After an awful night on Monday, where Jack-Jack was up from midnight until he fell asleep in his buggy downstairs at 3.15am, and I spent the rest of the night in a stupor on the sofa rocking the buggy with my foot, we seem to have turned a corner. The worst of this wave of teething is over! Jack-Jack's appetite is back, and he even slept through yesterday from 6.50pm until 5.15am! We're very excited for these brand new teeth to make an appearance now!
We had a really lovely supervision session with our social worker Jane on Tuesday morning. The purpose of a supervision (which happens about every 6 weeks during the first year) is to talk through any issues we might have, plan our training goals, make sure we're meeting the child's needs and that everything's going well, and audit our finance (receipts) recording. She was very impressed with the care we're providing for Jack-Jack, and said that her manager had also spoken about how well we're doing! They want us to move up to the next skill level (they go 0, 1, 2 and then specialised carers) as quickly as possible, and we're doing our first two training courses online next week.
We're in our fourth week of placement now and things are definitely getting easier, both the childcare aspect and getting used to all the other people who are involved. We're feeling very positive overall at the moment!
Wednesday, 30 January 2013
Monday, 28 January 2013
Changing plans
Jack-Jack's mum didn't turn up for contact again today. She did call ahead of time apparently to say that she wasn't coming, but the contact centre didn't have the sessional worker's number (or ours, or the social worker's), so no one knew and he was picked up and taken, and then brought back as usual. We heard from Jack-Jack's social worker the other day that the contact times are due to change to allow mum to call beforehand and save Jack-Jack an unnecessary journey, so hopefully once this is in place they'll also provide a list of useful numbers!
The sessional worker, who seems lovely and is also a foster carer, told me that this morning was his last time taking Jack-Jack to contact, as he's busy taking other children to their contact sessions at the new proposed times. This means that Jack-Jack's routine will change again (we haven't been told what the new times are yet, just that it will be later in the day), and he'll have to meet and get used to a new sessional worker, a different car, and possibly a new contact centre too as they won't necessarily have space available at the new times at the one he's been going to.
Thankfully the long car journey was probably quite good for Jack-Jack today as I'd think he slept for most of it. Our day started very early this morning and it doesn't feel like yesterday ever really stopped going by how much of the night was spent awake! He was pretty miserable today and had two long naps in the afternoon too which is unusual. I hope these teeth pop through soon so we can have our happy baby back!
The sessional worker, who seems lovely and is also a foster carer, told me that this morning was his last time taking Jack-Jack to contact, as he's busy taking other children to their contact sessions at the new proposed times. This means that Jack-Jack's routine will change again (we haven't been told what the new times are yet, just that it will be later in the day), and he'll have to meet and get used to a new sessional worker, a different car, and possibly a new contact centre too as they won't necessarily have space available at the new times at the one he's been going to.
Thankfully the long car journey was probably quite good for Jack-Jack today as I'd think he slept for most of it. Our day started very early this morning and it doesn't feel like yesterday ever really stopped going by how much of the night was spent awake! He was pretty miserable today and had two long naps in the afternoon too which is unusual. I hope these teeth pop through soon so we can have our happy baby back!
Sunday, 27 January 2013
Lucky
We've had a couple of reactions recently that have sat rather uncomfortably with me, although to all intents and purposes they were positive, and it's mainly around the use of the word "lucky". Someone in our hairdressers who knew of our journey to foster said what a lucky boy Jack-Jack was the other day, and this morning at church a lady became quite emotional when she realised that he was a looked-after child, and said more than once how lucky he is. (We don't generally go around telling people that we're foster carers, but we've decided that at church we will be honest as we're hoping to go there regularly long term, and they will find out eventually if we keep turning up with different children!)
This child is many lovely things, but he certainly isn't lucky. He's been taken away from his mother with no notice or explanation, experienced things that no child should have to experience, and is currently living with strangers. He will in all likelihood have to go through another major upheaval to move to his forever family, once he's settled, attached and happy here.
I know that it's a common thing to say, there's certainly no malice behind it, and people mean well, but I do think that there's some serious education to be done to separate the idea of "lucky" from adopting and fostering.
This child is many lovely things, but he certainly isn't lucky. He's been taken away from his mother with no notice or explanation, experienced things that no child should have to experience, and is currently living with strangers. He will in all likelihood have to go through another major upheaval to move to his forever family, once he's settled, attached and happy here.
I know that it's a common thing to say, there's certainly no malice behind it, and people mean well, but I do think that there's some serious education to be done to separate the idea of "lucky" from adopting and fostering.
Friday, 25 January 2013
Routines, signing and a purple baby!
We've got Jack-Jack's basic routine down now, and as long as we plan our day loosely around it, he's very happy to nap in the buggy/carrier, and has had many a milk feed or meal out in cafes. He's becoming quite the baby who lunches! It's quite funny - however grouchy he's been with us beforehand, he still manages to charm the people around us with his huge eyes and cheeky grin, and he's very popular wherever we go.
His social worker left a message this afternoon to say that contact is on for Monday, although they're not sure whether mum will be there or not. Apparently the plan is to talk about rearranging contact for later in the day, so that mum will have a chance to phone beforehand to cancel it if she's not going to be there to save Jack-Jack an unnecessary journey, which is definitely a positive step forward.
We were looking through a baby book this evening, and when Jack-Jack arrived with us he was doing about half of the developmental things expected of a 6 month old (we're not getting hung up on this, we were just reading through the lists to see what to focus on to help him move forward), and he's now doing everything on the 7 month list plus some things on the 8 month list! The things we've picked out to focus on are mainly waving, clapping, pointing, drumming etc. as he's not using anything apart from screams to communicate with us at the moment.
Jack-Jack can be quite a screamy baby, and we've noticed that he gets extremely frustrated if he's screaming about something and we get it wrong (as you can imagine). We decided to begin signing with him, and started signing "milk" on Monday before every milk feed. This morning he signed back, more than once! The next step is for him to sign "milk" when we're not expecting it, just to say that he wants some. We're going to start introducing more signs which should help with his frustration and get him communicating with us.
Jack-Jack tried blackberries at breakfast and strawberries at dinner time today, in one of these. He absolutely loved it! He could chew (well mostly gum and dribble) on the soft fruit in the net to his heart's content and make as much mess as he liked, with us supervising his mealtime rather than hovering. We're doing a mixture of fork-mashed and finger foods for him at each meal, and I do recognise the importance of learning how to handle and manage different textures of food without choking on it, but the nibbler seems like a good halfway point for now as he has been known to be a little over enthusiastic at times! I wish I could post a photo of the happy but purple post-blackberry baby, but you'll have to imagine it - start with a ribenaberry and cross it with Violet Beauregarde and you'll be halfway there!
His social worker left a message this afternoon to say that contact is on for Monday, although they're not sure whether mum will be there or not. Apparently the plan is to talk about rearranging contact for later in the day, so that mum will have a chance to phone beforehand to cancel it if she's not going to be there to save Jack-Jack an unnecessary journey, which is definitely a positive step forward.
We were looking through a baby book this evening, and when Jack-Jack arrived with us he was doing about half of the developmental things expected of a 6 month old (we're not getting hung up on this, we were just reading through the lists to see what to focus on to help him move forward), and he's now doing everything on the 7 month list plus some things on the 8 month list! The things we've picked out to focus on are mainly waving, clapping, pointing, drumming etc. as he's not using anything apart from screams to communicate with us at the moment.
Jack-Jack can be quite a screamy baby, and we've noticed that he gets extremely frustrated if he's screaming about something and we get it wrong (as you can imagine). We decided to begin signing with him, and started signing "milk" on Monday before every milk feed. This morning he signed back, more than once! The next step is for him to sign "milk" when we're not expecting it, just to say that he wants some. We're going to start introducing more signs which should help with his frustration and get him communicating with us.
Jack-Jack tried blackberries at breakfast and strawberries at dinner time today, in one of these. He absolutely loved it! He could chew (well mostly gum and dribble) on the soft fruit in the net to his heart's content and make as much mess as he liked, with us supervising his mealtime rather than hovering. We're doing a mixture of fork-mashed and finger foods for him at each meal, and I do recognise the importance of learning how to handle and manage different textures of food without choking on it, but the nibbler seems like a good halfway point for now as he has been known to be a little over enthusiastic at times! I wish I could post a photo of the happy but purple post-blackberry baby, but you'll have to imagine it - start with a ribenaberry and cross it with Violet Beauregarde and you'll be halfway there!
Thursday, 24 January 2013
Playtime
Ok, I'm going to mention sleep again, but only because Jack-Jack had a great night! He went to bed at 7pm, grizzled a couple of times, but once we'd gone to bed he only woke up once for milk at 4am and then slept through until 6.30am! He also woke up in a cheerful mood and sang to himself in his cot for 15 minutes until we got up, which was a very nice alarm clock to wake up to!
I've been leaving a beaker (one of those spill-proof Nuby ones - we tried freeflow but it ended up flowing freely all over the carpet) of cooled boiled water on the floor for Jack-Jack to have a drink whenever he wants one, but until now he hadn't taken any interest in it unless I held it to his mouth, and even then he was just chewing on the spout. Twice today I looked over and he had the beaker gripped in both hands and was drinking from it!
We went to our local soft play centre this afternoon with our friend and her two little ones. They all had a blast. Jack-Jack was very happy sitting and watching the bigger kids, rolling on the floor giggling, and playing chase with me practicing his new commando crawl. He also gallantly put up with being poked up the nose by our friend's baby girl, and leaped on by her exuberant toddler son. He had so much fun he completely wiped himself out, and fell asleep on my lap during his afternoon milk feed. We ended up spending about 2.5 hours there in total - it's a complete bargain for the entry fee, especially in this snowy weather when we're all getting a bit of cabin fever!
I've been leaving a beaker (one of those spill-proof Nuby ones - we tried freeflow but it ended up flowing freely all over the carpet) of cooled boiled water on the floor for Jack-Jack to have a drink whenever he wants one, but until now he hadn't taken any interest in it unless I held it to his mouth, and even then he was just chewing on the spout. Twice today I looked over and he had the beaker gripped in both hands and was drinking from it!
We went to our local soft play centre this afternoon with our friend and her two little ones. They all had a blast. Jack-Jack was very happy sitting and watching the bigger kids, rolling on the floor giggling, and playing chase with me practicing his new commando crawl. He also gallantly put up with being poked up the nose by our friend's baby girl, and leaped on by her exuberant toddler son. He had so much fun he completely wiped himself out, and fell asleep on my lap during his afternoon milk feed. We ended up spending about 2.5 hours there in total - it's a complete bargain for the entry fee, especially in this snowy weather when we're all getting a bit of cabin fever!
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!
Monday, 21 January 2013
Snow day
Contact was cancelled due to the snow, and thankfully we had a text last night to let us know so we wouldn't have to be in such a rush this morning. Jack-Jack also contributed to the more relaxed feel today as he had an excellent night's sleep last night, only waking three times. He also inexplicably had the king of all naps this morning - two hours! (We resisted the urge to go and poke him to make sure he was ok, although we did check on him a couple of times as we couldn't believe he was still sleeping!)
My mum came to visit us today and met Jack-Jack for the first time. We all went out for a cup of tea and a piece of cake in town, and mum helpfully shovelled the snow off our front and back garden paths for us whilst we fed Jack-Jack his dinner which was lovely! She also brought the push-along brick trolley I had as a child, and we're going to strip and repaint it for Jack-Jack to play with (we say this confidently, although it may have to be shelved with "stripping and revarnishing the dining room table" and "sewing an heirloom patchwork quilt" in that mental drawer of future jobs waiting for time to do them...)
My mum came to visit us today and met Jack-Jack for the first time. We all went out for a cup of tea and a piece of cake in town, and mum helpfully shovelled the snow off our front and back garden paths for us whilst we fed Jack-Jack his dinner which was lovely! She also brought the push-along brick trolley I had as a child, and we're going to strip and repaint it for Jack-Jack to play with (we say this confidently, although it may have to be shelved with "stripping and revarnishing the dining room table" and "sewing an heirloom patchwork quilt" in that mental drawer of future jobs waiting for time to do them...)
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