Life with Matthew - Day 7

I know I havent yet got round to writing about day 2- 6 but yesterday felt like a real milestone and I want to record it while I remember.

Matthew was a week old yesterday. He spent most of the morning sleeping ( he seems to enjoy his morning down time!) . But during the rest of the day we noticed him doing things he hadnt done before. Yesterday was the first time he was awake and alert for a proper amount of time. Usually he is either feeding or sleeping but yesterday he had long periods of time - half an hour or more when he was just awake. During this time he was looking around and making loads of eye contact and noticing new things!

Also yesterday he was in his bouncer and when Simon moved it from one room to another he grabbed at one of the rings and held on to it! Such a small milestone - but amazing to us.

Matthew was also made official yesterday. We took him to the registry office to record his birth. He also met for the first time little Eva Scarlett. Our good friends Dan and Helen had their little girl on the SAME DAY (!) as Matthew.

Yesterday was an excellent day . Last night wasnt so good - his feed in the middle of the night took 1 hour and 45 minutes so I hope he gives me time for a nap today when Simon gets home from work this morning.

I wonder what Matthew will do today?

Life with Matthew - Days 1-2

I want to be able to remember the first few special days with Matthew. I am sure that we will get many more special moments and days but these ones are very special as we bond as a family and get to the know the new little man in our life.

The Birth and Day 1

My waters broke on Wednesday evening at 10pm. As I was not yet having any contractions I had to go to the hospital to make sure the baby wasnt too distressed and that my blood pressure etc was ok. Everything was fine and we were told to expect labour in the next 24-36 hours. We were also booked in to be induced if nothing had happened by Friday. We went home expecting to have a very boring Thursday at home waiting for something to happen!

At 1am we went to be bed and immediately i started to have back pain. This started to come in in waves up my body and I realised they were early contractions. By 2am I was having uneven contractions every 4-6 minutes. I rang the hospital but they asked me to wait until the contractins were more even. I rang at 4am when contractions were coming very evenly and they agreed I should go in. ( although I think they stil thought it was too early and I was just a first time Mum panicing!!!). When I arrived at the hospital at 4.45am my contractions were every 2 minutes!!!! They had to monitor me for an hour to check I was in labour before checking how much I was dilated - just in case I wasnt in labour and as was now open to infection. At 5.45am they checked and I was 5cm dilated. During this time I started to use the Tens Machine for pain and occasional gas and air.At this point they agreed I was in labour and started to run the bath for me to get in for the last part of my stage 1 labour. The bath was fantastic and I loved the soothing of being in the water. I could also use the gas and air in the water. Things were starting to get very painful and Simon and our wonderful midwife Gerti ( who took over from Kate at about 6ish) were both fantastic with back rubs and encouraging me to take deep breaths of the gas and air. Things moved very swiftly from then on and Simon and I agreed that I would stay in the water to give birth. Matthew arrived in the water at 9.36am. This photo was taken soon after.

The rest of day 1 went pretty quickly and by early afternoon I was down on the labour ward. Simon popped home for a bit and my mum and Simon's family came to visit. Istayed in hospital overnight to try and get help establishing breast feeding.

Day 2

Day 2 was also spent in hospital. Simon came over for most of the day and my mum came for another visit. The time spent with Matthew was so special and it really was time for bonding. But the day was a difficult one due to trying to breast feed and real concerns that he wasnt eating enough. Although the NHS and staff overall for my pregnancy and labour have been amazing - I must say that on this evening there were lots of problems with staff and inconsistency of support. By the evening we decided that Matthew had to have some bottled food or he would loose too much weight. I had very little sleep either night that I was in hospital for a number of reasons .

But as I say - the time with Matthew was still precious and the breast feeding issues will be forgotton. Here are a couple of great photos from Day 2. My mum's hand with Matthew's and proud Mummy and Daddy with our new addition.

Birth Announcement

Just a quick update to say that Matthew Arthur Ellis was born on Thursday 22nd April at 9.36am weighing 8lb3.

We are all doing well and I will post a longer version of events later.

Here are some pics from first 3 days.

Baby Shower layouts

Ive had fun scrapping some of the photos from the Cheam Crop baby shower.

Michellane took this lovely photo of Simon and me. Great to have a photo for the baby album of us together. Ive used Basic Grey Kioshi for this layout. I love the soft colours.

The next layout is of each of the girls with the 'onesie' they hand decorated for me. The papers are October Afternoon - Three Little Ducks - with a selection of other embellishments from different ranges.

And lastly I had fun at making a double layout of all the girls measuring my enormous bump and trying to guess the right length with a piece of string. The new Cosmo Cricket Material Girl range was perfect for this!

Showered with surprises, gifts and love!

I was lucky enough to have two surprise baby showers.

The first was at work. Sarah organised a traditional English Tea for lunch on my last day complete with cream teas, sandwiches and a hot pot of tea. Lots of girls from work came and I was showered with presents as you see from this picture.

Then on the 10th April I went to my last full day Cheam Crop ( for a little while anyway). There Gaye had organised a lovely day for me. She bought lots of little white vests ( onesies) and each member of the crop customised one with their own unique design. What a lovely idea - my baby has designer clothes!

Gaye also organised a predictions book for everyone to guess the date/ name/weight etc and a present for me. Michelanne organised a game for guessing and measuring my bump and Sandra made blue fairy cakes. It was a lovely day and on top of that I won a bet on the Grand National with 'Dont Push It' and won the sweepstake I organised at the crop with the same horse!

Time to blog!

I've been thinking about a blog for a little while. I started one a couple of years ago but didn't get into the routine of updating enough.

I'm a huge scrapbook fan and blogging is quite common amongst scrapbookers to show their work or their favourite new products.

I'm also due to have a baby in one week! I thought that a blog will be a good way of keeping people updated and sharing photos.

I will try and post some photos of my baby showers and some recent layouts.