Eliza, one month

So Eliza is now a month old –  and what a month it’s been. The three of us celebrated this mini-milestone in style with cake and a few choruses of Happy Birthday.

Having a baby is everything everyone’s told you, and at the same time, nothing like it at all: it’s relentless, unpredictable, good, not so good, fantastic and a million other things at once. And I don’t think anything can really prepare you for what it’s actually like in the first days after bringing the baby home.

Here are a couple of things that really stood out for us from the past few weeks:

• People are very lovely; we’ve had so many messages, cards, presents for Eliza and visits from friends and relatives – thank you!
• There are so many stereotypes about new parents, but it is funny how quickly me and Alex reverted to them; obsession with sleep, lack of sleep, the various changes in nappy contents, and sleep…
• …and on that topic (see?) I’d always been very good at sleeping badly, but even that didn’t really prepare me for the after-effects of an exhausting overnight labour after days of not sleeping well in anticipation, and then a baby who wouldn’t sleep anywhere but on one of us for the first week, coupled with having to feed her every three hours (at one point I was so tired I couldn’t for the life of me figure out which way round my wedding and engagement rings went)
• Having people with new babies in common has been a life-saver; we were lucky to have a really good NCT group who we now see on a regular basis
• It’s a total new-mum cliché to think your baby is amazing, but Eliza really, really is (of course!). She’s so alert and responsive, and content – and I still can’t get over how much hair she has. She is changing so much and every day brings something new and exciting. Feeding her – even at 3am, 4am, 5am and so on – and knowing I’m responsible for her growing is complete and total joy