6 weeks, 35 days, 1008 beautiful hours.

6 weeks! It has been 6 weeks since my little man graced us with his presence. It has been the fastest and most amazing 6 weeks of my life! It is just unbelievable how quickly these little people slot so perfectly in to our lives and you can’t really remember a time without them. Have I mentioned I LOVE being a Mum?

My little man is just divine. I can and do spend hours just staring at him and wondering how my husband and I made something so perfect. He’s starting to smile now. Big, gummy grins that melt our hearts. He is overall a serious and thoughtful baby. He doesn’t smile a lot, but you can really see his brain ticking over most of the time. But when he does smile, it’s beautiful. And boy does he look JUST like my husband when he does smile!

His eyes look brown to me. Not surprised as my husband has dark brown eyes. My grey eyes and fair hair never really stood a chance. But you never know I guess. His hair (and there is a lot of it) is a medium brown and he seems to be getting more every day.

At our last weigh in when he was almost 5 weeks, he weighed 4.7kg (10.5lb) and measured 57cm. He is in the 93^rd percentile for height and 84^th for weight. He’s developing some chub in all the right places. His double chin seriously makes me melt. It’s so funny how certain features (double chin, receding hairline, dimply thighs etc.) are all considered ‘undesirable’ traits in adults, but in babies they are just drop dead gorgeous!

J loves tummy time and is holding his head up for about 30 seconds at a time before it goes bobbing back down again. His favourite place to sleep is on Mum or Dad’s chest. And I’ll be honest, he sleeps there a lot. Screw the bad habits that everyone says we’re creating.

His sleeping pattern is fairly inconsistent. Last week we had numerous five and six hour stretches which were lovely. Other nights he is up every three hours. I’m feeding on demand, none of this routine business. So I’m not complaining about those night feeds. I know one day in the too near future, he won’t need me like he does now. So for now, I enjoy it!

J’s favourite thing to do is stare at himself in the mirror and pull faces. And stick his tongue out at himself. He also LOVES his Fisher Price Snugglemonkey. That thing rarely fails to put him to sleep. In fact, the cricket sounds and the tune of twinkle, twinkle little star that is plays has on numerous occasions put me to sleep as well. Thanks Fisher Price!

My poor little man has had his first cold. No one tells you that the absolute hardest part of being a Mum isn’t the lack of sleep, the crying etc. but it is watching your little one feel unwell and feeling so helpless and guilty that you can’t take it away.

The time is going so fast and I am trying to take in every minute. Time is going so fast, we will be celebrating his 1^st birthday before we know it. While I am excited for all the amazing milestones we are going to go through, I hope my little boy doesn’t grow up too fast!

One week down, a lifetime to go...

My first week as a Mum has been and gone. Seriously, where did the time go? It flew  by!

This has been the absolute best week of my life! I feel like I have found what I was always supposed to do, be a mother. My husband and I make an amazing team, if I do say so myself. We both just seem to know what needs to be done to help the other and therefore help our son, J.

So far, breastfeeding is going really well. My nipples are a level of sore I didn’t know existed, but are slowly healing and I have been told they eventually get better. Little man is getting enough milk and drinking himself in to a milk coma every three or so hours. Breastfeeding is not easy, and I know I may experience challenges in the future, but for now we are doing well. I always said I wanted to breastfeed for six months, but I think now I’m doing it, I’d like to aim for twelve. I find it a really magical experience and seeing the look on my son’s face when I feed him makes me so happy.

I actually had a lumpectomy in 2010 in my left breast. My nipple was removed and reattached and it wasn’t until we started trying to conceive that I realised this could hinder breastfeeding. At 20 years of age, the last thing I was thinking about was whether surgery would affect my ability to breastfeed. Thanks to my amazing surgeon, it hasn’t.

I am not the best with bodily fluids of any kind. But this past week I’ve dealt with pus, poo, wee and vomit. All of those have at some stage ended up ON me. And I’m pleased to note, doesn’t phase me. People did tell me that breastfeed baby poo does not smell… they lied!

J does like to fall asleep in your arms. I know a lot of people disagree with doing this, apparently when children are three, they will still be asking to be rocked to sleep. I don’t believe this and I also will not stop rocking my son to sleep. They’re only this little for such a short time, and if falling asleep in my arms comforts him, well I will continue damn it!

Speaking of sleep, my husband and I are getting about 7 hours of broken sleep a night. We also try to fit in a nap during the day. J is a good little sleeper so far and I love waking up to hear him ‘talking’ to himself in his moses basket.

This week we have our newborn photo shoot. We tossed up whether to pay the money to have this done. But we figured after all it took for us to get this little man, it’s something we would regret not doing. I can’t wait to see the photos of our handsome son. I’m seeing this experience get quite expensive because I bet I cannot choose between the photos that are taken!

Also this week will be another weigh in, we’re hoping J has gotten back up to his birth weight, or close to.

Well those are just some of my experiences as a new Mum. Like I said before, best week of my life. I would not trade this for the world!

You Made Me A Mother

If you haven't seen this already, grab some tissues...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNKHD0-6SaY&noredirect=1

Absolutely beautiful!!!

Where am I now...

The last time I posted, I was waiting results from our blood test at our Fertility Clinic. Well… it was positive!!! I sit here exactly 9 months and 1 day later, and next to me, my five day old SON, lies on my husband’s lap.

I honestly struggle to believe that this amazing little man is ours. We made him (with a little help). He is absolutely perfect!
 

Let me backtrack… I received a call later during the day on the 22 of May, 2013. The lovely nurse gave me the news we had been dying to hear. I was pregnant! After over a year of waiting and crushing disappointment, after tens of thousands of dollars of testing and treatments, after 2 gruelling IVF cycles, after so many tears and “why us’s”, we had finally achieved our dream of starting a family together. When you wait so long for something, you start to wonder if it will ever happen. And then when it does, you keep expecting it to get taken away. After all, you’re used to constant disappointments.
 

At 7 weeks and 2 days pregnant, we saw and heard our baby’s beautiful little heartbeat. My husband had tears in his eyes and I was just in disbelief. It was really happening! At 8 weeks and 3 days, we saw our baby again at our first Obstetrician visit. It officially started feeling real.
 

Now fast forward back to today, after everything we’ve been through, I can officially say that our son was worth the wait!!! All this time, we were just waiting for this particular little boy. He is absolutely perfect and I cannot put in to words all the emotions that come over me when I think about him and look at him. I never thought we would get to experience this and it is even better than I could have imagined. I have cried so much over the last 5 days, tears of happiness that is. I feel like the absolute luckiest person in the whole wide world. To my husband and I, this is everything we’ve been dreaming of. All our dreams have come true.
 

I’ll never forget the struggle it was for us to get here. It definitely made us different people. More patient, more appreciative of the simple things in life, more accepting of things we can’t change. But the pain of infertility doesn’t go away. Pregnancy announcements still hurt, hearing others wish they didn’t have children or hearing them take their children for granted still hurts. But I hope that now we have our son here, in our arms, that those feelings may start to subside. After all, I sit here staring at this little miracle and knowing that I got our greatest wish!
 

I still know so many women struggling with infertility. I can’t express how much I wish for each and every one of them to get to experience this soon, or experience this again as some already have a child/ren.  

I’m planning to blog more. I want to record all my thoughts and feelings as I enter motherhood and as life changes massively. I know in the future we will want more children and will more than likely need to pursue fertility treatments again, putting us down this tiring and familiar road. I will want to blog about that too.

To end this post, I pose a question… what do you do when you feel like all your dreams have come true?