2 Months of Hazel

Life is getting back to normal, well not pre baby normal but a new baby included normal. The normal which includes finding poo and dirty nappies fascinating and a subject for conversation and photo taking, where most of my clothes end up with spew on them at some point, where my dining room looks like a Chinese laundry mat for midgets who like pink and where my house is starting to be decorated by baby toys and playmats. This is my new normal.

We have accomplished a lot this month! I can see Hazel growing before my eyes as the weeks come and go and so far I have one happy little (and incredibly cute) vegemite on my hands! This is a snapshot at what we’ve got up to this month as told by Hazel:

I now sleep through the night – my parents are pretty happy about this! Bed time is 8:30pm and wake up time in no earlier then 6am the following morning. How clever am I!!!!

Yo mumma what's up - I just slept through the night!

I’m in somewhat of a lose routine, feeding only 5 times a day, 2 by breast the remaining 3 by bottle. I don’t drink out of the little 125ml bottles anymore they're for babies, I’m a big girl now and drink 150ml per feed out of my massive (well they look big to me) 260ml bottles.

Speaking of bottles, don’t take my bottle from me mid feed or I’ll be incredibly pissed off at you, which will involve a high pitch banshee squeal until the bottle is back where it should be in my mouth! Did I also mention I get extremely grumpy when my bottle finishes! I believe I have a never ending stomach capacity, it takes me a minute to realise I’m full and don’t need anymore!

I love to smile at any opportunity I get, some people need to work harder then others but I give them away mostly for free these days.

I’m trying my hardest to laugh but the sound doesn’t come out for now – watch this space though I don’t think I am far off it!

I love to talk and coo at my mummy and daddy and I love when people sing to me! Hello World by the Saddle Club, Old Mac Donald and The Wheels on the Bus are my favourites for the moment.

I love laying on my playmate and looking up at my toys I hit at them with my legs and arms but I don’t think I do this on purpose at the moment.

I went to my first birthday party – my BIG cousins Josie’s 2nd birthday and pretty much cried and slept.

I love being in my pram, going for walks or going out to lunch with my mum.

I had my 6 weeks needles and screamed the drs surgery down he he he (insert evil laugh) that’s what they get for subjecting me to that!!

I’ve only had one full day at home without going in my pram/car or without having any visitors since I was born!! I am somewhat a social butterfly at the moment! I mostly sleep when I am out though.

I am too big for my 0000 growth suits. Mum had to pack them all away and replace them with my 000 suits.

I love doing explosive poos! I do one at least every two days (if not once a day), I just like giving my mum more washing to do.

I can get my wind up more easily now so I am a happier baby with less belly pains which equals less crying!! Win win for me and mother bear.

I love watching the telly.

I’m getting even stronger in my back and neck, I don’t really love tummy time but I’m pretty good and pushing up on my hands before I crack it.

I’m a bit more fussier on the boob now, I know I can get my milk more easier from the bottle so sometimes I be a little ferret.

I love having a bath, but I’m getting too big for my baby bath now, if I stretch I can nearly touch it from top to bottom I think I’ll be going into the big bath very soon!

I’ve rubbed a bald patch on the back on my head but the rest of my hair is starting to grow, I’ll have piggy tails in no time.

I’ve become somewhat of a dribbler over the last few weeks, blowing bubbles is my speciality.

I’ve moved into the next size nappies, no longer am I in newborn nappies now I’m in infant size.

What will the next month bring?? Who knows but I can’t wait to find out!

Picture Perfect

They say a picture paints a thousand words, but I only need one....perfect

Thank you to Megan Bourne Photography for these lovely images of our beautiful baby girl Hazel.

With so many beautiful photos {and more that I didn't load} I now have the hard task of deciding which ones to frame!

A month of Hazel

How can this be possible? Hazel a month old already?!

The last 30 days have seemed to come and go so quickly that I feel I must have missed a couple of weeks somewhere along the way. I think I have experienced every single emotion over the weeks from highest of highs to lowest of lows.

Life before Hazel seems a distant memory each and every day as she gets older I love her even more. I thought I was prepared to have a baby, people say your life changes but to me that last part never really sunk in….how could life change that much? I don’t think anyone can really be prepared for how much time and attention a baby needs, once again in my delusional mind all I thought a newborn baby would do is sleep the majority of the time only waking occasionally to feed and to be changed – yes you can laugh, I have since had a reality check

Bringing Hazel home was a weird feeling, bringing her inside our home was an even weirder feeling, she was asleep in her capsule – so what were we meant to do with her now? Do we leave her in the capsule and where do we put the capsule? We settled for the dinning room table and proceeded to check on her every minute just to make sure she was ok and we waited for her to wake.

The first couple of weeks were a major adjustment to me, no longer were my needs and wants a priority I now had to put the needs and wants of Hazels before mine for me this was tough, I felt like I no longer existed, when was it my time?? I was just the milk machine and if I wasn’t feeding her she was crying, I didn’t think I was cut out to be a parent - some people just have that maternal instinct and I was yet to find mine. I didn’t like being a parent at all, the thought of her waking up use to make me cringe because she would cry and I had no idea what she wanted, I was struggling with breastfeeding - I had the milk, she had no problem attaching and sucking I just couldn’t handle not knowing how much milk she was getting –was that why she was crying because she wasn’t getting enough milk? I also didn’t enjoy breastfeeding and the time it took up, I didn’t like sitting there for what felt like hours on end. Bottle feeding seemed to be the answer for me so I could control something and be sure that she wasn’t hungry and make the feeding process quicker that also meant Keegan could help with the feeding and Hazel didn’t need to be attached to me 24/7. I started to express and bottle feed her what I had and top up with what ever I was missing. A midwife came and checked on me at home and I told her my concerns about the feeding and she told me to have another go now that Hazel was a bit older. I started fully breastfeeding Hazel again and everything seemed to be going ok, I still expressed some milk to keep as back up in case I was out and didn’t want to feed in public or just wanted a rest from her on the boob. Everything was going fine until she was about 3 weeks old and she was really hard to settle I couldn’t get her to sleep or sleep for a long period of time during the day the thoughts that maybe my breast milk wasn’t cutting it again crept into my mind. I fed her by the bottle and she scoffed the 60ml up easily and wanted more. No longer was she drinking 60ml per feed now she wanted the 120ml and more. To ease my mind that Hazel is getting enough milk I now feed her with a mixture of both breastfeeding and bottle feeding. Breastfeeding solely wasn’t for me. I like to know how much she is consuming but I also didn’t want to express to feed her everyday. I feed her by the bottle before she has her big sleeps and by the breast when she is snacking during the day and this seems to be working for us. Keegan is able to help out when he comes home and usually feeds her the last bottle before bed and this gives him some time with Hazel.

One area we are really lucky with is Hazel sleeping at night. I only need to get up once during the night as Hazel has always seemed to sleep 6 or more hours in a row. We tend to put her to bed at 9:30pm and she generally wakes up around 4am. Occasionally early on she might of woken up at 3am but more often then not now it is closer to 5am. I feel so lucky that I am able to get a decent chunk of sleep at night, I could only imagine how crazy I would be if I was also sleep deprived. With the good sleeping at night comes with a downside – Hazel is a bit scatty sleeping during the day. She is currently going through a phase (well I hope it is a phase) where she wont sleep in the cot during the day, put her in the pram and go for a walk or go somewhere in the car and bam she is sound asleep. I was getting a bit worried about this because I didn’t want to start a bad habit of her only being able to sleep in her capsule, but each day I work on her going to sleep in her cot and today I succeeded for 2 whole hours. I’ve given up on trying to work Hazel out – the one minute I think I know what’s going on then she changes the story but I have worked out that babies do as they please like this phase she is going through only sleeping in the capsule will go as quickly as it came (I hope) for the most part she is a good little sleeper and are very fortunate of that.

My days seem to go so quickly now, I hardly have time to do the most simplest of things like hang washing out or have a shower, every job I do has to be carefully calculated around Hazel's eating and sleeping schedule, sometimes having lunch seems like an impossible feat. I now wonder what did I ever do with all my time before Hazel! The one good thing is now I can do everything twice as quick and most things one handed, I'm sure these new skills will come in very handy during the rest of my life.

I’m not ashamed to admit that early on there where days that I just cried my eyes out for no reason at all or over the most stupid of things, I constantly doubted myself as a parent and my capabilities of looking after a baby, there where even times when I wished I never had a baby but as each day comes and goes I settle into the role of being a mum, each day gets easier and I’m at the point now where I think I know what I am doing and beginning to enjoy Hazel as a baby. She seems to be growing before my eyes, I don’t think she looks like a little newborn baby anymore she is so alert and bright eyed she loves looking at the world. I love waking up in the mornings getting little smiles out of her on her cheeky face, she looks at me in the eyes like she knows who I am and enjoys just cuddling. Hazel seems to be a happy and content baby and I’ve grown to be a happy and content mum. My maternal instincts are finally kicking in and I couldn’t imagine doing anything else now.