My tiny man is one whole month old! I missed updating on the actual day (in fact I feel rather ashamed to admit that I FORGOT on the actual day - only remembered on the 22nd that Samuel turned one month old the day before!), but there it is. He will be 5 weeks old on Tuesday (it's Sunday today) - I can't believe how fast the time is going!
I don't have much time to update as Samuel is starting to wake now that I'm typing, and seems like he is going to be very hungry and cross if I don't hurry up and feed him, lol! I wish I had kept up better over the past couple of weeks. A lot has happened that I wanted to keep a record of, but I just haven't had time.
Right after my last update (literally, immediately!), Samuel became really fussy, and it got progressively worse each day until he was basically spending the entire day crying and seeming uncomfortable, and no longer doing calm things like making eye contact or smiling at me :( He would not fuss or cry if he was sleeping or breastfeeding, but otherwise he was crying constantly. He would start the moment he let go of the breast, and he started to have only a handful of catnaps throughout the day (10-20 mins at a time). It became hard to handle a really really upset baby all day as well as the four other little ones, and I started to worry that he was becoming "colicky". Only Matthew out of my others was like that as a small baby, and it was sooooooo incredibly hard. Matthew's colic started in the same way and at exactly the same age I think, so I was not feeling too optimistic about it. I did not know how I was going to cope with several more months of it! The only thing was that his evening sleep still remained consistent and good - if I got him nursed and asleep between 7 and 8pm, he would stay asleep the rest of the evening, and would then nurse right back to sleep after a nappy change and a feed, for another 2-3 hours.
On the very worst day, he did not sleep well during the evening. In fact he was still awake at 10pm crying, having had no sleep yet that evening! Thinking of this being the new norm was soooo depressing, as I hated seeing him in pain, and that is how he seemed to be. I figured he needed to see a chiropractor like Heather had suggested when he was born, so I made an appointment for him (and me - OW my hips are SOOOOO sore still!!) with the same place I took Benjamin to when he was a baby - they specialise in babies, children, and mothers who are pregnant or newly postpartum. The appointment wasn't until Feb 1st, but at least it was made.
So at 10pm that evening I marched downstairs with him and handed him to Neil because I had tried everything to soothe him, breastfed him to bursting point and still he was crying and wouldn't sleep. My back and arms were hurting and I hoped Neil would have an idea. He sent me upstairs to rest and held Samuel in the kitchen to keep the crying noise as far away from the sleeping children as possible in our teeny house! I heard him crying on and off for a while and then he stopped. After it had been quiet for a bit, I went down to investigate, and found Samuel fast asleep in Neil's arms. Neil said he had prayed over Samuel and then he had gone to sleep! I was so glad that he was asleep, and so grateful that Neil had taken the initiative to pray over him! We put him to bed and he slept intil 2am, and next woke at 5.45 or 6am. When he got up for the day, he was a totally different baby! Absolutely zero fussing or crying all day long, other than if he was hungry and I was taking too long getting my bra open, hehe! He was calm and physically relaxed, and seemed contented. He made eye contact and cooed and smiled all day! :) He still had quite a few catnaps in the bouncy chair and woke if I tried to transfer him to the bedroom, but he did take one nice long 2hrs and 45 minutes nap in the afternoon. That was Tuesday, and he has been calm and happy ever since!!! Well, he was kind of fussy for the hour before bedtime this evening, but anyway, God is so faithful and I am SO relieved!!
Ahh I didn't get to finish this, so Samuel has now been changed and fed, and then changed into a different sleepsuit after bringing up milk on himself (and me!), and then nursed some more, and now he's dozing draped across my front while I type this with one hand! :) These precious days are so fleeting so I am enjoying it while I can. It is just about midnight now and another week starts tomorrow, and I'm tired, but he isn't asleep enough yet for me to put him down, otherwise he might wake up. Hopefully if I hold him for 5 or 10 more minutes he'll stay asleep when I put him down and I can go and brush my teeth. So I may as well continue typing for now! :)
Samuel still hasn't used his crib! He naps on my bed or in the bouncy chair, though he doesn't stay asleep so long in the chair. If he stays asleep when I put him on my bed, he always sleeps for the next 2.5 - 3 hours. He now has one such nap per day, as yet unpredictably. He won't stay asleep any other time that I try it, but once a day at some point, he will. Usually that's somewhere in the afternoon but one day this week he started a long nap at 10.30am. It was a day that Benjamin had been awke since 4.45am (those molars again!) and poor Benji was exhausted, so he nursed into a deep sleep only 15 minutes after Samuel did. They both slept for a record 3hrs and 15 minutes! Which was perfect, since their naps were staggered by 15 minutes, so I had chance to nurse and change Samuel in the 15 minutes before Benjamin woke up. I got housework done, read alouds and other quality time with the older three, and I even managed to cut Nathan's hair after they ate lunch! They all badly need a haircut so the other 3 are on my to-do list this week! I am also preparing to start school this week - we start back on Mon 31st, and Matthew starts school for the very first time! :) He's so excited! I hope I can pull it off, but I am also really looking forward to it. Neil's birthday is on Tuesday too!
Samuel is now sleeping 4-5 hours consistently in the evening, and usually goes from about 8pm to 1am, or 7pm to midnight, or something like that. I just put him down now and he has stayed asleep next to me, so I can finish the typing a little faster if it doesn't disturb him! Then I MUST go to bed!
He wakes a couple of times in the night after midnight I think, but maybe some nights only once?? I really don't know, it could be more than that, but we now have a dark room (I kept the lamp on to see by in the first few weeks) and sleep tummy-to-tummy, so I barely come round enough to get him latched on and then fall straight back to sleep. My hips have been slightly less painful in the last two days, but before that I had to change sides with Samuel halfway through the night because it became too painful to stay on that side (also better for Samuel's head I should think!). The last two nights I haven't had to, so I had unknowingly been offering Samuel the same breast all night, and boy was I lopsided in the morning, haha! The side I hadn't used was engorged. Ow. In the evening he sleeps in my bed, and I just climb in next to him part way through the evening and go on the internet via my laptop. He isn't disturbed by it at this age, but he will be soon. Some evenings I am downstairs till bedtime though. Then I just climb in beside my sweet tiny man and go to sleep! I LOVE it. Love it soooo much. He is just precious and I love being close to him. I have no desire whatsoever to put him in his own sleeping space. It's just GORGEOUS sharing my bed with him.
He is cooing so sweetly these days! I keep trying to catch it on camera (for a video clip) but EVERY time there's deafening bellowing in the background from another kiddie or else he stops and starts to fuss a bit instead of cooing, or someone comes and stands in front of the camera to make a silly face or ask me a question! Hopefully I'll get a good clip to share soon! He has Matthew's sweet husky little voice - only Matthew has had that type of voice so far. It's UNCANNY how many similarities there are between Samuel and Matthew. He SMELLS like Matthew did as a baby as well. Again, only Matthew smelled like that - he was quite a... strong-smelling baby, lol! Like a MAN smell, quite stinky sometimes! ;) Even right after a bath, it was like his sweat glands were all full of pheromones or something, and he was quite a sweaty baby in general. Arthur, Nathan and Benjamin weren't like that at all. Samuel is! He's also showing the start of cradle cap which all the boys have had (and Benjamin and NATHAN still do, even though they only ever have their hair washed with Dentinox!! What is up with that?! Nathan is THREE!!!), and his hairline is doing that receding thing now that his brain just had a growth spurt (so did his forehead therefore, hehe!), so it's becoming more visible. He has only had two baths (gasp! Yes, I'm a bad mother! ;) ) so far, but he has his hair washed with Dentinox. Hey ho.
His smile is so precious!! Big and broad and open and gummy, and he has a dimple in one cheek like I do (the same side too!). His face lights up when he smiles. I LOVE him so much!! He is beginning to get some newborn acne on his cheeks, poor little manny. He is otherwise doing great, and growing SO fast! He is now outgrowing all his 0-3 month sleepsuits and fits the smaller 3-6 month ones well. Craziness at just 4 weeks old!! He was 11lbs 1oz at three weeks old, and I guess he will next be weighed at his 6-8 week check. I have no idea what he weighs now but I'm guessing at around 12lbs? I am noticing my arm and shoulder hurting a LOT lately after holding him, so he must be gaining weight! He is tracking things with his eyes, and starting to watch his brothers around him (which they love!). He has smiled at Matthew and coos at him too, since Matthew is (as usual) the one who really puts in the time with little babies, sitting with them and being calm and interested in them. He was the same with Benjamin, and Benjamin warmed to him so much more than the others as a baby. Matthew has a real tender heart for little babies :)
I'm sure there's so much more that I wanted to write about, but for now I need to go to bed. I need to make an appointment for my 6-week postnatal check (just a week or so away!), and they'll send Samuel's in the post. Once he's had that check I will need to follow my tradition of finishing posting at this lovely blog, which is sad! I will try to update a couple of times at least before then, while I have the chance! I can't believe my new baby is almost at the end of the newborn stage already! :( I LOVE me a newborn!
I will be back though! ;) I have a couple of boys names at the ready for boy #6. Heather thinks the next baby will be born in June 2012, just in time for the Olympics! :) Matthew told me randomly the other day that he thought I would have another baby in October, but not this October. We shall see! I DO hope and pray that God will bless us with more babies yet! I hope it's not greedy of me, but I just love it so much, and don't want it to end!
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Thursday, January 13, 2011
3 weeks old!
I'm still here! Absolutely no time to update - we've had no internet most of the last week anyway (tsk!!), but it's back on now by the looks of it.
Managing with Neil at work is incredibly hectic! My parents came to stay with my grandparents nearby last Friday and they've been to see us every weekday since then. They go home tomorrow so today was the last day they came over. They came each afternoon and it was LOVELY to have their help with keeping the boys entertained and busy (and the dishwasher running!) - they brought me sandwiches every day too. Love my parents! I'm a bit sad that they're going home!
Not quite sure how things will go without my parents around to help! A couple of the days this week have seemed absolutely unmanageable, but I think those were days when I had added stress factors. Nathan's 3rd birthday was on Wednesday, which also turned out to be the day that Samuel started breastfeeding like he was starting a growth spurt (he was!), and Benjamin started cutting both bottom molars at once - literally all of a sudden they were halfway up through huge purple swollen gums, my poor baby! :( Benjamin literally breastfed as much as Samuel did that day, either that or he was screaming and crying continually, and wanting to focus on making the day special for Nathey, I found it pretty stressful. Last week (before my parents came) there was one day that felt completely impossible to manage. I thankfully don't even remember the details of it too well now, but I do remember the bit where I was in the boys' bedroom rummaging frantically for a change of clothes for the one who had merrily tipped out a whole cup of water over the recently-opened Christmas presents, while Benjamin cried for me at the stairgate and Samuel cried in his bouncy chair and I just sat down on Nathan's bed and cried, saying, "I can't do it Lord! I can't do it Lord!" over and over. It was the last thing in an ENDLESS line of difficult-to-manage things that day and I felt so much less ready physically than I had expected to feel. Anyway, at that moment I was completely overwhelmed and did not know what to do. But, you know, I pulled myself together pretty quickly and changed a boy, cuddled another, and nursed another, and I survived.
But it is hard with 5 such very little ones! :S
Health Visitor came last week and since Samuel had just been weighed by the midwife 2 days before, she didn't weigh and measure him that day, but she sent someone to do that this week instead. So on Tuesday, at 3 weeks old exactly, Samuel weighed 11lbs 1oz - ANOTHER pound in a week gained!! He's at the 98th percentile for weight which I think is a record for one of my babies, even over Arthur (who wasn't far behind that as a baby)! His length was funny though - somebody has made a mistake somewhere because he ws 57cm long and DEFINITELY longer than he was a couple of weeks ago (he's filling out the length of even his biggest 0-3 month clothing) and yet he was measured at 59.5cm at birth?!?! Hmmmm! I would think that the birth measurement was wrong, but she was very careful and thorough. It's different though, because they use a tape at birth, and stretch them on a flat scale with the HV.
Anyway, growing boy! He's doing his 3 week growth spurt right now but it's not too bad. He's napping okayish, mostly in the bouncy chair but also on my bed once or twice a day for a good 2 hours each time, if I can put him down without waking him. He sleeps most of the evening now from about 8pm if I nurse him thoroughly (with 5 breasts, haha!) around that time. It's just after midnight now and he's stirring next to me having been asleep since 7.30pm ish. I'm noticing this is becoming "normal" for Samuel, which is nice! After that he'll usually need a full change and feed between midnight and 1am (yep, he's fussing and sucking his hands now!) and then wake around 4.30am to feed. Neither of us really wake up since we stay lying tummy-to-tummy (LOVE that!), and he wakes again about 3 hours later - usually AFTER I have to get up for Neil to go to work. It's quite nice to get the boys changed and eat breakfast before he wakes up for the day.
Bless! He's sucking his index finger really noisily right now (and very contentedly!) - never seen him do that before!
I have photos, but no time! Soon, hopefully. He is smiling occasionally and once did a HUGE beaming smile which changed his whole face - gummy and broad! :) Like Arthur's smile I think. He is starting to coo like he is really wanting to communicate with me, but just the odd one or two now and again - soooooooo sweet! :)
I have a ton more I could say but I need to nurse my sweetie pea and go to sleep! Back soon hopefully! :)
Managing with Neil at work is incredibly hectic! My parents came to stay with my grandparents nearby last Friday and they've been to see us every weekday since then. They go home tomorrow so today was the last day they came over. They came each afternoon and it was LOVELY to have their help with keeping the boys entertained and busy (and the dishwasher running!) - they brought me sandwiches every day too. Love my parents! I'm a bit sad that they're going home!
Not quite sure how things will go without my parents around to help! A couple of the days this week have seemed absolutely unmanageable, but I think those were days when I had added stress factors. Nathan's 3rd birthday was on Wednesday, which also turned out to be the day that Samuel started breastfeeding like he was starting a growth spurt (he was!), and Benjamin started cutting both bottom molars at once - literally all of a sudden they were halfway up through huge purple swollen gums, my poor baby! :( Benjamin literally breastfed as much as Samuel did that day, either that or he was screaming and crying continually, and wanting to focus on making the day special for Nathey, I found it pretty stressful. Last week (before my parents came) there was one day that felt completely impossible to manage. I thankfully don't even remember the details of it too well now, but I do remember the bit where I was in the boys' bedroom rummaging frantically for a change of clothes for the one who had merrily tipped out a whole cup of water over the recently-opened Christmas presents, while Benjamin cried for me at the stairgate and Samuel cried in his bouncy chair and I just sat down on Nathan's bed and cried, saying, "I can't do it Lord! I can't do it Lord!" over and over. It was the last thing in an ENDLESS line of difficult-to-manage things that day and I felt so much less ready physically than I had expected to feel. Anyway, at that moment I was completely overwhelmed and did not know what to do. But, you know, I pulled myself together pretty quickly and changed a boy, cuddled another, and nursed another, and I survived.
But it is hard with 5 such very little ones! :S
Health Visitor came last week and since Samuel had just been weighed by the midwife 2 days before, she didn't weigh and measure him that day, but she sent someone to do that this week instead. So on Tuesday, at 3 weeks old exactly, Samuel weighed 11lbs 1oz - ANOTHER pound in a week gained!! He's at the 98th percentile for weight which I think is a record for one of my babies, even over Arthur (who wasn't far behind that as a baby)! His length was funny though - somebody has made a mistake somewhere because he ws 57cm long and DEFINITELY longer than he was a couple of weeks ago (he's filling out the length of even his biggest 0-3 month clothing) and yet he was measured at 59.5cm at birth?!?! Hmmmm! I would think that the birth measurement was wrong, but she was very careful and thorough. It's different though, because they use a tape at birth, and stretch them on a flat scale with the HV.
Anyway, growing boy! He's doing his 3 week growth spurt right now but it's not too bad. He's napping okayish, mostly in the bouncy chair but also on my bed once or twice a day for a good 2 hours each time, if I can put him down without waking him. He sleeps most of the evening now from about 8pm if I nurse him thoroughly (with 5 breasts, haha!) around that time. It's just after midnight now and he's stirring next to me having been asleep since 7.30pm ish. I'm noticing this is becoming "normal" for Samuel, which is nice! After that he'll usually need a full change and feed between midnight and 1am (yep, he's fussing and sucking his hands now!) and then wake around 4.30am to feed. Neither of us really wake up since we stay lying tummy-to-tummy (LOVE that!), and he wakes again about 3 hours later - usually AFTER I have to get up for Neil to go to work. It's quite nice to get the boys changed and eat breakfast before he wakes up for the day.
Bless! He's sucking his index finger really noisily right now (and very contentedly!) - never seen him do that before!
I have photos, but no time! Soon, hopefully. He is smiling occasionally and once did a HUGE beaming smile which changed his whole face - gummy and broad! :) Like Arthur's smile I think. He is starting to coo like he is really wanting to communicate with me, but just the odd one or two now and again - soooooooo sweet! :)
I have a ton more I could say but I need to nurse my sweetie pea and go to sleep! Back soon hopefully! :)
Monday, January 3, 2011
Nearly 2 weeks old already!
Wow, the time is passing so fast! I can hardly believe that Samuel is going to be 2 weeks old tomorrow! Christmas came and went so fast, and then I blinked and 2010 had passed into the memory banks and 2011 was here! Crazy.
Today is Monday 3rd of January and it's the last day of Neil's paternity leave. Tomorrow he'll go to work at 7.30am and not get back until about 7pm. Yikes! I have such a mixture of feelings about the new normal around here! I'm so excited - breathlessly excited! - to be starting out as the mother of five children, spending my days watching them grow and learn and develop, and managing my home and my little ones. It's such a challenge (and TOO hard sometimes, but you keep going I guess!) but ohhhh so rewarding! And exciting to tackle. I can't think of anything I would rather be doing - no job or career could possibly hold this much anticipation or joy or love or thrills or rewards for me, I'm sure of it. It has to be hard work and a big challenge in order to be THAT thrilling and rewarding. So in part I am eager for tomorrow because it's the start of a new year which stretches out ahead of us, and a new beginning with a new little person in our family. I'm excited for all that it means, and all that the year will hold for us!
But ohhh I'm scared, lol!
How in the wide world will I juggle the needs of five little people, when the youngest is a needy newborn baby and the eldest is only just 6?! I was never proficient at it with four little people (trust me, I was NOT "there" yet!) so I am not sure how to proceed!
Personality-wise, I work well under pressure, and better still when I don't have someone else to fall back on. If Neil is at home I will manage less well, than if he's at work. I rise to the challenge, and I can't afford to be lazy (which is my tendency unfortunately!). It's a GOOD thing that I need to do my days without Neil home for 12 hours, although it's kind of the last thing that I want to do right now, thinking about the week ahead! ;) It will be good for me!
On Friday my parents are coming!! I can't wait to see them, and neither can the boys - they LOVE Nana and Grandy! I'm so excited for them to meet Samuel as well. They've seen his photos but it will be lovely to see them hold him and see all the things about him that I've been telling them on the phone, for themselves. They are travelling up from France on Thursday, and staying with my grandparents until the following Friday. Apart from the weekend, they are planning to come here for part of the day every day, yay! To help me with the boys mostly, and to meet Samuel. Nathan's birthday is next week (HOW ON EARTH WILL HE BE THREE?!?!!) and Neil has to work that day so I am really happy that my parents will be here and can help me make the day special for him. I have 3 children aged 2 and under at the moment! Two, one, and newborn! :) And four and six! :) Anyway I am looking forward to my parents visiting because it will help me to have them here. I have Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday on my own, which will be interesting!
I get tired very quickly when I do things with the boys these last few days - I've been going downstairs for anything from 30 minutes to a couple of hours, just slowly tidying the living room (which is beyond description, truly) or sitting with Samuel in my arms, or just chatting with the boys as they play. I get tired quickly and go back upstairs with Samuel when that hits, and just feel like I need a long nap to recover from sitting downstairs! I'm nervous about the days to come since I will never get the chance to nap. It has been several babies since I last was able to nap, no matter how desperate the need, obviously! I hope I hold up physically.
I have made a list this evening to help me keep focused tomorrow. This is all I want to achieve tomorrow and even though it's basic I think I will not manage much more, and will have to work at just achieving what's on the list!
* Drink 4-6 glasses of water
* Benjamin down for a nap at appropriate time
* Meals on time for all of us (give or take 30 mins)
* Read aloud to the boys (at least 1 hour)
* Nappy changes for all the nappy wearers, at least morning, noon, and bedtime! (Nathan and Benjamin are full-time nappy wearers, no potty training yet. Matthew wears a nappy at night and whenever he needs to poo still.)
* Keep on top of the living room floor (tidy-ish)
* Read Bible and pray, at least first thing, but if possible at any moment I can grab too!
* Feed and cuddle Samuel as much as possible. Change his nappy as often as needed (LOTS lately!).
That's it. Hopefully I'll manage to keep the above stuff going, because if I do I think the day will go okay for us all. I am not sure what we'll have for dinner - there are precisely NO freezer meals this time! I have no idea why that slipped my mind, but hmmm, that could make things tricky! I'm guessing tomorrow's dinner for the boys will be baked beans on toast, since it's quick, easy, nutritious, and one of their favourites! :)
Another part of me is just feeling so sad that my babymoon is over! :( I still get to snuggle my tiny man, but it has been so precious just focusing on him and snuggling him ALL the time. He has mostly slept all his sleeps on my front. These last two or three days I have started to put him down next to me on the bed when he is WELL asleep on my front. I don't want to! But I started to get worried about when Neil goes back to work, and what if he absolutely will not sleep unless he's on my front by then?! Today I really feel that pull of the fact that it's the last day where I get to rest in bed with my tiny love. Even when he's been happy and contented NOT in my arms, I have still scooped him up anyway and held him close all curled up against my chest, and kissed his little soft head a zillion times, and rubbed his back until he fell asleep - as often as I could. I know I can't do that during the week after today, and I really have a lump in my throat just thinking about it. The demands of the day will mean I have to keep on putting him down to deal with issues with the boys, discipline, and various things that need doing like nappies and meals. Samuel is SUCH a contented little baby. He doesn't mind being put down, but I can feel him relax more when he's in my arms. He goes so calm and still, and just blinks and does his sweet fast breathing, and eventually dozes off. I LOVE holding him! I will hold him just about as much as I possibly can even with Neil at work, but I know I will need to keep putting him down, and he won't be able to take his naps on me.
A sling would fix that, I know, but I don't get on well with slings in general. Either they hurt my back, or even if they don't, I find them too cumbersome, especially when trying to tend to the other little ones. I can't pick up or lift a toddler when I have a baby on my front, even with 2 arms free. It just doesn't work for me. It's possible to cook a meal or change a nappy with a baby on my front, but I find it physically straining and exhausting to do so. My back hurts just trying to lean round the baby to get things done. So I am not going the slinging route, unless he ends up a colicky baby and it's a survival tactic for a while. I HOPE he won't be!! But so far he seems very very laid-back and calm and happy. He's such a precious blessing!
Our last bouncy chair broke when Benjamin was a baby, so when I realised we didn't have one, I went looking on eBay. I wanted a Fisher Price one with a vibrate function, like our old one. We had a Fisher Price Kick and Play before and it was brilliant. Just the right bounce-ability when pushed with a foot, and the vibrate function was very helpful too! I needed one that was being sold locally enough so that I could avoid postage costs. I found a more basic Fisher Price bouncy chair for £5 (I think?) just a few streets away from us, and won it! It has a vibrate function but no lights and sounds like the other one, which I'm PERFECTLY happy about! ;) It has a built in blanket to cover the baby up if it's chilly, which is sweet! And it does bounce as nicely as the other one, so I'm pleased about that. After I washed the cover, I put Samuel in it (yesterday or the day before, I can't remember which!), and he was very happy there while his brothers stroked his head and put the blanket on and off and on and off and on and off and on and off, etc, and bounced the chair none-too-gently. The chair got nudged and bumped a few times as they busied themselves playing next to it, which made Samuel jump a bit, but he was calm through it all. Eventually he started to fuss a bit, so I put the vibrate function on and rocked the chair gently with my foot, and he went very still, just blinking. Over about 10 minutes, his sweet little eyelids got heavier and heavier, until he went to sleep. Today I put him in the chair for a short while and he did the same thing. After he had been asleep about 5 minutes I picked him up out of the chair and put him in my bed upstairs and he stayed asleep for a couple of hours. So I am cautiously hopeful with the bouncy chair to help me! :) It's a safe place to put him down, so long as I do not leave the room. Our house is conveniently teeny tiny so we only HAVE the one room to be in anyway, lol! ;) Very handy at this stage! I think if I need to go to the toilet or the kitchen, I will have to take him with me. Or just not go to either of those places unless I have him put to bed upstairs or something.
He has not used his crib at all so far - well, I tried him in it when he was fast asleep once at under a week old, and he stayed asleep less than 10 minutes on his back in there, and then woke up kind of fussy. He sleeps with me at night and I have no plans to change that any time soon. LOVE co-sleeping! :) For naps though, once Neil is not with the little ones in the day times, I need to do something different I think. While he's tiny, he is safe on my bed unsupervised, but only until he gets near to the age where he could roll. And even so, I don't feel safe even now putting him there for naps, because Arthur and Matthew are able to let themselves upstairs through the kiddy gate now, and I don't want them to have access to him on the bed if I don't know they're in there.
Soooo I will try transferring him to his crib once he's fallen asleep either breastfeeding or in the bouncy chair. I am not too confident about it because if I put him on his back he is likely to wake up pretty quickly. If I am in the room with him all the time, I have been putting him on his tummy to sleep, because he goes off to sleep on my front (tummy down) and his front is therefore all warm and toasty, and he stays settled if he goes down on his tummy if he fell asleep that way. He sleeps for a couple of hours every time like that. I am not crazy about sort of training him to be a tummy sleeper though, because at night he sleeps on his side or on his back next to me in between nursing, and he seems to have no problems sleeping on his back. So I don't want to mess with a good thing! I know how hard it is to try to get a baby to sleep on his back who is plain hurting or uncomfortable on his back for whatever reason - two of mine have been that way, but Samuel is definitely not so far. I don't want to lay him down in his crib on his tummy to sleep and then walk away and shut the door. So I will persevere trying to transfer him asleep onto his back in the crib and hope he stays sleeping. I think he will wake within 5 minutes every time and eventually get cross and overtired, but I'll give it a try anyway. I also suspect he'll take some of his naps actually in the bouncy chair. He is disturbed by the noise around him so I want to try to get him napping upstairs if possible, because it doesn't seem fair to him to see him flinching and startling at crashes and bangs and screeches from his brothers, even though he stays asleep! That can't be as good a quality of sleep for him, and I want him to be well rested at all times.
Anyway, so I need to change the crib sheets tonight in preparation for tomorrow, and also find the spare monitor to plug in where he'll be sleeping, so I can hear when he stirs. The video monitor is in the boys' room so I can see/hear when Benjamin wakes from his nap and during the evening, but we have an old monitor (which hopefully still works!) that I need to put in with Samuel too.
I hope I can do it! I feel like I'm pretty sure I CAN do it, but it's a bit nerve-wracking at the moment! I need to somehow stay calm and sane so that I treat the boys the way they should be treated, and not get snappy or shouty or irritable with them if I get tired. They are HARD work, behaviour-wise, so that's a challenge at the best of times.
Samuel is doing great! :) The midwife came yesterday and discharged us to the Health Visitor, who will be coming tomorrow at noon. I am sad and nostalgic about the midwife discharging us because it is an official closure to the whole pregnancy and birth thing, which - as you know - I absolutely love and adore! :) So I am sad to leave that behind. Again! I can't believe I have done it five times now, and I feel kind of clutchy around the throat thinking that I may not have many more times left to experience, compared with how many I have been through already. I mean, I can't see myself being pregnant five more times, as much as I would LOVE to. I'll be 35 next month. I am hoping and praying (actively!) for more babies yet!
Samuel is waking so I will have to finish this later. I have photos to add, and just a bit more waffle about my darling boy! I'm so besotted with him, he is just delightful and lovely in every way and it's going to be hard to get back to normal life when I'm still SO in babymoon mode!
Oh, he seems to have resettled himself (he's on his tummy next to me in bed), so I'll carry on for now!
The midwife weighed Samuel yesterday at 12 days old and he now weighs 10lbs 2.5oz! He was 9lbs 1.5oz exactly a week before, so he has gained over a lb in a week! She was very pleased with his weight gain and his colour. He had a lot of swelling and bruising to his face, which has FINALLY started to go. I would say his swelling is all gone now, and his bruising almost all gone - it's not really noticable at all any more unless you know what to look for. Poor little man still has red patches on the whites of his eyes from the birth, and the midwife told me that can take several weeks to clear up. I am noticing today that the worst patch has started to look less red at last, and the others are more pinky now, so that's good. Anyway, she was very pleased with him because even with bruising he has had no jaundice whatsoever. He has been feeding almost constantly though, so that will have been flushing his system out very well.
He feeds on demand, basically whenever he is awake, hehe! I am working on making sure he has FULL feeds, so if he dozes off after one full side, I still wake him up and offer him the other side. Once he's well and truly stuffed, I let him sleep. He will then typically sleep for a couple of hours, or 2.5 hours even. My policy this time around is to make sure that's the longest he sleeps before I wake him up and feed him again. The idea is that with feeds no further apart than 2.5 hours in the day, he will be well tanked up during the day and eventually begin to space out his night-time feeds by himself. I hope! I have no idea of his nights, none at all! I lay down next to him and nurse him, and we both fall asleep. Next thing I know, he's fussing and I wake up enough to offer him the other breast and fall back to sleep. Fast forward to another moment where I become aware of him fussing, and I glance at the clock and acknowledge the time, offer him the breast and fall back to sleep. When I next wake, I have no recollection of the time I saw on the clock the last time, offer the boy the breast and fall back to sleep. And so it goes on! So I just can't tell you anything at all about his nights. I don't know how often he wakes, how many times each night, how long he feeds for, how much sleep I'm missing or how often my sleep is disturbed. I'm a bit frustrated because I really DO want to know the answers, and I try to be aware of it during the night, but I'm so half asleep that I forget it before morning comes and can't recall it by then! I think I would have to come round enough to physically write down the time each time I wake, to know how the nights are going, but that seems like a big faff so I probably won't get around to that! It's a GOOD way to do it, as it preserves my sleep in the best way possible. Samuel nurses back to sleep right away every time I feed him at night, and often has alert times after feeding during the day, so I am happy to see him being specific in that way about day and night. I don't give him the opportunity to be alert and wakeful in the night mind you! ;) I fall asleep and don't engage him at all. I also don't change his nappy at all, unless he is wet through (not happened yet) or has obviously pooed. Once or twice I have missed a pooey nappy until a couple of hours later because I have just fallen back to sleep and missed it, which I feel bad about!
He did start to get a couple of sore patches when he was first doing lots and lots of breastmilk poo after his meconium cleared out, so I've been using Sudocrem since then and he has no sore or red patches any more, even if he poos frequently. He typically will do 3 or 4 pooey nappies in the space of about 30 minutes, and then nothing for 5 or 6 hours, so that's better than some of my little ones who have just pooed and pooed and pooed around the clock and ended up sore no matter the barrier cream! It never really cleared up until a couple of months later when the frequency of poos calmed down.
Samuel's eyes are grey. They were so dark and murky the first week, and even with good light from the window and him looking directly into it, I still couldn't see any discernable colour to them, just dark murkiness. But this week they have been lightening up just slightly, and I can see that they're dark grey at the moment (no blue at all), and there is a ring around the pupil that I can't describe at the moment, but it could turn into a sort of tan-coloured ring like Benjamin's, I am guessing. Benjamin's are grey with a tan ring, just like mine, and I wonder if Samuel's will be similar. No way to really know this early, but I like guessing! :) They could also turn brown, as Arthur's started out grey too. His eyebrows and eyelashes are starting to "come out" now and so far to me they look light brown, so I think he'll have the same hair colour as Arthur and Benjamin. Nathan's is similar too, but his hair is slightly darker brown than the others, and Matthew's is quite fair - a cross between blonde and light brown. I think Samuel's eyebrows are more brown than Matthew's were though, so I think his colouring will be more like Arthur and Benjamin.
Samuel definitely looks most like Matthew in the face (their noses are almost identical!) but he's also a mix of all of them. It's lovely to see the unique combinations of each child as they arrive! This is probably a good time to post some photos! :) I think Samuel has been asleep nearly 2.5 hours now so I need to wake him up and feed him if he doesn't wake up himself. Here are the latest photos - starting way back on Christmas Eve at 3 days old:
Here is Samuel on Christmas Day in another Christmas outfit! :) Good old eBay! His eyes were still swollen, and his bruising probably peaked from that day. It seemed to really come up. He was looking at the window (he seems to really like looking at any light source, especially natural light, and will stare at it for ages and ages):
I already have a photo of Samuel in the Mr. Bump sleepsuit (which they all wear and get photographed in!) which I posted last entry. But here's another one, just for the records! He was 6 days old here, and really did not fit it any more in the length. He doesn't fit ANY of his newborn (up to 10lbs) sleepsuits now - his feet are restricted by the length as he's such a LONG baby! Neil got the box of 0-3 month clothes out of the loft today and the first load is in the washing machine, so that's a relief! I can't believe we're cracking that box open so soon! Anyway, here is Samuel looking at the window again, in the Mr. Bump sleepsuit! :)
So many people keep on saying how BIG he is, which I guess he is for a brand new baby, but as far as human beings go he is still EVER SO TINY! And that's how he seems to me, he is just soooo teeny tiny in my eyes, almost to the point where I can't understand why people keep on about how big he is, lol! I took a photo of him sleeping on his front with my hand laid gently on his head, just because when I was stroking his little head like that, it struck me again how tiny he was, and so I wanted to capture that to dispel the myth that he's this gigantic baby! ;) He was 6 days old here too:
Here is a series of photos that I took when Samuel was 8 days old, just before the boys' bedtime. Arthur and Matthew came up to see him as they often do at that time of day, and I realised I didn't yet have any photos of the boys with Samuel, except for the one I posted last entry of Benjamin holding him. So I got out my camera, even in the poor light (hence grainy photos), and took a few photos of them. Matthew is very taken with Samuel (just as he was/is with Benjamin, only more so) and is a very calming influence - he gets very serious about him and talks in hushed tones near him, and constantly wants to stroke or kiss him. He strokes his little head or tummy soooo gently and carefully. That's why he's wearing such a serious expression in one of these photos - this is Matthew looking after Samuel and taking the job very seriously. They are both giving him a kiss in the last photo, when it was time for them to go and get ready for bed :)
And lastly, here are 3 photos of Samuel taken when he was 9 days old, on my bed. His one Christmas present was a Very Hungry Caterpillar touchy-feely toy, and he does seem to focus on it and look at it so I put it near him sometimes for him to look at. I put it on the bed and fiddled about with depth of field, wanting to focus on Samuel and make the caterpillar blurry. While I was doing that I managed to catch him starting to smile at me! :) Samuel looked me right in the eye at 7 days old, raised his eyebrows in surprise as though recognising me for the first time, and SMILED! I couldn't believe it because he was only 7 days old, long before babies are apparently "able" to do proper social smiles yet, but I knew it was not wind, and was definitely "social" behaviour. Matthew and Benjamin were my previous earliest smilers at 3 weeks old which was already "early", but 7 days?!! I do know baby smiles by now, after 5 babies, but I still didn't mention it at first in case I was wrong. But he has smiled at me about once or twice a day, every day since, and at Neil a couple of times too. All the occasions were when he was particularly alert, focused on our faces, and being held about 12 inches from our faces as we talked to him. Definitely social smiles! :) I still can't believe he's doing it so early but there we go! In the last photo here, he was just beginning a smile - see how his eyes are so different and all lit up as he switches into his "social" mode?! :) Such a sweet little peanut!
He's fed and asleep curled up on my chest right now. Bliss!!! I will miss it so much tomorrow but at least I can still do it in the evenings and at the weekends! This precious stage is so fleeting and passes WAY too quickly. How I long to slow down time so that I can revel and soak in it all I like! *sigh*
The one sad thing that I have noticed about my sweet little Samuel is that he has undoubtedly got Arthur's curly feet :( I'm soooo sad about it, though my mum reminds me that it's not bad going to only have two out of five with the stupid curly feet gene (okay she didn't call it that, but that's what I think of the darn thing!), considering Neil was one of 3 siblings affected by it out of 4. Ugh. I know it means many rounds of both his little legs in full plaster casts, traipsing back and forth to the hospital with all the kiddies for frequent appointments, night boots that will disturb his sleep, and follow ups FOREVER where the physio struggles to figure out why his feet are not staying straight despite the treatment (ongoing with Arthur, whose feet are still curly and whose next appt is next month). So sad to have to begin it all over again, and to have to see my little baby in plaster casts. His feet don't look as curly as Arthur's did before his first casts, BUT the thing that concerns me is that they also turn in at the ankle, which Arthur's didn't, sort of suspiciously like clubfoot. But, I can flex them into a straight foot position, but they don't have any flexibility beyond that. I will not be hanging around waiting for the Health Visitor to notice and refer him, which is how we did it with Arthur and the physio told me she really should have seen him as a newborn (he was 3 months old before his appt came through). I will be phoning Arthur's physio tomorrow morning, and I'm sure she'll arrange to see Samuel pretty quickly.
*sigh*
Other than that, things are going well with my newest little man! When the midwife was packing up to go yesterday, she said (completely deadpan), "See you again later this year?" LOVE THAT, hehe! I answered, "Yeah, probably!" ;) And she said, "Going to be another boy?" And I said, "I should think so! I'm thinking of names already!" - which (shh!) I am! ;) Pretty sure that if God blesses us with another baby it will likely be a boy! And I'm already excited about that - my desire for a daughter, whilst THERE, seems to diminish with each baby that comes. I'm more excited for another sweet baby boy right now, than a baby girl. I love my boys! :)
Okay, that's all for now. I will try to update again soon, and work on my birth story in bits whenever I can. Heather has written loads of notes during my labour and no doubt will give me a copy next time I see her, so that will help me! :)
Today is Monday 3rd of January and it's the last day of Neil's paternity leave. Tomorrow he'll go to work at 7.30am and not get back until about 7pm. Yikes! I have such a mixture of feelings about the new normal around here! I'm so excited - breathlessly excited! - to be starting out as the mother of five children, spending my days watching them grow and learn and develop, and managing my home and my little ones. It's such a challenge (and TOO hard sometimes, but you keep going I guess!) but ohhhh so rewarding! And exciting to tackle. I can't think of anything I would rather be doing - no job or career could possibly hold this much anticipation or joy or love or thrills or rewards for me, I'm sure of it. It has to be hard work and a big challenge in order to be THAT thrilling and rewarding. So in part I am eager for tomorrow because it's the start of a new year which stretches out ahead of us, and a new beginning with a new little person in our family. I'm excited for all that it means, and all that the year will hold for us!
But ohhh I'm scared, lol!
How in the wide world will I juggle the needs of five little people, when the youngest is a needy newborn baby and the eldest is only just 6?! I was never proficient at it with four little people (trust me, I was NOT "there" yet!) so I am not sure how to proceed!
Personality-wise, I work well under pressure, and better still when I don't have someone else to fall back on. If Neil is at home I will manage less well, than if he's at work. I rise to the challenge, and I can't afford to be lazy (which is my tendency unfortunately!). It's a GOOD thing that I need to do my days without Neil home for 12 hours, although it's kind of the last thing that I want to do right now, thinking about the week ahead! ;) It will be good for me!
On Friday my parents are coming!! I can't wait to see them, and neither can the boys - they LOVE Nana and Grandy! I'm so excited for them to meet Samuel as well. They've seen his photos but it will be lovely to see them hold him and see all the things about him that I've been telling them on the phone, for themselves. They are travelling up from France on Thursday, and staying with my grandparents until the following Friday. Apart from the weekend, they are planning to come here for part of the day every day, yay! To help me with the boys mostly, and to meet Samuel. Nathan's birthday is next week (HOW ON EARTH WILL HE BE THREE?!?!!) and Neil has to work that day so I am really happy that my parents will be here and can help me make the day special for him. I have 3 children aged 2 and under at the moment! Two, one, and newborn! :) And four and six! :) Anyway I am looking forward to my parents visiting because it will help me to have them here. I have Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday on my own, which will be interesting!
I get tired very quickly when I do things with the boys these last few days - I've been going downstairs for anything from 30 minutes to a couple of hours, just slowly tidying the living room (which is beyond description, truly) or sitting with Samuel in my arms, or just chatting with the boys as they play. I get tired quickly and go back upstairs with Samuel when that hits, and just feel like I need a long nap to recover from sitting downstairs! I'm nervous about the days to come since I will never get the chance to nap. It has been several babies since I last was able to nap, no matter how desperate the need, obviously! I hope I hold up physically.
I have made a list this evening to help me keep focused tomorrow. This is all I want to achieve tomorrow and even though it's basic I think I will not manage much more, and will have to work at just achieving what's on the list!
* Drink 4-6 glasses of water
* Benjamin down for a nap at appropriate time
* Meals on time for all of us (give or take 30 mins)
* Read aloud to the boys (at least 1 hour)
* Nappy changes for all the nappy wearers, at least morning, noon, and bedtime! (Nathan and Benjamin are full-time nappy wearers, no potty training yet. Matthew wears a nappy at night and whenever he needs to poo still.)
* Keep on top of the living room floor (tidy-ish)
* Read Bible and pray, at least first thing, but if possible at any moment I can grab too!
* Feed and cuddle Samuel as much as possible. Change his nappy as often as needed (LOTS lately!).
That's it. Hopefully I'll manage to keep the above stuff going, because if I do I think the day will go okay for us all. I am not sure what we'll have for dinner - there are precisely NO freezer meals this time! I have no idea why that slipped my mind, but hmmm, that could make things tricky! I'm guessing tomorrow's dinner for the boys will be baked beans on toast, since it's quick, easy, nutritious, and one of their favourites! :)
Another part of me is just feeling so sad that my babymoon is over! :( I still get to snuggle my tiny man, but it has been so precious just focusing on him and snuggling him ALL the time. He has mostly slept all his sleeps on my front. These last two or three days I have started to put him down next to me on the bed when he is WELL asleep on my front. I don't want to! But I started to get worried about when Neil goes back to work, and what if he absolutely will not sleep unless he's on my front by then?! Today I really feel that pull of the fact that it's the last day where I get to rest in bed with my tiny love. Even when he's been happy and contented NOT in my arms, I have still scooped him up anyway and held him close all curled up against my chest, and kissed his little soft head a zillion times, and rubbed his back until he fell asleep - as often as I could. I know I can't do that during the week after today, and I really have a lump in my throat just thinking about it. The demands of the day will mean I have to keep on putting him down to deal with issues with the boys, discipline, and various things that need doing like nappies and meals. Samuel is SUCH a contented little baby. He doesn't mind being put down, but I can feel him relax more when he's in my arms. He goes so calm and still, and just blinks and does his sweet fast breathing, and eventually dozes off. I LOVE holding him! I will hold him just about as much as I possibly can even with Neil at work, but I know I will need to keep putting him down, and he won't be able to take his naps on me.
A sling would fix that, I know, but I don't get on well with slings in general. Either they hurt my back, or even if they don't, I find them too cumbersome, especially when trying to tend to the other little ones. I can't pick up or lift a toddler when I have a baby on my front, even with 2 arms free. It just doesn't work for me. It's possible to cook a meal or change a nappy with a baby on my front, but I find it physically straining and exhausting to do so. My back hurts just trying to lean round the baby to get things done. So I am not going the slinging route, unless he ends up a colicky baby and it's a survival tactic for a while. I HOPE he won't be!! But so far he seems very very laid-back and calm and happy. He's such a precious blessing!
Our last bouncy chair broke when Benjamin was a baby, so when I realised we didn't have one, I went looking on eBay. I wanted a Fisher Price one with a vibrate function, like our old one. We had a Fisher Price Kick and Play before and it was brilliant. Just the right bounce-ability when pushed with a foot, and the vibrate function was very helpful too! I needed one that was being sold locally enough so that I could avoid postage costs. I found a more basic Fisher Price bouncy chair for £5 (I think?) just a few streets away from us, and won it! It has a vibrate function but no lights and sounds like the other one, which I'm PERFECTLY happy about! ;) It has a built in blanket to cover the baby up if it's chilly, which is sweet! And it does bounce as nicely as the other one, so I'm pleased about that. After I washed the cover, I put Samuel in it (yesterday or the day before, I can't remember which!), and he was very happy there while his brothers stroked his head and put the blanket on and off and on and off and on and off and on and off, etc, and bounced the chair none-too-gently. The chair got nudged and bumped a few times as they busied themselves playing next to it, which made Samuel jump a bit, but he was calm through it all. Eventually he started to fuss a bit, so I put the vibrate function on and rocked the chair gently with my foot, and he went very still, just blinking. Over about 10 minutes, his sweet little eyelids got heavier and heavier, until he went to sleep. Today I put him in the chair for a short while and he did the same thing. After he had been asleep about 5 minutes I picked him up out of the chair and put him in my bed upstairs and he stayed asleep for a couple of hours. So I am cautiously hopeful with the bouncy chair to help me! :) It's a safe place to put him down, so long as I do not leave the room. Our house is conveniently teeny tiny so we only HAVE the one room to be in anyway, lol! ;) Very handy at this stage! I think if I need to go to the toilet or the kitchen, I will have to take him with me. Or just not go to either of those places unless I have him put to bed upstairs or something.
He has not used his crib at all so far - well, I tried him in it when he was fast asleep once at under a week old, and he stayed asleep less than 10 minutes on his back in there, and then woke up kind of fussy. He sleeps with me at night and I have no plans to change that any time soon. LOVE co-sleeping! :) For naps though, once Neil is not with the little ones in the day times, I need to do something different I think. While he's tiny, he is safe on my bed unsupervised, but only until he gets near to the age where he could roll. And even so, I don't feel safe even now putting him there for naps, because Arthur and Matthew are able to let themselves upstairs through the kiddy gate now, and I don't want them to have access to him on the bed if I don't know they're in there.
Soooo I will try transferring him to his crib once he's fallen asleep either breastfeeding or in the bouncy chair. I am not too confident about it because if I put him on his back he is likely to wake up pretty quickly. If I am in the room with him all the time, I have been putting him on his tummy to sleep, because he goes off to sleep on my front (tummy down) and his front is therefore all warm and toasty, and he stays settled if he goes down on his tummy if he fell asleep that way. He sleeps for a couple of hours every time like that. I am not crazy about sort of training him to be a tummy sleeper though, because at night he sleeps on his side or on his back next to me in between nursing, and he seems to have no problems sleeping on his back. So I don't want to mess with a good thing! I know how hard it is to try to get a baby to sleep on his back who is plain hurting or uncomfortable on his back for whatever reason - two of mine have been that way, but Samuel is definitely not so far. I don't want to lay him down in his crib on his tummy to sleep and then walk away and shut the door. So I will persevere trying to transfer him asleep onto his back in the crib and hope he stays sleeping. I think he will wake within 5 minutes every time and eventually get cross and overtired, but I'll give it a try anyway. I also suspect he'll take some of his naps actually in the bouncy chair. He is disturbed by the noise around him so I want to try to get him napping upstairs if possible, because it doesn't seem fair to him to see him flinching and startling at crashes and bangs and screeches from his brothers, even though he stays asleep! That can't be as good a quality of sleep for him, and I want him to be well rested at all times.
Anyway, so I need to change the crib sheets tonight in preparation for tomorrow, and also find the spare monitor to plug in where he'll be sleeping, so I can hear when he stirs. The video monitor is in the boys' room so I can see/hear when Benjamin wakes from his nap and during the evening, but we have an old monitor (which hopefully still works!) that I need to put in with Samuel too.
I hope I can do it! I feel like I'm pretty sure I CAN do it, but it's a bit nerve-wracking at the moment! I need to somehow stay calm and sane so that I treat the boys the way they should be treated, and not get snappy or shouty or irritable with them if I get tired. They are HARD work, behaviour-wise, so that's a challenge at the best of times.
Samuel is doing great! :) The midwife came yesterday and discharged us to the Health Visitor, who will be coming tomorrow at noon. I am sad and nostalgic about the midwife discharging us because it is an official closure to the whole pregnancy and birth thing, which - as you know - I absolutely love and adore! :) So I am sad to leave that behind. Again! I can't believe I have done it five times now, and I feel kind of clutchy around the throat thinking that I may not have many more times left to experience, compared with how many I have been through already. I mean, I can't see myself being pregnant five more times, as much as I would LOVE to. I'll be 35 next month. I am hoping and praying (actively!) for more babies yet!
Samuel is waking so I will have to finish this later. I have photos to add, and just a bit more waffle about my darling boy! I'm so besotted with him, he is just delightful and lovely in every way and it's going to be hard to get back to normal life when I'm still SO in babymoon mode!
Oh, he seems to have resettled himself (he's on his tummy next to me in bed), so I'll carry on for now!
The midwife weighed Samuel yesterday at 12 days old and he now weighs 10lbs 2.5oz! He was 9lbs 1.5oz exactly a week before, so he has gained over a lb in a week! She was very pleased with his weight gain and his colour. He had a lot of swelling and bruising to his face, which has FINALLY started to go. I would say his swelling is all gone now, and his bruising almost all gone - it's not really noticable at all any more unless you know what to look for. Poor little man still has red patches on the whites of his eyes from the birth, and the midwife told me that can take several weeks to clear up. I am noticing today that the worst patch has started to look less red at last, and the others are more pinky now, so that's good. Anyway, she was very pleased with him because even with bruising he has had no jaundice whatsoever. He has been feeding almost constantly though, so that will have been flushing his system out very well.
He feeds on demand, basically whenever he is awake, hehe! I am working on making sure he has FULL feeds, so if he dozes off after one full side, I still wake him up and offer him the other side. Once he's well and truly stuffed, I let him sleep. He will then typically sleep for a couple of hours, or 2.5 hours even. My policy this time around is to make sure that's the longest he sleeps before I wake him up and feed him again. The idea is that with feeds no further apart than 2.5 hours in the day, he will be well tanked up during the day and eventually begin to space out his night-time feeds by himself. I hope! I have no idea of his nights, none at all! I lay down next to him and nurse him, and we both fall asleep. Next thing I know, he's fussing and I wake up enough to offer him the other breast and fall back to sleep. Fast forward to another moment where I become aware of him fussing, and I glance at the clock and acknowledge the time, offer him the breast and fall back to sleep. When I next wake, I have no recollection of the time I saw on the clock the last time, offer the boy the breast and fall back to sleep. And so it goes on! So I just can't tell you anything at all about his nights. I don't know how often he wakes, how many times each night, how long he feeds for, how much sleep I'm missing or how often my sleep is disturbed. I'm a bit frustrated because I really DO want to know the answers, and I try to be aware of it during the night, but I'm so half asleep that I forget it before morning comes and can't recall it by then! I think I would have to come round enough to physically write down the time each time I wake, to know how the nights are going, but that seems like a big faff so I probably won't get around to that! It's a GOOD way to do it, as it preserves my sleep in the best way possible. Samuel nurses back to sleep right away every time I feed him at night, and often has alert times after feeding during the day, so I am happy to see him being specific in that way about day and night. I don't give him the opportunity to be alert and wakeful in the night mind you! ;) I fall asleep and don't engage him at all. I also don't change his nappy at all, unless he is wet through (not happened yet) or has obviously pooed. Once or twice I have missed a pooey nappy until a couple of hours later because I have just fallen back to sleep and missed it, which I feel bad about!
He did start to get a couple of sore patches when he was first doing lots and lots of breastmilk poo after his meconium cleared out, so I've been using Sudocrem since then and he has no sore or red patches any more, even if he poos frequently. He typically will do 3 or 4 pooey nappies in the space of about 30 minutes, and then nothing for 5 or 6 hours, so that's better than some of my little ones who have just pooed and pooed and pooed around the clock and ended up sore no matter the barrier cream! It never really cleared up until a couple of months later when the frequency of poos calmed down.
Samuel's eyes are grey. They were so dark and murky the first week, and even with good light from the window and him looking directly into it, I still couldn't see any discernable colour to them, just dark murkiness. But this week they have been lightening up just slightly, and I can see that they're dark grey at the moment (no blue at all), and there is a ring around the pupil that I can't describe at the moment, but it could turn into a sort of tan-coloured ring like Benjamin's, I am guessing. Benjamin's are grey with a tan ring, just like mine, and I wonder if Samuel's will be similar. No way to really know this early, but I like guessing! :) They could also turn brown, as Arthur's started out grey too. His eyebrows and eyelashes are starting to "come out" now and so far to me they look light brown, so I think he'll have the same hair colour as Arthur and Benjamin. Nathan's is similar too, but his hair is slightly darker brown than the others, and Matthew's is quite fair - a cross between blonde and light brown. I think Samuel's eyebrows are more brown than Matthew's were though, so I think his colouring will be more like Arthur and Benjamin.
Samuel definitely looks most like Matthew in the face (their noses are almost identical!) but he's also a mix of all of them. It's lovely to see the unique combinations of each child as they arrive! This is probably a good time to post some photos! :) I think Samuel has been asleep nearly 2.5 hours now so I need to wake him up and feed him if he doesn't wake up himself. Here are the latest photos - starting way back on Christmas Eve at 3 days old:
Here is Samuel on Christmas Day in another Christmas outfit! :) Good old eBay! His eyes were still swollen, and his bruising probably peaked from that day. It seemed to really come up. He was looking at the window (he seems to really like looking at any light source, especially natural light, and will stare at it for ages and ages):
I already have a photo of Samuel in the Mr. Bump sleepsuit (which they all wear and get photographed in!) which I posted last entry. But here's another one, just for the records! He was 6 days old here, and really did not fit it any more in the length. He doesn't fit ANY of his newborn (up to 10lbs) sleepsuits now - his feet are restricted by the length as he's such a LONG baby! Neil got the box of 0-3 month clothes out of the loft today and the first load is in the washing machine, so that's a relief! I can't believe we're cracking that box open so soon! Anyway, here is Samuel looking at the window again, in the Mr. Bump sleepsuit! :)
So many people keep on saying how BIG he is, which I guess he is for a brand new baby, but as far as human beings go he is still EVER SO TINY! And that's how he seems to me, he is just soooo teeny tiny in my eyes, almost to the point where I can't understand why people keep on about how big he is, lol! I took a photo of him sleeping on his front with my hand laid gently on his head, just because when I was stroking his little head like that, it struck me again how tiny he was, and so I wanted to capture that to dispel the myth that he's this gigantic baby! ;) He was 6 days old here too:
Here is a series of photos that I took when Samuel was 8 days old, just before the boys' bedtime. Arthur and Matthew came up to see him as they often do at that time of day, and I realised I didn't yet have any photos of the boys with Samuel, except for the one I posted last entry of Benjamin holding him. So I got out my camera, even in the poor light (hence grainy photos), and took a few photos of them. Matthew is very taken with Samuel (just as he was/is with Benjamin, only more so) and is a very calming influence - he gets very serious about him and talks in hushed tones near him, and constantly wants to stroke or kiss him. He strokes his little head or tummy soooo gently and carefully. That's why he's wearing such a serious expression in one of these photos - this is Matthew looking after Samuel and taking the job very seriously. They are both giving him a kiss in the last photo, when it was time for them to go and get ready for bed :)
And lastly, here are 3 photos of Samuel taken when he was 9 days old, on my bed. His one Christmas present was a Very Hungry Caterpillar touchy-feely toy, and he does seem to focus on it and look at it so I put it near him sometimes for him to look at. I put it on the bed and fiddled about with depth of field, wanting to focus on Samuel and make the caterpillar blurry. While I was doing that I managed to catch him starting to smile at me! :) Samuel looked me right in the eye at 7 days old, raised his eyebrows in surprise as though recognising me for the first time, and SMILED! I couldn't believe it because he was only 7 days old, long before babies are apparently "able" to do proper social smiles yet, but I knew it was not wind, and was definitely "social" behaviour. Matthew and Benjamin were my previous earliest smilers at 3 weeks old which was already "early", but 7 days?!! I do know baby smiles by now, after 5 babies, but I still didn't mention it at first in case I was wrong. But he has smiled at me about once or twice a day, every day since, and at Neil a couple of times too. All the occasions were when he was particularly alert, focused on our faces, and being held about 12 inches from our faces as we talked to him. Definitely social smiles! :) I still can't believe he's doing it so early but there we go! In the last photo here, he was just beginning a smile - see how his eyes are so different and all lit up as he switches into his "social" mode?! :) Such a sweet little peanut!
He's fed and asleep curled up on my chest right now. Bliss!!! I will miss it so much tomorrow but at least I can still do it in the evenings and at the weekends! This precious stage is so fleeting and passes WAY too quickly. How I long to slow down time so that I can revel and soak in it all I like! *sigh*
The one sad thing that I have noticed about my sweet little Samuel is that he has undoubtedly got Arthur's curly feet :( I'm soooo sad about it, though my mum reminds me that it's not bad going to only have two out of five with the stupid curly feet gene (okay she didn't call it that, but that's what I think of the darn thing!), considering Neil was one of 3 siblings affected by it out of 4. Ugh. I know it means many rounds of both his little legs in full plaster casts, traipsing back and forth to the hospital with all the kiddies for frequent appointments, night boots that will disturb his sleep, and follow ups FOREVER where the physio struggles to figure out why his feet are not staying straight despite the treatment (ongoing with Arthur, whose feet are still curly and whose next appt is next month). So sad to have to begin it all over again, and to have to see my little baby in plaster casts. His feet don't look as curly as Arthur's did before his first casts, BUT the thing that concerns me is that they also turn in at the ankle, which Arthur's didn't, sort of suspiciously like clubfoot. But, I can flex them into a straight foot position, but they don't have any flexibility beyond that. I will not be hanging around waiting for the Health Visitor to notice and refer him, which is how we did it with Arthur and the physio told me she really should have seen him as a newborn (he was 3 months old before his appt came through). I will be phoning Arthur's physio tomorrow morning, and I'm sure she'll arrange to see Samuel pretty quickly.
*sigh*
Other than that, things are going well with my newest little man! When the midwife was packing up to go yesterday, she said (completely deadpan), "See you again later this year?" LOVE THAT, hehe! I answered, "Yeah, probably!" ;) And she said, "Going to be another boy?" And I said, "I should think so! I'm thinking of names already!" - which (shh!) I am! ;) Pretty sure that if God blesses us with another baby it will likely be a boy! And I'm already excited about that - my desire for a daughter, whilst THERE, seems to diminish with each baby that comes. I'm more excited for another sweet baby boy right now, than a baby girl. I love my boys! :)
Okay, that's all for now. I will try to update again soon, and work on my birth story in bits whenever I can. Heather has written loads of notes during my labour and no doubt will give me a copy next time I see her, so that will help me! :)
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