My First Baby Activity.

I'd heard about Baby Signing and always had the intention of starting it at 6 weeks, mastering it by 3 months and then having full conversations with my 6 month old over a Babychino in Starbucks. To the envy of all other mums of course!

In reality 6 weeks came and went and I'd absolutely forgotten all about it, my brain instead taken up with other important issues such as Pampers Dry Max v. Pampers Baby Dry (Dry Max wins btw) and being able to finally drive again after the emergency caesarean.

So one afternoon after I'd wheeled us rather clumsily through the heavy door of the Feeding Room at my local Mothercare I spotted the leaflet by the changing area.

'Baby Signing classes with The Best Start Club'

I'd been thinking to myself that day that I need to start doing activities with Evie that don't involve sitting and drinking decaf latte after decaf latte. So this was clearly a sign (groan).

I filed the leaflet away in the zipped compartment of my change bag (which has been reallocated to the collection of such things as leaflets, vouchers, pamphlets, important letters I need to post etc) and forgot about it for a week.

When I decided to clear out the massive wad of crap I'd stuffed in there I saw the leaflet and dropped the lady an email. There is a local class in the community centre near me, walking distance in fact and it's every Thursday at 11. It's a 10 week course so I don't expect I'll be having aforementioned conversations with her by the time they're done. Maybe I'll need another 10 ;)

Baby Sign for 'More'.

The first class was 2 days ago and I have to say I did enjoy it. There was a lot more singing involved than I expected (100% more to be precise) and although things like that do set off my cringe reflex, I coped quite well I think!

We covered the basis of Baby Signing and the group leader passed on her experiences of it with her own son. I was excited to hear that in fact I might not have been too far off track with my hopes. Babies can indeed respond to the signs from as little as 5 months and actually sign at about 8 months.

What I want to get from this is to enable Evie to communicate her wants and needs to me to ease frustration. It must be a total pain in the arse to be a baby desperate to be changed out of a wet nappy to have your cries misinterpreted for hunger or wind etc.

All things going to plan, I hope that soon Evie will be able to feel she can be understood by me, her Daddy and my mum and sister who also help to look after her.

We've started off with the basics-
Milk, nappy change, bath, bed etc. The key is consistency and repetition, always ensuring we remember to say the word as well as sign. This might take me a while to get into a habit, especially with her frequency of feeding and the logistics of the nightfeeds.

I also like the fact that its thought to help increase their spoken vocabulary as opposed to hindering it. They say most of the time the baby stops signing the word when he/she can speak it.

So I'll report back after a few weeks, hopefully a little more confident with the signs.

Katy x