One month

Dear Penelope,
You were a month old this week. Has it really been only a month? On the other hand, has it been a whole month already?
Your daddy and I have had a lot of learning to do the past month. Lots of learning about how to care for you and to keep you happy, while not going insane ourselves. You've been really good about helping us with that. In the past week or so you've figured out that one feed in the middle of the night is perfectly acceptable. For this I would like to thank you.


Your days go like this. You wake up at about 6 or 7am and have one last feed in bed with me while Daddy gets up and gets your nappies washed and your formula ready for the day. After a thorough burping, I'll put you down in your rocker and get up. I usually make it through breakfast and if I'm lucky I'll make it to the shower before Daddy leaves for work. In the morning you're usually pretty quiet. Feed 100mL every three hours or so and I can work on the computer or rest. Some mornings we go out to mothers group or the health clinic. At some point in the afternoon, it all seems to go wrong for you. You get grumpy and have trouble settling. You usually end up in the ergo for a while in an effort to get you to have some sleep so you're not overtired later.
When Daddy comes home from work, he'll take you for a while, to hold you and try and calm you down. He swoops you through the air and lifts you right up to the ceiling. Sometimes you like this, sometimes you could care less.
Three evenings a week, you're nanna comes over to see you when she's finished teaching school. She is absolutely nuts about you, I'm pretty sure that seeing you is the high point of her day many days. Often you're unco-operative and are sound asleep when she comes over, but given your grumpy afternoons, this usually doesn't last long. If she's lucky, you'll be due a feed when she's over and then she can have a good cuddle.
Later in the evening you'll be given a bath. The first few baths you screamed through, but now you seem quite content with the warm water.
At some point in the evening you stop being a grump and get the idea of sleeping. Often you'll go 4 or 5 hours between feeds overnight. You'll usually wake for a night time feed at about 3am. I wake up and go get you, check your nappy and tell Daddy to go and get a bottle, then put you down on our bed while I go and wash my hands. When I get back, I put you on a pillow across my legs, put the towel over my shoulder and give you your formula. Daddy goes back to sleep beside us. The most tricky bit of night time feeding for me to figure out was getting you back to sleep. What currently seems to work is wrapping you back up when your sleepy and then lieing you down between us and lieing down beside you. I can then grab twenty minutes of sleep while you settle yourself down into a deep sleep with me near you. When I wake back up, you've conked out and I can carefully pick you up and tuck you into your cot. With any luck you'll stay asleep until morning when we start again.


You're absolutely beautiful and we love you so much,
Mummy.