Talking with your Baby

This is from a handout I was given by a speech pathologist.  I’ve been doing fairly similar things, based on the Baby Talk book by Dr Sally Ward.   So far so good!!

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Talking with your Baby (12-20 months or with very few words)

Make Listening Fun!!
- Spend some quiet play time together -with the TV and radio off
- Show where sounds are coming from
- Use sound making toys
- Speak more loudly and slowly
- Use rhymes and songs

Keep sentences very short (1-2 key words)
Not: “Let’s have a bath before dinner”
But: “Bath time! Hot water. Love bath! Splash!”
Repeat words to help them learn
E.g. “Here’s your drink. Big drink. Mummy drink?”

Match -
your words with what your child is looking at/playing with.
This is the way your child learns that words go together:
- Point to and name the objects played with
- Talk about what they are doing moment by moment
- Follow what they are doing. Comment on what happens

Respond to what your child does
- Repeat what they say
Baby: “ball” (pointing)
You: “Oh! Yes. Ball. Want ball” (give ball)
- Add another word: “Push ball”
- Avoid questions and directions as it interferes with their learning. Don’t try to prolong their attention span. Join in with what they want to do.

Dealing with night terrors

Talia had her first experience of what we are fairly sure was “night terrors” recently.

She woke us up around 11:30pm screaming and inconsolable. She was acting as if she didn’t recognise us, and could not be comforted with the usual things (cuddle, snugglebunny, drink). She didn’t want to be held and slumped on the floor coughing as if she was trying to vomit, in between the screaming. She’s not normally a screamer so it was quite scary for us. It didn’t actually sound as if she was in pain, just really really upset, but we were getting very worried that she wasn’t responding to us and ended up calling health direct because we had no idea what we should be doing.

Once we’d checked off all the symptoms (or lack of them) it seemed that night terrors was the likely scenario. So around midnight all 3 of us sat on the loungeroom floor and watched one of her favourite videos for 40 minutes, which was sufficiently distracting to stop the screaming and give us a chance to check for any further odd behaviour etc before putting her back to bed. Then once she’d settled in the usual way she was fine for the rest of the night.

I was really glad my husband was back from overseas, if I’d been dealing with that by myself I’d have been a wreck.

Parents 4 Parents - a new prem support group for WA

Some exciting news!

I recently discovered there is an emerging premmie support group in WA called Parents 4 Parents. They have been keeping a very low profile at the moment until they can get all the legalities of becoming a charity sorted out.

I had a long chat this morning to one of the organisers and am hoping to be involved once they get themselves together and I told him I would spread the word.

For anyone in WA who is interested in getting involved (or at least getting onto the email list they hope to have soon), the contact person is Mike Safy - natalieandmike@bigpond.com Mike is full of ideas and enthusiasm. His son Joshua was born at KEMH in Dec 2006 but spent most of his hospital stay at PMH.

The healing process

Ever since Talia was born, I’ve been ambivalent at best to fullterm newborns. They seemed so different, almost alien. I felt quite negative about seeing them; even though my head told me everything was OK, clearly in my subconscious I still harboured either some sadness or anger or jealousy or maybe just a yearning for other people to understand what I had to endure. I wasn’t proud of these feelings, but they welled up within me of their own accord.

Then this week, a friend with a premmie son the same age as Talia had a daughter, Elizabeth, born at 38 weeks and for the first time in two years I looked at a photograph of a full term newborn baby and felt only happiness and relief.  Yesterday an old school friend had her first child, a full term baby, and again I felt only joy and excitement.

It has been a slow process but I think I really am now healing emotionally.