In denial…!

As its been a good few weeks since my last post I think it is fair to say that looking after a newborn continues to be all-consuming! I think I may have been a teeny tiny bit overambitious about what I may have been able to do after Hudson was born (I know my family and friends will all be furiously nodding their heads in agreement with that sentence right now!). I thought I could have been doing some work for my Mum and Step-dad whilst maybe doing some other freelance writing work…yeah right!

So I’m now focussing on the small, everyday achievements like: making and eating my own lunch by 2pm; getting Hudson to a baby group on time; completing a car journey with Hudson without having to stop and feed him (I managed that twice yesterday, woop!) and having a little time to myself on an evening when Hudson will settle with Sam.

Feeding, feeding, feeding…

Breastfeeding continues to be very demanding as he still doesn’t follow any sort of routine as I’m trying to keep everything baby-led. It does seem to have become a little less relentless now he is 12 weeks old and is able to go a little longer between daytime feeds even when he is awake, yay! Whereas at the start awake = feeding! I think I am going to try expressing some milk so that Sam can have a go at giving Hudson a bottle on an evening to give me a little time to myself. It will also allow him to take Hudson for a walk by himself as, understandably, he doesn’t feel comfortable doing that at the moment with no way of feeding him. Hudson doesn’t seem to go through the “early hungry cues” you’re told about, he goes from “calm” to “crying for milk” in seconds!

My first time using the breastpump went well and I managed to express 2oz of milk which I am really pleased about as I tried on an evening and apparently early morning is the time you’re most likely to get the best results. Sam tried to feed Hudson the milk last night and he did take a little bit from the bottle but wasn’t really interested and kept on putting his hands up in front of his mouth as Sam held the bottle near his mouth. We’ll just have to keep on trying I guess and hope he gets the hang of it soon.

Despite him going longer between daytime feeds we seem to be going through a very long “phase” of waking for milk every hour during the night at the moment. He is a big boy so he obviously needs to make sure I have enough milk for him by doing this all night! To try and give us all a little more sleep Sam turned our cot into a co-sleeper by raising the base of it so its mattress is the same height as ours. This means I can lie Hudson in the cot and just scoot over and feed him lying down during the night then leave him to sleep without having to move him and inadvertently wake him up all the time. We’ve done a week like this so far and it’s going well, fingers crossed! I’m trying not to get too stressed about the very broken sleep and just go with it, I know it’ll settle down eventually…!

A little silver lining is that for the last two days I have managed to get him to nap in his pram rather than on me! I love having him sleeping on me but it doesn’t make eating or getting anything done very easy so it’s nice that I have managed to get him to settle away from me again as its been weeks since he’d do this. The trick seems to be that fact I have him in the pram but rather than the carry cot so he is sat up a little bit more and I pop a muslin between us when I feed him so when I put him down after he’s fallen asleep it’s still warm and smells like me.

Exciting developments

All the broken sleep was completely forgotten when Hudson rolled over from his front to his back for the first time on Monday! His neck has seemed really strong for at least a month now and he’s been holding it up quite well since we’ve been doing tummy time. I popped him onto his front on Monday evening and he was holding his head really high up and pushing off the floor with his left hand. I left him for a few seconds then rolled him over so he would know how it felt. We then did the same the other way. He only needed two of these assisted rolls before he rolled over by himself, clever boy! I shouted Sam to come and see and luckily Hudson did it a few more times for him too, yay! We even got it on video.

He’s been “talking” to us loads too which is lovely, lots of cooing and babbling. It’s like he is really trying to tell us things and he loves it if we copy him or talk back to him to carry on the “conversation”.