So a new chapter commences! Two days after my last post our beautiful and spirited son Ithan Saul Hancock arrived with great determination and haste.The birth was everything we had hoped for and more, at home, straightforward and fast! Suffice to say by lunchtime we were eating scrambled eggs and sipping champagne gazing at our beautiful new son wondering how so much can change in the space of a few short hours. (for the full story see http://birthwise-uk.blogspot.com) We were really grateful we had put all the groundwork in at the hospice as G was able to whizz up there and drop Rosa off, comfortable in the knowledge that she would be absolutely fine and almost certainly have a lovely time. It meant that we were able to totally relax and focus on the job in hand! Although Ithan's birth was really speedy we still decided to leave her there overnight as it meant the three of us could have a moment to relax and get used to each other before Rosa's routine demanded a certain amount of normality had to return. It was definitely the right thing to do as when Gareth collected her the next day they said she had had a great time and slept right through. We felt we had been allowed a moment just the three of us and couldn't wait for her to meet her new brother. A big thank you to the hospice, it is an amazing place and we are extremely lucky to have it on our doorstep (if it hadn't been so close I don't think G would have made it back in time!)
The last few weeks have passed in a bit of a blur as you would expect. Rosa has been pretty fabulous, she knew straight away that something was very different but has been quite amused and entertained overall. We have had quite a steady stream of lovely visitors which she has enjoyed, particularly as most of them came bearing noisy gifts for her, hurrah! She has had a few really sensitive moments but that is only to be expected and we have been trying really hard to do fun stuff with her and make sure she has her fair share of attention. Strangely, quite a few of her sensitive moments have been when we were trying to take self timers of all four of us. We have a selection of group pictures but with Rosa doing a sad bottom lip face, not really the image we were aiming for!
She has been sleeping remarkably well considering her brother is definitely a midnight squawker, she seems to have become reasonably if not totally immune to his shouts pretty quickly and despite our tiny house he has only actually woken her twice, which I think is really good going. He seems to have a knack of saving a really loud squawk for just outside her bedroom door...it must be good for her in the long term though, it is a very good skill to be able to sleep through noise and I'd like to encourage her in that.
Apart from pretty intense baby adoration and the constant duties to them required we don't really have much other news as normality has been kept at bay as much as possible! We had our second appointment with Dr.Cox, Rosa's new pediatrician today. We saw the dietitian not long before Ithan was born but we hadn't had any feedback from that yet, except that the pooh samples we put in proved that she doesn't have a lactose intolerance, which we kind of knew anyway. (Why doesn't all correspondence regarding Rosa get automatically sent to us GGGRRR!) The main thing is we didn't dread the appointment which we would have done had it been Dr.Arrend. Nothing much came up from it really other than the report from her dietitian. She said from a three day snapshot the food diary provided which is not necessarily an entirely accurate picture the only possible deficiencies in her diet are maybe iron and vitamin D. The iron thing we are aware of as because of the limitations in her diet getting enough green veg in her can be tricky but I don't think it is a serious lack, we'll have to give her brazil nuts. Dr.Cox said that for some reason every child has been coming back as vitamin D deficient in the last few months and he wonders if they have changed the goalposts on what is the required amount. He said she obviously wasn't anaemic and almost certainly not to worry about the vitamin D. He said when she had bloods taken in May when she was poorly they didn't show any problems with iron but next time she needs bloods taken those things can be checked. They also weighed her and said she is still gaining weight although it is slow. It would be silly to put her on supplements if it will just make her fat.....bloody right! She is a beautiful girl and healthy and perfect in her own way.
Rosa and Ithan have a brand new cousin! Zennor Cooper was born on August the 31st she is very beautiful and we can't wait to meet her. Congratulations to Charlie and Lowenna.
I'm going to post this now as the days are whizzing past. The end of Summer is smelling more like Autumn everyday and there seem to be new chapters starting all over the place, it is amazing and wonderful how life just keeps moving on.