Category: baby

Our “little” 2 week old

/ Renae / Leave a comment

Our little Darby is 2 weeks old today. Except he’s not that little. He is our biggest baby, and the way he is feeding, he’s going to be off the charts just like Chanbe was in his first 12 months. But he’s still our little guy for the time being.

I think the period where they’re under 2 months has the biggest “aaawwww” factor. You can still refer to their age in weeks without sounding pretentious, they still have that newborn look, and they don’t mind being handed around for cuddles. Which means I have another 6 or so weeks of this:

Aaaaawwww πŸ™‚

No 2 days are the same

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It’s tough being only days old, navigating life on the outside. Darby is doing his best to be a typical newborn, which means he’s sleeping most of the day and being awake, having nice long feeds during the night. Thankfully, with Mum here and Hubs still off work, I’m able to go back to bed once the kids get up, and generally manage to sleep til about 11 before Darby needs another feed. And by this time, Quindy is ready to go down for her sleep, and the house is quite peaceful for a couple of hours. I’ve been using this time to potter about, and have started culling clothes and kitchen stuff for the upcoming move.

I overheard Mum telling her friend on the phone tonight, every day is different, and at this stage, that is certainly true. Yesterday Darby had quite a bit of awake time during the day, so I got a two and a three hour block of sleep overnight. Today, however, he has pretty much been asleep since 9am, only waking here and there for feeds, so we could have a restless night coming up. It’s really hard to say.

Hubs has been pilfering mangoes off various public trees around town, so he has been making delicious mango lassi (basically a smoothie) at least once a day for us to enjoy. For those of you who know me very well, I know you’re thinking “but Renae hates mango!” and it’s true. I don’t like mango on its own, but I have come to appreciate it in certain things like smoothies and daiquiris!

Our very good friends, and Darby’s recently appointment Godparents, Sonia and Felix, come to visit most days which is just lovely. I really love having friends who just pop in and know they can help themselves to a drink and immediately engage with our kids. They have definitely made our time up here much more enjoyable than it would have been otherwise. We will certainly miss having them around next year.

Other than that, we are just trying to keep Chanbe and Quindy entertained during the hot days, and trying to make sure Mum doesn’t burn out from all the work of looking after them a lot of the time! We took Darby to Hubs’ Christmas party at the pub last night and of course he was a big hit. We don’t have a lot planned in the lead up to Christmas, but the countdown til we leave is on.

And of course now that I can hardly keep my eyes open, Darby is wide awake. Aaaah the joys.

 

There’s an aeroplane in my bed

/ Renae / 1 Comment

It’s been a big few days around these here parts. On Thursday night – wait that was only last night – we hosted a Christmas and “welcome to the world Darby” party that was attended by 15 people including 6 kids under 5. Granted 3 of them are ours but still. We feasted on slow cooked pulled pork rolls with wombok salad, followed by profiteroles and mango daiquiris. I can’t wait to get stuck in to the leftovers.

Then tonight we headed to the pub with Darby for Hubs’ work Christmas drinks while Chanbe and Quindy stayed home and tormented behaved perfectly for Gran. After arriving home around 11, I fed Darby and collapsed into bed.

And sat right on a toy aeroplane.

Gotta love being a parent πŸ™‚

The difference a few days can make

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Darby Jacob. What a guy and what a name.

Hubs and I had settled on a girl’s name a few months ago, and it’s a corker. I’m going to infuriate you by not sharing it here, as it’s still number 1 on our list if we happen to have another girl. Boy’s names on the other hand don’t come so easily to us, and a week before Darby was born, ie his due date, we had settled on a name but it just didn’t pop for us the way the names “Chance” and “Quinn” did.

And we still hadn’t decided on a middle name. Hubs isn’t a fan of middle names in general – probably because he doesn’t have one – and wanted to leave this baby middlename-less. l was not convinced and in fact was quite adamant that I wanted to use another family name.

So I emailed my wonderful mother in law (I think this was 4 days before Darby was actually born) and asked her to share all of the male family names on her side.

Jacob immediately stood out to me and I had it semi approved by Hubs. Now. If you want me to tell you where the name Darby came from, I wouldn’t have an answer for you. It literally popped into my head on Friday the 5th of December and so I added it to my names list on my phone. And do you know when I suggested it to Hubs? About half an hour after our little man was born. While we were trying out other pre-discussed names on him.

Hubs is very hard to please when it comes to names, but he loved it. Well I think he liked it and it grew on him very quickly. It was just one of those names that popped for us and even though I’ve never much bought into a name “suiting” someone, it’s very easy to call him Darby and it just fits.

The point of this little story? If Darby was born on time or even just 4 days earlier, he would have a completely different name and that’s kinda weird for me.

Does he look like a Darby?

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Not enough hours

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Who ever thought it was a good idea to have a baby around Christmas time and a month before a big move must have had a very good sense of humour. Or, none at all.

There are so many jobs that I need to do right now and each of them would take between 15 minutes and an hour, yet I can’t seem to get them done. And that’s WITH mum here doing all of the washing and much of the child minding.

We embarked on Christmas cards again this year so that took priority over everything else. They will hopefully be finished tomorrow so I can get back to all the other things like organising the removalist and filing in baby paper work. Our good friend up here who is leaving town around the same time has started a count down. I think we’re down to 25 days. I’m so excited. It’s going to be a good end to the year with lots of fun things coming up!

Another baby boy

/ Renae / 2 Comments

Already having a boy and a girl is an interesting position to be in when pregnant with your third child. Everyone asked if I knew what we were having this time around and I’d always have the same response:

“No we’ve never found out. We like the surprise. But if I already had 2 boys I think I’d want to know!” Obligatory laughs all round.

And that was the truth. I’m not saying that I would have found out, but I know that I would want to have a girl if we had 2 boys already. Of course I would love my baby no matter what, and to be honest I don’t know if I’d have the courage to say “I’m really hoping for a girl.” (Or a boy if I already had 2 girls.)

I really thought this one was going to be a girl and I was really excited about the name we had picked out for “her”. Hubs always insisted it was a boy, so when he was born and Hubs said “I told you so” all I could feel was pure joy. We didn’t even have his name finalised (that’s a story for another day) but possibly because our first born was a boy, it was like I was reliving that moment, and what a moment it was. Both times, just as special.

I guess I’ll never know how I would really feel/react in the case of already having 2 babies of the same sex. I do know that I love babies and I want to have more children, and in the meantime, this is the darling face I get to stare at any time I like πŸ™‚

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As easy as 1… 2… 3…

/ Renae / 2 Comments

1. Have a lovely big feed and a little lie down, and wait for the bubbles to build

2. Feel a big hefty amount of toxic gas bubbling away, and give a hint of a smirk to let bystanders know what’s about to happen

3. Let it rip

Oooooh yeeeeaaaaah……

We’re home

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The doctor’s gave me the go-ahead to come home today. That is the shortest hospital stay I’ve had post-baby, and even though I thought I’d want to stay longer, I was actually itching to come home and get on with our new life.

I’ve unofficially decided to do an unofficial NaBloPoMo for Darby’s first month in our family. I often think back to the first month with Chanbe and Quindy, and really don’t remember much, so it would be lovely to have a bit of a record of what life with a newborn is like; to look back on and reminisce.

So today, we arrived home around 11:30am. Hubs suggested we do the whole “buy a gift for the older kids from the baby” thing which we didn’t do with Chance and Quinn, and to be honest, I think it was just an excuse for Hubs to buy more Lego, but it went down well. Chance is very keen to give Darby lots of cuddles and wants to share his food and toys with him which is just making my heart explode. Quinn on the other hand, hasn’t taken too kindly to the “noisy baby” as she calls him. No doubt she’ll come around, but I can just see the possibility that Chance might be protecting Darby from Quinn in the months to come!

Oh the irony πŸ™‚

He basically just fed and slept today which was lovely to ease into it all. He’s just had a big-ish feed and now it’s off to bed for us all. I have made this an unofficial NaBloPoMo so as not to put unnecessary pressure on myself, but I do plan to post at least most days. Even if it’s just ate, slept, repeat…

Thank you for sharing this lovely time with us!

Welcome to the world

/ Renae / 7 Comments

Please meet our son, Darby Jacob. He finally decided to grace us with his presence at 12.45am, today the 7th of December. He was born a very healthy weight – 4.32kg (9 pound 8 oz) and is already feeding nicely.

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I know I’m completely biased but he is just so beautiful. I’m catching up on sleep today and will go home to start our life as a family of 5 tomorrow. Hubs has time off until Christmas day so we get to hang out a lot over the next few weeks.

Chanbe and Quindy met him this morning. Chance is quite besotted, asking for lots of cuddles and wanting to know when the baby can come home. Quinn was a little unsure about the whole thing but is already walking around saying his name.

For the last couple of weeks, Chanbe has been asking on a daily basis “is it the baby’s birthday today Mama?”Β It’s so nice to be able to answer him “yes”.

40+4

/ Renae / 1 Comment

Another day, another morning spent sitting in the outpatients waiting room. I’m a regular there these days. They are taking very good care of me which is lovely, but I’m kind of over it now. Very very ready to meet this little baby of ours. Unfortunately there are still no signs of me going into labour on my own, so there might be some more intentional prods and pokes coming up this weekend, to see if they can help move things along.

I am trying to make my way through the last season of The West Wing (as per #097 on my list of 101 in 1001) and have “only” 17 episodes to go! That’s still a lot of hours, but I’m loving it. There won’t be much time for viewing in the coming weeks, so just trying to get in while I can.

Other than that, I’m just enjoying having Mum here, and enjoying sitting in front of whatever air conditioner I can get near. I’m not fussy.

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock….