coping with a new baby

Our Lovely Little Boy

Posted by

44

WP_20141115_11_24_22_ProOur little Monkey is in many ways a typical toddler. He tantrums, he shouts and has meltdowns. He is not a big fan of sharing and thinks everything is “my toy”. He is fussy about food, and well everything. “Don’t like that” & “Don’t want to” are frequent phrases in our house. Along with, of course “No!” even for things I know he wants (eye roll).

But, he also has the sweetest little nature and is so caring. I’ve made no secret of the fact that we have been struggling over the past few weeks. With Little Miss’s colic and reflux we have been really struggling with lack of sleep and just exhaustion. (This has actually, fingers crossed, touch wood, improved a lot this week, phew!) Unfortunately this hasn’t led to the best parenting of Monkey at times. I hold my hands up and admit that I have been a lot snappier with him and have raised my voice a lot more than I would like. Continue reading →

The truth about life with newborns

Posted by

14

It has been just over a month since Little Miss arrived and well and truly became part of our family. As gorgeous as she is though, life with a newborn can be really hard, and exhausting. For all parents to be, here is some of the things you should know about life with a newborn (and for those of you who are already parents, I wonder if this will ring any bells!)

Continue reading →

Colic? Reflux? An allergy? or just anxious parents?

Posted by

17

In all honesty we are having a bit of a rough time with Little Miss at the moment. Sadly she spends a lot of her life, and most of her awake time, screaming, and in pain. There is something different about the cry of a baby in pain. Tired cries are a bit whiney, hungry a bit demanding, uncomfortable a bit angry, and in pain is, to my ears, very shrill. It is horrible and draining to hear for hours on end when nothing you do seems to help. It is hard enough during the day but in the early hours of the morning, when you have been attempting to sooth your child for 2-3 hours it becomes unbearable.
Continue reading →

Little Miss at 4 weeks old

Posted by

25

WP_20141118_09_38_01_ProLittle Miss is 4 weeks old today. The last 4 weeks seem to have both flown by and lasted forever, isn’t that just the way of it with newborn babies?

Colic has well and truly taken over too unfortunately. After spending a lot of time fretting about whether there was anything I could do to help or prevent the colic, at the weekend we reached a level of acceptance I think. We have to accept that our evenings and a lot of night times are spent trying to soothe a baby in pain. Horrible as it is, it is only for the next couple of months and then we know it gets better. We have been through it once with Monkey and we can get through it again.

Having said that, the last few days have been really tough. She is definitely worse when I have eaten dairy as on Monday night we had a really cheesy dinner. I didn’t even think about it as it was a meal made and frozen before she was born but it is made largely from milk and cheese. And well since then she has been really rough. That night was awful and Tuesday morning she did a weird jelly poo (sorry if TMI) and spent  lot of the day in quite a lot of pain and therefore very unhappy.

Continue reading →

Reality

Posted by

22

WP_20141105_17_44_27_ProMy word of the week this week is “reality” because we are very much getting used to the reality of life with a 2 week old baby.

After a very smooth first week, this week has definitely been trickier (I knew I was jinxing myself blogging about it lol!). It hasn’t been terrible bit it is very true when they say that the first days of a baby’s life are not a good indication of how well they will sleep later on!
Continue reading →

Adapting to life with a newborn

Posted by

28

The word of the week this week is definitely “Adapting.” We are all adapting to the changes that bringing our newborn girl home has brought.

WP_20141029_08_01_05_Smart (2)

Rubbish shot but Monkey going in for a kiss 🙂

Monkey is doing amazingly well at adapting to being a big brother. We have been so proud of him from the get go and he just gets better and better. After a few days of playing up a little more and being more demanding (which is not at all surprising when his little world had been turned upside down and he barely saw Mummy or Daddy for days) he has settled down a lot. We are trying to find the balance between giving him plenty of attention, and not over-indulging him, as he does need to learn that he is not the only one that needs our attention now.
Continue reading →

Coping with Colic

Posted by

59

P1020228After publishing my breastfeeding journey with Monkey recently, I have been reminiscing a bit back to those early days of Monkey’s little life. With the arrival of baby no.2 approaching faster by the day I guess it’s no wonder really! I am nervous of going through the baby days again as I didn’t find it very easy first time round. There was the initial breastfeeding struggles, which led on to a much longer struggle. You see, Monkey had Colic and coping with a colicky baby can be really hard. I’m not sure any newborn baby is easy, but I am really hoping we don’t have Colic to contend with again this time!

I have been remembering the things we did and methods we used and thought I would share them, in case anyone else is going through the same struggles and needs some help Coping with Colic.
Continue reading →

A Toddler’s Anxiety

Posted by

18

It’s not the most positive word to sum up our week, but unfortunately there has been a lot of Anxiety in our house this week.

We had such a lovely weekend last weekend and started off the week feeling good, tired, but good. On Monday hubby had taken the day off from work to help me catch up with a few house jobs, (my pelvis isn’t helping me at the moment so I really appreciated it!), plus it was nice for him to have an extra day off after a busy weekend before going back in to work. My parents came and took Monkey to his usual Monday Rhyme Time session at the library and all seemed well.

Continue reading →