Seven weeks

Alice is still far from convinced by her plate. She's managing just about enough of her feeds now, although still fitting in one or two extra bottles a day, but her sleep is very disturbed - she keeps waking herself up at intervals with pitiful little cries, then dropping off again. And of course this plus the more frequent feeds means OUR sleep is still disturbed.

The cleft nurse came to see us today and was able to tell us that it's normal to react badly to the plate, especially if feeding has been well established for a while. We just have to persevere, and the more she wears it the sooner she'll get used to it. But although it's reassuring to know it's normal, it doesn't really help us.

It's funny, although to some extent I do want the health professionals to be reassuring and tell us that Alice is normal and the tiredness is normal etc etc, part of me would like them, just once, to say 'oh my god you poor thing that's TERRIBLE, nobody should have to cope with that, it's just much too hard isn't it?'

It's a fine line between 'normal' and 'yeah yeah tell us something we don't know'.