Jasmine Stalker-Firth

We have had a lovely time and can’t believe that tomorrow is 12th Night and all our decorations will come down. In one way it is good as we are running short of dialysis fluid as the Christmas tree is sitting on two boxes of dialysate wrapped in Christmas paper.

Christmas Day was lovely. We had a late start, as Christmas Eve Jasmine had been really vomiting and we had changed the cot twice and our bed once and Jasmine herself so many times and we finally got to bed late and Jasmine was awake in the night and didn’t settle very easily. So on all the photos of us on Christmas Day Jasmine looks all nice and fresh and Neil and I look like we can’t keep our eyes open. Jasmine got lots and lots of clothes and bibs, which was brilliant as she has grown quite a bit without us realising, so we have put a lot of small things away for the new baby and made space for all her new big girl clothes. She also got some great toys too. Thank you, everyone.

On Monday we went to clinic and she has put on a little bit of weight so she is now around 6.4kgs (dry weight). Her head circumference has gone up 0.7cms which was great as it hadn’t been growing and was starting to be a bit of a worry. And she has grown a centimetre in length (now 67cms) which is brilliant too.

On New Year’s Eve we were really exhausted as we had had another bad day and night with Jasmine – with constant vomiting and changing clothes and bedclothes and everything all day and decided that we would just go to bed and not wait up for the New Year. However, being a northern woman I just couldn’t fall asleep. So, at 11.45pm I put the clock on my stomach and kept checking it, then we had this conversation every couple of minutes:

Me:”Are you asleep?”
Neil: “Not with you asking me every two minutes.”
Me:”Do you think we should get up and let the New Year in?”
Neil: “No.”
Me: “Ok.”
Silence, then:
Me:”Are you asleep?”
Neil: “Not with you asking me every two minutes.”
etc…
Neil is a very patient man.

Finally, at 11.57 I got up and said that I was letting the New Year in because traditionally if you don’t let the New Year in then you can’t go out until someone comes round to your house. And I didn’t want to sit in the flat until Easter. So, Neil gave up pretending to be asleep and we got ready.

Traditionally, the person who lets the New Year in is a dark-haired male (we had a small round dark-haired lady in her pyjamas with rather large stomach), he takes with him coal (I had matches), and salt (I never bothered), some people take bread too and an unopened bottle, especially if they are going round someone else’s house to let the New Year in.

So, I stood in the hallway until it was midnight (I had the timer with me as we discovered that none of our clocks tells the same time) and then as soon as my timer went off, I let the New Year in as it was freezing in the hallway and Neil hadn’t yet arrived to open the door. He came running over and said, “Oh let yourself in did you?” (which was a bit rich since he didn’t want to get out of bed and do it. I don’t think you are supposed to, but really it was below zero – even in fluffy bedsocks).

So, we wished each other a Happy New Year and Neil gave me, the person who has let the New Year in as tradition demands, some silver (20p – I asked him if times were hard, he told me not to be cheeky) then I carried on through the flat and let the Old Year out through the balcony door (you can’t sit down until this is done as it is bad luck) and then I cut a fresh cake (a mini-mince pie as we hadn’t got our New Year’s cake organised) and opened a fresh bottle (there was a toss up between some left over cava from the summer and a bottle of beer, the cava won), so that we could toast 2009.

After all that festiveness, we made a nice pot of tea and got back into bed. Jasmine slept through all of this of course! And Neil soon went to sleep, glad that this northern madness which he didn’t sign up for, was over for another year. I sat in the dark drinking my tea and thinking about 2008 and was off my head with joy that Jasmine was asleep next to us – even if that did mean she would wake up, raring to go at 6am!

Today, I have been off my head with joy again as we bought Jasmine a babywalker. I was so excited and couldn’t wait to get home and set it up. Jasmine is doing really well sitting up and can roll a bit and she can wave and stuff, but she has no desire to sit herself up or stand up or anything. So, we are hoping that the babywalker will encourage her to use her legs and stand up. She will remain a few months behind other babies development-wise until she gets a transplant.

So far, so good. She was standing in it and liked the activity music centre on the front and was very happy to be upright and potentially mobile. It was good to feed her milk in as well as it is very tidy because she can vomit all over the table on the front and not over herself. Fantastic!

Now she has flaked out on the floor and we are psyching ourselves up for the usual round of exit site dressing change, setting the machine up, observations, and plugging her in. Things don’t stop even during the holiday season. Neil gave Jasmine her epo injection on New Year’s Day. Poor thing!

So, here’s wishing everyone all the best for 2009. Happy New Year!

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 4th, 2009 at 5:39 pm and is filed under home. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.