Sad news from my sister and weaning fayre

After my strange answer messages from the dead yesterday I had another blast from the past last night. My mum had a friend when I was younger who happened to have the same birthday as me & I used to call her my twin. When I was about 12 or 13 she moved away and never got in touch again, no forwarding address, nothing. Me and my mum were rather upset, so was my younger sister as she played and was really good friends with her daughter. My mum had posted a message on friends reunited and managed to get there address where they stay now. After about 12 or 13 years of not hearing from them, heard about the baby she had after leaving (was 7 months pregnant when she left) and another she had after that but never from them to know where she stays seems so strange, my mum is planning on writing to her, no pressure on her to get in contact back but just to get in contact let her know about what has been happening here since they left.

My mum also told me she had finally gotten in contact with my younger sister, we had not heard from her since 15th March after my grandads funeral. She had went on a "missing" list! My sister is a drug addict, she had a daughter, my niece, Hayley who is 5 and stays with my mum as she is not fit to look after and care for her. It's not unusual for my sister to dissapear for days and weeks on end, she has always been a rather selfish person in that respect, she is 21 yet acts like a small spoilt child.

My sister had been in hospital in the time she hadn't been in contact, she was in as she had an ectopic pregnancy, that is a pregnancy where the embryo grows outside the womb, in my sisters case it was on one of her fallopian tubes, thankfully she never lost her tube and is okay, as much as loosing a baby is such a horrible thing to happen (this is her second miscarridge) due too the state of her life it also seems like it is a blessing in disguise. I may sound terrible for saying this but she is addicted to Heroin and Cocaine she also smoke Cannibis, she has no home of her own either, her life is a total mess, we have all tried to help her but until she can help herself there is not much we can do for her. As I've said she as a daughter that has been in my mums care for the past 3 years, before that my mum stayed with her for a while or she used to go stay with my mum so never really had her on her own every anyways so doesn't have a clue about how to bring her up. She couldn't tell you how she is getting on at school, what is her favorite DVD, book or toy, who her friends are, nothing!!! The last thing my sister needs in her life is to bring another one into it, for if she did who would look after her baby, how would she feel knowing she would have made the baby who is an inoccent little person have to go through horrendus withdrawals once born due to her addiction as well.

While she was in the hospital she also had them look at her kidneys, she has had problems with them in the past when she was younger and had been having problems with them again. They have said she has totally wrecked her kidneys, she has to go into hospital on the 4th May to have surgery, this is to remove dead and damaged tissue surrounding them and to assess the total amount of damage to them. They are also planning to place a balloon into her kidneys, not sure as to why completely but the procedure will leave her in hospital for between 1-3 weeks depending on how well she reponds to the treatment. If it doesn't work she will have to go into another hospital that specialises in renal surgery. I worry for her but still cant get past thinking she brought alot of this upon herself.

I had my weaning fayre today, I found some parts of it useful and others totally useless. They advised the same as WHO guidelines that babies should be exclusively breast or formula fed till 6 months before introducing solid foods but said that the UK government also says that as every baby different they may need it sooner but no earlier than 17 weeks. There talk and demonstration was about perfect weaning foods, how jars and baby foods quite often were ladden with sugar and to try limit the amout of sugar that is in a babies diet and also that maing your own is not onl better but also cheaper as well. When I asked them about BLW (that is Baby Led Weaning) they said that it is not reccomended as babies insides were not designed to go straight from milk only to solids and that they had to have purees, I dont believe this and hopefully will do BLW with Violet as I think it is a way of weaning that would suit us better. They reccomended purees until 7-8 months then slowly introducing lumpier foods and no finger foods until at least 10 months to reduce risk of choking. Babies rarely choke but rather gag, they have an excellent gagging reflex and if leant forward can easily gag up food they have not managed to swallow. I will take there advice with a so called pinch of salt and do what feels best for us. On the upside we did get some lovely recipies and freebies.