It's been a long time since we had a baby in the house, day in day out.
Yes the grandchildren stay a night here and a weekend there, but doing a Parent and C hild fostering placement brings it all back.
I think one of the remarkable things I'd forgotten is how much they can develop in the shortest period of time. I can go out for a morning and when I come back the baby has grown so much and in so many ways. He was a few weeks old when he arrived, a bundle of vulnerability who could do nothing much for himself. He's nearly nine months now and gets bigger and bolder and more competent with every passing hour.
He wants to grow, he yearns to walk and talk - he's not quite there with either yet - but he makes plenty of noise which is talking in his book. He can crawl at greyhound pace and keeps trying to stand upright without hanging onto anything.
He smiles in all the right places.
But there's more; his mum is still only sixteen, and we've noticed that she too is maturing with almost every day, it's a huge joy to witness.
The other evening the baby was sounding distressed. Baby and his mum were in their bedroom but he was sounding unhappy. I went up to support. The mum said;
"I think the problem might be his bottle of milk"
I replied "Oh, wonder why?"
"Well" replied mum "It's straight out of the fridge. In the day he's fine with cool milk, but now it's getting dark before his bedtime I think he might want it warmed"
This is good stuff. It's a requirement to keep bottles of baby milk in the fridge for obvious reasons, and there are procedures for warming it (no microwaving - running the bottle under warm water is good). But if the baby is happy with milk stright from the fridge it means the baby's hunger can be satisfied all the sooner.
We ran the bottle under a warm tap for 5 minues to bring it up to body temperature and…bingo!
The big deal here is that one of our jobs as foster parents to this Parent and Child is to support the mother in learning for herself how parenting works. And a large part of that is dealing with a child's ever-changing ways.
The mother won't always have someone on hand to advise, so we advise as little as we can, sometimes telling her what her options are and giving her space to think it out, whatever the challenge is.
And we're constantly finding new ways to do that.
The baby is growing with every hour and so is his mum.
And so are we!