One month of motherhood

I’m not entirely sure what I expected motherhood to be like, but I don’t think I imagined it to be like this. So much washing (how can one baby dirty so many clothes?) and so much time spent feeding (which is the thing I find most restrictive, as I am used to being able to multi-task more than I can now). There are also so many precious times, such as holding your little baby as he snuggles sleepily into you or searches for a non-existent nipple on your shoulder, or having a nap with him. Sometimes I feel that I don’t ever want to put him down.

Cooper and I have spent a lot of time at home during his first month, but we’ve also been out and about doing our shopping, visiting friends and family, going for walks, and going on trips to Melbourne and Ballarat (each one nearly an hour away from us, one east and one west). We’re using the routines in the Contented Little Baby book, and apart from one night when he had a snuffly nose, Cooper has only woken once a night since coming home from the hospital, and has even slept right through from 11.15pm to 7am a couple of times. Despite that, I still feel pretty tired most of the time since Adam needs to be in bed by 9.30 each night before he works, which means that I get about 6 hours sleep most nights. Napping when Cooper naps has helped, but I am constantly tempted to do chores around the house when he’s asleep, which eats into my nap time.

As with most babies, Cooper sometimes ends up in a number of different outfits in any one day. For the most part, he does not like getting changed, and constantly rewards me by peeing on the outfit I have just changed him into. He also rewarded Adam the other night with number ones AND twos whilst he was being changed. I was worried that Adam was going to scare Cooper with the loud outbursts that I could hear coming from the bedroom

August 2008

I love watching the joy on Adam’s face as he holds his little boy and talks to him. At Cooper’s 2-week health check-up we received a bookmark about communicating with babies, and it mentioned that you should use different tones of voice. It makes me laugh whenever I overhear Adam repeating Cooper’s name, first in a deep, gruff voice, then in a high pitched voice, trying to get Cooper’s attention. It doesn’t matter how many times I explain to Adam that he should talk normally to Cooper, he still keeps doing it.

Over the last week Cooper has started to hit the mobile toys under the play gym. He doesn’t look at them, but knows that if he lifts his hands they will hit something that makes a noise. He likes to lay with his head predominantly facing the right, and we are working on getting him to lay the other way, to reduce the flat spot on his head from laying the one way.

Cooper is such a good baby, and when he was having an unsettled night the other night and wouldn’t sleep properly from 7pm – 10.30pm, my Mum commented that he is turning into a ‘real’ baby. The people at church adore him. When he is not asleep there he is very content and everyone comes up to say hello to him after the service. He’ll be baptized into the congregation there on 14 September.

Hope you enjoy the photos for this month. Cooper is changing so fast!

Aren’t first babies meant to be late?

From what I have observed, first babies often arrive after their due date. Not so with our little man. After spending two-and-a-half weeks at home in preparation for the birth, I decided to weed part of the garden on Tuesday 22 July, with the intention of finishing it when the weather was forecast to be clear again, on Thursday or Friday. I think it was the weeding that helped Cooper make his early entrance into the world.

Adam and I had been planning to see The Dark Knight on Adam’s day off on Thursday, and spent Wednesday night watching Batman Begins. When I went to the loo before bed, I felt an extra gush of fluid, and realized that my water had broken. A trip to the hospital confirmed this, but because I was only having Braxton Hicks contractions we were sent home again.

During the night I started to feel a bit of discomfort with the contractions, and consequently didn’t get much sleep. By mid-morning, the contractions started to get painful, so we say that labour really started at around 11am. By mid-afternoon the contractions were starting to get more regular, and I had trouble talking to my friend on the phone during contractions whilst trying not to let on what was happening, because Adam and I had decided not to tell anyone until we were on our way to the hospital.

By 4pm I needed pain relief and Adam took me on the 45 minute trip to the hospital whilst I counted the length and time between contractions. They were 4 minutes apart lasting for 50-70 seconds. After being assessed in the emergency department for an hour, they found that I was 6cm dilated, and finally took me to a birthing suite where I could get some pain relief.

I felt that the gas didn’t help much, but after a little more than an hour in the birthing suite, I felt the need to push, and was horrified when they told me that I couldn’t use the gas any more when I was pushing. After 45 minutes, baby Cooper was placed on my belly, and my first thought was how warm he was, and then, whether it was a boy or girl. When I lifted the cover and saw his ‘bits’ I happily told everyone that it was a boy. He was born at 8.15pm on 24 July.

So, all in all it was a 9 hour labour, and we stayed in hospital for two days. On our way home we took Cooper to meet his Poppy at the nearby Epworth hospital, where he had been after having neurosurgery the prior week. We found out that Poppy Peter’s dad’s mother’s (Cooper's great-grandmother's) maiden name was Cooper, which we hadn’t known about. Pretty amazing.

Baby Cooper

Little Cooper Peter Watson has brought us so much happiness in the short time since we first saw him, and we love him to bits. Stay tuned for more updates on our gorgeous little boy.