Playing Happy Families

Sorry it's taken me so long to post on here, but I'm sure you can appreciate I don't have much free time now with a baby to look after! This won't be a long post - my brain is running on emergency power and there's not much of that left!

Francis has been home for a week now and, for the most part, things are going well. We've had a few problems getting him to sleep at night (Thursday night I had only 2 hours sleep), but that seems to be improving. He's now a dab hand at breastfeeding and feeds around every three hours. I was a bit worried that he would struggle with this as, before he left hospital, he was still having a few problems latching on, but now it's really easy. It's great not having to worry about bottles and formula - especially at 3am when he's screaming to be fed!

On Thursday it was Graeme's birthday so we decided to venture out with Francis for the first time. It was a bit of a military operation getting organised and, just when we were about to leave, Francis decided he wanted his dinner! After that minor delay, we eventually arrived at Speke Retail Park which was thankfully not too busy. It was a weird experience pushing a pram around for the first time. I was half-expecting some random woman to come racing after me, asking why I'd nicked her baby. It's going to take a while for it to sink in that I'm actually a mum now. We had a lovely, stress-free wander around the shops buying a few bits and pieces for Francis and some ornaments for our newly-decorated living room. We also learned a valuable lesson in parenting while shopping in Mamas and Papas after Francis caused a small explosion in his nappy. ALWAYS take spare baby clothes with you - baby poop gets EVERYWHERE.

Other than that, there's not a geat deal to report. We've both discovered we can function quite well on surprisingly little sleep (although 2 hours is pushing it slightly). We've bathed Francis a couple of times with mixed results - sometimes he seems to enjoy it, other times he screams blue murder. He'd lost a little bit of weight at his last check-up on Friday (not sure how - he feeds like a gannet), but he's getting weighed again tomorrow so hopefully it will be good news.

I'm off to catch 40 winks (literally) before Francis wakes for his next feed. Oh, too late.

Lisa xxx