Ten days old, more photos and updatey stuff

Trying to find time to catch up and continue from where my last post left off, as I still had so much more to write about! Lydia is asleep against my leg on the bed with me, all snuggled up in a blanket. Any sleep she's had today (lots!) has all been taken on my chest or in my arms. I SO love this stage, but it's over far too quickly. I told her today, that it would just be for a little bit longer, and then Daddy has to go back to work, and Mummy has to be busy with allll her big brothers as well as snuggling her. So we'll be downstairs all the time. I do not get on well with slings and carriers, although I have a few of them in case I get desperate. When my babies are tiny and I'm the only parent around, I use a bouncy chair (with a vibrate function - essential for some of my littles!) as a safe place to put them while I am in the room needing my arms, hands, and sometimes milk department free and available for other little ones. If I'm in the kitchen making food, I have the bouncy chair in there with me. The problem is, we haven't got a working bouncy chair (again!!)! The last one we used for Elijah is missing a part to put it together. I am SURE I packed it all away complete, but hmmm, some little people have had access to the bag and now it's NOT complete! It's quite an old bouncy chair and a bit leany due to non-babies sitting in when they weren't supposed to, and also it's royal blue. And I am on a seeeerious girly kick, even if it's crazy of me. So there! ;)

So, I am on a mission for a new (second-hand) one at eBay. I actually want to get a "gender-neutral" one that's not so dark in colour, and it MUST have a vibration function. Otherwise I'm surprisingly unfussy! ;) But I need one reeeally soon.

Aww, my tiny 'Lijah is crying at the bottom of the stairs for his "Da-deee" so forlornly (Neil has gone to the toilet), so I am going to stop this and cuddle him as long as Lydia sleeps. Back later (maybe?!).

Back. I picked him up and he immediately wanted milk, so he has completely emptied me on one side now, lol! Samuel snuggled up to my other side, but he doesn't seem to want milky any more. I am pretty sure he has no idea there's lots of normal milk there now - he went off it when it turned to colostrum. Benjamin still usually has bedtime milky, but often goes without if he falls asleep before I get to him, and he hasn't any any since Lydia was born because I have been feeding or holding her whenever their bedtime has come round.

Lydia is still sleeping (so sweetly!) on the bed so I will carry on for now. I think I got to the part where she was 4 days old. This photo was taken when she was 5 days old, the day when the midwives came to do her heel prick and weigh her. She weighed a teeny 6lbs 12oz, which is fine as she'd lost 7% of her birth weight (normal is 7% to 10% in breastfed babies). She was still 4oz heavier than Elijah was at birth, but size-wise she seemed just as tiny.

The tiny baby size clothing (up to 7.5lbs) was still a generous fit on her, and I'm sure she's gained weight now since then, but she's still fitting her tiny baby clothing at 10 days old. I have had to put her in a few newborn things when we ran out of clean clothes - the tumble dryer set something on FIRE a few days ago, and died spectactularly! Thankfully it was just one item and Neil was here, and the smoke alarm went off, and everything was okay, but it was a bit scary for a while! Neil had a MASSIVE clean up job to do, and he put the tumble dryer out of the house on his own (heavy!) because it was giving off smokey fumes. He found us a new one and got the old one taken away, and now we have a really snazzy efficient tumble dryer which dries things much faster than before, and has various safety features to prevent overheating and fires. Phew. But we had a LOT of laundry piling up for a few days there!

So anyway, she wore some newborn sleepsuits, which just were tooooo big, and her feet kept being all bunched up in the torso by morning, lol! Some are just about okay, too big, but wearable, if they are brands that come up a bit small for size. She did wear a dress and tights set (her first one - I was sooooo excited, hehe!) that is newborn size - I am having to bear the suspense with various dresses in the drawer still, because they are all newborn size and she's not that big yet, bless her! I put her in the smallest of the newborn dresses and some newborn sized pink tights, and they were a bit big on her to be honest, but I had a lovely time dressing her up and snuggling her anyway! ;) This is Lydia wearing it - she's 8 days old here. I took this photo to show a little girl who had made and sent a card, but as it's a photo of Lydia I will include it here as well! :) See how the newborn tights are all baggy and too long?! Bless, she's so weeny!

 

 

And one of me gently squishing my little sweetie. She is getting stronger with her neck muscles now, but her head still prefers to flop to one side if I hold her like this, and her cheek is sooooo invitingly buttery-soft. It aches somewhere in my ovaries when I lay my cheek on hers and especially when she involuntarily roots for milk at my cheek. *sigh* Such blissful times, these fleeting newborn days...

 

 

These next photos are also from 8 days old. She was fussing that morning, a bit (she doesn't usually fuss that much - well, saying that, she has started to be a bit more fussy of a morning since then), and I was rapidly shovelling down a bowl of cereal so I wasn't instantly picking her up and soothing her like I usually had the luxury of doing. Arthur came strolling into the bedroom to say hello to Lydia - he does this every morning, as do Matthew and Nathan, and often Benjamin. They are always soooo happy to see her, and ask what she's doing, whether she's had a nappy change yet, and whether she's had her "breakfast". :) Anyway, he went straight over to where she was lying, and laid his cheek down the recommended 12-inches away from her face (he's very particular about details, knowing exactly the distance a newborn best focuses!) and said, "Hello! Hello Lydia!" in a soothing voice (he always talks to her in a soothing voice, it's so lovely to listen to!). When she fussed a bit more, he instinctively reached out and began stroking her from the tip of her nose to the top of her forehead at the hairline, with his thumb, very gently. She calmed right down, and he kept doing it for a while, so I took a couple of photos while he did it. After a while, she was all still, and he stood up and said, "Well, she seems calm now." and off he went! He keeps amazing me with how easy he is around babies - although my mum reminds me that I shouldn't be surprised, he's had a lot of experience! ;)

 

Something else that has amazed me, is that Lydia is already cooing and smiling! Samuel started smiling (proper social smiles, not wind) at 8 days old, as I have written about here before, and he maintained that afterwards too. But not cooing until a bit later. Lydia smiled for the first time at FIVE DAYS OLD!!! :-O Seriously. Neil told me that morning that he thought she had smiled at him, but I
have to admit (I feel a bit ashamed!) that I doubted him. I thought, no way, that's not possible at 5 days old. She hadn't really focused on our faces properly yet, even. But later that morning she was fussing a bit, and I put her back to the breast in case she was hungry. She didn't want it, so I held her back in my hands to look into her eyes, and she made eye contact, and it's like she had only been waiting to be able to focus enough to make eye contact, to start with the social stuff! She looked right at me, and her eyes went wide as though she recognised me, and she did a BIG smile, not a little "maybe" smile, a real lovely smile! :) And while I was speechlessly taking that in, she stopped smiling and looked very focused, and I noticed she was moving her lips differently, as though she was intentionally trying to do something with them. She suddenly said, "Coo-gah!" as carefully as she could, really intentionally, like she was putting the two syllables down ever so carefully, one after the other. That's all she said, but OH! Bring on the proud mama!!! I was fit to bursting over it, I was soooo proud of my tiny new baby girl! Five days old. I still can't believe it.

Since then she has had one or two short moments each day where she has connected with us - eye contact like that, and then that intentional look, and a smile or two, and various little very carefully placed cooing sounds. Just a little thing, and then that's it. Often she is exhausted after the smile and tiny coo, and yawns and yawns from then on until she is back on the breast and falls into a long sleep! Such a lot for a new new brain to be doing, no wonder she's tired from it! Today, at 10 days old, she has smiled quite a lot of times so far, some of them little sweet smiles, and one or two really big wide open-mouthed smiles that she's held for a few seconds, looking right into my eyes. She has also cooed at the water glasses on my chest of drawers, lol! ;) The cooing is never for very long, but it's definitely proper "talking" - all the sounds are the same as the others when they have started cooing. I'm just amazed (have I said that enough times yet?! lol!) that she's started both cooing and smiling so early. I can't WAIT to catch her smiles on camera. I am soaking them up right now since once she's smiled once, she's tired and finished smiling, so far. If she smiles, there's no point reaching for the camera because there isn't likely to be another one for a while. Soon though, hopefully! She has done so many more smiles today than any of the previous days, so I'm hoping she'll be beaming for the camera soon! :)

For now, here's my sweetie pie this morning - 10 days old. She is making eye contact a lot more now. Her eyes are lightening up in colour, and there isn't a trace of blue to them. They are grey, right now a mid-to-dark grey, but they will probably continue to get lighter as they days go by. The grey thing makes me feel pretty sure she won't have blue eyes though. Arthur, Benjamin and Elijah had dark grey eyes at birth, and Arthur's are brown now, while Benjamin and Elijah have grey eyes with a brown/hazel ring in the middle. I think Lydia will have some brown to her eyes, but I'll have to wait and see how much. I love this, because it's my mum's gene (all the other grandparents have blue eyed genes) and Lydia's middle name is Jane, which is my mum's name. :)

I put her in a newborn sized outfit this afternoon - it's a tutu!!! I can't believe I'm a mother who has a newborn sized tutu for her daughter, lol! I tried to take some nice photos of her, but I'm a bit of an amateur, and she didn't stay asleep for long while I took photos, and got rather cross quite quickly! These are the three that came out the nicest:

 

 

She is more fussy in the mornings these last two days, and doesn't settle to sleep for long. I don't know if it's to do with a growth spurt, needing to feed more therefore, or whether she just isn't into sleeping in the mornings?! Around mid-afternoon, every day without fail, she feeds into a REALLY deep sleep for 3 hours at least. If she isn't waking by then, I tend to wake her to feed her. I would prefer her not to sleep longer than 3 hours without a feed right now. Then, she wakes for a little bit but seems really sleepy, and then goes back to sleep at the breast for ANOTHER 3+ hours, so into the evening. And there I was worrying that she'd be super busy in the evenings because that's how she was in the womb! ;) She's really sleepy in the afternoons and evenings, and I get worried that she'll suddenly perk up for a wakeful/fussy spell around midnight for a few hours like the mornings are becoming! But so far, so good. She sleeps pretty well at night like the afternoons/evenings, so far.

 

Her cord stump came off when she was 6 days old - well, in the night between 6 and 7 days old, but she was born at night, so yeah, 6 days old. I found the stump (with its clip on) in her armpit in the morning, lol! I'm always happy to see those go, and glad that my babies generally lose them within the first week, because they get kind of stinky before they drop off. Her tummy button is healing nicely now.

 

I am doing okay - being looked after wonderfully by Neil, as I am still mostly resting in bed upstairs while he takes on everything with the boys, and he even brings me my meals in bed! He's wonderful! I am trying to do a little more these last few days, going downstairs for a little bit with Lydia, or to snuggle some boys on the sofa, etc. Not much. Neil goes back to work on Thursday, so I need to ease myself back into normal (ish) activity by then. My parents are coming from France to meet Lydia on Wednesday - yay!!! It's Arthur's birthday a week from today, on Saturday (he'll be NINE!!!), and they are spending the day with us then too. I'm not sure what their plans are for the two days in between, when Neil is back at work.

 

This evening (it's evening now, and the boys are in bed), I had a bit of a scare. My bleeding is still going strong, and while it's still normal, I'm sure it was a lot less by 10 days postpartum after some of my other babies. It is still red, and at times, quite heavy. I have had a day or half  a day here and there where I've had very little bleeding, which has turned to brown, but red is still the norm for the most part. Tonight I went to the toilet for a BM (adding that tmi in case it's significant), and changed my pad. Then I got back in bed and Lydia was waking up, so I fed her. While I was feeding her, I started to feel a continual flow going on. It wasn't torrential, otherwise I would have put Lydia down to investigate. But I sat there aware of it, feeding her, and getting more and more anxious. She fed from both sides, so about 20 minutes (at most) after putting the pad on, I finally got chance to check it. I had soaked through it, and onto my pyjamas, and could still feel bleeding. I changed my pad quickly, found some clean pjs and got back in bed, soooo nervous. I hate bleeding. :( In the end I phoned Heather. She's in the middle of her craft fair still, but I knew I could ring her at home as usual in the evening, for advice or reassurance. I had probably half as much blood on the new pad by then, but it seemed to be slowing. Heather said I should ring the labour ward to speak to a midwife about it, so I did, and the midwife thought it was probably okay, but that I should call back if it hadn't slowed down in an hour, or if it got heavier. It hasn't stopped completely (though I guess it wouldn't anyway, entirely) but it has slowed down, so I haven't called back.

 

The other thing is that I am feeling more and more anaemic as the days go by. I feel quite weak and breathless getting out of bed and just walking downstairs or to the other bedroom, and I didn't feel that way a few days ago even. I feel more tired, and Neil says I am "all one colour" - he mentioned that the last couple of evenings, in a concerned way, but I felt okay then. Tonight I feel quite light-headed and just like I really need to fix my iron again. So I'm wary, with more blood loss than usual. I was borderline anaemic before giving birth, and then my blood loss was 350mls - not the smallest amount, but not excessive either. I've had smaller blood losses at birth, for sure. Arthur's was 400mls, the most I've lost at any of my births, and I was anaemic (I think) after his birth. Anyway, so then to have heavier blood loss AFTER the birth as well... I am a bit worried about it, because that's my nature, but I'm going to do what Heather said next, which is to ring the midwives tomorrow and request a home visit to do a blood test for my iron levels. I would also appreciate a check in general, because they weighed Lydia and did her heel prick test, but they didn't actually check me at all! So I would like it if they did that too!

 

Okay, Lydia is awake now and it's late, so I need to finish this and go and get ready for bed, so I can feed her and fall asleep myself! I will update again when I can! :)

One week old already!

A whole week has gone by! I can't believe my tiny girl is a week old already! I have been gradually adding to my birth story (in draft), bit by bit as I've had a moment, and each day I'm getting a little more done. I really want to write a proper full birth story this time, as I haven't really got round to it that last two times, although at least I did write a birth story to some degree for them. I keep thinking I'll write it TODAY and post it! But I'm being really long-winded with the detail, and enjoying doing that, and there are only short times when I have both my hands free for typing. I can't stand typing when I have only one hand to do it with, and a lot to say! ;) Hence no updates until now.

Right now, Lydia is sleeping on the bed next to me, wrapped up in a little fleece blanket. She's been asleep for an hour or so, and I've managed to email some photos to my parents (at last!) and have a long talk with Neil, but I've only just now realised I could have been finishing my birth story!! When I came to do it, I decided I probably won't have long now before Lydia wakes up, so I will just throw in a quick general update here for now instead. With photos, if I can get those up in time! :)

Here's a photo taken on the 25th, so I guess she was 2 days old (though she was born at almost midnight on the 23rd, so she wasn't quite that old yet!) - I was holding her in my lap, fast asleep, and just GAZING at her, and marvelling that she's REAL, and she's here and she's mine! I just couldn't believe it, it was such an amazing feeling! So I took a photo to capture the memory of the moment:

And here's a photo of her from earlier that day. She wasn't all that settled so most of the photos I took didn't turn out great, but I took them to show my mum how she looked in purple/lavender - my mum is shopping!! :)

I am SO enjoying the girly clothes!! :) Lydia doesn't have a big selection of clothes in her current size - MUCH to my delight, she did fit the tiny baby size clothes after all! :) She only weighed 7lbs 5oz at birth, and "tiny baby" fits up to 7lbs 8oz, but some brands are quite generous as well. There's absolutely no point in me putting her in the newborn size (up to 10lbs) because they swamp her, and the shoulders slip off her tiny slender shoulders, etc! Bless her, she's so tiny! I adore having tiny babies - I like big chubbly babies too, but when I have a tiny one, I get to have both! ;) They start tiny and go through the bigger, chubbier stage after that. Even though she's near the top end of the weight range for the tiny baby size clothes, some of them are still a bit big on her. As far as the million cute little outfits go, nearly all of them are size newborn or above, so right now she has some sweet little girly sleepsuits, a couple of dungaree outfits and lots of whites and unisex stuff that the boys have worn (I confess I haven't put her in a single unisex outfit yet! ;) ). She has long arms though, and the sleeves on the tiny baby size clothes are a bit short. Many of the boys have had long arms as new babies too, with the same issue with clothes. Neil has longer than average arms, so it's his doing! ;)

Lydia has Neil's hands and feet - she has SUCH long fingers! Her fingernails were really long when she was born as well, and in the first two days she was quite unsettled and didn't sleep much. She breastfed almost all the time, and if she wasn't feeding she was crying, and the unsettled thing meant that she scratched her face a bit, and I had to put her in a sleepsuit with those foldover sleeves so that she couldn't scratch herself. I am always so nervous about cutting new baby nails! They are still long, but she isn't scratching herself at all. In fact, she's such a totally calm and laid-back baby now.

For the first two nights I really didn't get any sleep - none at all the first night, but for 30 minutes near the end of it, I think. Lydia fussed and was unsettled all the time, and I was a bit uncomfy from the birth still. The second night I didn't get to sleep until 3 or so in the morning, and I was starting to feel a bit frantic and desperate about getting some sleep by then! She was feeding or crying, or seeming uncomfy in her tummy all the time. Then suddenly she slept a couple of hours straight and so did I, thankfully.

I wrote the last entry here the next day, and by the end of that day, I could tell my milk was comimg in. My breasts were much more full and heavy, and I was delighted to get instant liquid when I did a quick check by hand expressing. Lydia took long swallows when she fed and seemed more settled, so I figured she must have been hungry for more than colostrum by the time the milk arrived! :) Well I think that was confirmed that night, as the two of us slept for TEN HOURS!! Such a difference compared with the nights before! Not ten hours straight of course - she woke to feed several times, but soooo peacefully. I was brought to by the sweetest thing - a pair of tiny rosebud lips sort of "pecking" hopefully at the side of my breast! Even half asleep, I still completely melted at the cuteness of it! :) No sounds with the sweet pecking as such, and I only had to position myself a bit better, tummy to tummy with my sweetie-pea, latch her on, and fall asleep again! She must have fallen asleep as she took her fill because the next thing I knew, there was that darling nibbly-nibbly thing going on again and the clock said it was 2 or 3 hours later. So lovely! :)

And since then, Lydia has been a different baby! Calm, relaxed, easy-going... She feeds plenty, and sleeps when she isn't feeding, usually for 2-3 hours at a time. I know it's still early days, but I'm hoping she'll stay laid-back and happy! She has alert times as well, for a short little while before sleeping again.

Here is a photo of her being peacefully asleep the day after my milk came in (look how long her fingers are!!):

That night I got photos of Arthur and Matthew holding Lydia at bedtime. They all love her SO much! Arthur is especially taken with her and constantly asks to hold her. The first time I handed her over to him, I was astounded by how confidently he handled her! He just took her from me in a second, no hesitation or awkwardness about where to put his hands or how to pick her up. He handled her like an adult, and an experienced one at that! Look at him loving his baby sister... :)

And here's Matthew holding her. Nathan was patiently waiting his turn, bless him - sooo keen to hold her and have his photo taken too, but things were melting down in the bedroom and Neil needed everyone to come to bed NOW, in the end, so Nathey had to wait until the next day.

And there's much more to write, but Lydia is awake and fussing now so I will stop, post this, and hope to add more tomorrow.

Thanks for all the lovely comments and congrats! :)

Lydia is here! :)

I had a baby!!! :D I wrote this last night (she was born the night before - 13 minutes to midnight on Wednesday 23rd October) but I REALLY wanted to write about her birth with it, otherwise I knew i would struggle to actually get around to it if I just did a quick birth announcement here first. But alas, I never did get time to finish the birth story part, so I cut it out of this post and pasted it in draft form in a new post. Hopefully I'll get chance to finish it soon and post it separately.

Anyway! Baby news, yay!! Lydia Jane was born at home on Wednesday 23rd October, at 11.47pm. She weighs 7lbs 5oz (3315g) and measures 51cm (20 inches) long. Here are three photos which I took at lunch time the next day (yesterday) at about 13 hours old - first opportunity with enough daylight and Lydia actually sleeping and not feeding or crying! ;)

Labour and birth went well, no complications, tiny first degree tear which didn't need stitches, exactly the birth I hoped for with zero direction and me feeling like a ROCK STAR immediately afterwards (I think I did actually say to everyone within 20 seconds of pushing her out, "I rock!!!" lol!). She's HERE, and oh she's a GIRL, really and truly (I keep checking!), and all the boys are so ecstatic, and we love her. She cries a LOT and seems uncomfy in her tummy quite a bit, and it groans horribly like she has wind or gunk or something she can't shift. She feeds most of the time, and hasn't let me sleep much more than a few hours in the almost-48 since she arrived, but hey ho, I am able to rest up in bed, and I feel pretty good.

More soon! I'm eager to share more detail, just finding the time is difficult since she is in my arms all the time and if I put her down she doesn't stay asleep for long - see, she is now making little squeally snorty noises and NOT looking happy! ;) So I will pick her up and feed her again. My milk isn't in yet, but I would think it might come in tomorrow sometime, or even overnight if it gets a move on. Sometimes my milk has been in by now, with other babies, so it shouldn't be long since she's feeding a lot of the time. Okay, cross baby - going now! :) Thanks for the comments and for keeping up, especially since I've kept you waiting if you don't know me at Facebook! Sorry! :/

I will post the birth story and more photos soon!