Amber Mary

 I can't believe that our baby girl is 10 days old already!  The last week has gone very fast, in a whirl of milk, nappies, snuggles and hospital!

Amber was born on Thursday 21st January 2021 at 2.25pm, weighing 7lbs 15oz.  10 days before her due date.  I'd been in labour Tuesday 8pm, when I started having contractions.  We headed to hospital at about 3am on Thursday morning, and just less than 12 hours later, Amber was with us.  I'll spare you all the gory details, but I found labour very hard work!

We stayed in hospital for 2 nights after Amber was born, so that she could be monitored for withdrawal from my epilepsy medication.  The first night, after Matt had gone home for the night, I stayed up, just staring at my perfect baby girl.  She's so beautiful, I just can't believe she's ours and so perfect and scrumptious.  She's got loads of blonde hair that sticks up like mine did when I was born.  I'm not sure if it is curly like Matt's or straight like mine yet.  She's definitely got blue eyes, but we're not sure what shade yet.  She's got Matt's nose, and my ears and ear lobes.  She's got tiny wrinkly hands and feet, and very tickly feet.  She has a big bruise/bump on her head from the position she was in inside me, but it seems to be going down and not bothering her at all.

We went to the Broadlands Birth Centre to have her weighed on Monday and she had lost 14% of her birth weight.  It's normal to lose up to 10%.  We got sent immediately back to Southampton hospital and it was really worrying and stressful.  We ended up staying in for another two nights, but our Covid tests took 24 hours to come back for some reason, so I was in the isolation ward for that time and Matt was just waiting to come into hospital.  He ended up bringing a bag of stuff for me, since we had come into hospital with nothing but the clothes we were wearing!  He sat in the coffee shop downstairs doing year 9 parents evening, and then was finally allowed upstairs at about 7pm on Tuesday.  Amber put on 7oz in those two days, which is loads.  The poor little thing must have been so hungry!

Amber has been doing much better since then.  She's feeding really well from the milk I am now expressing.  She's quite a thirsty little thing, and it's nice to know exactly how much she's getting.  Plus this way, Matt can do some of the night feeding, which helps me get some sleep.

She met her Grandpa and Nana for the first time on the 24th January.  They are in our support bubble, so we should be able to see lots of them.  I think they are quite smitten with our gorgeous girl.

She has changed so much already in the past 10 days.  She looks very different in terms of her head shape and is generally less squishy than when she first arrived.  Her touch of jaundice has gone and she is gaining a good amount of weight.  My midwife came to visit on Friday, which was lovely.  i'm so glad I got to see her again.  She was such a source of calm during the entire pregnancy, so I'm glad she got to meet Amber.

We're very tired, but we're also very in love, so it makes the sleepless nights totally worth it.  I cant believe that she is finally here after waiting for those long long 9 months.  I really didn't enjoy the experience of being pregnant!  Amber is so perfect though and we just love her so much.  We feel very lucky to have her.

Anyway, here are some photos of our gorgeous girl...

Cuddly Cats

The last couple of weeks have been all about Matt getting to grips with online teaching.  To be fair, he didn't need much practice.  He's been teaching online on and off for pretty much the last year, so really knows what he's doing.

Meanwhile, as he's taken over downstairs, I've taken over the armchair in the bedroom and working on various crafting projects.  Then, every afternoon at about 3pm, Snowball climbs onto my lap, sits on my bump and starts purring before going to sleep for an hour.  I just sit there and stroke him, while listening to my audio book.  Purring is probably my favourite noise in the whole world, so I'm more than happy to sit and have a cuddle, even if it means having to put down my crochet or cross stitch for a while.

Matt and I have been trying to get out for a walk at least every other day, even if the weather has been terrible,  One day we went down onto Barton beach and it was so foggy, the Isle of Wight had completely disappeared!  There were actually people swimming in the sea that day.  It was -1 degrees and they were swimming in the sea!  Madness!

We've had some lovely sunshiney days too, but to be honest, we're now just a bit fed up of waiting for the baby to arrive and wish it would hurry up.  I'm 38 weeks today and the thought of still potentially having another 2 weeks to go being this uncomfortable, is quite awful.  Baby needs to get a move on!  We're so ready to meet him or her!

 

Happy New Year 2021!

Happy 2021!  And what a beautiful one it has been so far in the New Forest.  We've had a couple of walks in the forest that have been stunning.  We went for a walk on New Years Day with Mum and Dad.  It turned out to be rather further than we thought and I needed several hours of Snowball napping when we got home, but it was so icy and pretty, it was worth it!

We had a walk on Wilverley plain today with one of Matt's work colleagues, who has been isolating for quite some time and was in need of a bit of company.  I enjoyed chatting to someone new.  It feels strange not heading back to work tomorrow, but i'm also very glad i'm not, after everything that is happening with Covid and schools at the moment.  Matt has been cleared to not go into school until after the baby arrives, which is great, and a huge weight from our minds.

This is us welcoming in 2021 at about 8pm, right before I headed off to bed!  The fireworks woke me up at midnight, but I knew there was no way I was going to be able to stay awake that long!

We've got an exciting year ahead of us.  I just want the baby to hurry up now as I've been having false labour pains for over a week and I feel so uncomfortable all the time.  Still, making the most of things being quiet for the time being by doing some crafting.