Changes

What a difference; in just over a week Kien has been sleeping practically the entire night without requiring our help. It is simply astounding that we have finally come to this point. I never thought he would sleep through the night, not ever!

Jef still gives him a feed around 22:00-23:00. Then Kien will self settle when he wakes through the night, and will only have a major awaking anywhere between 4:00-5:00. I will then feed him and he will go back to sleep until he wakes up fully - usually around 6:30. I am so pleased (and relieved) we finally can sleep for longer than 1 hour at a time!

This Saturday we have our 9 month interview for "Growing up in NZ" study by the University of Auckland. I requested transcripts for all my interviews, and have been bounced around from one person to another because no one seemed to be able to help me. Today I had a call from their Data Access Coordinator. She said that of all their participants (around 7000) I am the only one who has made this request so they had to put together a policy (as further down the track they anticipate more requests). She asked me why I wanted the information (which actually surprised me somewhat as I thought it was fairly obvious). I told her my reasons are two-fold:

1. This is an intensive research study spanning over 21 years. I want to be able to refer back to my answers so I can reflect on my responses and provide more meaningful information. There is nothing worse then providing a whole lot of answers that are inconsistent due to me simply forgetting what I had said originally.
2. The study is also a reflection of Kien's timeline, and like the BBC documentary series "Child of our time" it is a snapshot in time. I want Kien to be able to see this, and how he (and we) contributed to the study, including our thoughts, hopes, dilemmas, and state of mind.
   

She was so impressed with my reasoning that they are now going to look at expanding their study to provide access for participants to be able to review and contribute to their individual information on the website to include photos, hopes & dreams, interests and talent etc. She has asked me to provide further ideas and suggestions for this new development. I guess I can put my thinking cap on, after all I am now sleeping so much more than I was a couple of weeks ago and I actually don't feel like I've had a lobotomy anymore.

Remember this pic from when Kien was 4 weeks old?

Well, spot the changes at 36 weeks...he can still fit into it :-)