Olive May Leach - Day 16

Things starting to fall into patterns here which is good altho' midwives keep suggesting we change them. First she wasn't feeding enough, now they want us to try and space the feeds out a bit more ?! This does have some advantages - moving from 3 hrs to 4 hrs between feeds does allow you to get more done and leave the house a bit more . . . altho' Olive has other ideas and appears stuck at 3 1/2 hrs but we can live with that and try and eek it out a little longer.

We managed a family Easter meal (see above).

She really has grown lots in just 2 weeks. She put on almost 10% in the first week and its easy to see her beginning to fill the moses basket. She also now fits in some of the clothes we had bought her - hence shots of her in her retro Green Baby 'romper suit' that I bought for her ages ago.

The novelty of nappy changing has started to wear off - we no longer stare at the poo, trying to guage its colour against the NCT factsheet !

I quite like that our o'night routine hasn't changed. I still get up at 2 and 6am to change the nappy before handing O to Lydia for feed time and then come downstairs and make tea and crumpets/toast/bagels etc. Thankfully I snuck out for a run this morning at 8am as my butter intake was starting to show !

I've noticed that Olive stares quite intently at me as I change her nappy which I've decided is partly because of my glasses. I have 2 v different pairs of spectacles and as her eyesight is not that detailed I am probably just a walking pair of specs to her. In fact I think she thinks she has 2 dads so I tend to keep thick black frames for nasty, wakes me up in the middle of the night to change my nappy dad and keep the the silver frames for nice, cuddles & plays with me, daytime dad !? I do think if Lydia (or anyone) put my specs on, Olive would get v confused.

I have managed to finish my little garden raised beds project. Spinach and brocolli planting to start soon when Julie Stone arrives next week. (see above)

Lydia is upstairs talking to Olive. She has little half conversations where she leaves spaces for O's replies. Its rather nice to listen too. This morning at 6am I joined in as Olive was looking at the big animal faces book that we had put in her moses basket.

Lydia: What Olive ? What has chicken been upto ?

Olive: nothing, maybe a gurgle

Robin: Really Olive ? Chicken's been in an accident, broken her wing ?

Olive: nothing, maybe a gurgle, or sneeze

Lydia: But the vets coming around later today ?

it can go on for hours, we're hoping to find out how chicken is doing tomorrow.

Happy Easter from all at Pymers Mead.

Olive May Leach - Day 8

1 week old today, and the sun came out. Having been rained on twice so far we played it safe and just walked up the road to Dulwich Trader. Sun hopefully seeing off the final remains of Olive's jaundice.

Lydia wanted to buy a diary to keep all madam's important events. I am currently keeping a detailed log of all O's feeds (left or right!) and bowel movements on scraps of paper. We decided I would go back and transcribe all this into O's diary but just the feeds so '4am - big poop' wont need to appear. These are the things midwives ask you.

We continue to be getting a decent amount of sleep - feeds at 7pm (Gina Ford special), 10pm, 2am, 6am, 10am. I get up, wake the mite who is dead to the world, swaddled tight like a worm with cute baby head. She is never awake. I undress her and change her nappy which usually gets her alert to say the least. Lydia feeds & burps her in her new nappy to keep her awake. I usually make bagels, toast or hot cross buns and tea. Important to look after mum. I put her back in her sleep suit, swaddle her and put her down. This can take an hour, but still leaves us with 3 hours kip before the next feed o'night. We are undoubtedly v v lucky.

In fact we have both noticed ourselves waking suddenly at 1.55am and 5.55am thinking 'what is it?' 'is Olive crying?'. She never is. We appear to have been trained to wake up every 4 hours, 5 mins before the next feed. A bit like Olive has been doing the Gina Ford treatment on us !! Weird, but clever baby.

Many thanks to everyone for lovely gifts. Lots of great clothes and we loved the 'Olive's first sunrise photo' from the O'Neills.