NICE WEEKEND

At a time when we're still surviving each day and ticking off each week with a newborn, we had a really good day on Saturday: Charlotte had a nap, James had a poo, I had a bath and we made it out of the house!

In my book, that's quite a successful day in between feeding, expressing, and trying to get both kids to sleep. I think I even managed to put the hoover round. It helped that I wasn't worrying that my OH wasn't getting any work done. He is such a massive help during the week, but it's an added stress when I think he's not getting his work done.

And we're even convinced we might have seen a glimpse of a few very early smiles :)

Nearly four weeks in and we're starting to think about getting James on a bit of a routine. Nothing rigid - we'll give the EASY (Eat, Activity, Sleep, You Time) routine a go as we did with Charlotte. It really helps to give us a clue as to whether he's hungry or tired. Plus, the biggest thing we ever learnt from the early months with Charlotte was to watch for the tired signs as early as possible, because she was so difficult to calm and get to sleep once she got to overtired/over-stimulated.

The only down side of the past few days has been Charlotte's waking in the night. She just cries and cries for cuddles - often woken by James crying when he's up for a night feed. It means while I'm feeding, my OH has to deal with her, so neither of us are getting any sleep to relieve the other the following day.

On Sunday night my OH ended up sleeping on the floor in her room because she just would not settle without one of us in there. I know it must be a reaction to the big change in her life, so we're trying not to get angry about it. But we did jump at the offer from her Grandma to have her stay there for two nights this week - mostly so I can get James' feeding back on track and catch up on some rest.