I'm not ready for this yet.....

For those that have never met me in the flesh I would like to point out that 'skinny' has never been a word people would associate with me, I'm definitely what some kinder people would describe as 'fluffy'...

I can blame genes for this (I have an extremely fluffy family on my father's side) or I can blame my love of chocolate but whatever the reason it's a given (although I am now working hard on less fluff).

DBF also has the tendency towards fluffiness - especially round his middle - but he carries it better because he's a) a man and b) 10 inches taller than me.

Speaking of tall, that's another word very few people would associate with me. In fact the only reason I'm not what you'd call short is that several members of my family are more vertically challenged than I am which means at certain social occasions I can count myself amongst the tallest people in the room.

Why am I telling you this?

Because I've managed to produce a long, skinny daughter.

Who knows how genetics works. DBF has a very skinny sister and I have a skinnyish brother so the fluffy gene is not always dominant in either family plus DBF is six foot tall so there is a taller gene in the mix there. Still, all in all it's a bit of a surprise (and one that I'm sure she'll be thankful for when she gets older).

There is a downside to this though as I took DD to be weighed at the end of last week and she's not putting on weight as much as they'd like her to. It's not dramatically bad, in fact the first thing the Health Visitor said to me was 'is she an active baby?'

Is she? Too right. The only time she's vaguely still is when she's asleep but even then she's a wriggler. At feeding she's constantly moving about and flailing arms and legs (which makes feed times SO much fun for me). Active doesn't even come close to describing her.

So the advice of the Health Visitor was to introduce a meal of baby rice into her day. It's a month earlier than they advise weaning to start but DD obviously needs extra calories - she's not hungry as she's happy and sleeping well so the issue is that she's burning more calories than my milk can provide.

So, I have a baby that doesn't stay still, who is unable to really support herself yet and I have to try and get spoonfuls of food into her mouth. I don't think I can really describe the picture to you but I'm pretty sure that you can imagine it. DBF gave up very early on during the first try out with the reasoning that I'm the one who'll have to feed her most days so I should get the practice in.

It's also had a dramatic effect on the nappies just in the two days we've been trying it. Yesterday we had three full nappies instead of the usual one and there was a VERY different aroma involved.

I know it's for the best, I certainly don't want her seriously underweight, but I wasn't ready to even start thinking about this kind of dramatic change in our routine just yet.

Oh well, nobody ever said life with a baby was dull and boring...