Well, we haven't killed her yet, so...

I've gone all 'hands over ears shouting "la la la I can't hear you la la la" again. A bit like I did at the end of my pregnancy. From lapping up the newborn advice to, frankly, being ungratefully deaf to it.

There's just so much of it about. And again, I solicit it half the time, with all my tweeting and blogging about Lady P. But so much of the advice just seems impossible to follow. Especially the stuff in those goddamn baby books.

The only advice I like are recommendations along the lines of: 'I'd just go with the flow if I were you, you won't kill her' (though as we know, it'd be awfully easy to). I've gone from consulting every baby book available and constantly googling all Lady P's movements and 'symptons' to a rather more laissez faire approach. We recently switched formula, for Lady P's late night top-up feed, based on the fact our nearest supermarket didn't have the brand I had so carefully researched. It's safe to say we're relaxing a little bit here.

I'll leave you with a great example of a piece of baby care advice I am happy to ignore:

A separate baby kettle - because life isn't complicated enough!

Transatlantic Nursery Chat

Lucky little Lady P is going to be bilingual from the start as we are immersing her in two languages: English and American.

TLOML changes her diaper when she's pooped, and sticks a pacifier in her mouth when she's hollering. And I, by contrast, put a clean nappy on after she's done a poo, and give her a dummy when she's skriking.

Oh, hang on a second, that makes three languages: Northern English. Skriking is a Northern word for screaming or crying. Along with gip, which means sick (as in, 'Oh little Lady P, are you gipping on my shoulder?'), it's become a word I use much more frequently now we have a wild, screaming, vomiting creature living amongst us at Fox Corner.

For what it's worth I prefer the English words in the main. They are somehow more baby-friendly. 'Posset' sounds so much more pleasant than 'spit up'. 'Muslin' has an innocence to it, whereas that 'burp cloth' just sounds bawdy. 'Diaper' and 'pacifier' sound like clinical equipment, whereas 'nappy' and 'dummy' are straight from a nursery. And 'receiving blanket' sounds like something that might be used in a religious ceremony, perhaps a baby sacrifice event - till you learn it's just a lovely swaddle cloth. The only exception, I think, is 'poop', which is much cuter than dirty smelly 'poo'.

We use these Transatlantic alternatives interchangeably - which is great for the development of Lady P's cerebral cortex. She'll grow up learning there is more than one word for most objects, and thus grasp the concept of language very early on.

But there is one word I want to stick to, to the exclusion of all other (American) alternatives: I'm pushing hard to be called mummy, and not mommy or mom. It's the only name I think a mother should have, and I'll be disproportionately upset if I don't hear it on her lips one day. So I'll keep saying it to her, over and over, and just hope she's listening.

Are you listening, Lady P?

Eating the elephant

My wise and glamorous entrepreneurial friend tells me that the best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. Not that she eats a lot of elephants, so far as I know. But she often tackles large and apparently unmanageable tasks, and does so by breaking them down into bite size chunks.

I have decided to take the same approach to raising Lady P.

By raising, I mean creating a baby who settles for a nap without fuss, isn't dependent on a dummy, doesn't need to sleep in our bed every night, and has a reasonably predictable eating and sleeping schedule. (Later we'll be creating a toddler with a nice attitude, and a child with good manners, but let's cross one bridge at a time).

As you can tell, I have set quite a high standard for her, and for us. I was just determined not to get into bad habits, that's all. I was always a bit sniffy about people whose 2 year olds still use dummies, or can't go to sleep without having their hand held. I figure you have to nip that stuff in the bud.

But maybe 3 weeks old is a bit early to be so strict. After all, it's a lot to handle, being born and existing in a world you didn't even know was out there. I feel for her. No wonder she needs rocking to sleep sometimes. And we're both learning the basics here, like how to feed effectively. So if she's wailing for food in the middle of what I thought would be a good long nap, I just need to take that on the chin and provide the boob she demands.

So as I said, it's like eating an elephant. One bite at a time.

Right now I'm focussed on learning how to get her to feed properly, frequently and till she's satisfied. Once we've got that sorted we might start to think about getting her to sleep without resorting to a buggy ride or curling up together (not that I don't like curling up with her, it's just, well, like I said, bad habits die hard). And one day we'll get rid of that dummy.

For now, we're savouring the first bite of elephant. It's a little chewy, but still very satisfying.

101 ways to kill your baby

Wow. I thought pregnancy was a bit of a minefield: all those risks to which you might expose your unborn child.  But compared to the mild frisson I experienced when eating soft cheese or taking a hot bath, caring for the little mite now she is actually born is a terrifying white knuckle ride.

First there's the ever present danger of incorrect climate. Babies are rubbish at managing their own body temperature, which is why the John Lewis baby department - with its many blankets of different weaves - was invented. She must not be too cold, or she'll perish. Too hot, and she'll get too, well, hot. And too cosy and she will sleep herself to death. Given the recent weather, swinging from balmy spring day to frosty grey dampness, maintaining an even temperature in a drafty room is no mean feat. So we have a baby monitor that tells us if the room is too hot or too cold. It is always too hot or too cold. We are constantly running in there and turning radiators up or down, removing blankets, opening windows, and generally thwarting Lady P's lame attempts to sleep.

And sleeping is important. Overtiredness can lead to all sorts of other problems, and I don't just mean that it prevents us having a peaceful G&T. The best way to get her back to sleep is to cuddle her into submission. But that is the path to co-sleeping... and the risk of squashing her to death. We could swaddle her, as many people recommend, but apparently swaddling stifles the Moro reflex and puts them at risk of falling into too deep a sleep (and therefore cot death).

Once she's asleep, but not too deeply, and at the right temperature, you'd think we could relax. Wrong. We have to worry about flat head syndrome, and the potential for brain damage (or a weird shaped head, meaning she can never get a buzz cut. Hmm.). To avoid the flat head thing we need her sometimes to sleep on her side, or with a pillow - and therein lurks a suffocation risk.

Also, too much sleeping and not enough eating will make her floppy and jaundiced, apparently. So, on the rare occasion she is knocking out ZZZs for more than 3 or 4 hour,  I need to wake her for a feed.

You can't do wrong for doing right, as they say Up North.

Breaking all the rules: chomping on a suffocation device while lying  on a pillow with a loose blanket

After my post on advice I was given some excellent advice from our favourite New Yorker's wise sister - 'never try to make a happy baby happier'. With every day that goes by I see more clearly the value in this advice. She is so often screaming that when she isn't, we don't want to disturb the fragile peace.
So if Lady P is perfectly happy napping with a pillow in a cold room, or snuggled into our bed a little warmer than recommended, well, we let her. With frayed nerves, and watchful eyes, but still, we let her.

After all, what doesn't kill us makes us stronger.

Labour: just like building your dream house

One of my favourite British TV shows, which I missed the most when we were in the US, is Grand Designs. (Gratifyingly it has become one of TLOML's favourites too.) Grand Designs follows interesting home builds - unusual restorations, eco-friendly new builds, and so on.

A Grand Design house (image pilfered from Channel 4)

Most weeks the people building their dream home liken it to labour. As in 'this house is our baby and building it is like giving birth.'

I have a new perspective on any use of birth as a metaphor. I now know that nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, is anything like giving birth. Giving birth alone is like giving birth, and it is like nothing else.

Having said that, I noted a couple of interesting parallels with the dream-home building process.

1. Naive optimism
The happy fools who are turning their grand designs into a home are always unrealistically optimistic. Kevin McCloud, the presenter, scoffs at their budget estimates and their idea of a reasonable timeframe. He is always right: in a dozen series I've never seen a home built on budget, or on time.

And yet the owners always think the impossible can be done, no contingency will be required, and the build will be weatherproof before winter. Just like I thought, when we arrived at the birth centre at 4pm, that I was very far along and would doubtless be delivering Lady P in an hour or so. (She arrived 8 hurt-y hours later) The same kind of naive optimism that lead me to ask the midwife, after a couple of pushes, 'do you think she'll be born on the next push?' (In the event I had about an hour of pushing ahead of me.)

2. Foolish pride
Often the owners decide to despatch with specialist support from professionals like project managers, quantity surveyors and even architects. And even when the windows arrive on site completely the wrong size, or the entire building team quits en masse, and Kevin McCloud raises his eyebrows and says 'Are you sure you can manage this build without help?' the foolhardy owners are too proud to admit defeat and hire in the experts.

Similarly, even when it became apparent that I had many hours of labour ahead of me, and the pain was hugely more than I had anticipated (for who could anticipate such pain?!), I bit my lip, banished thoughts of an epidural, and said to TLOML 'this pain is totally manageable'. Pure pride.

For what it's worth, I'm glad my optimism and pride won the day. Lady P was so alert, and calm, swimming up to meet us, and I felt pretty much 100% within a day or two of giving birth. So taking the natural (optimistic, prideful) path paid out for me. Still, if I'd know beforehand quite how much it would hurt and for how long, I wouldn't have been quite so bullish.

I'm like those chumps at the end of the Grand Designs episode, sitting in their dream home, laughing at the fact they went £100k over budget and they nearly had a nervous breakdown in the process, saying 'If I did it over again, I would do it just the same.'

They usually go on to add 'I'm not sure that I would do it again though.' That's where we differ... two weeks in and we're already confident we'll be doing this whole birth and newborn thing again some day. Only next time, I'll know how much pain to expect.

Good advice

I'm all ears again. Hoovering up advice like the rookie mum that I am.

So far my favourite two pieces of advice for surviving the first few weeks after birth are these:

1. Never stand when you could be sitting, and never be awake when you could be asleep.
Wise words indeed from the Wondertwin. It's true what they say about that whole giving birth and caring for a newborn baby: it really is rather tiring.

2. Never cancel your day's plans just because you had a bad night.
So if I planned to have a coffee with a friend, even if my sleep was decimated the night before, I should still make the effort to go. I may be grumpy, and look like crap. But at least I'll get out and about, which is a lot better than being grumpy and looking like crap and stuck in the flat feeling sorry for myself. My sister, who had twins and a c-section to contend with, gave me this advice. She knows a little something about sleep deprivation. So if she can make this philosophy work (not that I'm being competitive....) then I shall certainly try to do the same.

What's the best - or the worst - piece of advice you've heard, for dealing with life-after-birth?

Nobody talks about Day Four

One does, as an expectant mum, hear a lot about how magical the early days with a newborn are. One also hears a lot about how challenging this time can be. (Of course, if you're an optimist you choose to hear the magical stuff louder than the challenging stuff.) 'The early days' or 'those first few weeks' are described as if they are one long contiuum of experience.

Not so. On Day Four, everything changes. There are lots of changes, some small and some significant. The pain of Day Four is that this is the day they all collide.

Even the poppers on a babygro are hard work on Day Four

Here's what happened to me:

1. The endorphins wore off. That post-birth haze of joy had probably been receding for days. By Day Four it had been depleted altogether.
2. Some other bad hormones come in and replaced the endorphins. Let's call them 'the crying hormones,' for lack of the scientific name.
3. The sense of marvel reduced. Just only a tiny amount, but still. Gazing in wonder at the incredible creature we have produced was a great pastime for hours and hours at first, but that could only last so long. We still love her to a terrifying degree, but the frequency with which we say 'oh my god look at her little mouth!' or 'isn't she beautiful' did lessen. On each day before, we had taken at least a dozen photos. On Day Four, not a single photo was taken.
4. The sleep deprivation kicked in. I can cope with two or three night's poor sleep on the trot. By Day Four my nerves were wearing rather thin.
5. The outfits run out. We had enough sweet, co-ordinated outfits to take us through the first few days, but the laundry could not be put off forever. Although we did consider just dressing her in a towel, it's not really a good look.
6. The friends who have been keeping their distance for a couple of days, to give us space, start a-calling and a-wanting to visit.
7. Last but absolutely by no means least, my milk, as they say, 'came in'. On top of all these other niggles and strains, suddenly instead of breasts I had enormous boulders. And Lady P, used to sipping a little colostrum with ease, suddenly was expected to suck a rock the size of a watermelon. She was furious. Absolutely, blood-curdlingly, furious. I was, frankly, scared of her.

I survived*. Most people do, it seems. Thanks to the Breastfeeding Hotline, Aptamil (contrary to the Breastfeeding Hotline's advice, but never mind that), a good chat with some friends, and a long hot bath (enabled by the doping effect Aptamil had on Lady P). And I chatted to some friends, who had survived this so-called magical time and kept their baby alive since then too.

And that's when I realised... everyone goes hits the same massive bump in the road. Some people hit it three days in, others more like five, but everyone hits it. And hard.

And yet no-one tells you to expect it. Maybe it's like labour, and you forget the specifics - which is why I wanted to write this post. It is my legacy to any expectant mums. Preparation is key. If I'd know Day Four was coming, I'd have stocked up on chocolate and made sure I knew how that complicated breast pump worked in advance.

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*In fact, Day Four now seems like a distant memory. Thanks to some good team work with TLOML, the establishment of the semblance of a routine, and a fair amount of faffing around with expressing and bottle feeding, we are now feeling a little more in control and a whole lot happier. I'm sure we'll hit some more bumps in the road ahead, but we're a lot more able to cope now. And back to taking dozens of photos every day.

7lbs 1oz, since you ask

She's here! The most delightful baby imaginable.

Lady P

She arrived late on Saturday, and I'd love to tell you about the labour and birth in graphic detail. I could also fill you in on her temperament, her long legs, and whether she is hairy or not (she is). And I'd be happy to share the details of our care in hospital, how that birth plan worked out for us, and whether my pedicure survived (it didn't).

But I know what you're going to ask. It's the first thing everyone wants to know: 'What does she weigh?'

It's a strange question, really. I mean, assuming she's not massively premature or hugely oversized. She's a baby. She weighs something between 6lbs and 8lbs. You know, the kind of thing babies usually weigh. The details are irrelevant. If someone says to you 'I met this great guy', you don't immediately ask 'how much does he weigh?' Nor, on finding out you are going to have a new boss, do you ask 'how many stone?' So what's with the baby weight obsession?


Unfortunately for our interested family and friends, TLOML and I are not big birth weight watchers. And the Whittington  Birth Centre vibe is all about letting you take your time, after delivery, to marvel in your new baby and bond as a family. So they didn't weigh her for at least an hour after she was born. Meanwhile we used that special bonding time, obviously, to call our mums and text our nearest and dearest. (I would like to point out I did restrain from tweeting at least.) Everyone we told asked us the same thing.

'What does she weigh?'

We didn't know. We knew she was alert yet chilled out, incredibly beautiful, and had great big feet. We were immediately certain of her future as an Olympic gold medal-winning swimming supermodel. But we did not know her weight.

Well, we do now. Our lovely little Lady P was 7lbs 1oz at birth. A fact we have now started to include in all birth-related communications.

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PS We're calling her Lady P because she has a certain elegance that suggests an aristocratic bearing. Again, something else we could have told you long before we knew her weight.