Sitting baby, extra leg (!), and poorly Nathan

Look what Benjamin did today!!



He was sitting for a few seconds during the week if propped (hehe!), which we only happened to try because he's sitting SO well supported, and seems eager and excited when he is sat up. He does sit in the Bumbo but not very often because he seems to look kind of bored in there in general, and just SITS. He seems to like the potential "options" (or something!) of looking around and moving himself, and acts a bit confined in the Bumbo. After a while he just gets upset and wants to be picked up. His sweet little eyes bug out in curiosity when he's sitting on the floor (supported by my hands) and he starts to move his legs and arms like he is interested in things he sees and wants to get to them or touch them. He doesn't do that in the Bumbo. I was sitting with him in my lap this morning and he was reaching with little trembly arms for the big bright coloured car transporter! He is really starting to take an interest in the boys' toys these days.

I brought it over, but it didn't balance too well on my lap with him, and he got frustrated. So I sat him on the floor and put the car transporter in front of him, and he sat so sturdily (well, as sturdily as wobbly little beginners get!) that I took my hands off his back, and he stayed for almost 10 seconds! He was holding and patting the car transporter, and he was so excited that he was sort of quivering and gasping, bless his heart! Arthur has always been like that too, but Matthew and Nathan not so much, so it's sweet to see another little one with a mannerism that we last saw in Arthur :)



My hand was never far away, as he did over-balance quite often!




Love this last one - I call it "Freefall" haha! ;)



He seemed to absolutely love sitting and actually handling toys in an upright position - my big boy! I really didn't expect it because he's only 4 months old - not even 4.5 months yet. Arthur was sitting at 5 months like Benjamin is now, and Matthew at 5.5 months for the first time, I think. Nathan surprised me by sitting unaided for the first time as late as 7 months, which I didn't expect because he was already crawling at 6 months. Sooo, Benjamin is my earliest baby to sit unaided! I will give him tons of practice as long as he's happy with it, because I think it will help his back. He is about to start treatment with a children's osteopath in London for his back and head. A month or two ago I started to notice that his forehead bulged out a bit on one side. It sounds daft now, but at the time I couldn't understand it and so just presumed it to maybe be part of his birthmark there. Anyway, a while later I happened to be looking down on his head from like a bird's eye view, and noticed that his whole head was oblique in shape. His forehead did bulge forward on one side, and at the back on that same side, it was flatter than the other side.

I googled and found that he simply has "flat head" (what a nice label!). He always nursed in bed on the same side, and I felt bad because my ignorance about it "did" that to him :( I immediately stopped nursing him in that position, and switched us up to the other end of the bed, because the websites advised that repositioning was a good solution, and it should gradually resolve. Well, I think there was a tiny bit of improvement, and it was never a very bad case in the first place, but it really hasn't gone away. His head is still oblique, and he is getting to the age where it should have resolved by now, and his skull plates will start to fuse soon. So I took him for a free assessment in London, and when they were examining him, they noticed that he prefers turning to one side rather than the other (he has no stiffness or tension problems though), and they even felt in his mouth and checked his palate, and found that he has a sort of twist right through him, from the skull bones down the spine to his pelvis. His head isn't just asymmetrical in a forward/back manner, but in an up/down manner as well, which I can't see by looking at him, but that's what they noted from his hard palate - one side is higher than the other.

I just feel blessed that he's SUCH a happy, cheerful, easy going baby! They were surprised too, and said that many babies would present as ongoingly colicky with that kind of issue. I do see that he's uncomfortable sometimes, but he doesn't complain much. If he's lying on his back, he kind of arches it to one side and makes unhappy straining noises sometimes. He sleeps fine on his back either in my bed or his Amby Hammock.

So, they gave him a treatment right away, starting at his pelvis, with the intention of working upwards. He did not like them touching his neck at that stage, which they weren't surprised about, apparently. The thing is, it's in LONDON, and right in the centre as well. A paaaaiiiin to get to with a baby! I drove last time - I know I'm crazy! ;) It's SO central London that I had to drive past Buckingham Palace! I took a wrong turn shortly after that (was fine up till that point) and if you take a wrong turn in central London it's nearly impossible to get back on track, because the roads just keeping turning and winding at great speed with all the traffic and you can't stop to even glance at a map for a second! You can't pull over either. I drove down a bus lane by mistake and I reeeally hope I don't end up getting in trouble for that. Once I found myself going round and round Trafalgar Square with other drivers beeping and honking at me for being in the wrong lane, etc, I was a bit worried, but thankfully there was a red light for long enough for me to see how to get out of that part! Anyway, I was SUPER late, but I phoned the place twice en route to let them know and they were really understanding and saw us immediately when we did arrive.

The next appointment is this Tuesday. Last Sunday at church Terry Virgo was preaching and he prayed for healing at the end of the service. I waited AGES with Benjamin in my arms, and he laid hands on him (as did I!) and prayed for his little back to be healed. Benjamin does not seem to have any trouble this week turning. He doesn't favour one side over the other and has since started rolling from back to tummy in both directions as soon as I put him on the floor. He has rolled tummy to back once or twice too, but he generally doesn't seem to know how to do it!

Oh and my right leg? Always an inch shorter than the left one (so said the osteopath I saw a few years ago for a while)? Grew that extra inch as Terry held it and prayed over it on Sunday. No, I am not kidding! ;) Dozens of people were watching and I had my eyes closed (I was sitting down) but I could hear people gasping and someone said, "Hallelujah!" hehe! ;) I did feel a very strange sensation in my thigh that is very hard to describe, but the nearest I can think of is blowing up one of those long thin modelling balloons, the way the length stretches like that. It lasted maybe just a second or two and then went away. The lower back pain I have a lot is a LOT better suddenly, and I felt a bit odd at first like I had a raised heel on my shoe on that side. Later that day I also started to have a stitch-like pain just under my ribs on that side, and it was really persistant. It was only in the evening when Neil suggested it might be to do with my leg being a bit longer, that I wondered if maybe it was just the rest of my body isn't used to that extra height in my posture on one side, and I guess there's a knock on effect as my body gets used to it - maybe?? Anyway, that's gone now :)

So, I forgot what I was talking about, but basically:

1) God is awesome! And REAL! :)

2) Benjamin has some appointments (supposed to be weekly!) that I'm not looking forward to, but hopefully God is healing/has healed his back.

3) My teeny tiny baby is starting to sit and roll already!

4) It's reeeally late so I must now go to bed! BUT I have to update again asap because it was Arthur's birthday on the 9th (so long ago now already, tsk! Naughty me!) and he is FIVE!!!! Thank you to those who remembered and wished him Happy Birthday, and also at Facebook. I MUST try to blog instead of "Facebooking", because I update there daily now and it has sort of become like a micro blog thingy, and this place is getting neglected as a result! Also, Facebook does not keep my stuff forever - in fact, not for very long at ALL actually, so it's just lost in the end, and I wish I had written about it here. I'm finding that already on things I want to look back at to see what I wrote about something, and I can't find it. It's not here, so it's lost forever in the sands of time!!

Nathan is poorly right now. He is tired and off his food a bit, and under the weather. He started with a cough a few days ago and it's become pretty bad last night and today. This evening he started a fever (low at the mo). Last time this happened was August, and I had no idea what was wrong with him, except that he had a higher fever than this (exactly the same cough though) - up to 101. At first people agreed with me that he was teething (he had just had his first molar peep through in the few days before), but when the temperature got higher they said not. He also was off his food and over the days seemed to me to act nauseated, and on the last day of the fever he had diarrhoea. Then he perked up but had 2 nosebleeds which worried me and I took him to the doctor. She said it was just likely a virus, but I am really not happy with that diagnosis because we had not been out of the HOUSE for at least 10 days. Seriously. The boys had gone to the park with Neil, but literally just to an open field to run and run and run - no playground equipment or other people. And Nathan hadn't done that for the best part of a week before he got poorly, even. So, I didn't buy the whole virus idea. The other thing was, at the end of his fever and stuff, lo and behold, ALL THREE of his other molars came through his gums at the same time, the poor little fellow! So, I totally put it down to that, even though MANY would argue that teething can not cause such extreme symptoms.

So, here we are again. He has had a cough for a few days, and now starts with the fever, which I have to admit I was expecting, given that the cough seemed awfully familiar and I wondered if it was another bout of multiple teething coming up and thus we'd see the same set of symptoms emerging. So far his fever is lower than last time, but it was a few days of fever last time so we'll see how it goes tomorrow. He has been eating okay-ish, but tonight once he had a fever he would not even look at food. Tonight and last night he is whimpering in his sleep and wakes very frequently to cough and be comforted. He is tired all day and needs bed an hour after waking from a nap. But otherwise he is happy and interested in toys. He mostly just wants to sit on the sofa and watch Thomas the Tank Engine right now, and we're letting him. He looks so tired and unwell in his face, poor little love.

I looked in his mouth yesterday to see what is going on with his teeth. He is quite behind with teeth, as he only got his first tooth just before his first birthday. He has all four of his first molars, and the middle four at the top. His first top canine came through recently and is now almost all the way in. The top canine on the other side has a little point poking through, which has been there about a week. Now, at the bottom he just has his two molars, and the middle two "first baby teeth". The ones that go either side of those "first teeth" haven't arrived yet!! I don't know why! They're usually around the 8 month mark, on average! Anyway, so those have yet to come, and the canines next to them haven't come yet. When I looked in his mouth, the whole of the bottom gum where those two big gaps are looked red, and I see a grey outline of a tooth pushing against the gum on one side next to his two middle teeth, so he is definitely about to cut some teeth, along with the top canine he's getting, but I wonder if he's going to pretty much get all of those missing teeth at once? Maybe that could account for the severe teething symptoms like last time when he got all his molars at once? I don't know. He hasn't had any trouble just cutting a single tooth at a time.

Anyway, so I tried to find the stuff I wrote (and everyone's comments) at Facebook from the time Nathan was poorly and cut his molars in August, but Facebook hasn't kept a record of it :( So that's a good reminder to STOP "blogging" at Facebook (which was never intentional, it's just so easy to do!) and start to put this stuff in my blog again, even if it's short entries here and there! Tsk.

That's why I am posting (it was supposed to be briefly, hahaha!) about Benjamin sitting - although I did also post that at Facebook earlier! ;) And about Nathan being poorly, so that I will have that to read back for reassurance if it happens again and I've forgotten what to expect.

I MUST write about Arthur's birthday! I have photos! Only half of them are edited and ready to upload, but I'll try to finish those. The poor boy never gets his birthday blogged about these last few years, because I just don't get around to it even though I MEAN to, and then Christmas happens and it's all too far in the past, etc. I don't want to do that this year!!! I will be back soon to blog about his birthday, and totally plan to do My Husband Rocks! Friday again too. Because he does :)