All day, and all of the night

For the duration of the pregnancy there was one fact that people pointed out to me repeatedly. Once the baby arrived, I was going to be tired. Very tired. And after less than 24 hours of Oliver being part of the household I can safely say that all those doom-sayers were right.

As I have mentioned elsewhere in this blog, I don't function at all well without sleep. So sleep deprivation was probably the one thing I knew I would be able to do little about and thus the thing I dreaded the most. And yet today, after a night punctuated by several feeds and/or nappy changes, I have been extremely active and only now am starting to feel the pace.

Whether I can keep up this pace remains to be seen. And I'm sure last night was relatively good by many standards, as he slept for a three hour stretch from 2.45am until 5.45am, thus granting us at least some uninterrupted sleep.

Hayley, of course, has a much harder time than me. She is following the policy of "baby-driven" or "on demand" breast-feeding. So whenever he wakes and needs a feed, she must wake and feed him. This leaves me unable to assist, as the policy recommends no expressing of milk or use of bottles for the first 6 weeks.

Hayley is coping very well though. She occasionally gets a bit tearful as the "baby blues" get the better of her, but we both know that's the hormones and most of the time she is very chipper. Even when Oliver has become fussy about feeding from his least favoured breast, she has overcome her tiredness to chat away patiently to him as she does battle with his flailing limbs and attempts to re-attach him to his source of nutrition. I'm so proud of her for her patience today. She has come through some tough days to get him to this point and hopefully his feeding will continue to improve and we won't be driven to resort to bottles of formula.