Traumatic morning doesn't stop Ivy exploring...

This is the sort of scene that greets me when I leave Ivy on the floor of her room to go and flush the liner from her nappy. Earlier she took EVERYTHING out of her clothes drawers and mixed it with the box of 'stuff Ivy has grown out of'. Holigan doesn't begin to describe her!

She's had a very stressfull morning, trip to Raigmore for a cystogram (see yesterday's blip for my ramblings about how I wasn't sure she needed it). I reconized the nurse dealing with us from our previous trips to children's ward as someone who I hadn't been particullarly impressed with (she kept waking me up to ask questions about stuff that was written on my chart etc.)- she completly failed at putting the cathetar in poor Ivy and failed to notice the blood in the tube. She and two other people had a total of 4 failed attempts before declaring it useless and saying we could go home without the test being done. Ivy did not enjoy the experience. At first she screamed so hard her lips went blue, and by the end she was so exhausted from yelling she was almost asleep. Between attempts I got to cuddle her to calm her down, she was completely flopping into me. After she was calm, I gave her to Euan and she was unhappy again- turns out sometimes only a mummy will do.

Her memory is getting better, which makes things like this harder- like when the nurse who was going to have attempt 3 walked into the room, Ivy was instantly tense at a new person who might hold her down and after it was all over and i put her on the bed to dress her she was howling all over again at being put on the bed.

She was mostly her usual self when we got home, if slightly more cuddly than usual. At dinner- she seemed to crack signing when she wants more food- we've been trying to teach her fingers together (like an infinity sign) for more, and clapping for please. I don't think she can tell the two apart necarily, but she's started clapping for when she wants another spoon of food. So I think clapping is now 'more please!'

One of the nurses in the room commented that Ivy is obviously a baby who gets massaged- as I was stroking her back to calm her down. We're really seeing the benefit of massaging her now I think. There's a lot of things with parenting i'm finding where you put in a lot of work, for no reward at the time- but it comes through later. Like the massage, breastfeeding (so hard to begin with, so lovely now), baby sign language (months of signing with nothing back, worth it when she says please)- and hopefully stuff we'll see benefits of in the future, like socalising her with other babies and surrounding her with books.