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2006-07-29 - 10.25pm��previous entry��next entry
6 weeks old already (lots of photos!)...
Oh my gosh, I want to CRY - I just spent my first free time in what feels like FOREVER writing a diary entry, which has taken me 2 hours so far either side of dinner, and then I pressed some button on my keyboard and the window closed and my entry is GONE :( I was just finished with the writing and busy posting photos. I am so upset about it I could just cry! I haven't got any time left to write another entry. I have like 15 photos to post, urgh! And I wrote a lot of detail about my postnatal check and Matthew's latest stuff. I'm so sad. I can't redo it, it's too late and I'm too tired. I don't know when I'll get time again to update because there just isn't ANY these days, and Matthew sleeps in front of the computer almost, and he consistently sleeps through the evening now in a dark room, so we can't really use the computer any more. We need to figure something out about that, but no time to think these days!
Okay, so just quickly, Matthew is 6 weeks old and doing great. We're trying to do the flexible routine thingy from "Secrets of The Baby Whisperer" (by Tracy Hogg) and it seems to be going okay so far. Matthew still cries a LOT, and fairly inconsolably through the late afternoon and early evening, and I can't figure that out.
He weighed 10lbs 10oz at the baby clinic yesterday morning, and he has his 6-8 week check on Wednesday next week. He had his newborn hearing screen at the hospital on Wednesday just gone and it was all normal, his hearing is fine. He is cooing and smiling a lot, and making new vocal sounds all the time. He smiles at the fabrics on my shelves now, as they are his favourite thing to look at apart from people! He isn't quite so bothered by having baths any more which is nice. He is so strong in his neck and can lift his shoulders and head up when on his tummy. He can almost get his head to 90 degrees to look straight ahead of him when he's on his tummy, and his legs lift up behind him too. I think it's because he has had a LOT more time on his tummy than Arthur ever did. He has all his day naps sleeping on his tummy, and starts the night on his tummy too. If I put him back in the cot after a night feed, I always put him on his back and he's fine like that, but he hates to be on his back in the day and won't sleep like it now. He sleeps so peacefully on his tummy, and prefers to be held facing out forwards or down on his tummy too. He still spends a part of the night in bed with me most nights, and I do all his night feeds in bed next to me, lying tummy to tummy :) I love that!
Arthur is so helpful with him, and still loves him to pieces. The first thing he says when I come downstairs holding Matthew in the morning is, "Ma-Maaa!" (Matthew) in a delighted tone with arms outstretched for him! He has to hold him straight away and within about 2 seconds he wants to know, "Poo-poo?" (patting Matthew's nappy), and I either tell him, "Yes, he's done a poo, we'll have to change him in a minute" or "No, I don't think he's done a poo yet, Arthur" Immediately after that, he wants to know, "Bup?" (burp) and I tell him we'll burp him after he has some milk :) He loves to help change Matthew's nappy and seems almost disappointed when Matthew HASN'T done a poo, hehe! He also loves to help me burp him, patting him on the back, and gets so excited if Matthew actually burps while he's patting him! He also helps me by coming to tell me if he hears Matthew awake and crying when he's upstairs in his cot napping. If I'm in the kitchen doing some laundry or something, he'll come RUNNING in, calling, "Mama, mama!" and I say, "Yes, Arthur, what is it?" and he puts his finger to his ear and says, "Ma-Ma" looking all concerned, and sure enough when I come out into the living room, I hear this tiny wailing sound from upstairs! He's such a good boy. If Matthew brings up some milk while he's lying on the changing mat, Arthur says, "Oh dee!" pointing to it, and then gets a muslin cloth and dabs at Matthew's mouth like he's seen me do, and then pushes it into the side of his face to catch any further eruptions! He's such a sweetie.
I have photos. I gave detailed explanations for them in my lost entry but I haven't time to do that again. They're pretty self explanatory though, and I'll make brief notes!
Here's Arthur changing Matthew's nappy, hehe! I found him shoving a clean nappy under Matthew's legs (never mind that he still had the old nappy on!) when I came back from the kitchen where I had been digging a baby vest out of the tumble dryer. He then reached for the wet cloth wipes that I had put on the floor ready to use, and started to undo the poppers on Matthew's nappy!
Another nappy change photo, the next day, of Arthur giving Matthew a kiss (he also does this a lot!). See the homemade denim nappy on Matthew?! I found it in a box and I'd forgotten about it. I made it for Arthur out of an old pair of reeeally soft jeans, but he outgrew it before I ever put it on him. It's really soft and absorbent and I'm really pleased with it! He wore it to the baby clinic and I got complimented on it :)
The precious view I get of my sweet tiny boy when I am breastfeeding him in bed first thing in the morning! I love seeing him all bleary and sleepy, and hear him snuffling away sleepily at my breast :)
Here's a photo of Matthew cooing at me from his cot-bed at 5 weeks old :)
His face is so quiet and calm when he coos, and he hardly changes his face at all. He just opens his mouth such a little bit and flares his nostrils a bit and that's it! Soooo different to Arthur, who used his WHOLE face when he cooed and chatted as a tiny baby! See, here is my lil animated man at 8 weeks old - what a difference between my two lovely boys (again!):
I love that both my boys have that fluffy mohecan (sp?) thing going on with their baby hair though :) I LOVE their newborn hair! Here is Matthew after a bath, wrapped in the towel he was weighed in at birth:
And dressed afterwards, with that lovely fluffy hair that I was talking about! :)
Matthew likes the playmat that Arthur had when he was tiny. He doesn't get much time on it because Arthur is just too boisterous around him when he's on it, but I grabbed the opportunity when Neil was giving Arthur his breakfast one morning. Matthew loves looking at the bright red dangly ladybird. Of course Arthur was eager to play with him after he finished his breakfast!
I love this photo - I took it a few days ago. My tiny boy is definitely going to be BLUE-eyed!! I am so excited for some crazy reason, hehe! I love that Arthur's eyes are so brown and Matthew's look like they'll be so blue! I've been trying to get a good shot of them for a week or two, as they're getting a bit lighter in colour now and it's much clearer to see that they're going to stay blue. They MIGHT go grey, as my mum says mine started out blue, got lighter, and then gradually "greyed-up" over time. I had clear grey eyes as a child and somewhere along the line I got a hazel ring in the centre. Apparently that's where Arthur's brown eyes have come from, but it's seems to me so clever that he's managed to get brown eyes from that! All the other genes for eye colour in the family are blue. I like the variety we might get with our children - apparently we're just as likely to have GREEN-eyed children as blue or brown! How exciting to see what they will be! Anyway, here is my sweet BLUE-eyed boy at 6 weeks old :)
Okay, getting there with the photos now! Here are a few of Matthew lifting his head when he was having some nudie tummy time on a hot day this week. The light isn't too good as I used the flash when I shouldn't have, tsk. But never mind. You can see Arthur's little hand poised over his back in the second photo, "bupping" him ;)
I was meant to finish this diary when Matthew reached 6 weeks old because of it being a major milestone, but we haven't had all our checks yet. I had my postnatal check on Wednesday and it went fine. My blood pressure was fine, my tummy felt normal, my bleeding is all but gone, just a tiny bit of spotting here and there. The doctor said it was surprisingly common for bleeding to go on longer after a second baby than first time around - interesting. She said not to worry till I'm 8 weeks postpartum, but I'm sure it will have stopped completely by then.
She listened at great length to my answers when she asked me how I was feeling in myself and how I was coping, and she was great. She said it didn't sound like I am depressed, just utterly tired-out and doing something that is very hard to adjust to. She gave me loads of advice and told me the names of some great places to take Arthur to over the school summer holidays - soft play areas and good playgroups, etc! She has two little children herself so she really knows, and I find that SO helpful, to have a GP with that kind of experience to hand. She is so lovely as well, and really supportive and understanding. She is doing Matthew's check next week, and after I've written about that I think it will be time to put this diary to rest until next time. I can NOT believe I am doing this already! It sometimes feels like I JUST got my BFP and then somehow I blinked and here I am with my 6-week-old baby, about to close this diary up till the next time! It feels like just yesterday that I was doing that after having Arthur. So crazy!
Okay there was lots more but it's too late and Matthew is stirring, and oh there's my milk letting down (!!) so I need to finish this now. I get next to no time to even switch the computer on at the moment, so I'm missing my favourite diaries and just catching up online and venting in my diaries, etc. I hope things will settle soon, and we need to figure out a new place for the computer or something, because while Matthew sleeps in the same room, we simply don't feel right sitting in there clattering away at the keyboard any more. So we don't get to use it much. Thank you SO much again for the lovely messages and support over my ups and downs lately! Anyway I will try to update again soon, and definitely after Matthew's 6 week check on Wednesday :) I'll leave you with another photo of my sweet smiley boy, taken the day before yesterday. I LOVE this sweet baby boy!
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