Sunday Jamie turned 1 month old, so we had a little photo shoot. Here are a few of the best:
And some of the outtakes:
Thursday 29 April 2010
Wednesday 21 April 2010
routine...what routine?
You always hear people talking about getting into a routine with your baby. I'm not sure at what stage this is supposed to start, but we're not there yet. My day is more or less dictated by Jamie's hunger levels. I'm still breastfeeding at the moment, and as much as I'd like to have a say in his feeds--he pretty much needs to eat when he's hungry or there will be no peace in this house. I'm attempting to try to get him to eat, then have some awake/play time, then sleep. This does not always work. Several books recommend this method as the precursor to sleeping through the night eventually, but it's not always that easy. Sometimes it works beautifully, but usually only for one portion of the day. Other times he eats-plays-eats-sleeps or eats-sleeps-eats or this morning (at 5:30am!) he played-slept-played-slept-ate-played-slept. These are all in 2-4 hour cycles. During the night, he's supposed to eat-sleep-eat-sleep-eat-sleep and then eat-play-sleep at the start of the morning.
The past couple weeks, from about 6pm onwards he has been eating nearly every other hour until bed and then it takes a long time for him to actually get to sleep. I think he's overeating and then overtired, and using the feeds for comfort. We were probably 'bad' parents and held him too much while he napped when we should be putting him down in his Moses basket. So I've decided to try to be a little more strict (well try to anyway). It's very easy to just let him sleep on me during the day--I mean he's just so cute when he sleeps-and I've just about managed to work out how to position him so I can still use the laptop and reach the remote at the same time. But I am vowing now to be more disciplined and make every attempt to try to get him to sleep in his basket. We're also going to introduce a new bedtime routine and make the last feed of the day an expressed bottle feed which Paul can do. We tried this last night for the first time and he did drink from the bottle (he had refused it the only other time I tried), but he didn't go down straight after-he needed a lot of holding/rocking/shushing, but once he did, he then slept for a solid 4 hours and then fed fairly quickly at 3:30 and went straight back to sleep, when usually it takes him 60-90 minutes of eating/dozing before he will go back to sleep. I am really hoping to establish some good habits before it gets too late and becomes really hard to break the bad habits. We will see. I've already let him break the pattern today as I couldn't keep him awake after his mid morning feed...
Guilty parents:
The past couple weeks, from about 6pm onwards he has been eating nearly every other hour until bed and then it takes a long time for him to actually get to sleep. I think he's overeating and then overtired, and using the feeds for comfort. We were probably 'bad' parents and held him too much while he napped when we should be putting him down in his Moses basket. So I've decided to try to be a little more strict (well try to anyway). It's very easy to just let him sleep on me during the day--I mean he's just so cute when he sleeps-and I've just about managed to work out how to position him so I can still use the laptop and reach the remote at the same time. But I am vowing now to be more disciplined and make every attempt to try to get him to sleep in his basket. We're also going to introduce a new bedtime routine and make the last feed of the day an expressed bottle feed which Paul can do. We tried this last night for the first time and he did drink from the bottle (he had refused it the only other time I tried), but he didn't go down straight after-he needed a lot of holding/rocking/shushing, but once he did, he then slept for a solid 4 hours and then fed fairly quickly at 3:30 and went straight back to sleep, when usually it takes him 60-90 minutes of eating/dozing before he will go back to sleep. I am really hoping to establish some good habits before it gets too late and becomes really hard to break the bad habits. We will see. I've already let him break the pattern today as I couldn't keep him awake after his mid morning feed...
Guilty parents:
Happy baby:
Monday 19 April 2010
Jamie on his playmat
So I've finally made my first short video with my new camera. To be honest, it's not that exciting as Jamie is a little young to actually interact with his playmat, but he's focusing a lot more and is aware of it. He also gave you a little 'present' during the filming, which I chose not to edit out and I hope you find it amusing!
Thursday 15 April 2010
life as a new mother...
...leaves you little time to blog.
I wish I had a bit more time to write about about how things werer going, but it seems if I'm not feeding or comforting sweet little Jamie, then I'm frantically trying to get something done that's been on my to-do list for at least two days. Blogging, sadly has fallen down the list of priorities. Over the last week, though, we seem to have reached a little bit of a routine from morning to late afternoon (evenings are a different story), so hopefully, once I knock off a few more of my to-do's, then I will have some time for some morning blogging.
Jamie is doing very well. We went to see the health visitor today and he had his hearing checked and was weighed for the first time since day 5. I'm proud to say he's a healthy little chap with good hearing. He's up to 8lb 4oz, up a pound and a half from his birth weight. He's definitely been eating like a champ, so I'm not surprised. He has been feeding like a crazy man in the evenings, which actually means I get a couple decent blocks of sleep at night. We usually go to bed around 11 or so and then he wakes up around 2, feeds for an hour, and then again at 5:30 or 6, and then feeds for another hour. Tomorrow I'm going to try expressing for the first time so Paul can have a chance at one of the multiple(!) evening feeds.
Speaking of evening feeds, he's just starting to fuss for one, but I thought I'd share our Flickr site where we're trying(!) to upload some of the better photos of Jamie. We have a premium subscription to the site so you can download the full res versions of the photos if you want to print any of them. We will try harder to take and upload more photos, but it's another thing like blogging, that is a bit harder than I expected!!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulwoodward/sets/72157623625531237/
I wish I had a bit more time to write about about how things werer going, but it seems if I'm not feeding or comforting sweet little Jamie, then I'm frantically trying to get something done that's been on my to-do list for at least two days. Blogging, sadly has fallen down the list of priorities. Over the last week, though, we seem to have reached a little bit of a routine from morning to late afternoon (evenings are a different story), so hopefully, once I knock off a few more of my to-do's, then I will have some time for some morning blogging.
Jamie is doing very well. We went to see the health visitor today and he had his hearing checked and was weighed for the first time since day 5. I'm proud to say he's a healthy little chap with good hearing. He's up to 8lb 4oz, up a pound and a half from his birth weight. He's definitely been eating like a champ, so I'm not surprised. He has been feeding like a crazy man in the evenings, which actually means I get a couple decent blocks of sleep at night. We usually go to bed around 11 or so and then he wakes up around 2, feeds for an hour, and then again at 5:30 or 6, and then feeds for another hour. Tomorrow I'm going to try expressing for the first time so Paul can have a chance at one of the multiple(!) evening feeds.
Speaking of evening feeds, he's just starting to fuss for one, but I thought I'd share our Flickr site where we're trying(!) to upload some of the better photos of Jamie. We have a premium subscription to the site so you can download the full res versions of the photos if you want to print any of them. We will try harder to take and upload more photos, but it's another thing like blogging, that is a bit harder than I expected!!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulwoodward/sets/72157623625531237/
Monday 5 April 2010
Happy Easter!
Yesterday was Jamie's first Easter and also our first outing. We went to church in the morning. Jamie was a perfect angel and slept through the entire service and the coffee/tea/chatting afterwards. He wasn't as perfect for the rest of the afternoon, but Paul took care of him while mommy had a nap. In the evening, I made him his first Easter cake:
It's a carrot cake with butter cream icing. The fur is coconut and the face is made of marshmallows, raisins and a cranberry. I got the idea off allrecipes.com. He didn't get to eat any of course. We saved it for lunch today with our friends Rob and Eilidh.
He also got his first Easter present on Saturday from our friend, Anna: a little yellow ducky that quacks:
I think he'll enjoy it more when he's a bit older! Mom and dad like it though! Mary and Anna came to pay us a visit on Saturday. Jamie likes to show off his good behaviour for his guests. All our visitors so far have seen him pretty much just sleep. It would be great if he was like that more for mommy and daddy. It's a good thing he's so darn cute!
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