Bliss!

After a so-so night with a 4 week old ( who was actually due yesterday!), I have actually managed to feel a bit more 'normal'. That is, I baked some chocolate chip and banana muffins and made some gluten-free chicken nuggets. Now I am enjoying a muffin with a hot chocolate whilst Lily is fast asleep next to me.

LILY
Lily is 4 weeks and 1 day today. Who knows whether she would have arrived on time, I could still be pregnant now! Weird, I got my pre-pregnancy body back pretty sharpish and now I can't imagine looking down and seeing a huge bump.
Last week she got a bit of a sore bum, two red patches one on each perfect little bum cheek. I applied Sudocrem, but it always seemed to wipe off onto the fleece liners of the cloth nappies. Said red patches got steadily redder and raw, almost like two little burns. I wondered whether it could be the detergent I used to wash the nappies, but Rockin Green is pretty good. I reckon it just came from longer stints of sleep in the night time when we use disposables (sposies). For the moment she is in sposies during the day as well, just until her bum returns to normal and I order some more fleece liners. I really HATE sposies. Started using Huggies during her stint in SCBU ( 4 nights) and my friend suggested it could be that brand causing the problem. So we switched to Pampers which have a weird netting inside, which looks like it draws the moisture right away from the baby's bum, even the poo. After some strange smelling wet nappies ( like a strong chemical alcohol/vinegar) I googled 'my baby's poo smells like vinegar' and the results threw up things like lactose intolerance (possible, given her dad), changes in gut enzymes and not getting enough hind-milk. This worried me quite a bit and although I am not big on dairy anyway I considered reducing dairy intake. Then Rob smelt the actual Pampers nappy (unused) and he could smell the chemical smell that just gets worse with moisture. Further googling told me many parents had found this smelly problem with Pampers, it is the chemicals that make up the DryMax section. I don't want to know what chemicals they pump into these nappies, but as soon as her skin heals up the better. At least I know what goes into making cloth nappies and how they are washed!

LIFE
Rob is intolerant to potato, wheat gluten and cow dairy products. So, our family eats quite healthily. Most foods are cooked from scratch and there is no junk food to be seen! To bake cakes and cookies I can follow a recipe that takes my fancy and just adjust the flour and the butter; gluten-free flour (I like Dove's) and a dairy-free marge (I like Pure, sunflower marge, not soya). I often add a smidgen more sugar as gluten free flour is really dry and the floury flavour can come through more than wheat flour... The breadcrumbs I am using for the chicken nuggets are rice breadcrumbs. I could make my own, but the spelt bread I bake gets eaten so quickly there often isn't any left to whizz up into breadcrumbs!

LOVE
I can't wait until Rob is back from home, feel like this everyday. I think he got a bit annoyed today after learning one of my family member's thought he had proposed whilst I was washing up! Far from it! Hope that hasn't been spread around the family... I wonder if thats whether some people haven't acknowledged our engagement...
Going to start a list of people in the family versus people and friends we want at the wedding. Con is we have such large families (Catholics!) and where can you draw the line? What about cousins/aunts/uncles you barely see or speak to? Decisions, decisions!
(In my opinion, these days weddings are based on onemanupmanship and the fear of not being invited to someone's wedding once they get married if you don't/can't invite them to yours. Give me a nice garden, food, drink and our closest loved ones and we'll be very happy)