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.

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.

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.

Yes, the putrid stump has at last fallen off and with it has gone the foul smell.

Whether it was simply to make us feel better or not, the midwife told us on Friday that she had never known a stump to hold on for so long, nor one to smell quite so bad. This was some relief as Mrs C and I had started to wonder whether we were simply over reacting to the stench. She advised us to smear some Vaseline on a piece of cotton wool and place it over the stump. This should soften up what was there (and hopefully mask the smell a bit).

The momentous occasion came when doing a nappy change on Saturday evening. It was there stuck to the cotton wool and beautiful little belly button beneath.

Oh, how Little P smells so much better!

Avid readers of this blog will know that when Little P finally popped his head out into this world he was 12 days overdue.

That meant he’d been been inside the amniotic fluid for just short of 9 and a half months. And just like when you spent a bit too long in the bath it made his hands and feet all wrinkly like prunes. We thought this was very adorable indeed - a little Californian Raisin of a boy.

As his skin started to dry out, however his hands and feet have turned into those of a hardy Norwegian fisherman’s. The cracks on his feet were so deep I thought they might actually bleed. They didn’t, of course; and now the cracks have gone to be replaced by flaky skin. A quick bit of research on the internet tells me that this is normal in babies and goes after (the ever ambiguous) “a few days”.

Well, it’s been 12 days and Little P’s skin is still so flaky (all over his body) that he is essentially a living, breathing flake of dandruff. If ever there were a market for Head and Shoulders to move into this is it (except they’d have to call it “Head and Shoulders and Arms and Legs and Chest and Neck” etc).

Worse of all though, is not giving in to the temptation to pick the bits of skin off. I bet it’s easier to quit smoking then it is to resist those tiny, flakes of skin.

I knew these computer books would come in useful for something when I bought them:

Yep, propping up the head end of Little P’s Moses basket: