We made it to 4 weeks

It’s been 4 weeks since baby Hayley was born; yay we made it!

The first month of having a new baby is always the hardest. All babies cry more in their first three months than any other time in the rest of their lives. That’s a lot of crying. Every moment feels like a blur – the days fuse into the nights, which fuse into more days and more nights and it seems like there is no end to this sleepless suffering.

How exhausted am I on am I on a scale of 1-10? About 12. Could be worse, I know. With Theo, I think I was at like 25 on the exhaustion scale, so I know what worse looks like.

And it does get better from here. Actually, it gets better from about 3 months, so I’ve just got another 8 weeks to go before the light at the end of the tunnel presents itself. That’s not so bad.

Apart from the hunger cries and general gas-related fussiness, Hayley’s been a really sweet baby. She sleeps like a log during daylight hours, looks most alert at about 8pm, goes back to bed at 10 and usually fusses from 1-4am, at which time she will strain and cry till she finally delivers a large adult-sized burp/fart/poop. Once that’s done, she falls back into the most delicious sleep.

While those hours of walking, singing, bouncing and shushing in the middle of the night can be rough on both of us, we’ve developed a kind of understanding. I may not be able to help her get the gas out any sooner, but I’ll be there to hold her and walk with her until she feels better, however long it takes. In return, she grunts at me with a mixture of annoyance and displeasure. Occasionally, she makes rude faces at me like this. So adorable.

But I also get to have plenty of moments like these that are pretty rad.

Every time Hayley fusses, the bigger kids run over to pat her head and say “It’s ok, baby Hayley, don’t cry cry.” Amazingly, it seems to cheer her up, or at least distract her from whatever it was that was making her cry in the first place.

I try to savour these fleeting newborn moments when I can remember to but they pass too quickly. Her skinny newborn chicken legs are already filling out nicely, her cheeks are getting chubbier, and I feel her getting heavier with each passing day.

Maybe I’m feeling sentimental knowing that this is the last baby I’ll get to baby. :'(

*And we’ll talk more about this but no, there ain’t gonna be no baby #6, we’re done here.