Photo time!

The Birthday Princess

Smiles at Grandma's

Practicing crawling!

Big girl, standing!

Beautiful Smiles

Chilling at daddy's work!

Brushing my teeth!

Taking Piglet for a ride!

With my Pushchair

Birthday Banner!

Learner Driver

Peeking in my toy box

Feeding baby!

Feeding myself

Story time with Cousin, Peyton!

Tea Party!

Birthday Card, on Telly!

Bath time!

Birthday Cake

My first swing!

Amazing new family!

Peppa Pig!

My new friend, Heidi!

My new Playroom!

The Playroom again!

Dressed up with Daddy!

Daddy's first Fathers day!

My Birthday ride!

An actual little girl!

I think its safe to say my tiny baby has officially gone! Lately i have found myself wishing i could slow the time down! I cant believe i haven't blogged since she was 8 months old! She's now 13 Months!!
Last time i posted, we were worrying about her development being behind. I'm not really worried about her anymore, she is still quite behind with some things but she's learning so much now its amazing! Here are some of the latest things that have got us going all gooey over her...

* If you sing 'Pat a Cake' to her, she starts clapping her hands straight away, then during the last line ' Put it in the oven for baby and me' she pats her tummy!

* She now nods her head whilst saying 'yeah yeah yeah' .

*She can pick her own sippy cup up and drink from it.

*She now shuffles on her bottom at a pretty decent speed, and can get just about anywhere she chooses to go!

* If you tell her to have a drink , she immediately picks her cup up and starts drinking!

* When we sing '5 current buns' She gives her her imaginary penny, and pretends to eat her current bun at the end of every line. 

*When singing 'Wind the Bobbin' she attempts to do the winding action with her arms, claps in all the right places, and points to the ceiling.

*She can do the actions of a fish, and a chicken, and makes cat noises when asked.

* She knows where the clock,Dolly, light, ceiling  fish and Lucy Lamb (cuddly toy) and her toy train are and will point to them when asked.

* When asked how old she is she holds up one finger.

* She knows where her hair, knees, toes, ears, Tongue, teeth, head, and hands are, and will point to her nose when asked in both French and English.

*She gives kisses whenever she's asked to (and even when she's not!)

*She can hold her fork and spoon and feed herself an entire meal.

* When we're putting her trousers on, she pulls them up herself, in attempt to "find her piggies".

* When she finishes a meal, she gives herself a round of applause.

* If we hold her coat out for her, she now puts her arms through by herself.

* She waves as soon as you say goodbye.

* When you say "hello" she pretends to pick up a phone

*She can pull herself onto her knees.

* She can brush her own teeth, and hair.

* She dances whenever she hears music.

*She recognizes characters on the television.

* As soon as she sees a cat, she makes cat noises.

* When we sing 'Heads, shoulders, knee's and toes, she can correctly point to all apart from shoulders at the moment.

* When on her feet, and holding onto our hands, she has recently began to put one foot in front of the other and take steps, which is a new achievement for her, but she's still heavily relying on our support.

* She picks up her Dolly, and its bottle, and holds the bottle over the 'baby's' mouth, pretending to feed her. (sooo cute!!)

So she may not be walking or quite crawling just yet, but she's certainly learning a lot. She's become such a little character over the past few months as well. We still cant go anywhere without being stopped several times and complimented on what a happy little girl she is, or what a beautiful smile she has.

She had a fantastic first Birthday, surrounded by family and friends.. she's already a very popular little girl! We had a party on the Sunday before her birthday, with special guest Peppa Pig, and a family trip to Skegness on her actual birthday, where she had her first ever ride on a donkey and absolutely loved it!

We had her weighed on her birthday and she was exactly 18lb 1oz, so growing nicely, but still tiny really :)

We're now looking forward to her second Christmas, its going to be soo magical this year as she's at such a wonderful age.

I'm still loving being a mummy, i absolutely love the age she's at now, watching her grow and learn is amazing! I'm going to try and get back into regular blogging again. So much has happened in the past five months its impossible to remember it all. 

Adam and i have had a few chats lately about the plans for 'Little someone Elce number two' .. and unfortunately money is our main concern. At the moment, we're lucky to have family looking after Izzy while we're at work, but i wouldn't expect them to look after two. But at the same time, we couldn't afford childcare, but it would be a big loss for me to stop working.. so we're going to have to have a serious think about how we plan our family. 

My friend, Becki had her second baby at the beginning of September, and Izzy got incredibly jealous when she saw me hold her at first. However, we recently visited again, and she absolutely loved baby Heidi and kept kissing her. 
I'd like to have a bit more time with Izzy being an only child before a second one enters the scene, but i do now think she will like to become a big sister eventually!

It feels good to have finally blogged again.. I couldn't believe it when i logged on and saw that iv had 13,873 views! I'm determined to not leave it so long this time!

Love love love xxxx

8 Months!!

Well another month has gone by, and how fast it's gone! This means Isabelle is now an incredible 8 months old! I seriously don't know where the time is going! I've found myself already planning her first birthday party, which seems insane. It doesn't seem two minutes since i was planning her birth! As each day goes by we continue to fall more and more in love with her. We've had a tough couple of weeks, the events have been heartbreaking at times, yet somehow they seem to have made us love our little girl even more.
A few weeks ago we began to notice that Isabelle had started nodding her head. At first we couldn't tell whether it was just a new thing she'd learnt to do, but after a while it became obvious that the head nodding was involuntary. It got more and more powerful to the point where she'd fall over, or bang her head on things, and she began to do it more and more. She always seemed to do it when looking at lights.
It gradually got more often and more powerful, and we noticed that her eyes were going funny when she did it too. I managed to get some video footage of her doing it, so i booked her in to see a doctor.
The doctor took one look at the video and was quite concerned, she mentioned Epilepsy, which had been the first worry I'd had. She said she was going to send an urgent referral letter to the hospital to get her tested.
A couple of weeks later i received a voicemail message on a Saturday morning from a doctor at the hospital asking if we could take Isabelle straight in. We spent a couple of hours at the hospital with her being looked at and examined. The doctor was worried about several things. She said she wanted to arrange an EEG, MRI scan and blood tests.

Something was brought to our attention which we had never heard of before. 'Angelman Syndrome'. Almost all of the worries that the doctor had mentioned, were symptoms of this syndrome. We all did the worst thing possible and got on google. Apparently, children with Angelman Syndrome rarely walk, and hardly ever speak. We were devastated. The more we read, the more we convinced ourselves it could be bad news.
It was so hard to think that this beautiful little girl who is so amazingly happy and perfect to us could have such a disability.
We had a couple of terribly restless nights and spoke about it loads. We'd just taken the fact we thought we had a completely 'normal' little girl for granted. We'd always assumed we'd take her to Ballet lessons, and singing lessons like me. The thought that she may never be able to do those things broke our hearts. As i thought about it more and more, i suppose i almost diagnosed her in my head. She ticked so many of the boxes! I couldn't bare it, but i sort of managed to get my head around the thought she could end up in a wheelchair, but the thought of her never speaking was unbearable. I couldn't even think about how it would feel to know she's never say ' I love you mummy'.
One characteristic of Angelman Syndrome is that they are amazingly happy children. Always smiling. The amount of appointments for speech therapy, physiotherapy etc they go through each week is unbelievable, yet they never fail to keep a smile on their faces. They are truly inspirational people!

Angelman Syndrome is diagnosed with an EEG, and a blood test. On Tuesday morning we got a phone call from the hospital, saying that Isabelle had been referred to the main city hospital for an EEG. We had to wait for the other hospital to call and tell us when to go in. It was a nail biting few hours. Eventually, they called, and told us to go in that afternoon. The EEG was an awful experience, it took approximately an hour and a half, and i have never seen my little girl so distressed. It broke my heart. Even my mum shed a tear, and she always manages to stay strong.
We then had a long wait, before returning to the hospital the following Monday.
To our delight, the EEG came back as normal! We have never been so relieved! It felt like we'd been given our little girl back!
They still want to do the MRI scans and blood tests, so we're waiting for those appointments to come through, but at least we can sleep at night now!
Of course, we would love Isabelle no matter what, but its such a relief to know she will be able to have the sort of life we've dreamed she would have.
This experience has certainly made me a lot more grateful. I will never take her for granted, every little thing she does now amazes me.
She is now 8 months old. She doesn't roll over and she has no interest in crawling. In the opinion of some medical 'know it all's' this may mean she's behind with her development.
I don't care what age she walks, crawls, skips or sprints. She gives the best smiles in the world, and that's enough for me.
She sits up completely on her own now, and she has two teeth!!! She's learnt how to say Dada (Which has pleased Adam no end) and she's saying it all the time!
She's certainly not going to be under any pressure from us, to reach certain milestones at certain times. This is the one time in her life she wont be pressured with deadlines and rules, and i have no intention of changing that.

I love my BabyBelle more than life, and i always will. She's my absolute world. I have the most amazing, happy, brave and beautiful eight month old baby girl in the world, and i couldnt be more proud! 
xxxxxxxxxx

Our little angel

7 Months!

I cant believe it's been a whole month since i last posted! I apologize for my failure as a blogger!

I have just realised that i never really wrote anything about my operation after i had it. To sum it up in a word, it was awful.
I have actually been meaning to put in a complaint against the surgeon, but i barely have a minute to go to the toilet never mind pour my heart out in a letter to the NHS.
There were several things he said during my unfortunate time in his company which were both offensive and incredibly unprofessional. I was completely disgusted. To add to the annoyance, he looked (and acted) about 12, yet had a forest of chest hair that could have homed several small animals!
This annoyed me. They have to wear hair net thingys, so why was he allowed to have all that on display?? Grr, the guy annoyed me from the second he greeted me with the words 'So, we're here to improve your sex life are we?' Which was said incredibly loudly in front of a waiting room full of people. (Mainly old ladies) so it certainly raised an eyebrow or two.
I was furious. I dread to think what everyone around us thought. He made it sound like I'd chosen to go in, for some funky cosmetic procedure, when in actual fact, i was almost passing out with nerves, and shouldn't have had to be there at all.
This is what annoys me. I shouldn't have had to go through all of this. Most normal people, give birth and are fully recovered around 6 months later. It has taken me 7 months to be almost back to normal, and not in pain. I have spent Isabelle's life struggling to sit down, or even walk at times, all because of a mistake made by them. This was just one of many comments he made which upset me, including a very personal comment after the operation, for which he could probably be in trouble for sexual harassment!
I had no idea i was going to be in so much pain after the operation. My whole body ached. I felt like my insides had been punched repeatedly, my throat was sore from the tubes and i could hardly move. It took a couple of weeks before i felt human again.

Finally, i seem to pretty much be back to normal. Adam was hoping to try for baby number two this coming Christmas, but i won't have long since recovered from having Isabelle so i think we may need to re plan that!

Isabelle is doing amazingly! She has taken so well to food and is certainly thriving now! Her hair has grown loads and she's put on 1lb 5oz in three weeks!! We can tell she's getting a lot stronger now too! She sits really well, and loves to be on her feet, she's been doing lots of rolling from her back to her tummy over the past few days too!
She seems to make new sounds every day! She's very talkative and we love to hear all the funny little noises she comes out with.
She's recently begun to show shyness around people she doesn't know very well. She's always smiled at anyone and everyone, and still does the majority of the time, but she definitely shows signs of nerves around unfamiliar faces.
She gets really excited every time she sees or hears my mum, if she hears her on the phone she grins and starts chattering herself. If she sees her in person she throws her arms out and practically launches herself out of my arms towards her Grandma.
She absolutely loves books. We can spend hours sitting and reading stories, and looking at and discussing pictures. She especially loves touchy feely books, and know where all of the feely bits are on every page!
I am really struggling to believe that our tiny little girl is 7 months old today! The past 7 months have certainly been the best adventure of my life. That beautiful girl is my world. I would do anything for her and i intend to spend my life showing her what a miracle she is to us and how much we adore her.

I go back to work in exactly a weeks time. I had sort of been looking forward to it a bit, yet dreading it at the same time. I am now going through a phase of feeling utterly sick about the whole thing. I work with some fantastic people, and I'm sure I'll get straight back into it and love it again once I'm back, but at the moment I'm dreading it. I just cant imagine spending full days without being able to see that beautiful, smiley little face that brightens my day. I know I'm going to find it a lot harder than she will, it really is going to break my heart.
She's only going into a nursery for 5 hours a week, as my mum and sister are having her the rest of the time. I think the nursery will be good for her, however I'm glad its only for a short period each week.
Just lately. she's started doing the most heart breaking little cry every time i leave the room, she sticks her bottom lip out and everything, its unbearable. I just know that if she does that the first time i have to leave her next week, I'll be crying my way to work.
I just hope that my return to work doesn't mean i end up missing things. I have completely loved watching her learn and grow over the past 7 months, and i want to be there to see the first time she crawls, and her first steps etc.


I know every mother thinks the world of her child, but i literally cant explain my feelings for Isabelle.
She may have only been in my life for 7 months, but i cant imagine my life without her.

Love love love xxx