I can’t believe it’s been a month since my last post! I promised myself I wouldn’t let my blog writing slip once the baby was born but it has been a pretty tough month so I haven’t had lots of time to sit and write and I also didn’t want to do a purely moaney post whilst I was finding things a bit difficult. All normal mum problems/stuff but it does seem to get to you after a while.

Sam did take four days off in a row last week for our four-year wedding anniversary so it meant I had my first solo bubble bath since Hudson was born and we all went for a lovely meal so that helped cheer me up and gave me some much-needed relaxation.

The dreaded developmental leaps

I think one of the reasons that Hudson has been a bit upset and cranky for the last few weeks has been the start of his next Wonder Weeks leap. He’s 24-weeks old now and is in the middle of Leap 5 and he always seems to have a rough time at the start of each one. Why they decided to call them the Wonder Weeks I don’t know…I guess the “Woeful Weeks” wouldn’t encourage many people to buy the book!? As much as the leaps seem to impact on his sleep and make him want to feed more it is amazing watching him starting to do even more new things. He can sit up unaided quite well now before eventually leaning/toppling sideways and he can move around so much when he’s on his tummy despite not being able to crawl yet. If I leave him on his back under his jungle gym and come back a few minutes later he will be on his front at a completely different angle! He’s also obsessed with putting his hands in our mouths as we talk – he finds it hilarious if we pretend to eat them. I’m excited to see him doing even more new things in the coming weeks.

The imminent arrival of teeth

Hudson’s been chewing everything for a good few weeks now but in the last two weeks I have noticed his gums have started to look red and a bit sore and he wants to chew things constantly so I’m expecting some teeth to come through soon. He’s also chomped me a couple of times whilst feeding which hasn’t been fun so I dread to think what that’ll be like with teeth – ouch!

He got really bunged up and snotty over the weekend and we thought it was a cold but now I think it may have been due to him teething. As we have been constantly wiping his nose and trying to de-snot his nostrils a lot along with trying to get some Dentinox gel on his gums he, understandably, gets upset when I try any of these things now! Poor thing. We had a terrible night on Saturday as he was so bunged up that he kept on waking himself up so he was very overtired and got so upset trying to feed himself back to sleep with a blocked nose.

Bedtime/Dreadtime

With everything that’s been going on with Hudson it has meant that night times have not been fun at all. He’s always woken a lot through the night, usually around 6 times for milk, and I try not to torture myself when I hear that my friends’ babies wake up once or twice during the night. I know every baby’s different. But after 5 months I think I reached the end of my tether a little bit!

Firstly we returned to him shouting/crying most nights as I tried to feed him to sleep, sometimes just refusing to feed at all. He would then be happy just lying next to me babbling away but it then meant a very broken night of sleep after he eventually dropped off. Then he started refusing to feed in the night on occasion to the point of pushing himself off me when I tried to hug him of feed him – he was obviously annoyed that he had woken up but he still can’t get himself back to sleep every time. I was finding myself getting annoyed in the middle of the night when he would stir but then not go back to sleep and Sam would then get annoyed at me being so frustrated. Not a great cycle to be in. I understand that my reaction wouldn’t have helped me feel any better but it’s very hard to describe how trying nights like that are to someone who isn’t a breastfeeding mother!

We seemed to have a breakthrough this week as he had the best night’s sleep ever on Tuesday night – he only woke three times and fed for just a few minutes before going back to sleep. He also seemed to stir then get himself back to sleep twice and then slept until after 7am! I thought we’d maybe turned a corner but then last night happened! From 11:30 last night he stirred every half an hour and would thrash/roll from one side of his mattress to the other and wake me up! Luckily he wasn’t upset but it still means I feel a bit jaded and bleary-eyed today.

I’m trying really hard to stay positive about these broken nights as I know (well, desperately hope!) that eventually he will start sleeping for longer during the night in his own time and Sam and I are happy to bed share until that time. I don’t see the point of moving him away from the bed let alone out of our room when I’m having to feed him so often still.

“Proper Food”

Another exciting thing we have started in the last week is giving Hudson his first tastes of real food. I’m part of a Whatsapp chat group with all the mums I went to baby massage with and they were all talking about their babies trying different foods so I was then desperate to start giving Hudson some. I started with avocado and his reaction was brilliant! He definitely wasn’t sure but did keep on opening his mouth for more. I wanted to start with baby led weaning but after trying cucumber sticks once he didn’t seem keen on holding big bits of food and chomping them so I’m going to give him some purées first. Since then he has tried potato and peas and I made some carrots and parsnip today.

The cheeky monkey did get his first taste of pizza on Tuesday! Well, just the tomato and pesto topping. It was my nephew Eli’s first birthday so we were at my sister’s having some lunch and Hudson was sat on my lap as I had some pizza and he was moving his head towards the slice and started opening his mouth! It was so funny so I let him suck the sauce off without any cheese and he couldn’t get enough – he was holding tight onto my hand so I couldn’t take it away again!  He’s definitely his father’s son, Sam’s favourite thing to eat is a Margherita pizza so it was only a matter of time until Hudson followed suit!