Mary progress (by )

Mary's doing well. Her blood sugar was a bit low at first, due to some combination of medication Sarah was on before the birth (Metformin, to control gestational diabetes, which acts to reduce blood sugar levels) and a delay in Sarah's breast milk coming through properly, but she got over that fine and was pronounced fit to discharge. She and Sarah are still in the hospital for now, though, as Sarah's quite anemic and gets short of breath very quickly, and she was showing some signs of infection; but they put her on antibiotics, and the infection symptoms are fading away. She's on iron supplements, and is getting stronger every day.

I've been spending most of every day with them, helping Sarah with looking after herself and Mary, and keeping them company. I get to hold Mary lots, which has been particularly fun as she's started being more awake and alert; she spent a lot of time sleeping for the first couple of days, but now she opens her eyes and looks around, turning her head towards voices. Today she took to lifting her head up, although her neck is still quite weak so she can only do this if you're holding her upright to begin with; she now unsteadily holds her head up so she can look around more. The right thing to do to help her brain develop at this stage is to talk to her, so that's what I've been doing... telling her about the pets at home and that sort of thing. I've also been having a go at talking to her in Lojban, as I'd quite like to raise her as Lojban/English bilingual, in order to test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis once and for all. I need to to a bit more research on suitable Lojban baby talk, but so far it's been {ko .iu gleki} ("be happy, darling"), {lo vi mamta be do} ("Mummy's here!"), {mi patfu do .iu} ("It's Daddy!"), {.uu .uinaidai} ("Aw, you're sad"), {.uipei} ("Are you happy?"), {.uidai} ("You're happy!"), {fi'i la meris} ("Welcome, Mary"), and so on.

4 Comments

  • By Twey, Tue 1st Feb 2011 @ 11:41 am

    It's probably a good idea to take the ‘one parent, one language’ approach — if she figures out she can get away with speaking to you in the same language as her mother, she'll never produce Lojban.

  • By Twey, Tue 1st Feb 2011 @ 11:42 am

    Oh, and congratulations, good luck, and you'd best get to drilling and creating huge amounts of Lojban vocabulary for when she starts asking about things ☺

  • By @ndy, Wed 2nd Feb 2011 @ 10:49 am

    Bilingual children are great! I've heard that if one is going to raise a child bilingually then it's best if one parent always speaks one language and the other parent another. That way they learn to separate them from the beginning rather than confusing them and being unable to talk to anyone.

  • By sarah, Sat 5th Feb 2011 @ 7:37 pm

    Jeany says words in Lojban though - it's akward for me as she expects me to respond and I don't know it!

    She knows some phrases I don't know if she talks with Daddy in Lojban as I think she's worked out I don't understand.

    (Jean's the 5yr old not the baby!)

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