Jack's new admirer

My sister and her daughter Ellen, who is just nine years old, visited us recently to see our new baby. It's amazing how kids are so obsessed by babies and probably girls more than boys. My niece Ellen was really taken by Jack and it was so sweet to see her with him and wanting to hold him etc... it was soo sweet and a really touching moment.

Bottle feeding our newborn baby Jack

There was cause for celebration in the Garner household the other day when the health visitor weighed Jack and he has been putting on some weight. Born at 6lb 12oz, Jack now weighs 7lb 8 oz. A good weight gain. He is being fed on breast and expressed milk via a bottle as well and occasional top-ups on formula. So all bases covered really. From what little we have learnt so far feeding is the key to him being happy and also keeping him quiet and content for longer periods of time. At the moment he is feeding every two to three hours, with the aim to get him to feed every three hours and sleep for an hour between feeds. It's hard work though as he doesn't always want to follow our plans. In the past few days he has wanted to feed almost constantly, so we hope that's him going through a growth spurt. Anyway we are healthily obsessed - I hope- by him putting on weight at the moment and I guess many first-time parents would feel the same.

At last a decent night's sleep

Just when we were getting at the end of our emotional tether last night, our little baby Jack actually had a reasonable night's sleep last night allowing his very tired parents to recover a little.

One thing that has been playing on our mind has been his belly button - while the navel cord clip has thankfully dropped off causing great celebration in the Garner household three days ago - where it has fallen off looks a little bit sore and is slightly pussy. The midwife told us over the phone that this was ok and that we should just keep it clean by washing it once a day with water that has been boiled. Anyway we still not happy with it, so hopefully the health visitor will be able to explain more, but as we haven't seen or heard anything from them yet, I will not be holding my breath on that one.

So hopefully I'll get a few tips about his belly button problem and post them here. At least the horrible navel clip has fallen off as this was causing Jack some discomfort with his nappies that had to be folded down so far so that they didn't rub on the clip. This also seemed to make them more prone to leak.

It's my first day back at work today. I felt a mixture of sadness leaving home today, but also strangely excited about a return to some sort of normailty.

Jack and his first walk.. well push

Another day and another sleepless night for the first-time dad .. Jack is defintely getting a bit better at sleeping, but we are still getting up every two to three hours a night. It's hard work and sometimes I wonder how many first-time parents have been driven to absolute despair trying to get their little one to settle. I'm about to go back to work after two weeks paterniity leave, which I think is probably about long enough. My wife probably doesn't agree, but she seems to be much more ready to cope all day without me being here now and I think I'll go stir crazy if I don't get back to work and activate my brain again. However, I'll probably miss Jack like crazy, in fact I know I will, but I don't think I could do the house huisband bit, in fact I wouldn't be very good at it either.

Before I go back to work we have been trying to get out and about with Jack as much as possible, so Charlie feels ready to go out by herself when I'm not around. This is a great idea, because it gives her confidence to do this alone and is great to get some fresh air, plus when you time it right, he seems to sleep like the proverbial baby. It's also worth it to discover the little hiccups you might face - for instance, we couldn't unfold our Quinnie pram and had to go online and download the instructions before we could figure it out. It couldn't have been simpler either - so sleep deprivation must fuddle the brain, although most would say I'm not the most practical in any case.

Here is the link to some responses to a question we posed on Yahoo answers - great responses to this little problem, which again was pretty obvious if only we had thought about it. Beware though if you have a little boy, not only do you have point the little winkle down, but watch out for him spraying you when you take off his nappy and a bit of cold air hits his little fella.

Week one and we're exhausted

I've been a first-time dad for 10 days now and Jack has been home for eight days. Both me and Charlotte (my wife) are absolutely exhausted, but just when you think it couldn't get any more tiring something good happens that gives you a lift. Jack had his best night sleep yet last night after we worked out some things we were doing that he clearly didn't like.

First - we were turning our light off in the bedroom during the night, but we think Jack doesn't like this. So we bought a little 15w bulb to go in one of our bedroom lights and left this on all night - if he needed changing there was no need for us to turn a light on and wake up Jack and ourselves. We had two wake ups last night, but they were fairly brief feeding and changing with Jack hardly waking each time.

Second - we were having problems with Jack's nappies leaking everytime he pees and waking him. We have tried various types of nappies - Pampas and Huggies and vaious sizes but no luck. What we weren't doin was pointing his winky down and so the wee wee was leaking out of the top and waking him all the time. See these responses on yahoo answers.

Third - we put him to bed properly, washed him, fed him, changed him and then burped him and that seemed to help him get off to sleep in a really calm way.