It has been a busy week on the road, meeting all the friends and family in SA and Vic.  We seem to have pretty much worked out how to travel in the car without too much screaming….feed, feed, feed, then rock to sleep, put in car seat and get going as soon as possible.  Nathan generally stays asleep to start off with, and if I’m sitting in the back with him then I can pat him to sleep when he does wake up.  This routine has made all the travelling bearable…so far!  

This last week Andrew and I have noticed a huge difference in the amount of interaction between us and Nathan.  Nathan now gives lots of huge smiles, he chats to us, and his looks are much more focused.  He also rolled from his tummy to his back 3 times one afternoon, and luckily we caught it on video since he hasn’t done it again yet.  

Andrew and I are now quite good at picking up when Nathan is tired, though getting him to sleep is still another matter.  He loves the wrap/sling that we have, and I MUST buy myself one when I get back to Sydney.   I am constantly amazed at how a simple, long piece of material is the thing that keeps me sane.

Nathan and Shirley 

Nathan seems to hate the car seat, and will often scream for most of a car trip.  Hence, I was rather concerned about our 2.5 week car trip that was planned…Sydney-Adelaide-Horsham-Timboon-Melbourne-Sydney.  We decided to fly Nathan and myself to Adelaide, and Andrew drove the car down as quickly as was feasibly possible.  Nathan hardly made a sound for the entire flight.  I fed him on the way up, and fed him on the way down, and I don’t think he even noticed the change in pressure. The trip from the airport to Shirley’s farm was horrible, with Nathan screaming from the back seat.  I decided to sit in the back to help to try to console him, and I put a muslin wrap over the carseat so that he couldn’t see things flashing past, and that seemed to help and I finally got him to sleep for the rest of the trip.  

We visited some friends for lunch in Adelaide on Saturday and Nathan slept all the way there but he had quite a screaming fit on the way home.  Today we drove to Horsham and managed to keep Nathan happy for all but the last 15 minutes of the trip, so I now have some hope that the rest of the driving can be managed so that we don’t have to deal with a screaming baby for very long.  

The pimples no longer have white heads, but they seem to be hanging around, though sometimes they are much more noticeable than other times.

The smiles are coming much more readily and for longer now.  I love his smiles, there’s nothing better! 

All is going well.  Nathan is stacking on the weight now, so both the lactation consultant and the Early Childhood Centre nurse are both happy.  His last weigh in at the hospital was 4.615 kg on Thursday which made Claudell happy because Nathan has just about caught up to where he should be (she said he should be about 300 g above birth weight at around 4 weeks).

The acne is still hanging around, though it is not as bad on his face as it was, but he has loads of pimples on the back of his neck and top of his shoulders.

This week we meet up with a couple of my friends, show off to Andrew’s workmates, have another appointment at the Early Childhood Centre, and on Wednesday Nathan and I fly to Adelaide for the start of our holiday.  Andrew will drive the car down and meet us at Shirley’s farm.

Nathan at 3.5 weeks old

Every day seems so very long, and yet the last 4 weeks have literally flown by.

I leave the flat almost every day, but I find it terribly stressful. I try to time trips so that Nathan is not hungry so that I don’t have to put up with lots of screaming in the car or pram, but that is not always possible and sometimes feeding him just before going out doesn’t work anyway. I’m constantly tired, even though we get about 8 hours of sleep with a 4 or 5 hour straight stint most nights. I find the almost constant feeds during the day are tiring as well, and is the grizzling/crying in the afternoons and evenings.

The acne on Nathan’s face is improving and might even be gone in a week or so. He seems to try to reach out for toys, but has no real coordination to his movements. We think he likes his baths and the massage we give him after baths. Andrew and I have talked about dummies, but so far we haven’t introduced them. Instead Nathan sucks on his fist and index finger. He hasn’t found his thumb yet. His umbilical cord dropped off when he was 6 days old, but his belly button continued to bleed a little for ages. I noticed today, however, that it seems to be clean and free from blood now!

Nathan and I have now survived our first week on our own, since Andrew went back to work last week. It was scary at first, but we are getting better at getting out and about. We made it to the library on Tuesday to get some new books to read, Wednesday I went to the Mother’s group at the Mascot Childcare Centre, and Mumsense at the hospital on Thursday. After the Mother’s group on Wednesday, Nathan was weighed. The nurse was a bit concerned that he hadn’t put on any weight in the 8 days since his last weight check, and because I had been a bit concerned about feeding, I decided it was worth seeing the lactation consultant at the hospital. I saw her (Claudell) on Thursday morning, and she was really nice and quite helpful. She arranged to see me today to see if he’d put on any weight in the 4 days since seeing her last, and I was happy to hear that he’d put on 150 g in that time. She aims for about 150 g per week, so obviously the changes in the feeding patterns that she had suggested were working!

Because I was at the hospital this morning, I decided to drop into Uni to show Nathan off to my work mates. I think we were there too long since Nathan ended up very grizzly, but it was nice to see everyone though.

Nathan has developed lots of spots on his face. Someone described spts on their baby as ‘baby acne’ and that is exactly what Nathan’s spots look like. Acne. They are also moving down to his neck and upper back. I hope they disappear soon.