Right, so I thought I’d get back into blogging with a post about my favourite subject: sleeping.

Every parent I spoke to in the weeks leading up to Little P’s birth said, in essence, the same thing: “Kiss goodbye to sleep”. And, in a way, we have done.

The first few nights with Little P at home were deceptive, he was feeling the effects of Mrs C’s drugs binge and had chosen to sleep off his hang over. This gave us a false sense that Little P would sleep from 11pm until 6am from day one and that our lives would be full of joy, laughter and most importantly sleep. Oh but how wrong we were.

Peter decided that once his head had cleared he liked food. Yes, he liked food oh so very much. And he didn’t care whether it was day or night he want food.

So our nights were broken with feeds at 11pm then at 2am and again at 5am. But it seemed to be a routine and we didn’t mind so much. We had a system, on work nights (Mon to Thur) Mrs C would do the change and the feed and on all other nights (Fri to Sun) I would do the change and she would feed. And it worked. I found that I got used to being woken up in the middle of the night quite quickly. I’m not saying that I would have done it from choice but it wasn’t as bad as I feared.

So day after day, week after week we followed our routine. Not feeling too tired (no match sticks keeping our eyelids open at least) and just getting on with feeding and changing.

Until Little P had a growth spurt between 3 and 4 weeks. He suddenly became not quite so Little P. He tipped the scales over 10lb for the first time and his stomach was now big enough to hold more milk. So the 2am feed disappeared.

We still woke up obviously. We were in a routine. But Moderately Sized P (that name will never catch on) slept through until 5am.

This went down as the “Best day ever” since getting Little P.

Then he did it 2 days in a row, then 3 days then 4 days. Our sleepless nights seem to be over.

Except now we’re really tired all the time. Little P lets us sleep until 7am at the moment but we’re really knackered. We’d be feeling really lucky about having a sleeping baby, if only we had the energy.

I think this is down to those early weeks of not really feeling tired finally catching up with us. Plus we’re trying to fit bits of our old lives back into our schedules (exercising, socialising, blogging, that sort of thing) but it’s a bit of a squeeze.

Anyway, we are really lucky to have a sleeping baby and every time he closes his eye’s at 9pm and keeps them shut until 7am I say a little “thank you” under my breath.

But what I think has been the biggest eye-opener for me (ouch, terrible pun) is just how little sleep I really need each night. In fact I couldn’t agree more with one of the other Dad’s from our NCT group said to me the other day “What annoys me most is if I’d known I could get by with so little sleep before I would have done so much more with my life. But I was in bed.”

So I have kissed goodbye to sleep, but for all the right reasons.

OK, so Peter’s now 2 months old today (checks timer, yep, still working) and I thought that it was about time to start writing this blog again on a regular basis.

Tonight was going to be the first *proper* entry but I’ve just been up and down the stairs for the 5th time tonight (a very agitated and sleepless baby tonight) and to be honest, I can’t be bothered to write much.

So just to say, over the coming weeks I’ll be playing catch up with the last 2 months as well as telling you all the hilarious things Little P does on a daily basis (”…and then he just stared at me for hours. How brilliant is that?” etc).

It’s nice to be back and I hope there is still the odd reader out there.

Cheers, Ian.

Just a quick post to assure you all that I haven’t forgotten about this blog and that as soon as I get time to breath I will be back posting again… by my guess that should be sometime in 2023.

See you then…

New born babies have only a few things that they really like to do; sleep, poo, wee, stare and eat. Some of these things that they love doing are also accompanied by the scream on the Banshee (those are: poo, wee, eat).

The worst scream that Little P does is his “I’m really hungry” scream.

Thanks to our experiences over the past (let me check the new counter) 19 days we have started to predict when the screaming is going to start. Not that we can actually stop him screaming, of course.

So we cradle him in our arms, give him a little hug and gently swing him back and forth until Mrs C is ready to dish out the rations and the screaming slowly but surely turns into snuffling.

Yes, Little P makes noises like a boar snuffling for truffles when he’s snuffling for a nipple.

Now, they don’t mention that in the books.

As some of you may have noticed, I’ve made a few changes to this here blog (sorry, I forgot to warn you: This post is blogging about blogging!).

I have finally got around to coding up a replacement for the “Fatherhood Expected in” countdown timer. Yes, I now have a cumbersome and clunky “Fatherhood Maintained For” count, er, up timer. I’m happy to share the code, if anyone wants it. Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? Well, on the off chance that you want it, leave me a comment and I will mail it to you.

I’ve also changed the graphic in the page header. For the benefit of newcomers or those with very bad memories, before it showed a man and a pregnant women. Now it shows me and Little P. Before the colour combination work really well to pick out the man and the woman. Now it has a radioactive man holding a radioactive baby.

Some more work is needed, I think.

I’ll get round to doing a complete blog redesign so it doesn’t look quite so amateurish, I promise. Just as soon as Little P doesn’t need his nappy changing, a feed, winding etc…

Here’s a picture of Little P’s new best friend:

After being brainwashed by the Blooming Marvellous catalogue given to us, we decided Little P’s vision needed to be stimulated and the blank side of the Moses basket wasn’t up to scratch.

So we bought this and he loves it - stares at it for ages.

His vision is now being stimulated like never before.