We have a new 'thing' around these parts - wobbly sitting!

She doesn't last long before becoming the Leaning Tower of Georgia, but she's improving. It's so flipping cute!

I love watching her learn new things. She's interacting with other people (& other babies) loads now, and is so much fun. This age, nearly six months, is great - but people keep telling me it gets better and better.

Now seriously... go back and look at those chubby knee rolls again, you know you want to. Love!

First up, hi lovely ICLW-ers! Thanks for stopping by - it's always nice having my inbox flare up with comments from new faces. This little blog was started a few years ago, originally about life in Australia as a primary school teacher. It evolved as I did, following my journey into living in England, travelling the world, living with PCOS and planning our wedding. When we started our TTC journey, we knew it'd be a challenge {see the aforementioned PCOS diagnosis!} but we didn't realise just HOW hard it would be. Here on the blog, I talked about our infertility adventure, which moved into IVF and our eventual BFP. Life has been crazy, and we are so, so lucky to have welcomed our baby daughter, G, into the world in March this year.

G is 25 weeks old now, and an absolute delight. We're having some difficulties with sleeping at the moment, but that is a topic for a whole new post. As for EATING, however - no problems there. Guzzle guts is loving her foray into solid foods. After three days of sweet potato, and three days of pear, we moved into a new veggie: zucchini!

She wasn't particularly sold on the taste - to be fair, neither am I. It does go quite watery on its own, too. After the first day on it, I mixed up with sweet potato to give it a bit more texture. That went down much nicer.

After that, we moved to apple. That's usually a safe bet in terms of first impressions - I may or may not have been stealing mouthfuls of her puree while it was being warmed up. (Mwahahahaha.) Funnily enough, she pulled a few faces at the start; maybe she was expecting zucchini again and was shocked by the sweet flavour? But as soon as she got going, she had that mouth open like a baby bird - gobbled it up. At one point, she was leaning so far forward towards the food bowl that she almost had her nose in it. A definite hit!
Georgia is still breastfeeding at her normal 3-4 hourly feeds, and we do solids around lunchtime. As we have tried more and more combinations, we'll be increasing to breakfast time as well. So exciting! :)

It's time: Let the messy eating begin! We started solids a few days ago. Very, very gently - one ice cube (so a few spoonfuls) at a time & the same solid over a couple of days, so we can monitor for any potential reactions.

Sweet potato was up first, and she thoroughly enjoyed it. Wasn't sure about the spoon, and that took a little while to get used to, but I was surprised at how much she actually swallowed. On the third day of sweet potato, Georgia threw a temper tantrum and wanted more - so we ended up having two cubes. She was happy afterwards. :)

Today was a new solid: Pear!
She was a little puzzled at first, I think because she was expecting the sweet potato taste she had come to like! Once she'd gotten her mouth around the first few spoons, she polished it off pretty quickly.

I'd heard from a few mum friends that fruits like pear/apple were good to, er, get things moving - and it did the trick! After a few days of quiet on the bum front, today brought us some action. My first nappy change after purées - very interesting. ;)

We'll be doing pear for a few more days, and then will switch to a different veggie/fruit. At the moment, she's only having this one taster meal per day, which is usually around lunchtime. After Georgia has had a few different tastes, I'll be adding in a little rice cereal with fruit mixed in as a breakfast meal.

I did some more fruit & veggie shopping yesterday, since I was in the zone. :)

• 5x pears = 1 tray. It's a bit of a gritty puree, as pears tend to be, but nice and sweet.
• 6x small parsnips = 0.8 of a tray. Surprisingly, they smell stronger than they taste. I've never eaten them on my own before, only mixed in soups and stews. I let Georgia lick my finger after I pureed them, and she didn't seem too fazed. (She would have only gotten a microscopic amount, though.)
• 6x zucchinis = 1.4 trays. They were VERY watery, and smell gross.
• 1x can of peaches = 1.6 trays. It's not quite peach season here & I couldn't find frozen ones, so this had to do for now. I made sure to buy the organic kind in their own juice, no extras in there.
• 1x bunch of spinach leaves = 0.8 trays. Even mixed with boiled water to blend, this mixed down to nothing.

We opted to wait until nearer to 6 months before we started Georgia on solid foods. I wanted her to get as much benefit from breastfeeding as possible, especially since our start was a little rocky. Since she's found her groove and I want to keep my supply up, I saw no reason to rush into things. Plus, Georgia was born a little over 3 weeks early, so there was no harm in waiting that little bit longer.

Oy, shocker few weeks here!

I was struck down with a nasty gastro bug that left me admitted in hospital fighting dehydration - my first night away from the baby, and it wasn't even to have a romantic weekend away with the hubby! It was pretty awful and I won't go into details, but I learned a few things from that experience: I missed Georgia like crazy, trying to find breastfeeding friendly drugs is HARD, and pumping every 3-4 hours sucks. Literally.

Dude - being sick sucks on its own. Being sick as a mum is a nightmare! No sick leave from this job, that's for sure. Especially when you are single parenting during the week when hubby is working away. All I can say is this: thank the heavens for awesome family members.

I've been fighting the bug for the past week & have had a few recurrences (joy!) but in the meantime, Georgia has been amazing! Maybe it's been a necessity, or maybe just a fluke, but she has been SO good with other people since I've been sick. The last few weeks she's been very clingy, crying when away from me and upset with other people holding her. This week gone by? She's all smiles. Loving cuddles from her grandparents, her aunty & uncle and some family friends at her Christening. Hopefully this trend continues.

Speaking of Georgia, she has outgrown her cradle at 23 weeks old, so we got a good stretch out of it. She could still fit in there length-wise for a while longer, but she's rolling and kicking now, and is constantly waking up with arms and legs hanging out of the bars! I'm not ready for her to be in her own room yet, so we're starting to transition her into the full-sized portacot next to our bed. Naps there started today - not very successful so far, but day sleeps have always been hit or miss around here. The test will be the evenings...

Five months... and almost the start of a new season. My beautiful girl has been very busy growing up this month!

The last couple of days have been a whirlwind of emotions. We've continued with the sleep training, and Georgia is trying so, so hard to sleep. I'm learning so much as I go along, and I'm a LOT calmer - so I'm thrilled that things are progressing. It's hard, and draining, but I'm finding the better she sleeps in the day, the calmer she sleeps at night.

Win win!

I realised a few days ago that I had quite a few new followers in the online world - I've been pretty open with sharing pictures of my wee girl, but after a few odd faces and comments, I decided to make a switch. The blog here will stay as it is, where I can monitor what I put up & how often. But I have removed my previous accounts on Twitter & Instagram and have started over privately on both of those mediums. I could have blocked and removed accounts on both, but I tried that out and it was far too tedious. Easier just to start over.

I know many people don't like to share photos of their little ones, or at least keep more control over their online presence. I've always been fairly open, although I'd like to think sensible, about what I share. The support I received through blogging and other social mediums while I was going through infertility, IVF & then pregnancy was nothing short of amazing, so sharing my ventures into parenthood seems only natural. Besides, I love the advice I get here & reading other people's stories makes me feel that little bit less lonely on the tough days.

If you haven't discovered my new Twitter & Instagram accounts, or want to be added since they're private, please do get in touch. I'd hate for friends and longtime blog readers to miss out, if you're so inclined. Drop me an email. :)

Hubby has started his new job & I'm on my own with Georgia from Monday mornings to Friday nights.

It's been 20 weeks since Georgia was born, and I'm still learning about motherhood as I go along.