Happy 10 weeks birthday!!

Sorry it’s been a bit slack on the postings front, but we've been a tad pre-occupied as you might imagine. You may notice that we've changed the name of our blog to 'Little Monster'. This was the prototype name we gave our little boy as we steered our way through the initial weeks of life with our new baby son. Also, you'd be surprised how many people arrived at our site by typing the words "first timer" into a search engine.

To the sum the past 10 weeks up in a phrase, 'roller-coaster' would be it. These were the words that the chap in the labour ward next to us uttered to me as he emerged from the labour suit after 20 hours of blood, sweat, tears (and that was just him!) with a baby girl. We were just entering the ward at the time, and had no idea what to expect. In hindsight, this summed it up perfectly.

The labour was intense. It started around 2am on the morning of Saturday the 13th August. This is possibly the worst time for labour to start as you will generally miss most of a valuable nights sleep. After the waters broke, we called the labour suite and were told to go straight in. To cut a long, and particularly painful story, short - 28 hours, back to back baby, 8lbs 5oz, epidural, theatre-birth, lots of tears, hotel rooms in city hospital, nottingham (the way forward), fabulous support from family later - we emerged with our little son.

Without wanting to use every cliché in the book, it was the most amazing experience I’ve ever been through - and 10 weeks later, I cannot believe how far we have come. Not only for the fact that we are we now sporting a growing baby (13lbs 5oz) who interacts, grins and talks to you like you wouldn’t believe. But we've been through an amazing adventure as a new family. We realised just how many amazing people we know - who have given us great support and kind words. We have been overcome by just how extraordinary our immediate families are - without whom we simply wouldn’t have coped. We discovered that breast-feeding, although fabulous for the baby, without the right support (which doesn’t always come from the midwife) is extremely testing. We learned that our baby loves to wait till their nappy is off before giving you a 'present'. We learned that you need to be disciplined with your baby, even at this young age, in order to establish any sort of "routine" and regain some sort normality. I’ve learned how amazing a mothers love and bond for her child is. We discovered that everybody has an opinion (which is normally different from yours) on how you should raise your child. And I’ve personally learned that interrupted sleep every 2hours can occasionally make you hallucinate.

They say a picture tells a thousand stories, so after a photo shoot in his bouncer, we decided to share these. Here’s to the past 10 weeks: