EIGHT WEEKS OLD

James had his 8-week check up and first jabs today - and all went brilliantly. He's a smiley, healthy, happy chappy. And despite being in some discomfort from his jabs, after a nice bath, he went down to sleep as beautifully as he (almost) always does.

He really has been a dream child the past few weeks. He only cries when he's hungry (still at least every 3 hours) or tired. And when he's tired, he goes down to sleep really easily (often only for 25 mins and with the help of a dummy, but still...).

And I can't believe that after writing at just less than 5 weeks I had more or less decided to give up on the breastfeeding - we're still going. And it's improving. We're topping up a some of the feeds when I know they've not been good, and he gets formula at least one night-feed, but other than that it's all me. And he's piling on the pounds - 13oz in the past week alone.

Yet why am I still totally knackered? Yes - his big sister, as ever. After two nights of properly sleeping through, we're back to the up several times a night norm. And I think we managed about a week without a cough and a cold . They're both back with a vengeance again.

Plus Charlotte's got some new teeth coming through - making her a whinging, crying, unhappy, shouting, non-eating little girl once again. I do feel sorry for her, but at the same time there are days when she is really trying my patience and it makes everyone miserable. But we know it'll pass eventually - and at least there's evidence of actual teeth this time, and therefore a reason for her behaviour.

But tonight she's at her Grandma's. James is asleep for a few hours. So I'm treating myself to a curry and glass of wine, and it feels well deserved :)

Nap time

SIX WEEKS/20.5 MONTHS

Getting loads of proper smiles now :)

So I haven't given up breastfeeding after all :) Was so close last week, but pushed on through and each day things seem to be getting a little better.

I've had great support from the local hospital's breastfeeding 'guru' - she's been very encouraging, checking I'm doing everything right and not having a go at me for introducing the bottle or the odd bit of formula. The suggestion from her is that James is simply a hungry baby that needs feeding a bit more than we were used to with Charlotte. So that means top ups, or more frequent feeds - the latter of which isn't conducive to also looking after a 20-month old toddler.

So at the moment - I'm feeding James myself when he's awake enough and we've got the time, otherwise it's a bottle of expressed milk (or formula if we've not got enough), with top-ups from the bottle if he doesn't seem satisfied despite coming off the breast.

So a mish-mash of everything, which is hard work, but should get easier the more he's simply taking from the breast. And if he's full and winded, we have one very chilled out boy. In fact that's how both the bf woman and the health visitor described him - "chilled". Rather different to the "strong personality" we often heard to describe his sister!

Talking of her - she's having horrendous nights because of her constant cough once again. She's on another course of antibiotics after the doctor said she's got a lingering chest infection. But she seems happy enough in between coughing fits. 

Despite her rough nights, she's now sleeping in her 'big girl bed'. She kept ending up in it after cuddles to ease her cough anyway, so we thought we might as well try the full night. Unfortunately we've had one falling out incident, thanks to an ill-fitting bed guard (now rectified) - which ended up waking her up to the point of her thinking it was playtime, so ended up back in her cot. 

And I can hardly believe her speech can have improved even more week by week - but the full sentences she now comes out with astounds me. "Look Mummy - it's a breadstick", "Look Grandad, my jeans fell down!". The talking of a 3-year old if the experts and books are to be believed.

Lastly, for this post, we're trying to establish a bit of routine with James already - otherwise we have no idea where we're at. So we've started with bedtime. Bath, massage, feed, story, bed, starting at 6pm - just as we did with Charlotte from a similar age - and so far it seems to be working.

He definitely gets his longest sleep when he's gone down (usually between 7.30-8pm), and up for feeds roughly every 3-4 hours after that (usually around 11-30pm, 2am, and then anything between 0430 and 6am). But it's proving trickier in the day as he doesn't follow very much of a pattern from which to take his lead - other than alternating one very awake day and one very sleepy day. So any kind of napping schedule will have to wait, and I'm just feeding him when he's hungry or every 3-4 hours if it's not so obvious.

Oh, go on then - another picture of my smiley 6-week old:

THE THREE Ps

Patience, perseverance and positivity.

Plenty of the first two are starting to pay off, resulting in the third.

Looking back over most of my past posts, I've realised I mostly talk about the problems and issues we've been dealing with. So I thought it was about time I highlighted some of the positives from the past few weeks - because there are more and more as each day goes by.

We're getting plenty of big beaming smiles - especially if we're smiling and laughing with Charlotte. She seems to love having her nose poked, and playing with the helium balloon is also still entertaining her greatly!

Since Sunday we've seen her do a few attempts at rolling onto her side, which is really encouraging. If she makes it all the way onto her front it might give her a bit of a scare, though, as she still hates 'tummy time'. I think we've managed 3 minutes maximum. But when we support her in a sitting position, her neck seems plenty strong enough, so being comfortable on her front will eventually come with time.

Charlotte will occasionally surprise us with the odd daytime sleep in her Moses basket. In fact today she managed THREE (at 0810, 1115 and 1400) varying between 25 and 40 minutes - but those cat-naps are better than nothing, and she only really fought two of them.

And she loves playing on her new Jungle Gym. She actually has three - two were hand-me-downs from a friend, but to make life easier for us, they're now at each grandparent's house, so we needed to buy one for our home! She's always very animated on it, with fantastic noises (squeals, gurgles etc), arm and leg movements (like she's running or galloping away from someone!) and she's getting better and better at focusing on a toy and batting at it.

She's also pretty content for lengthening amounts of time in her bouncy or swinging chairs, which makes life a bit easier for me as I can get things like housework and cooking done. I had been feeling guilty for leaving her in her chair for 20 minutes while I did something like the ironing; but she seems to amuse herself, I keep talking to her as I'm doing the chores, and I give her plenty of proper playtime throughout the rest of the day.

The bottom line is, despite the usual evening screaming fits and getting her to sleep in the day, Charlotte is a very happy, gorgeous, fun baby. In fact, she's got so much personality and seems to be progressing so well, it's very hard to think of her as a 10 week old baby. To us she's a little person - not a baby hardly at all. She's fab!