Baby Ashton - month one!

Wed 19th Waters broke (7:07am), no contractions. Walk into town (for fish ‘n’ chips at 1700) to encourage start of contractions. Realised those (five minutes apart) pre-contraction pains were in fact contractions – drove to hospital. Arrived at 19:15, Ash born 20:00 (7lbs 15ozs).

































Thurs 20th (word of the day: colostrum)
Fantastic, Ash sleeps through the night already (one small wake for feed, but otherwise two 4hr stretches).

A large and impressive bouquet of flowers arrives from Por-Por Ivy, Gung-Gung David, Uncle Paul and Aunty Boo. Ash has now received many more Birthday cards than I do – and I’ve had 37yrs worth of social networking and family merging under my belt!




Fri 21st (word of the day: meconium).
Nappy change times av. 45mins for two people.
First visit of community midwife (means we have to get out of bed today).














Last night was a baby body shock change reaction thing, tonight Ash feels hungry on the hour, or after two hours (his sleep cycle whizzes through all four stages in an hour).


Sat 22nd (word of the day: jaundice)
Jaundice is expected in newborns on the third day. The upside is it makes him sleepy and gives him a healthy photogenic glow. So long bilirubin goes down not up (within a week or so), it's not a problem (lungs are better at oxygen distribution than the placenta, there are a lot of excess red blood cells that need evacuating from a newborn – the liver goes wild with bilirubin to do this. Excess bilirubin equals yellow baby). Ash needs to see daylight and to drink a lot in order to flush things along (we wake him for a feed every two hours).















Sun 23rd Colostrum ends on day three. Breakfast, elevenses, lunch, tea, dinner, supper, midnight feast, early hours snack, dawn nosh – they’re now all fully on tap and on demand. Ash’s Winnie the Pooh’s went from meconium tar, to spinach green, to current Dijon mustard yellow (with seeds) – text book stuff (the sort of text books we now read).
Ash is a little shy - all this bowel talk.


















Mon 24th (word of the day: Guthrie)
The unresolved issue of unwitting golden baby showers at nappy time is resolved by Por-Por Ivy and Terry (towels). Our nappy changing abilities leap forward to 30mins, and can now even be accomplished by just one person.
A hairy lipped midwife came and pricked Ash’s heel for bloooood (Guthrie test for cystic fibrosis). She also weighed him (7lbs 7ozs – normal to loose weight from birth due to colostrum feeds).
Aunty Em and Even-more-fun-uncle-Ade come to visit bearing clothes and Chico the giraffe. (As 95% of all Ash’s belongings have come from Ade and Em – these extra gifts are unwarranted, but obviously appreciated).















Tues 25th A nice bouquet of flowers from Sam’s workplace – thank you very much!
New levels of sleepness nights. However much we comfort through jiggling, rocking, walking or patting – nothing works. He doesn’t like the Moses basket, the carry cot, the summer sleeper. The sweet relief of dawn at 4am means we’re back on two hour sleep rota!
The nice man from Tesco arrived with our on-line shopping today (for the first time). We’re very excited by this idea that all these groceries come to us – we may do this again.

Wed 26th A basket of flowering plants arrives from Grand Aunt/Uncle Caroline and Terry. Also arrived Ash’s week old anniversary and to celebrate, a bit of him falls off. It’s his cord stumpy bit (the book tells us this is good). We top ‘n’ tail him – fun for all the family, except for Ash ….. or for dad ……. or mum.
An unexpected gift arrives from Audrey – a good friend of Grandy Wendy - some natty blue dungarees and top, plus a bib. In Ash’s own words “thank you very much for your gifts – I’ll very much look forward to wearing them when I’m 3mnths old, and of course to spilling food into the bib later too”.

Thurs 27th His jaundice is going, what extra sleepiness this brought is also going. New levels still of sleepness nights – is he too hot, is he too cold, why is he constantly trying to whack himself in the face, why does he twitch just when he starts to look settled. Finally, after all the face slapping and twitching he nods off to sleep – but almost immediately remembers two hours have passed since food, and he’s very hungry!



















Fri 28th Grandmum Clark comes to visit (we still need an official title - hence the experimentation).
The issue of panicky nappy changes (change mat on bed with one essential ingredient always missing (out of cotton wool, warm water, new nappy, bin, cream, spare nappy (for when he decides to gift us with instalments))) is addressed with the completion of …. The Nappy Station. Changes can now be a solo effort and much closer to the target 5 minutes!

The Nappy Station!!












Sat 29th Granny C. is a discrete whirlwind of cleaning and sorting activity, taking time out whenever possible to sit with Ash so they can gaze at each other. Grandaunts Lorna and Morwena and Granduncle Rod come to visit. Aunty Morwena’s gifts of sleep suits are the only ones so far to fit Ash – fantastic. Lorna and Rod opted for a five piece set that’ll certainly make him the talk of the town.



















Sun 30th We know when he’s too cold (bottom lip shiver), too hot (face blotches and/or little pimples), needs a feed (not just rooting, but also his cry is cough waaah, cough waaaah). The breakthrough moment however – we now appreciate the concept of overtired and over stimulated. Late night walking, rocking, jiggling and swaying do nothing but stimulate him. They are replaced by calm and gentle singing (while holding his arms, so he doesn’t bash himself with twitches and flailing). Thirty minutes of repetitive Christmas carol singing from Sam brought sweet relief of sleep. The next time was twenty minutes, then just ten. This is this weeks seminal, eureka moment!

Mon 31st Gramps reluctantly catches the train back home – it’s been a lovely visit, a very relaxed and easy going introduction to each other.
Mummy Sam gets Ash to sleep just in time for community midwife to visit and wake him up. He’s now 8lbs 1ozs. He would have been more if he wasn’t burning calories keeping warm, using milk to stay hydrated from being too hot, being too free to move around when feeding – oh, and now that his jaundice has gone – we shouldn’t be waking him every two hours to feed him …. this midwife is a well intentioned Cruella De Ville. Ash is discharged from community midwife care.
Later that night Terry let us down and we accidentally let Ash wee all over his head (we found this guiltily amusing; Ash did not).

Tues 1st Suk-Por Annie sends through a big parcel of very fashionable clothes together with Pinkie the elephant. Ash is impatient for parents to dress him in these fine new clothes, so he dresses himself before getting some food from the fridge (oh no, it’s April 1st). A very big thank you to Suk-Por Annie!
We try a fun baby bath. It's apparently not fun for Ash.