Six weeks old

I have made things difficult for myself by going back and reliving things with these posts. If I was really smart, I would have been blogging as I went, but unfortunately the transition to becoming a new mum was far too over-whelming for me!

My memory of Charlotte at six weeks was of a baby who was very much starting to respond to her environment. While she didn't yet have the hand-eye coordination or strength to deliberately grab at things, she was certainly making a good attempt. Her play mat (below) become more fun for her as she was able to see the toys better. She also started to see the toys in her stroller better and made half-hearted attempts to grab at them (well, they looked half-hearted but I know that's not actually the case - she just didn't have the capacity to be full-hearted about it!)

She was definitely starting to smile at us, although her smiles weren't frequent or regular. Still, when they did occur, we knew they weren't just wind for a change!

I also remember this period being the time when I first noticed Charlotte starting to get more head control. I couldn't yet pick her up and have her hold her head high, but she needed less support from us while feeding and was able to look around for a few seconds before getting all wobbly. Sometimes, though, the power of the milk was just too strong and her head would need lots of support!... LOL

Unfortunately, Charlotte was still chucking up her food quite a lot at 6 weeks. We were assured that she would eventually grow strong enough muscles (internally) to stop this from happening, but I shed quite a few tears as I watched Charlotte bring up close to half of what she drank at each meal. There was no predicting when it would come up or on what, which made it even harder to cope with. But we were thankful that she was what the books referred to as "a happy chucker", meaning she didn't seem to experience any discomfort or pain. So she didn't have reflux, just "an immature sphincter". It was a nuisance and meant we went through lots of bibs, but other than that, she was feeding well. She was still putting on weight (lots of weight!) and certainly didn't appear to suffer as a result of the regurgitation, so we knew it was just a matter of time.

(As I write this now, some 8 weeks later, Charlotte has all but stopped regurgitating her food. And despite how upset I was about it at the time, I don't actually think I noticed when she stopped! It's funny how these things work...)

It was still over-whelming being a new parent with a 6 week-old baby, but things were slowly getting better and we were slowly starting to develop a routine. One thing I'll always be thankful for was that Charlotte was a good sleeper. While she didn't sleep through the whole night or anything like that, she went to bed at night without much fuss and slept a predictably solid 5-6 hours before needing another feed. So even with the chucking up, I still felt we were rather lucky and had a pretty fantastic baby :-)