Saved - 'It's a Boy!' balloon

J-cub was born at 8.34pm on a Tuesday evening. My parents live in Devon and were waiting from an announcement from us before they came to visit. After I'd spent an equally awful and lovely 2.5 hours being stitched up and having skin-to-skin with this new bundle of burning redness who'd appeared out of nowhere, I rang them to share the news (yes, apparently you can use mobile phones in hospitals now). I don't really remember what was said, as I was still pretty out of it and into my 37th hour of no sleep, but I do remember that they agreed to ring in the morning and arrange a visit.

A brief phonecall at 7.30am (really, Mum?) set them on the road and they were with us by visiting hours around lunchtime. They came with a massive vase of flowers, a lovely card, a soft blue teddy (who still sleeps with J-cub today) and the obligatory announcement balloon.

By the time we were finally allowed to leave hospital 4 days later, we had amassed a ridiculous amount of Stuff. I don't think I've mentioned this before, but Jamie doesn't drive, so it all had to be bundled into a cab along with our precious bundle of joy. Bless the cab driver, he read the instruction book and figured out how to safely strap the carseat in (one of the things from my 'To Do' list which I'd never got round to doing) and helped us to pack all our nonsense into the cab outside the hospital and into the house when we got home.

The balloon of course came with us (to the great joy of Tilly and Maeby), and when it withered and died, I packed it away into J-cub's baby box.

Tilly and Maeby have been experiencing joy of a different kind this afternoon, as they've unearthed another frog. Honestly, I have no idea where they come from. None of our neighbours have ponds and we have 6 feet high solid fences all the way round. Today's visitor was massive, much bigger than his tiny counterpart from last week who squeaked like a mouse. The more grown-up vocalisation of today sounded just like the air being squeezed out of a balloon. Tilly and Maeby are totally baffled by him, and have been following him slowly around the patio all afternoon. I feel like I should move him to a place of safety, but don't know what the right thing is to do. If I put him near the village pond, what if it's not his home? I worry he might get confused or eaten by a duck. Do ducks eat frogs? It seems like the sort of thing they would do...

Anyway, he's very good at scaring the cats off with his balloonesque noises, and hopping out of their reach when they get too close. I'm sure he can look after himself. Feel free to set me straight thought, frog-experts, if there's something I could do to rescue him.

Saved - Jacob's first vest

When I was pregnant and starting to get together all of J-cub's bits and bobs, everything I read warned against getting too many newborn-sized clothes. I knew I was big, and I knew J-cub would be big, so I got all his clothes in 0-3 month or above sizes.

My mum kindly put together some newborn stuff for the bump's Christmas present - some cardigans, mitts and booties she'd knitted in yellow and green ("Just in case they were wrong"), and a set of 3 newborn-sized vests in white, pale yellow and pale green. They were the tiniest, most gorgeous things I'd ever seen. The cotton was so soft, and each one had a tiny bird, bunny or bear embroidered on the front with a little fabric badge saying "Hello World".

I totally fell in love with them, although I doubted the bump would fit in them, as all my health professionals' kept tripping out the line "Oooh, he's going to be a good size, isn't he?" which had me convinced I was incubating some kind of giant baby (I had dreams where he was born with a full head of hair, the ability to walk and saying "Hello Mummy!"). I do remember putting the vests in the top of the 'baby' section in my hospital bag, and telling Jamie that if I ended up out of it and unable to direct him, he had to make sure the baby was dressed in one of the vests.

When he was born, J-cub weighed a respectable 8lb12oz, but even so the newborn vests swamped him. Here's a photo at a day or two old, demonstrating quite how baggy it was then. His newborn going-home pramsuit, the only other thing we'd bought in that size, was so ridiculously huge that his legs wouldn't reach anywhere near the leg holes, and his arms only came about half-way down the arm holes. We gave up, dressed him in a vest and sleepsuit, and tucked him into his carseat with a pile of blankets on top of him.

When the first week or so settled down we realised that 3 vests barely last a day with a newborn, so we had to make an emergency trip to Tesco for some cheap packs of vests and sleepsuits to see us through. Next time around, I'll hopefully be set for this kind of stuff, as whether the next one is a boy or a girl, they can wear all of J-cub's stuff again. And I won't bother with clothes, it's far easier (and warmer and cwtchier) to keep a newborn in a vest and sleepsuit (and cardi, if necessary) and dispense with outfits totally. There's plenty of time to waste your money on clothes when they're older, and the novelty of teeny-tiny clothes soon wears off.

My not-so-tiny baby stayed in newborn clothes until 5 weeks old, at which point he decided to give up on adhering to stringent sizing guides and sped through the sizes, so much so that he was in 12-18 month sizes at 7 months old, and 18-24 months at 10 months old. Thankfully, he's slowed down now, and at nearly 16 months he's still in 18-24 months with room to spare. Oh except for the few shorts and t-shirts we've got in 2-3 years. At 16 months. They don't tell you about the possibility of this happening when you're budgeting for a baby.

I have in fact saved most of J-cub's clothes, only ebaying those things he never got round to wearing. But just his teeny-tiny white vest with the bird on the front made it into his baby box.

Saved

I neglected to check the theme from NaBloPoMo for this month, so I'm a day late in starting. I enjoyed my Look Up theme so much, and I really loved posting every day but I need a project like this to make me do it.

After racking my brains for a while about what I have saved that I could write about, I've decided that I'll document some of the things in Jacob's baby box, as I'm a nightmare for sentimentality and keeping far too many things, but I think in his case I am fully justified. I just pity any future children who'll be lucky if I can even remember where their birth certificate is.

So here it is, Jacob's baby box, full of the things I've saved for him over the last 16 months. I also have a large spiral bound plain book in the same design, which is completely empty. It was supposed to be a baby book, but I got given a proper baby book and used that instead. Maybe this month will prompt me to rectify that and actually get some photos and memories stuck in and written down.

Summer Solstice

J-cub is technically 2 years old today (I'll be delicate and leave you to figure that one out). I can hardly believe that 2 years ago I had absolutely no idea that my life was about to change so massively. And yet I can't remember a time when he wasn't a part of me.

This week I want to talk a bit about breastfeeding, as it's National Breastfeeding Awareness week. I'll try and write some longer posts over the next few days, but I've had a long day at work today and have a stressful day tomorrow so I'll keep this short.

The photo below was taken during our first breastfeed in public. J-cub was just under 4 weeks old, and we went to the Civic Centre to register his birth, then had a long (and far too ambitious, I was in tons of pain) walk round the Marina to a cafe where we stopped for chips. I was very nervous about feeding in public, and spent ages getting him latched on and making sure I was covered up, but barely anyone glanced at us, except for an elderly lady who gave us an encouraging smile.

It was a big breakthrough for my confidence, and I remember excitedly texting my mum afterwards, who was very proud. And it was a lovely day, our first proper trip out as a family, and it felt wonderful.

Happy Father's Day

Whoops - somehow another 2 weeks have sped by since my last post. I'm going to try and do better and post every day for the next week.

Today I just want to say a very Happy Father's Day to Jamie, who is, without doubt, the best father J-cub could ever wish for.

I don't really remember last year's Father's Day, and I hardly recognise this tiny neckless-wonder, who would have been about 3 months old:

A year on, he's all grown up, and just about recovered from a nasty ear infection he had last week which saw his temperature rocket to 40.7 degrees C. Today is the first day he's been back to his normal self (although still refusing to eat), and we've had a lovely day of playing and chatting and cuddling.
More updates soon.

Memories

My parents are visiting this weekend, so I haven't had time for thinking about blogging, and it would be hard to explain the taking of Look Up photos since they don't know about this blog, and I'd kind of like to keep it that way.

Therefore, I'm once again resorting to the archives. These photos are from a walk we took when J-cub was teeny-tiny, and from when we didn't know any better and were still using the BabyBjorn carrier (with lots of resulting painful necks and backs).

It was springtime, and most of last Spring passed by in a haze of sleep-deprivation and gradually-building depression. It was Winter when I went into labour, and I barely noticed Spring appearing as I couldn't walk for ages and spent most of the time indoors with the blinds pulled shut (having your boobs out 24/7 will do that to you). On the occasional day that I did venture outside, like in these photos, I was pretty much blinded by the sunlight and amazed at the new green leaves appearing everywhere.

On this occasion, we went for a walk through the woods in the brilliant sunshine, with J-cub sleeping happily all the way. In those days, he'd fall asleep the moment he was put in the sling, it was lovely. There are several attempts at taking a photo of the three of us together, and I love the one above. I'm sad that I don't remember so much of last year, and that what I do remember is triggered by photographs. I'm glad I have the photos or I'd have no memories at all, but it would just be nice if my brain hadn't shut down to such an extent that I've blanked everything out.

In this set of photos, there are several of Jamie looking up at a tree. I don't remember why, but I'm sure he had a good reason at the time.