20 days

Our beautiful little girl is 20 days old already! Its scary how fast its going and how much she's changing already! She looks completely different to how she did when she was born. She's really starting to focus on faces now, and she has some amazing expressions! I literally cant take my eyes off of her, she makes me so proud every single day.

I have to hold my hands up and say parenthood is a lot harder than i was expecting. Everyone always tells you how hard it is etc, and there's no way i was expecting it to be easy but i have certainly been surprised. It hasn't been helped by the fact i was pretty useless for the first week, i almost feel like I'm a week behind with learning everything. I'd always imagined that it would be me teaching Adam a lot of things, but its ended up with him being a lot more confident than me, as he did everything for the first week!

Before Isabelle was born, i was fully aware that i would have to get used to the sound of a baby crying, I'm usually quite laid back so didn't think i would get stressed by it at all. One thing i didn't prepare for was how hearing her cry would make me feel. It actually breaks my heart. She's not a baby who cries constantly at all, but when she does it really gets to me. She seems to go through a phase every evening between 7pm and 3am where she constantly needs to be held. At first, she seemed to want to be feeding constantly, which was very tiring and was making me very sore, but now i think she gets tummy ache, and just generally wants comforting. When she gets really upset, she turns purple and stops breathing for several seconds! I find this so distressing and have ended up in tears myself on many occasions now.

Adam manages to stay quite chilled out though and helps to reassure me that she isnt as distressed as she looks.

The nights have been tricky, we've had a lot of visitors, and quite a busy schedule so far, so i haven't been managing to get much sleep through the day, so I've been pretty exhausted. Isabelle and I have both been a little poorly too, which hasn't helped, as even when she's sleeping I've struggled to get any rest.

The past two nights seem to have settled down though, she's going a lot longer between feeds now and is awake a lot more throughout the day which means she's more tired by the evenings, so hopefully we'll start to settle into a bit of a routine now!

I'm really happy with my decision to breastfeed. Its the most amazing thing in the world, i love how she looks up at me when she's feeding, she's perfect. Its been tough to begin with but I'm glad I've stuck it out, especially through the stage where i couldn't move and people had to latch her on for me. We both seem to have got the hang of it now though and its going well. I've even done my first couple of feeds in public (with help from my mum).

She's definitely feeding well as she's putting weight on fast! When she was born she was 8lb 6oz, three days later she was 7lb 12oz, and 8 days later she was 8lb 13oz! So she's probably well over 9lb by now!

She is all official now too, and has been registered and has a birth certificate!

So i am pretty much fully recovered after the birth, and all the paperwork etc has been done, so now its time to really be able to enjoy our lovely little lady :)