notice I've just put up one pic of Daph this time... I realise this means you're faced with a wall of text to wade through though. Sorry and thanks for making the effort - have a gold star from me! 

Where to start with Daph's eight month update? First of all, she is HUGE. I can't wait for our next trip to the health visitor to find out exactly how much she weighs now and how long she is - I swear she must be off the charts now especially with her height. She seems so long and, well, big. Not so chubby any more (although she does have a rather cute pot belly) but just big in every way - her head, her feet, her hands - all of it! I think she's going to be a giant. I know there's no way of telling how a person will end up from what they were like as a baby but I just can't see her being a delicate little petite child somehow!

She's such a little character now - and a really tough crowd. She'll have the odd day of finding everything funny, and then won't laugh for a week. Making faces at her that she hasn't seen before may get you a little chuckle but you can almost tell she's fighting it, as if she's really NOT that impressed you know, and once she's seen something once then it's no longer funny, mum, so stop doing it over and over again. She's very particular about who she'll smile at - she liked some of the female estate agents we've seen lately but the male ones were mostly met with looks of distrust. Wise beyond her years! And she'll have days where Daddy is her favourite and gets all the smiles, and days when I'm deemed the best.

Milestone-wise, I reckon she's a little behind average. She can sit now, pretty well, but often launches herself backwards in the middle of sitting and ends up falling on her back. I noticed just yesterday she was doing a bit of rocking on her bum, and reaching forward with her hands, which I think means she's about to crawl?! But knowing Daph she won't bother until she's about 1. If we put her on her tummy she screams and wriggles (often moving backwards inadvertently) and generally looks pissed off with us. Or rolls straight back onto her back. She's got the rolling down, finally, but still doesn't do it unless she ABSOLUTELY HAS TO. She can support her own weight really well though, and will stand easily if you hold her hands.

She isn't babbling yet - but she does do a good line in screaming. And blowing raspberries - her new favourite thing. She'll also make sort of sing-song noises when you're feeding her, which are quite interesting. But otherwise, to get your attention she'll whine (gah I hate whining!) or bang things like her hands on the table or her feet against her chair.

Food is still a hit, thankfully, and she's tried pretty much everything she's allowed now, all to great success. Apart from avocado. She really doesn't get that one. I love watching her eat - she's a total piglet and will always finish her meal and open her mouth for more. I've been quite lazy at letting her feed herself (mostly just to save time), and must make a conscious effort going forward to give her more opportunity to do so. She can easily hold a rice cracker and feed herself with it, it just takes FOREVER and lots of it ends up on the floor... luckily she's quite a neat eater, but I suspect this is because we haven't done baby-led weaning so I get to spoon everything into her mouth quite tidily!

I've been trying to cut down her milk as I noticed with alarm she's only meant to have three 7oz bottles at her age. Currently she still has five bottles per day (!) which vary between 5-7oz. I try not to let her finish them if she doesn't seem that bothered, and I'm desperate to drop the dream feed at 11pm (not least because it interrupts my only bit of me-time all day). But we tried it one night and she woke up at 1am starving hungry so I think I'll have to try to phase it out gradually. I'm confused about the milk versus food thing and exactly how much she should be having of each - I know there's that expression 'food before one is just for fun' but I'm SURE she doesn't need all this milk as well as her three proper meals.

She's sleeping pretty well these days and has settled into quite a nice nap routine of 9am-10.30am, then 12.30-1.30/2pm and then another little power nap at 4pm for about half an hour. Bedtime at 7pm, dreamfeed between 10-11pm and then up for the day usually at 6.30am. I'd love her to sleep longer at night but she absolutely can't do without her three naps - she goes ballistic at bedtime if she hasn't slept enough during the day.

I feel I must also mention her hair, which is growing thick and fast. It can't seem to decide what colour it is - the back of her head looks a lovely golden blonde, but the front (where she's sporting a rather fetching toupee style) is much darker and almost a light brown. Her eyes are definitely blue though, and a lovely dark grey-blue too.

Last but not least for this month, she has her top two front teeth now! They are SO CUTE. They came through last week and we had three nights of crying and generally being miserable, but now they're through she's back to her normal self. It's amazing seeing her with four little teeth and I can't wait to get a proper photo of her smiling with them all showing!

Last week, Daphne turned seven months old! And celebrated the occasion with a monumental growth spurt - I swear, she is TALL now. When I stand her up (she loves standing while holding my hands) she reaches the top of my head if I'm sitting on the floor with her - it's crazy. Her little neck is lengthening now and to me, she looks like a child more than a baby (I know, she still looks like a baby really - but her face is maturing).

I felt quite emotional about her turning seven months - almost really relieved somehow, as though at seven months she is somehow less vulnerable and fragile. I love the fact that now she can eat almost anything she likes, and she's happily graduated onto the more grown up Ella's Kitchen pouches. Yesterday she had macaroni cheese and loved it, and I'm trying her on spaghetti bolognese later. As for weaning, it's going really really well - she'll eat pretty much anything and also loves drinking water out of my glass too - I've tried giving her her own beaker but she much prefers drinking from my glass. Which is very cute apart from the backwash. She just wants to copy everything we eat and drink at the moment and is happily munching her way through cheese, rice cakes, cucumber and any soft fruit. The only thing that doesn't agree with her are yoghurts - we've tried a few times now and they come straight back up. Do I have the only baby in the world who doesn't like yoghurt?!

We've been pretty lazy on the weaning front when it comes to making her things from scratch - I do feel guilty about this but also I like the fact that she can try a huge variety of things easily with the Ella's Kitchen pouches - making that range of food at home would cost a fortune and we only have a tiny freezer compartment so it wouldn't really be practical to make huge batches and freeze them. I think life's too short to worry too much about these things when she only eats tiny portions (they are organic after all!) and she'll have plenty of homecooked food in her lifetime. Just don't tell anyone on Mumsnet.

She has three 'meals' a day now, alongside her milk (five bottles of 7oz, although she doesn't often finish the daytime ones). She has baby porridge with prunes in (to keep her regular, ahem, and to make sure she poos during the day rather than at night) for breakfast, then lunch is finger food such as bits of toast with cheese and cooked veg, then dinner is a proper 'meal' with protein in like chicken casserole. She also has water with each meal which she loves - she actually prefers water to her milk now which has been a bit worrying. I've not tried her on anything else like watered-down juice, in case she gives up milk completely.

Other than that - sleeping has been much better! She has slept through (touch wood!) most nights the past fortnight - although she always wakes up super bloody early - like 5.30am, which is quite exhausting in itself. However, I'm confident (is this wise? am I jinxing myself? probably) that now she's got the hang of not eating at night she'll eventually start sleeping later - fingers crossed. We didn't really do anything differently to get her to sleep through - except for not letting her fall asleep while having her final bottle of the day, as this means when she wakes up in the night and the bottle is gone, she doesn't freak out but can put herself back to sleep. It's all about sleep associations or something... anyway it's worked! It's been so nice to have some long uninterrupted bouts of sleep over the past two weeks. I actually can't believe I survived so long on so little sleep up till now - it's kind of crazy what you can deal with if you don't have any choice...

She's 'talking' a lot more now, making all kinds of weird and wonderful noises, including some epic laughing fits at nothing in particular. She's also cottoned on to the fact that if she coughs she gets attention so she is constantly coughing for no reason - very sneaky! We always rush to her to see what's going on but she's always totally bloody fine and stops coughing the moment she sees us and starts smiling.

I have a feeling already that she'll be a bit of a diva - she gets a lot of attention from both of us and I do worry that perhaps we're setting ourselves up for trouble in the future. Although I keep reading that you can't spoil a baby with love, so that makes me feel better about it. And I do love her - goodness me, she's just absolutely my favourite person ever, endlessly fascinating and entertaining.

She's a lazy lump though. Seven months old and although she CAN roll if she wants to, she rarely bothers, and as for sitting up - it's mostly too much of a hassle and she'd prefer to be held upright on your lap thank you very much. Obviously there's absolutely no sign of crawling from her either - but apparently I didn't crawl until I was one (! this explains why I was always last to be picked for netball) so I guess she takes after me in that regard. Let's face it, with us as parents she was never going to be a gymnast...

PS just read this back and realised it reads like it's sponsored by Ella's Kitchen. I promise it's not! Although if they want to sponsor me and send me a few pouches, it'd save us a fortune ;)

Happy half birthday little one! We took these pictures of you several days after your actual half birthday as you were a right grumpy moo that day, and definitely not up for photoshoots. But today follows the first night when you have slept through, from an amazing midnight to 6.45 (so, not exactly a lie in for us, but definitely an improvement). And to top everything off, this morning when I got up and said hello to you, you squeaked with giggles at me, despite the fact you've got a bit of a cold at the moment. You are THE BEST.

It's incredible to think that Daphne has been around for half a year already, but at the same time it feels like SO much longer than that. Emotionally, I've experienced more than I had in the previous ten years before she was born put together (and that's saying a lot, considering I got married and divorced in that timeframe!). It's so true all those sickly cliches about motherhood opening up a part of your heart you didn't know existed - I used to roll my eyes at all that stuff, but now I'm the same soppy sucker.

At six months, Daphne is the proud owner of two bottom teeth - the first one came through when she was about five and a half months old, followed by the second just last week. I'd love to get a picture of them but it's really hard - unless she opens her mouth really wide (which usually only happens if she's screaming!) her tongue is always in the way. But they're definitely there, and thank god - because the teething process was as properly horrible as I had anticipated, with lots of nightwaking screaming and suchlike. We resorted to Calpol a few times and it didn't seem to have much of an effect, neither did the teething powders unfortunately. Dentinox teething gel worked quite well the first time I gave it to her smeared on a dummy, but she soon got wise to it and once it was sucked off spat the dummy out and started screaming again. I'm quite dreading the next set of teeth coming through - poor babies, it must be horrible.

On the subject of dummies, Daphne has almost completely weaned herself off them. They were quite effective at getting her to sleep when she was younger, but now she usually spits them straight out. Sometimes she likes one if she's in the car seat but I can see that we'll be chucking them away soon. Which is good, in many respects, as I was paranoid about her becoming hooked on them, but bad in the sense that they were really good at settling her in the past, and I have no alternative tricks up my sleeve.

This week though, on the advice of my friend Julia (thanks J!), I started giving her a Jellycat rabbit to cuddle when she goes to bed every night, and I don't know if it's just coincidence or the fact we started a bit of controversial sleep training (more on that next) but since then she's been sleeping much much better. I even noticed she's started sucking on his ear in the middle of the night so he's definitely comforting her. I slept with him for a few nights first (which was quite funny, I came in to see Oli had made the bed with the rabbit 'tucked in' on my side) so that he smelt of me (NICE) and she definitely nuzzled her face against him when I gave him to her. He still needs a name though, as currently we are calling him Bunny. Original much?

So sleep - yes. Daphne was becoming one of those stereotypical nightmare sleepers, waking every hour between 2am and 6am, screaming her head off, and nothing could be done to comfort her. That was the weirdest thing. I would go in, try to cuddle her, or offer her a feed, but still she would scream, like she was angry at me because she wanted to sleep and it was MY FAULT she couldn't. We tried Calpol in case she was in pain, but that didn't help either. It was after one particularly horrendous night, when she was awake from about 8pm until 3.30am, and NOTHING I did settled her, that I decided we had to try something different.

So the next night we did the controlled crying thing. Yes I know it's controversial but I looked into it properly beforehand, and was reassured by several people that the stories of the raised cortisol stuff has very little scientific backing. Anyway, it was horrible, horrible, horrible. But actually she only cried for about ten minutes before falling asleep. The next night we tried it again, but every time I went in to check on her she cried even more - like I said, it was almost as though I was preventing her from learning how to sleep by going in and disturbing her all the time. So I stood outside the door and tried to shush her through it, and just waited. And it was hideous and I probably cried more than her, but she went to sleep and didn't wake for five hours.

Every night since then she's got better. The crying is now down to literally three minutes or so and more just moaning than crying - certainly no screaming, and her stretches of sleep are getting longer and longer. Last night she slept from 6pm to midnight, when she woke up and was clearly hungry. I fed her a bottle, put her back down in bed awake, and she chatted to herself a bit before falling asleep again until this morning. I'm not going to get cocky because I know that things with babies can change so much so quickly, but it's just lovely to know that she's getting some real, decent sleep, instead of these crappy hours here and there that were making her so grumpy and upset.

The weird thing is though, since she's started sleeping better at night, her naps have gone completely haywire. She was great at napping before (mostly worn out from her wakeful nights I guess), now she's a mess. Sigh. Swings and roundabouts I suppose!

What else can I say about six months? Well, she's certainly 'chatting' more, making all kinds of weird and wonderful noises (including a week of non-stop screeching which was really fun - she decided it was a great sound and would make it at every available opportunity but especially when mummy was out having lunch surrounded by people without kids. You've never truly been embarrassed until you've looked up to see EVERYONE in the cafe staring at you in disgust. Although may I suggest to the man who sat next to me on a shared table and frowned at us as he was trying to make a VERY IMPORTANT WORK CALL that he is a bit of a wanker and that possibly a coffee shop is not the best place to be doing VERY IMPORTANT WORK).

Physically, she's definitely taller than she was and maybe not quite so plump. She's still not great at rolling - she'll do it once maybe then decide it's a waste of time, but her hand-eye coordination is much better and she can grab things and pass them from one hand to another really easily. She's also constantly doing sit-ups, which make me laugh - she's trying SO hard to pull her back up to a seated position, bless her. I'm really looking forward to her being able to sit up on her own as I think it'll make playing with toys so much more fun.

And a quick update about me. When Daphne was first born I read everywhere that by six months I should be back to my pre-pregnancy weight. Well I AM NOT. I'm still the same as I was before Christmas, when I gave up dieting. I'm about seven (OK, OK, ten) pounds heavier than I was before. This is probably linked to my utter lack of general movement over the last two months - this miserable weather has seen me hibernating and driving places instead of walking. I stopped doing my exercise programme and I'm generally eating and drinking a lot more than I was at the end of last year. So I really need to get that sorted and have resolved to start in March, or once the weather cheers up. I will say that I've been absolutely KNACKERED since the four-month sleep regression thing took hold, so finding the energy to exercise has been really tough. Plus my sugar cravings are off the scale. I really should try to give up sugar but it sounds so depressing... any advice on that gratefully received!

It literally feels like only last week I was writing my four-month baby update!

Five months is probably THE best age so far! Daphne is such a sweetheart now - she smiles whenever she sees me or Oli, she laughs so much she squeaks and she's interested in everything. She's also started putting her arms up when she wants to be picked up, which kind of makes me fall to pieces inside. Every now and then I look at her and think she's starting to look like a little girl, instead of a baby. It's quite scary really, and I have to keep telling myself to really pay attention to her every day, and notice everything about her because I can see that before too long she'll be all grown up!

For Christmas, Daphne got given a Fisher Price Jumperoo from her Auntie Soph, and she's currently in it (freeing me up to write this). The music weirdly reminds me of Johnny Cash's Ring of Fire but that's no bad thing and it keeps her entertained for ages - I love watching her reaching for things and trying to decide what to do with them (currently this seems to be putting them in her mouth). Her newest favourite hobby, along with trying to eat EVERYTHING, is pulling my hair - and quite often pulling it out (oh and have I mentioned it's falling out anyway, by the BUCKETLOAD? Ugh).

She's not rolling yet but she has started grabbing her toes with her hands and pulling her knees up to her chin, which is really cute - except when you're trying to change her nappy, when it's rather infuriating. Thankfully that's usually Oli's job, heh (we made a pact when she was tiny that I'd do all the night feeds and he'd do the nappies - HIGHLY recommend this tactic, pays off massively when they poo in the night). She's such a little wriggler at the moment and seems to delight in any attention you give her - even things like changing her nappy make her all smiley and happy.

Bad bits about five months? Well, she is still not sleeping through the night -  she goes to bed at 6pm then will usually wake at around 10pm, 2am and then 6am. The GOOD thing about this routine is it means we get pretty decent evenings together now - we can actually watch TV (or we could, if I could be bothered) and eat a proper dinner together. I usually spend most of this time catching up on emails or online shopping or aimlessly surfing the internet and losing my mind on Mumsnet etc, but I consider all of these things time well spent. I've tried everything to get her to drop the 2am wake up - I don't really feed her much at night if I can help it as usually she's not actually hungry, but if I don't pick her up then she will cry and work herself up into a massive state. I feel like I've read everything that's ever been written on the subject of getting babies to sleep through and really, I've given up now. I try to sleep when I can (and have been known to fall asleep while putting her to bed, even for her lunchtime nap). It's not too bad, but there are the odd nights (like last night) where she will wake up at 2am and do a massive poo, and then obviously once you've hoiked her off to have her nappy changed, there's no chance of her going back to sleep again for at least two hours. In which case Oli and I both lie there groaning as she happily chats away to herself in her cot. I have never been as tired as I've been over the last month, and I'll definitely write a blog post on the sleep deprivation side of being a mum...

I know we could try letting her cry but, difficult though it is not getting decent sleep, it's not annoying me sufficiently yet. I'm so on the fence about the cry it out thing and really can't decide if it's good for babies in the long run, or neurologically damaging and means they end up in therapy as adults.

We can't get her to nap for longer than 45 minutes either, unless we are in the car - in which case she can sleep for hours. It's so frustrating when you read all these baby schedules that say she should be having an hour and a half's nap at lunchtime - not a chance! 45 minutes after falling asleep she's awake again, and no amount of trying to settle her will get her back to sleep. As a result, she has to have at least four naps a day, or she's a nightmare at bedtime. I'm sure that the nap issues is some way related to her inability to sleep for more than four hours at night but I'm really at a loss as to how to fix it?

Her proper cot arrived today and is sitting downstairs in its box. Lots of my friends who have babies that sleep through have already transitioned them to their own room, but the lazy side of me doesn't want to have to get out of bed in the night to tend to her if she wakes up. ESPECIALLY not in January #chilly. Currently she sleeps in a cot right next to me (the Chicco Next 2 Me) and I can even lie with my head inside her cot and mush my face right up against hers which helps settle her. I often fall asleep in this position. Obviously I couldn't do that if she was in a cot in the other room...

Other weird developments this month: she's started vomiting a lot more. She's never been a sicky baby but in the last month she's had two massive projectile vomiting sessions (always in the middle of the night, always necessitating a complete bedlinen change for both us and her - yay!). It's horrible and she goes completely GREY afterwards, and looks all sad and exhausted. Really worrying. I think both times have been caused by a cold, as she's been coughing up a bit of mucus, and I've been ill for nearly a month now so I'm sure she's got it from me. But she's also been spitting up a lot more after her bottles - not loads, but enough to be annoying. I don't know if I'm feeding her too much or what, but she always seems super hungry and always stops when she's had enough. Honest. (Yes I know she looks a little rotund but I am NOT overfeeding her. HONEST).

I'm not sure if she's teething yet as there are definitely no visible teeth in her mouth, but she has been chewing on things more, drooling and also has bright red cheeks. So I guess she is? The health visitor said it takes ages for the first tooth to come through and that she may be irritable for a long time beforehand, so that's another yay!

In other news, we've started weaning her, and she absolutely loves it - I'll do a separate post on that. It's funny, when I read all these books on weaning and they said 'don't worry if she doesn't eat anything to begin with', 'don't worry if most of the food ends up on the floor' - Daphne has mastered swallowing EVERY. SINGLE. LAST. BITE. And then crying for more. Currently she's had baby rice, carrot, cauliflower, peas and sweet potato and has eaten all of them happily. I think they make a lovely change from her horrible chemical milk. Fingers crossed it means she's going to be a champion eater... after having dealt with a complicated pregnancy, her being born tiny, not being able to breastfeed, months of colic and now her not sleeping through unlike many of her NCT peers, it would be great if just one aspect of parenting came easily... please?!

Little Chippy is officially four months old! I can't believe it - where has the time gone?! She is getting more and more adorable by the day - it seems like every morning when she wakes up at the moment she has learnt a new skill. It's amazing - people should definitely talk more about how watching your baby change day by day can blow your mind. I keep remembering that I must film her more too, instead of taking endless pictures, because even when I look back at the short clips from when we first took her home, it's incredible how much she's developed!

Anyway, it's a good job she's so bloody adorable because we are currently in the middle of sleep deprivation hell. It all started just after she'd had her 16 week jabs last week. From about 14 weeks, her colic FINALLY stopped and - praise be - we'd actually started to get her into quite a good routine, which included four naps a day and a sensible bedtime, meaning we had our evenings back. I was starting to feel all smug and relieved that we'd come through the worst of it all and that now we were going to have a smiley happy baby that slept well and gave us little bother. HAHAHAHA.

There's a thing they don't tell you about when you're pregnant - and it's a good job they don't, or you'd never have a baby. It's called the 'four month sleep regression' and is all to do with babies' sleep patterns changing to become more like adults'. Which means they no longer fall straight into a deep sleep, but instead have to go through a lighter phase before falling into a deep sleep. And this lighter phase is super easy for them to wake up from. Also, because of this, it's harder for them to 'link' sleep cycles together and so instead they wake up after each sleep cycle is complete.

Daph's sleep cycles last 40 minutes - you could set your watch by her. And for the last week, pretty much every 40 minutes after she's fallen asleep, she's woken up. Even at 2, 3, 4 and 5 in the morning. IT IS TORTURE.

The only thing that we've found to help us through this phase is having her in the bed with me again. Which is kind of lovely and cuddly and cute but does mean I get terrible backache as I have to kind of cradle her all night, and try not to squash her.

Thankfully (touch wood), she's still managing a long sleep between 9pm - midnight ish, but of course it's difficult for me to force myself to go to bed at 9pm because I'm just longing for some grown-up time where I can watch TV or just waste time on the internet looking at expensive dresses that would no longer suit me...

Anyway. I'm hoping and praying this is just a phase and that she'll grow out of it soon - the alternative doesn't really bear thinking about at the moment!

Other than this, we've noticed that, as she's so much more alert now, she's started to become really fussy when eating - she constantly pulls away from the bottle or pushes it off with her fists, then screams to have it back. All the while her little head is swivelling round trying to take in EVERYTHING that's going on -  it's so cute but frustrating too!

She's really really sweet now though and smiles at me every morning when she first wakes up, and has started laughing a lot more - mostly in the evenings when she seems to be in a better mood. Her laugh sounds a bit weird, like an old codger on 40 a day, but it's the most amazing thing ever and keeps making me cry (I'm blaming the lack of sleep for my sappiness levels). She also recognises people now - especially my Mum and sister, and beams at them too. Bless.

She can hold things really well, and will happily bash at everything on her annoying play mat - finally she's actually interested in toys. She can also sit up pretty much unaided. She just can't get herself into that position yet but I don't think it will be too long. She's not great at rolling from front to back yet but she does try - although lately when we do tummy time she seems to be trying to crawl and sort of slides her hands and legs back and forward and gets very very frustrated with herself!

Her newest favourite thing is blowing raspberries - she can do it for hours, and ends up with drool all over her chin. She also still LOVES music, and I sing to her every day, and she's starting to recognise songs she's heard before. Her current favourite track is Feed the Birds from Mary Poppins. 'Eeeaaaarlyyyy each day, to the steps of St Paul's' goes round and round my tired brain. To mix it up a bit this week I've been trying to get her into Christmas tunes and she's rather partial to Wham's Last Christmas now too.

Her eye colour is settling down - and *I think* her eyes are blue! A kind of dark grey-blue, similar to mine, but blue nonetheless. As for her hair, it's still a bit of a mystery - it's almost black at the back but the front is kind of sandy/gingery so who knows what colour it will end up. She had quite a lot of hair at the back of her head when she was born but bits of it have kind of worn off (I think from where she lies in the cot) and so now she has a kind of funny bald ring around the back of her head. She's also got quite yucky cradle cap, but we're leaving it as I don't think that it bothers her.

Finally, I feel I should point out JUST HOW FAT she has got. Look at those thighs!! She's a proper little chubba. Slightly alarming but my mum assures me once she starts crawling she'll slim down a bit!

As for me, I feel pretty much back to normal now. The diet has gone out of the window thanks to Christmas food and shenanigans and will be renewed again in the new year - but I did manage to lose eight pounds which I was quite chuffed with! I still have another 11 to go :/ but I don't think I look too dissimilar to how I used to now. At least, not with clothes on. My stomach has shrunk back quite nicely and really looks the same as before. But all those maternal fat stores ended up on my inner thighs as they are certainly... hefty. A bit like Chip's in fact. Now the challenge is not to PUT ON any weight at Christmas! We shall see...

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Daphne is twelve weeks old today, so I thought it was about time I did a (not so) little update on how she's been progressing. It's actually phenomenal how much babies change and how quickly - I can now barely remember what she was like as a newborn. These days she's all chubby cheeks and fat rolls and thunder thighs - a far cry from when she was a tiny little scrap without an ounce of fat on her (in lots of her early pics she looks like ET - so much wrinkly skin!)

We took her to be weighed on Friday as we hadn't had her weighed since her last injections at eight weeks, when she was 9 pound 9. Before we went in we did a little guessing game on what she would be - Oli said 10 pounds 9 and I said 11 pounds 3. We were kind of stunned then, to be told she is a whopping 11 pound 7 now! She's more than doubled her birth weight and has leapt from the 2nd percentile at birth to the 25th for both height and weight. I'm so relieved and love seeing her looking so fat and healthy and how babies 'should' look.It also makes me want to stick two fingers up at the Breastapo because she's been formula fed for the past six weeks and is thriving more than ever. Even if she is starting to look even more like Phil Mitchell - I swear her beautiful eyes are disappearing into the world's roundest face with the world's biggest cheeks.

Other than her weight, Daph has changed a huge amount in her general alertness - she's now like a proper little person, with her own moods, and is both incredibly noisy and incredibly nosey. If we're out for lunch or whatever she absolutely hates being left in her pram - she's desperate to sit on someone's lap and look around at what's going on. She also now wants the hood of the pram down when we're walking along - I've realised she's completely FASCINATED by trees, as she stares up at them and coos every time we walk under one. It's so bloody cute.

In fact, everything she does is so bloody cute these days and she really does make my heart burst with pride every five minutes, turning me into the sappiest mother on the planet. The best times are first thing in the morning when she's always weirdly happy (something she definitely didn't inherit from me or her father), the times when she full-on chuckles at you for no apparent reason, the mania with which she greets being placed into her little bathtub (nothing makes her happier - she goes completely mental) and the smiles of recognition you get when you come into the room. Enough to make you weep, I tell you! And the noises are non-stop (this is cute except for at 4 in the morning when even the sappiest of mothers wishes she could banish the baby to another room). She coos, grunts, gurgles, 'talks', farts, burps... you name it, she does it. I never realised quite how noisy babies could be.

Physically she's getting stronger every day. She can hold her head up pretty much indefinitely these days, and her legs are capable of doing some serious damage to anything within kicking distance. When she's in the bath she goes batshit crazy kicking her legs up and down and flailing her arms around. It's quite alarming! She also now loves eating her fists (dummies get spat across rooms in favour of munching on an index finger or thumb) and rubbing them into her eyes when she's tired or has had enough of something.

The only downside to my little girl, actually, are her terrible colic sessions. Touch wood these have been better the last few days, but ever since she was about three weeks old she's cried and cried most nights. It's hideous, like some sort of torture. Sometimes she screams so hard that she goes purple, and her little bottom lip quivers and tiny tears come out of her eyes. It's almost impossible to believe that colic doesn't mean the baby is in pain when they behave like they're in total agony, but we saw a cranial osteopath who said that they've done MRI scans of colicky babies and the areas of their brains that are reactive during the colic sessions are those representing frustration and not pain. Anyway, we've been on a long old road with the colic and tried pretty much everything, so I will definitely do a post on that once we're through the worst of it. Everyone keeps telling me that when she turns three months the colic will magically stop, so we live in hope. As I said, the last few days have been surprisingly calm in the evenings, so fingers crossed...

Anyway, enough about the baby, what about me?! I decided that being fat was not something I could cope with for much longer and am now on a 1750 calorie per day diet in the hope of losing my baby weight slowly and surely. I have to say I've definitely picked the worst possible time of year to be dieting (all that Christmas food in the shops - sniff!) but it's been going quite well and I've managed to lose 5 pounds already in just under a month. I've been using the My Fitness Pal app religiously and have found it really helpful at keeping track of what I'm eating and, most importantly, thinking about what I'm eating, rather than shovelling stuff in my gob without considering it. I've realised actually that that was my biggest downfall - I'm such a 'whim' eater - if something's in front of me more often than not I'll just eat it even if I don't need it or really want it. Having to record everything I eat on the app really makes me stop and question it, and I also find being able to scan the barcodes of things childishly pleasing.

As well as being careful with my diet, I've continued doing long walks with Daph in the buggy as often as possible (although the recent grey weather has rather put me off these) and also started a new exercise regime, recommended, believe it or not, by my mum! It's called XBX (if you google it there's a few websites about it) and was developed in the 1960s for the Canadian Air Force (of all things!). It's kind of aerobics, I guess, with lots of yoga-ish stretches. The best thing about it is that it only takes 12 minutes per day and you don't need any equipment except a mat. I've only been doing it for a week but I can already feel all the muscles in my body getting stronger and more toned which is very satisfying. This morning I think I even saw a glimpse of my old waist returning. One can only hope.

The only downside of this particular exercise programme is that it involves some hopping on the spot at the end. The first few times I did the hopping, I - sob - wet myself. Only a few drops, but BLOODY HELL. So now, I'm finishing off my 12 minutes of aerobics with 12 minutes of Kegels - come back pelvic floor, I'm so sorry I never truly appreciated you before!

Daphne is eight weeks' old today! And to celebrate, the poor mite has been subjected to four separate immunisations - three of which were injections into her podgy little legs. With mighty long bloody needles. Unsurprisingly, she wailed her little heart out after, with proper tears streaming down her bright red cheeks.

Given that I cried years ago when we took the cat to have his bits lopped off, I decided it was best if Oli came with us to the appointment and held her while the nurse did the honours. We've been told she may now get a fever (even better huh, not only have we injected her with strains of meningitis, diptheria and rotavirus - wtf is rotavirus, sounds made up?! - among others, we've also likely made her sick). So she's dosed up on Calpol and we're hoping will sleep it off. I know that immunisations are for the best in the long run, but there's a real lioness instinct that takes over and makes you NOT want to deliberately infect your baby with things, or cause her pain. It was horrible. Worse still, there's more injections to come at 12 and 16 weeks. Sniff.

So at eight weeks old, Daphne is getting more and more like the baby I imagined, and less like the colicky newborn blob she was for the first few weeks. She finally started smiling last week at seven and a half weeks, after worrying me sick by not smiling at all despite it being an expected 'developmental milestone' for six week olds. In the midst of my panic about it (and late night googling of 'signs of autism') I spoke to the health visitor who said that she probably was smiling already but that we were missing it because Daphne. Cries. A. Lot.

According to The Baby Whisperer, Daphne is a 'grumpy baby'. You can get angel babies, and touchy babies and spirited babies and textbook babies, but no, we got a grumpy one. She's incredibly impatient and stubborn and if she wakes up hungry, will quite happily scream in anger and frustration if she's not fed within nanoseconds. She hates being put down and wants to be asleep on your chest all the time (which is massively cute but does rather limit what you can get done in a day). If she doesn't like something (her hat being put on, you taking her out of the bath, her arms being put into sleeves etc etc) then she will scream at you in fury and beat you with her little fists.

I've decided it's all down to her being small - like small dogs, she has anger management issues.

Thankfully, once whatever it is that's pissed her off has been rectified, she's actually quite a happy, sweet baby. Her favourite place is lying on her back on her changing mat, staring up at the ceiling and having raspberries blown on her tummy and cheeks. Sometimes she even laughs. She loves baths and staring at herself in the mirror (narcissist). She loves Dire Straits and kicking her legs about on her playmat. She's becoming a real little character, and it is literally the best thing in the world watching her develop more and more each day.

She's put on shedloads of weight, and at her appointment today weighed 9lb 9, which is still small for an eight-week-old baby, but means she's jumped from the 2nd percentile (when she was born) to the 9th. She has a ferocious appetite and is definitely making up for lost time when it comes to building her fat stores up - I can't believe how chunky she is now when she was such a little scrap of a thing when she was born.

Sleep-wise, she's not TOO bad. There's no sign of her sleeping through the night yet, but she usually wakes at 3am and 6am for a feed then settles straight back to sleep, which is bearable, as she'll then sleep till around 9am. Weirdly, I find the tiredness isn't as bad as I imagined - somehow you get used to it, and most days I feel pretty OK actually. What I find harder to deal with is not being able to get much done - Daph's an attention seeker who hates being left alone, even to sleep, and most of my time seems to be taken up with attending to her various needs. For the last few days, all I've wanted to do is sort through my bras (random I know but true) but I have yet to find the twenty minutes to do so. There's always something else to do when she finally settles - whether it's cleaning the house, doing laundry, preparing her bottles, replying to friends, blogging (ha!)... sounds improbable that someone so small can take up so much time but now I've had a baby I completely understand how the day seems to vanish in minutes.

As for me - well, eight weeks on, I'm feeling pretty much back to normal. I stopped breastfeeding at six weeks (will do another post about that when I can talk about it without bursting into tears - suffice to say, it's been emotional and definitely the hardest thing about pregnancy, childbirth and new parenthood put together) and so physically I am feeling much more like my old self. In fact, just to prove how 'back to normal' I am, I even got my bloody period back, which seems very unfair. It was also horrendously heavy and gross and the last thing I needed, but I suppose it's a good sign that all my hormones are settling down. Even so! I feel very cheated that I didn't get a bit longer, and very jealous of breastfeeding mums who get months and months of freedom.

Weight wise, I'm a hideous 17 pounds heavier than I was before I got pregnant, which is definitely getting me down a bit. My thighs now touch (each other). The pregnancy water retention which makes cellulite magically disappear has dissipated leaving me with the cellulite of a sixty year old. Hell, even my bloody arms are fatter. Sniff.

I know they say it takes nine months to put the weight on so should take the same amount of time to come off,  but somehow I sort of assumed once I'd had the baby, the weight would disappear quickly, as I've always been quite consistent in my weight and never really had much of an issue with it. And I know I shouldn't care about a few extra pounds and it's terribly vain of me but but but... Obviously not breastfeeding is not helping the situation (oh how I regret my smug pregnant cry of 'maternal fat stores' as I tucked into yet more ice cream), so I've started a moderate diet and am also trying to walk as much as possible. Thankfully pushing Daph in the buggy is one of the best ways to get her to sleep, so I am making a real effort to get out every afternoon and walk at least a couple of miles. Thank GOD the weather has been so lovely for early autumn - I'm dreading the days when it's pouring with rain or freezing cold and I'm stuck in the house, as getting out and about really saves my sanity.

I might even start going for short runs now I've had my sign off from the doctor, but finding time to do so will be a challenge...

And finally, I am sure you ALL want to hear about my pelvic floor. Well, as far as I can tell it's back to normal - I had a second degree tear and after the stitches fell out (?! still don't understand the technicalities of this - bloody weird) it has all healed nicely (thank GOD again - this was my biggest fear) and everything feels pretty OK down there.

In fact, I would say that physically I feel exactly the same as I did before I had a baby. Just, you know, (as I may have mentioned), fatter. My boobs seem to have returned to their prior state with ease and don't seem to be unduly damaged or altered by their six weeks of pumping. I escaped stretch marks and my stomach looks pretty normal, without any noticeably saggy skin (my linea nigra is still there but beginning to fade). So I know I'm lucky in many respects. I just need to lay off the god damn biscuits...