statement of intent

I've now been a mother (what an odd thought) for 16 days. It's been a roller coaster - some days I seem to more or less understand what needs doing, and other days it all seems impossibly, overwhelmingly hard.

One of the things I keep hearing from everyone is how quickly babies grow, and change radically - mostly in the context of 'things get easier, we promise'. But I got through two weeks of having this baby around and it didn't seem to me like anything was changing or getting easier, at all. Still not sure about the 'easier' but I am starting to spot some changes and development, I think.

Meanwhile, I've been looking for a use for this journal.

So my plan is to post here, daily if I can manage it, about life with Sophie. I'm hoping that having this record will let me see how things have changed, and maybe even reassure myself that things were a lot harder before.

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So what about today then? Mike and I went for Christmas pizza at the house of some friends here, and brought Sophie in the sling. I don't really know how she'd been for the earlier part of the day, as I was taking advantage of the presence of my mother and the awakeness of Mike to get some sorely needed sleep. She was a little fretful before going into the sling, but slept all the way there; she had a couple of good crying fits once there but had a decent sleep while swaddled in her blanket. It helped that the friends in question had a bedroom with a Squeezebox that can produce the same white noise we use to lull her to sleep at home.

Some random notes:

• She was very hungry today. She had less milk yesterday than usual, by about 50mL, but was sucking it down today.


• Over the past couple of days she has been spending a lot of time with eyes open, looking around her. This time last night she was kind of wired after her small-hours feed, and I was starting to crash, so I lay down on the sofa and laid her down facing me and she just spent some curious minutes staring at my face and moving her little hands in that general direction, making some burbling noises, and I thought simultaneously 'This is nice' and 'My god, my baby is some sort of alien life form directly out of Hollywood.' (I mean, I did know that fetuses and babies are a common model for sci-fi space aliens, but watching these huge eyes in this big head make these little alien movements really brings that fact crashing home.)


• She was awfully fretful at times this evening. She has this yowly scream that is heart-rending to hear, and we heard it a few times. A week ago I associated it exclusively with times when she was having to come to terms with having a digestive system, but tonight it seemed to mean she was hungry. Much sooner than we'd usually expect. I guess she's a growing girl, and I really hope my milk can keep up.


• Tonight after her last evening feed, we had her swaddled and she was restless (and awake) in her Moses basket, so I just picked her up and laid her next to me on the bed, and then she was quiet and sleeping nicely.