William's First Year

This is my favourite time of day. William is asleep upstairs after being truly angelic and waking up only once during the night (although I jerk awake every 10 minutes as if I’ve been electrocuted, convinced he’s in the bed/stopped breathing/about to explode). I’m going to give him (second) breakfast in a minute, but in the meantime am tiptoeing about the house woofing down coffee, toast and putting the fire on ready for the day.

It’s absolutely freezing outside but we’re definitely going to get out for a walk. It’s so nice to feel the fresh air, although poor William had a very red nose by the time we got back yesterday! Every day we see someone on our travels and have a natter, it’s great to be back out and about, albeit behind the wheel of a pram, rather than on horseback.

Will and I finally joined the NCT ladies for tea yesterday – the last baby of them all. Actually, I was a typical harrassed mother after the health visitor turned up half an hour late and then William started to bawl his head off and needed grub before we could go…so in the end I was only there for half an hour! It was lovely to see everyone though and hopefully now I can come back into the fold and be more of a regular fixture.

William’s doing really well, he’s up to 8lb 3ozs and everything else is fine. Apparantly we should try lying him on his front when he’s awake to help his head go back into shape. Poor little mite looks absolutely miserable on all fours leaning on his head and trying to turn his neck, but better that than dragging him off to a cranial osteopath. I feel really cruel, but we’ll try it whenever he’s calm and see if it works.

Now we just have to explain to Molly that the play mat is for the baby….

One word – OWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW.

Why anyone would continue past 6 months is absolutely beyond me. Imagine feeding a child with TEETH?! My God.

Well, we left poor Alexander with a bawling William, but he did a sterling job and everything went brilliantly. I finally got my pint of cider and bag of nuts, which went down a treat, and we saw lots of friends (even MP, who had left the house and come to the pub all on her own for the first time in 16 years, leaving the kids at home!) who all said congratulations and helped wet the baby’s head.

Managed my hour, but then got incredibly twitchy and had to come home. I’m finding that I’m becoming more and more attached to William every day, not in a neurotic sense, but as he gets bigger and we understand each other better, I find it very hard not to have him near me for any length of time. Having said that, it’s a fine line….he’s out with Eddie, Sue, Jim and Kirsten now and I have to say that I treasure this time alone to pootle about and catch up with people. But I know that if the absence gets longer than a certain time I’ll get more and more edgy until he’s back again 🙂

Had a lovely time with Liz yesterday too, catching up on news and finding out how things are working out with her little baby Maria. We had a lovely walk and stopped in at Anne’s for tea and to return her dish – I am truly a middle-aged Yummy Mummy! The thing I love about living here is that there’s always someone either walking, driving or riding by to say hello to.

Will was an angel baby all day and still settled at night. He wriggles the entire time and makes all sorts of weird and wonderful snuffles in his sleep, and then as the volume goes up ever so slightly at around 2am you know it’s time to feed/change him before he goes back to his dreams until morning. He is fantastic.

Today will be a milestone as Alexander has kindly volunteered to babysit for us while Eddie and I go to the pub for an hour! After 8 months abstinence, I am finally going to have a pint of cider and a bag of nuts. Can’t wait (that is assuming I am able to leave the baby…)

Will has been so peaceful today, Jo and Micky came to say hello with Yas which was lovely and he was as good as gold. Clearly I’m going to pay the price later, but my friend Liz is coming over in a bit and we’re taking the babies for a walk in the sunshine, so I’m hoping the fresh air will wear him out later on.

He’s fast asleep upstairs now, pulling his funny little faces with his hands up by his face waving about like little sea anemones. He dreams so much, wriggling and snuffling about in his basket. I’d love to know what dreams are going through his little baby head. Fweet.

Feeling so much better now the antibiotics have kicked in and Will was an angel all day yesterday, feeding every two hours on the dot – I even managed to watch the first episode of Series 3 of the OC! We went for a walk through the villages, I’ve made a few baby mixes for the iPod which I plugged in and away we tootled, singing tunelessly to ourselves. William is clearly not a Kinks man, but seemed to like Keane….I’ll have to have a think about what we’ll have for our next foray into the outside world.

Eddie came home bang on 6 and like a model father whisked William upstairs for his bath and a chat. He had his dinner in the sitting room with us and then we got to bedtime and The Nightly Fear to see if he will or won’t go to sleep. But maybe we’re doing something right because he slept really well, feeding again at 3am and going back to sleep until 7! He’s upstairs now looking angelic as usual.

This morning the midwife is coming to do his guthrie test (I have no idea what that involves, but will let you know) and weigh him. It’ll be really interesting to see how he’s growing because to me he feels alot heavier. Then this afternoon we’re going to Granny’s funeral, which we’re not looking forward to obviously, but we can say goodbye and everyone can see William which will bring a little light into an otherwise very sad occasion.

Look at this little angel baby – it seems amazing to me that he can turn from this into a screaming, crimson demon in a matter of seconds….

Had a classic harrassed mother day yesterday, just felt so rough and everytime I moved William started to cry so I essentially spent the entire day in bed without being able to sleep or do anything. When it continued after supper we began to despair, but then at 11 he fed for an hour while Eddie and I dozed off, and then slept through until 5am. Could this be the beginnings of Will sleeping through the night? God I hope so. He’s upstairs now still asleep, but I’ll do the same as before and try to keep him up as much as possible in the day so he’s knackered in the evening. The most important thing is for Eddie to get his rest so he can survive work.

In the meantime, I’ve actually managed to make breakfast, bathe and dress – more than I achieved yesterday!

We were all set for another night of incessant screaming, but by some miracle, Master William actually managed to sleep through the night with only a couple of feeds! Now we’re desparately trying to remember exactly what we did so we can replicate this tonight.

Unfortunately, despite all this extra sleep, I’ve managed to get mastitis and woke up in the middle of the night with sweat pouring off me, but shivering terribly. Eddie took me to the doctor’s this morning and now I’m on antibiotics so hopefully it should clear up in a day or so.

In the meantime I’m gutted not to be seeing the NCT girls and showing William off, but never mind, there’s always next week – he’ll be the last baby to come along to our weekly gatherings! Better late than never, eh?

Will’s sitting with Auntie Victoria, who’s doing a sterling job of keeping him awake, the plan still being to try and keep him up as long as possible so he sleeps through the night. So far it’s not working! I finally got him to sleep at 04.30 this morning, and collapsed on the sofa, too scared to take him upstairs in case he woke up again. Then today he’s been a fairy baby again, but we’re trying feeding at 2 hourly intervals and also went for a long walk around Heath End and East Woodhay which gave him a bit of fresh air. Who knows what the evening holds. But I rather suspect we can guess. Plus, I’ve had NO sleep since this morning so by tomorrow I’ll be a limp rag.
Eddie goes back to work tomorrow, so it’s time I earned my keep again. Am really going to miss being looked after! But on the positive side it may also help us to start getting into a semblance of a routine – even if William doesn’t, at least Eddie, Molly and I will have some structure to our lives again.