Eve at 35 weeks old

Eve is now 35 weeks old, which, according to my calculator makes her one week off nine months… but then pregnancy is supposed to be nine months, and that’s 40 weeks… so that’s rather confused me…

ANYWAY. Eve is doing fab and getting so very clever these days. She can clap, and wave bye bye and likes to entertain by sticking her tongue out at you. She loves to be out and about in her pushchair watching the world go by.

She has started to ‘dance’ to music and loves toys that play songs so she can show off her moves! And she is in her element at bathtime, I have never seen somebody do so much splashing – so much so that Isla can’t stand to share a bath with her because she gets so upset about all the water flying about!

She is taking notice of the TV and particularly likes Night Garden and Baby Jake… and this morning was laughing lots at the faces on Thomas the Tank Engine.

She loves playing Peepo with her sisters, but isn’t as keen when Isla gets a little over-enthusiastic with her affections and cuddles start resembling rough & tumble…

Her weaning is going quite well. She is a little fussier than Lilly was, but she isn’t as prone to choking and gagging as Isla was. She LOVES yoghurt and her favourite savoury purees always involve chicken. But she hasn’t been so mad on red meat so far. She has tried the odd slice of toast and some Organix crisp finger foods, which she seems to enjoy. She can expertly drink from a cup and is starting to spit the drink out a little bit less – however if she isn’t wearing a waterproof bib she will still be soaked after every meal.

Eve remains a LOUD baby – and she isn’t afraid to let you know if she isn’t happy. Her squealing seems to peel layers off the inside of your eardrums at times!

We have had a lot of temperatures, grouchy afternoons and rosy cheeks, so we know teething is in full swing. But there are no little pearlies to show for it just yet.

Sleep-wise she remains a mixed bag. Sometimes she will go to bed no trouble, and sleep through the night. This is not the usual pattern though! On an average night she will wake once for milk, about 3 or 4am, and then settle down again without too much trouble. But we have probably one or two nights a week where she is still very difficult to settle in the evenings – either refusing to sleep in the first place, or waking up half an hour after settling and getting very distressed. It is hard to know what to do to solve the problem – she doesn’t want to be held, she doesn’t want to be put down, she doesn’t want a dummy, she doesn’t want calpol, she doesn’t want her bed… nightmare! Luckily her screaming doesn’t usually wake her sisters, they’re used to her. But I am very glad we’ve moved to a detached house – I would feel so guilty about the neighbours!

But all in all, she’s doing great. Definitely a feisty one like her biggest sister! But watching her learn to do the simplest little things, like clapping and waving, is just such a joy, even third time round.

Our beautiful baby-chops Eve. xxx

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A day of baby firsts

Yesterday, aged 27 weeks and 4 days, Eve decided to cram two major firsts into just a couple of hours.

First up came her first roll over – she rolled from her back to her tummy and she wasn’t too happy when she got there!

In fact, she did remind me quite a bit of a tortoise on his back wondering how the heck this happened and how on earth will I ever get the right way up again?!?!

But it didn’t put her off totally, she repeated her trick a few more times that afternoon and seemed a bit happier on subsequent occasions

And then, later that afternoon she sat up all by herself for long enough that it can officially be classified as “sitting up unaided” – although she did have plenty of cushions around her, obviously

Pretty chuffed with herself she was too!

Clever baby!

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…Starting nursery

It has been a busy few weeks in our household. Tony has started a new job, I am back after maternity leave. Lilly has finished nursery and we’ve been getting ready for the start of school. Eve is still waking in the night, and we’ve started weaning. We’ve organised and held a Christening. And Isla and Eve have started at nursery.

With all three girls I had a pretty similar amount of maternity leave – six months, give or take a few weeks. It was a little more with Isla and a little less with Eve, because of the various time of the year / financial circumstances.

Lilly started nursery at six months old, and was never really a problem, although she would never sleep in there. Isla started about seven months and never really settled. She didn’t sleep and she was a lot more distressed when you left her than Lilly ever was. She was ok, but we never thought she enjoyed it. She stayed at nursery until she was about 14 months and then Tony was made redundant and became a stay at home dad for a while instead.

Isla loved being at home with her daddy. But now he is back at work, and she is two years old, and for so many reasons we feel that now she really needs to get used to spending time away from us and enjoying the company of other children her own age. Watching Lilly so confidently looking forward to school is the clincher – nursery has helped make her a confident and outgoing child who cannot wait for the chance to make more friends, and we want the same for Isla in two years time.

We were not expecting this transition to be easy. I arranged with nursery that Isla would do four settling in sessions before her start date. The first one, I took her and stayed with her for the whole time. She wasn’t very sure when we walked in and asked a few times to go home. She wouldn’t acknowledge the other children, and got upset when they crowded round her to see the new girl. She liked painting but had a complete meltdown when one of the staff suggested she wear an apron! I could tell she liked the look of the slide and the cosy coupe car in the playground, but she refused to actually go on them. BUT… coming away from nursery she talked positively about the experience, told everybody who would listen about her painting and agreed to go back again the next week.

During the second session, I took Eve to the baby room at the same time. I reckoned that Eve would be absolutely fine, so we all spent a bit of time in the baby room before I took Isla next door. Then, I spent the hour going between the rooms to see both of them. Eve was absolutely fine, Isla cried and got upset everytime I went next door, although the amount of upset reduced noticeably each time, and I kept asking her: “Can mummy go next door to see Eve now?” and she would always agree, even if it was reluctantly.

So, on the third session, I dropped them off and left them for a full hour. My mum and I took Lilly to a cafe and we all talked about how weird it was to just be the three of us!

I left my mum and Lilly at the park and went back to get the two little ones. As I walked past the open window of the baby room, I heard a familiar high-pitched screaming… surely it couldn’t be?? She wasn’t due a bottle, or a sleep, or anything!

But yes, it was Eve, screaming, red faced and hysterical! The staff were trying in vain to calm her with a bottle, a dummy, anything!

Apparently, she had been fine, but then they had brought Isla in to visit her, because Isla was a bit upset. Seeing her baby sister seemed to work for Isla, and she calmed down. But it upset Eve and she had been screaming for the 20 minutes since!

After Eve was mainly calm, I carried her next door to find Isla. We spotted her before she spotted us – she was playing but her face was red and she was still gulping back sobs, trying to be brave. As soon as she saw us she exploded into tears – which set Eve off again screaming and screaming in my other arm!

Ah yes, it was definitely “one of those moments” – I’m sure any mum of more than one knows what I mean!

But, as we walked away from nursery, the sobs just about abated, Isla announced very loudly “We LOVE nursery!” which made all the staff laugh!

And, I’m happy to say that the fourth and final settling in session was a marked improvement. Isla didn’t cry at all, after the initial upset of me leaving. And Eve was happy and relaxed, even drifting off to sleep in her keyworker’s arms.

This was two weeks ago and things are still going fairly well. Eve has been absolutely fine, sleeping ok and never upset. Isla gets upset everytime I leave, but I am assured that she gets over it and has even started playing with some of the other children, a little tiny bit. Her favourite thing is the play kitchen and she spends a lot of her time there.

I don’t know whether Isla will ever be as enthusiastic about nursery as her big sister, or whether she will always have that little wobble knowing that we are about to leave her there. But Tony and I feel so strongly that this will be good for her in the long run, and it has to be done. We’ve been reading her all the ‘starting nursery’ books we can get our hands on and even Lilly has been roped in to tell Isla how great nursery is!

Hopefully this is the start of a very happy relationship, for both of them.

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Eve at six months old

The time has flown like you would not believe and now we find that our littlest baby is suddenly sitting in a highchair and eating dinners!

Eve is 25 weeks now and we have been weaning since 21 weeks. She was an enthusiastic eater from the off and now has decided she likes solids so much that milk is just soooo last month!

Her favourite foods so far have been parsnip, carrot and sweet potato. But it has been a resounding NO to courgette, no matter where I try to hide it!

Because she has enjoyed weaning so much we found ourselves moving from one meal a day to three more quickly than we planned, because she is drinking less and less milk at the moment. Where I used to always make her up 6oz bottles I now only make up 5oz, and it is very rare she’ll finish one of those (the main exception being at 4am when she is in the habit of waking…)

Her early issues with wind, which made her seem quite a tense baby, have pretty much gone. Now she seems much more laid back, full of smiles and only cries and fusses when she’s tired or hungry. She is still more than capable of screaming the street down when she’s not happy though – her piercing scream can still vibrate your eardrums if she fancies it!

Looks wise, she remains strikingly similar to Lilly at the same age, although daddy says she has his big ears! We still can’t tell for sure if she has blonde hair, or whether there is a hint of strawberry lurking in there…

She hasn’t yet rolled over completely, but she isn’t far off. She can’t yet sit up on her own, but she will sit happily propped up by cushions.

She absolutely loves playing with all her teething toys and she has a rattly pink poodle toy that she is quite fond of. At night we still use her Ewan the Dream Sheep to help her off to sleep, she likes the music setting and isn’t keen on the white noise, but it seems to be losing its magic a little now. (Hearing it certainly makes me feel tired though!)

At the moment, we think she is teething. There is no sign of any little white buds peeping through just yet, but there is a lot of dribbling and sucking of gums.

Sleeping wise, she has got a lot better recently in terms of going down for naps. She still needs her dummy to get to sleep, but one night last week she actually went to sleep sucking her thumb – which I’d prefer as then I wouldn’t have to keep getting up in the night to put her dummy back in!

In the last few weeks, Eve has started at nursery. She and Isla are doing two days a week, and Tony’s mum looks after them the rest of the week as both he and I are working full time again now.

I wasn’t really worried about Eve starting nursery, apart from feeling bad about her being the littlest one in there (just as Lilly and Isla were when they started). But I knew that really she is too little to be too upset, and will just take everything in her stride. I didn’t bank on the fact that, on her second settling in session (when I left her for an hour) I would return to find her screaming the place down! Apparently, she had been fine, but then Isla came in to visit her because Isla was a bit upset in the toddler room next door, and it seemed to set Eve off. She was heartbroken! But still had a smile for anyone who smiled at her, in between huge sobs…

Eve already seems to have grown up so much, but we know exactly how much more growing she will do over the next few months and years, having seen it twice before. We just can’t wait!

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• Eve’s Christening (growingmyfamilytree.wordpress.com)

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Eve’s Christening

Yesterday our youngest girl Eve Daisy was Christened.

We had a really lovely day shared with close friends and family, starting with the blessing at All Saints Church in our next town.

Unfortunately the church where we were married, and where Lilly and Isla were both Christened, has closed because of expensive repairs, which was a shame as we would have loved all the girls to have been Christened in the same place.

But it didn’t spoil the day – although Eve didn’t really seem too keen on the service itself and was the noisiest girl yet, squealing through the first half of the Christening and then getting a bit more grumpy and grizzly and needing a dummy to allow us to hear what the Priest was saying!! In fact, the only thing (apart from the dummy) which kept her quiet was when he poured the water over her head, she really quite enjoyed that and it stunned her into silence for a little while!

We had bought Eve a new Christening dress, as the one worn by her older sisters had gone a bit yellowy looking and also had some puree stains left by the last wearer… so she had a lovely white dress with netting over the top and embroidered with flowers. She also had matching booties, but managed to lose one en route to the church (a five minute drive!) so went barefoot after that!

My bigger girls also had lovely new dresses and where pretty well behaved throughout the service – especially Lilly – Isla needed a little bit more coaxing from Nanna to sit still!

After the service we had a reception in a function room in a local pub/hotel – with lots of balloons and a gorgeous cake which I am so pleased with (Unfortunately I didn’t make it – my decorating skills are no where near up to that standard!!)

We had about 35 guests, only a few of whom were children but I had made some goodie boxes for them with bubbles, drawing stuff, a mini magnetic fishing game and some animal masks to keep them entertained – and they went down really well. Although Isla wasn’t too keen when 3-year-old Lewis (her second cousin) got quite into character in his bee mask and starting trying to ‘sting’ her!!

It was a fairly drizzly day but it didn’t stop the kids wanting to play outside – in fact they rather took over the ‘smokers shed’, which to them was a little playhouse, and left all the smokers having to stand out in the rain for their fix!

Eve looked absolutely gorgeous in her dress and was happy to let people cuddle her but she preferred being outside where it was a little cooler and got a bit grumpy when she was tired so I rocked her to sleep and she had a little doze in her pushchair.

When it was time to go the girls bought back handfuls of balloons and were full to the gills with buffet, tired and happy.

Afterwards we had a few family and friends back to our house for some tea and a few glasses of wine.

All in all, a lovely day enjoyed by us all. Happy Christening Day, Eve Daisy xxx

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Eve at three months old

Well, our little baby is growing and changing at a fast pace – already she is so much different from the completely helpless newborn she was only a blink of an eye ago.

Eve, like her two sisters, is a little milk monster, and is growing and chubbing up nicely. During the day she is hungry at least every three hours, and will let you know when this happens in very uncertain terms!

She is a very smiley little person, and we’ve even had first giggles too – her favourite thing is when you immitate the sounds she’s just made and gurgle back at her.

She loves having a bath, she splashes around happily in there with her two sisters either side. She is very patient with the washing and the hair washing, but dislikes getting out and getting dry with a passion! Last bathtime was the first time she has not screamed and screamed (and I mean screamed – it makes your ears whistle) while we got her dressed post bath.

She is already starting to develop her skills. She can now reach and grab an object – for example one of the dangling toys on her playmat, and she is starting to gain some control over those flailing arms, managing (at last) to get a proper suck of her thumb the other day, although she is still rather fond of a dummy which she always has to help her fall asleep.

During the day, she can manage a stretch of maybe an hour or an hour and a half before she gets tired. We have started putting her in the travel cot in her bedroom for her daytime sleeps, but she still sleeps in a moses basket next to me at night. During the day when she naps, she can sleep for an hour or more. You can sometimes put her into her bed semi-awake and she will settle herself to sleep. But at night it’s a different story! She gets very tired by 5/6pm (same as her sisters at this age) and although she will have her bottle and go to sleep, she is likely to wake crying half an hour later. Sometimes, if you are lucky, putting her dummy back in and soothing her will help her fall back to sleep. But usually this cycle is repeated numerous times until she either falls asleep or we give in and bring her downstairs with us. Some evenings she is up with us until we are ready for bed – other times she is good and is asleep by 8pm. Once she is finally asleep we can have no complaints – she sleeps long stretches - six hours or more.

Eve has two very enthusiastic sisters, who really do dote on her, even if it is sometimes in a slightly over enthusiastic way. The poor thing rarely gets and peace lying on her playmat, chances are she will be joined by one or more sister, making it rather squashy under there. Or, if she is lying on the floor or in her seat, they might bring her hundreds of toys, until she’s almost buried under the blessed things. And she seems to be learning to tolerate the numerous squishy hugs and kisses!

“Mum, should this big person really be under here with me?”

One of the other things Eve isn’t too keen on is her car seat. She does seem to have improved a little and doesn’t always cry, however, she isn’t very keen if the car stops (for example at a red light!)

Yesterday Eve sat in her Bumbo for the first time – she seemed to quite like it. And we did our first tummy time for ages – it went down a lot better than last time we tried it and she is definitely gaining more strength in her neck.

Eve is a very happy and smiley little soul, and she is feisty, like her big sister. Everybody comments on how much Eve looks like Lilly as a baby, but she also has a look of Isla too.

In only three months she has brought so much joy into our lives – from the gorgeous smiles which greet you in the morning to watching her develop and grow. And her sisters absolutely love having a baby to fuss over too.

We love you Eve – and can’t wait to see you continue to grow and show us just who you are! xxxx

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• Life as a family of five (growingmyfamilytree.wordpress.com)
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Life as a family of five

Well, Eve is now 10 weeks old, so we have had two and a half months to adjust to life as a family of five.

Of course, it was chaotic at first. A pre-schooler, a very mischievous toddler and a newborn baby… And a house move when Eve was four weeks old… Well, it definitely had it’s moments!

But now I am beginning to feel that things are settling down a bit. Having three children has started to feel ‘normal’. For example, we have got used to the logistics required when we all want to leave the house (notwithstanding the time we arrived at Ikea only to discover we had left the baby’s bottle at home & had to race round in record time before feed time was due, or the time Tony was so flustered he used the deposit box at the bank to pay in some cash but completely forgot to enclose his name or bank account details!) And in the daytime I now feel like we have a bit of a routine for the various naps & feeds and other essential jobs to be done.

All the cliches are true – it feels like Eve has always been here. The thought of our family before her is strange! Words cannot say how much we all love her. She is chunking out a bit now and becoming more and more alert every day – gaining strength in her neck and wanting to look all around her to see what is going on and who is there. She is smiling and seems quite a happy and smiley kind of baby, not like Isla who was very serious when she was tiny… you had to work very hard to get a smile out of her! Eve’s lovely smiles first thing in the morning when you go to collect her from her basket are so gorgeous.

She reminds us in personality very much of Lilly when she was a baby – she is feisty and hard work at times. When she wants something, she will let you know in very definite terms – she has one heck of a pair of lungs which she exercises regularly with some pretty loud wailing – and if she’s really upset (e.g. you just got her out of the bath and now you have the audacity to want to get her dry and dressed) she will SCREAM at the top of her lungs, almost enough to set the glasses humming… it is incredible! She hates being in her car seat and (just like Lilly at that age) will tolerate it for a while if the car is moving, but if you stop at the lights the crying starts again!

She also looks a lot like Lilly at the same age, and we have been looking back over pictures of Lilly and marvelling over how difficult it is to tell which baby it is! At some point I would like to try and pick out a few to compare and post them on here for you to see what I mean!

Sleep wise, she is excellent in some ways, terrible in others! On the plus side, once she is asleep for the night she can go extremely long stretches… 9pm until 5.20am being her personal best. BUT… she is very difficult to settle for the night. She fights sleep something chronic. She wants to be held & rocked to sleep & if you do that, then put her down, she wakes up! Sometimes a dummy and a little bit of Ewan The Dream Sheep will help her settle, sometimes it just keeps her happy for a little while before the crying begins again. we are trying to get her into a bedtime routine, milk in the bedroom & putting her down in her basket, but most nights we end up having to bring her downstairs and trying to get her to sleep in her carrycot before taking her upstairs in it once she is definitely asleep for the night. I think as a parent of a baby you are always frightened of getting them into ‘bad habits’ such as rocking to sleep, dummies etc, but on the other hand you NEED sleep!

She can now coo loudly and likes to watch the lights on the television whilst kicking away on a mat. She doesn’t get as much time under her playmat as the other too used to, because with Isla on the roam its a little bit dangerous – both girls always try to get under the mat with Eve but Isla is a little bit more clumsy with her efforts, shall we say! She doesn’t mind sitting in her rocking chair for a little while now, as long as she’s in a good mood. But essentially, her preference is always to be held, and yes, she would rather you stood up while you do this, there’s only so long she will sit happily on a motionless lap!

Lilly and Isla are still doing us really proud as big sisters. Even though Isla is going through a bit of a hitting phase she hasn’t so far extended this to the baby. She is actually very gentle with her and is always stroking her and saying: “aaaahhh, Evie”. If we are out somewhere and Isla hears a baby cry she’ll always think it’s Eve. And Lilly really dotes on Eve and is always telling her how much she loves her and that she’s the best baby in the world. In return, Eve always has big smiles for her sisters – except maybe when Isla gets a little over enthusiastic with her cuddles and puts her full head of hair right in Eve’s face!

But yes, I think we’re doing ok. My return to work seems to be looming large though – end of next month – I think Tony is feeling a little nervous!

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• Say hello to Eve… (growingmyfamilytree.wordpress.com)
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Do you think I’ve got enough toys?

This is what happens when I suggest to her big sisters that we get out “a few” baby toys for Eve to look at….

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A quick catch-up

Well, it has been a while since I last had a chance to post on here – life has been very busy in the last six weeks!

First of all, we enjoyed a lovely holiday at Center Parcs with the inlaws when Eve was three weeks old. It was the first time we have gone with other people, so we were able to do some activities ourselves with the extra help with the girls – which meant that Tony got to go Quad Biking and I tried Tree Trekking! And the girls had a few adventures including a dance class for Lilly and the tots play zone for Isla (and Lilly, who wanted to join in, despite being a little bit too big!). I also took Lilly to her first Pantomime which she seemed quite impressed by. The weather was lovely so we even managed a barbecue on one of the days!

We returned home from Center Parcs on Friday, and on Saturday, we moved house! The whole family helped us – either by minding the girls or lifting and shifting. Three van loads later and all our things were in the new house! I made sure the girls new room was one of the first things to be properly unpacked and ready, so in the afternoon when they arrived all their clothes and toys were in their room ready for them to find. Lilly had seen the house before – she came round with us when we viewed it – but Isla hadn’t been here before. We had worried that she might find the transition a bit stressful, but she has taken it all in her stride. In fact, when she walked in the front door, she said: “WOW!”, and Lilly was also impressed: “I knew it was going to be nice, but I didn’t know if was going to be THIS nice”.

And on the Monday after we moved, Tony returned to work – back to his old company on the early shifts – so he has been getting up at 4.30am everyday and getting home for around 1pm. Looking after the three girls on my own has been (how shall we put this…) challenging at times. It has been made very much easier by the fact that there is now plenty of space for the girls to play – they even have their own playroom (what should be the dining room) and in the first couple of weeks after we moved the weather was glorious, so they have been able to play happily outside in the nice big garden.

Eve is growing nicely and we have had first smiles! She is sleeping much longer stretches at night. However, she is a NIGHTMARE to get to sleep – she fights tiredness something chronic (just like her biggest sister) and ends up getting overtired very easily. The last four nights she has been up til 10pm ish screaming on and off. She still prefers to be held and will fall asleep in your arms… but if you try to put her down she will wake up and resume screaming so the whole process has to start again. Very tiring. I am hoping that this little phase won’t last too much longer!

Eve's preferred place to sleep

And of course we have just enjoyed Easter weekend – something Lilly has been looking forward to ever since her birthday at New Year! The girls have had so many Easter Egg hunts I suspect that the novelty might actually have worn off a bit! We also did our first ever baking session with Isla, making Easter nests. She seemed to enjoy it – especially licking the spoon (and just eating handfuls of the mixture generally).

So, that’s where we have been and what we have been doing. If we ever manage to get Eve into a more favourable evening routine I will be blogging her birth story… it already feels like a long time ago as so much has happened!

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Say hello to Eve…

Eve, one hour old

Eve Daisy was born at 12.47am last Saturday, weighing 8lb 2oz after a successful induction which began on Friday afternoon. My second VBAC!

The birth was really quite quick, once the contractions kicked in, and the pushing stage particularly so… in fact I went from 6-10cm and she was born all within 10 minutes!

She is, of course, completely gorgeous, and gets more so every day. So far we think she looks a lot like Lilly did as a baby, she has the same shape face and nose, and she has the same slight smattering of hair that Lilly had (not the dark mop of hair that Isla was born with!)

Eve also has an extremely impressive pair of lungs and can not only already cry louder than her sisters but she also has a fabulous high pitched scream in her repertoire – so glad she is not my first baby or I would be paranoid that she was in real pain when she wails for food / has her nappy changed!

This time I was able to come out of hospital the same day, which was really brilliant. She was born just before 1am and we went down to the ward about 3am so I did spend half a night there. But we were discharged and home early that afternoon.

Once we got home, the VIP visitors arrived – big sisters Lilly and Isla, who had been staying with Tony’s mum and dad.

Lilly meets Eve for the first time

Lilly’s reaction when she saw her little sister was just incredible – I’m sure I’ll never forget it. The look on her face was just total amazement and genuinely full of love for her newest sister. She just could not stop telling her: “You’re so lovely! You’re so cute! I LOVE you Eve”, it was such a fabulous moment. And when we asked her what she thought of the name we’d given her, she said: “That is just exactly the name I wanted you to give her!”

Isla was less instantly impressed – she didn’t really take any attention of the new baby at all at first, she just carried on as normal. But in the days since then she has taken a lead from Lilly and has been stroking Eve’s head and saying “aaaaaahhh”. She also asks where the baby is quite a lot – she looks for her in her pram or in her car seat and if she isn’t there she says: “Baby!?”

To be fair, Isla hasn’t really ever seen a baby before, not one much younger than herself anyway. I think at first she really wondered what ‘it’ was – maybe another one of Lilly’s toys or something? Somebody held the baby up close to Isla on the first day and she looked a little bit scared! And at first she didn’t want to touch her or go too close. But because Lilly has been so brilliant and so loving with Eve, Isla has copied her which has been a great relief. So far we haven’t really noticed any particular change in Isla’s behaviour – we had expected she might play up more because she’d be a bit jealous – but she has actually been brilliant. It has made us feel so happy to think of the lovely close age gap the three girls will have and that the foundations are there for them all to have a really great relationship – certainly Lilly could not be a more doting big sister, on either Isla or Eve.

And in terms of how the first week has gone, I think we’ve all done pretty well. We have had a few ropey nights where Eve wouldn’t settle in her basket but prefered to sleep whilst being held. And at first she seemed to be struggling a bit with her feeding, but with a little help from a nice midwife we think we have things sorted now. But we are now on day 8 and for the last few nights we have been putting her down to bed at the same time as her sisters (7pm ish) after giving her a bath to tire her out a little, and it seems to have helped her relax and go to sleep without too much fuss. Last night she woke up 4 hourly through the night, so it was bed at 7pm then wakeups at 11pm, 3am and then 7am. I don’t think you can ask much more of a week old baby!

We have also ventured out a few times as a family of five - there are some more logistics to think about than there were when there were only four of us, but actually it really hasn’t been too horrendous. I think we are doing pretty well, so far!

There have been a few other major developments in the past week - our house move is now definitely back on, and it also looks like Tony may be going back to work for a while, but I will post a seperate entry about both of those - so all in all it feels like a LOT has happened in the last 8 days.

And yes, the family feels complete. Eve is just the perfect addition and she could not be more loved, by all of us. I am feeling very, very lucky and very much in love with my perfect family.

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