Tuesday 22 January 2013

Something old, something new

Jack-Jack appears to be teething (we prepared for this by buying herbal teething granules and Calpol - no one told us how difficult it is to actually administer either of these to a screaming baby at night!) Let's not talk about sleeping ever again - we may well just remove all clocks from the bedroom and be done with it, then if we try really hard we can imagine we've had a nice eight hour (or 4 hour would be nice too) stretch!

I had a call from Jack-Jack's social worker this evening, telling us that his mum has cancelled the next two contact sessions (due to be tomorrow and Friday), and that she hasn't made a decision on whether they are going ahead next week or not. I do feel very sorry for her, and her behaviour makes sense on some level if she feels that she's going to lose him - no one truly knows how they would react in the same situation. We do have to consider Jack-Jack's needs though - whilst he was undoubtedly being unsettled by having a 2.5 hour drive for no reason (so cancelling the contact in advance rather than not turning up is better,) it would be very good for him (arguably more so in the long term) to have a sense of continuity in his life by regularly seeing his mum and knowing that she's ok and still loves him. He also has no belongings from his mum's house so his social worker is trying to work with her to see if they can send some of his special toys and clothes, again so that he can have that sense of continuity.

In spite of all the upheaval Jack-Jack continues to advance in leaps and bounds and surprises us with something new every day - today he held his own bottle for the first time at lunchtime and only needed a bit of help to tip it up towards the end. I was talking to his social worker about his progress with us so far, and she joked that she won't even recognise him when she next comes to see him for one of her six-weekly visits. He's definitely moving from "baby" towards "toddler" at an alarming rate!

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