Athena at 7 weeks

Apologies if you’re not a baby fan, feel free to skip this post!

Athena is 7 weeks old now, much bigger than she was at birth (obviously!) and growing at a rate of knots, her legs and arms are chubbing out, she is smiling lots and holding her head up more often than not (which is a relief as we don’t have to be so careful with it!) she’s making more noises other than crying, lots of ‘coo’ing and big sighs! She’s 50th percentile for weight and 91st for height… long and leggy unlike her mama!

I’m getting a bit more sleep now, not that I was ever sleep deprived even when she first arrived but she tends to sleep at least 10 hours overnight with one ‘dream feed’ around 1am, which is before I go to sleep anyway, then she’ll normally sleep till 7ish, and then another hour and a half after a good feed, I’m still exclusively breastfeeding. I put her in her cotbed in her nursery for most naps (she looks so tiny in it!) and for the bit of her night sleep that comes before I go to bed, then when she wakes up I go and fetch her and bring her into bed with me for the feed, and if I manage to stay awake until she’s finished she gets popped into her moses basket, and I don’t she stays in the bed! I’m hoping this way she’ll learn to sleep wherever! A couple of people have looked a but surprised when I said she slept in her own room so early, but we use a baby monitor and check on her regularly and it’s my decision and I refuse to live by the law of any babybook! We also talk, hoover and generally don’t watch the noise levels so she doesn’t sleep in complete silence!

I feel bad that for the last week or so I feel like she’s either been in the car on one of our many trips to and from the old house to the new one, or on the way to and from the south coast to Norfolk. I can’t wait to be back to ‘normal’ so we can have more tummy time and interaction with toys. At the moment the only thing she really loves is a little book of black and yellow pictures that I use to distract her when  changing her. I feel like I should constantly be stimulating her little baby brain and when I put her down to cook/go to the loo I feel bad. I know this is ridiculous as she’s so small that using her brain probably tires her out a fair bit! She now baths with me, which she seems to like a lot more than us bathing her on her own, and the first time she even fell asleep in it the first time! It amazes me how much sticky fluff she manages to get between her tiny fingers and toes on a daily basis! She’s still got a load of hair, but it is thinning round the back a bit now!

She’s not a cry-y baby (how would you spell that?) at all, only when she’s hungry, which is brilliant, although I’m aware that may well change, and we’ll deal with it when it does! The other bonus is she only craps every four days! This is perfectly normal for a breastfed baby apparently! So we save on nappies but when it happens, boy does it really happen! That stuff goes everywhere! Luckily we know at least which day it is likely to be and it’s always in the morning accompanied with a loud arrival! Sorry… It’s true when they say all new parents get obsessed with poop! Or kackow as we call it (pigeon German, even though I think it’s a pretty rude term!)

The next thing to get done is her 8 week jabs ad then I plan to find a few mother and baby groups to join to meet people, and might try netmums/mumsnet if I can find someone who doesn’t constantly talk in acronyms. “My LO is EB and not FF and DS1 and DD3 are out with my SO, and my AF returned but IAC ” err, what?! so yep, If I can find someone normal I’ll happily have ‘em over for tea!

And as for me, I a few weeks back I managed to re-open my C section scar at one end, which was not so pleasant, but at my 6 week check up it had healed enough for me to drive (though I already had as it hadn’t occurred to me I shouldn’t!) and finally to bath! I still get twinges when I’m in funny positions, or lift something too heavy, and am fairly numb from my belly button downwards, I cant feel if I touch my skin. Other than that I’m still about 2 stone off what I weighed when I got pregnant, and in a couple of weeks I’m going to start exercising again, to try and head back towards that weight (and to be able to fit in my old clothes!)

That’s it for now, I’ve got a stinking cold and a sore throat, so today! New flat came with a completely unnecessary but very welcome 32” Telly on the bedroom wall, so in bed is where we’ll be! Hope I don’t give the cold to the sprog though!