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Well it’s now 9 weeks since Emily was born and life has certainly changed and the thing is, I love it. I almost can’t remember not having her around after only 9 weeks! eeck. All things seem to be going OK, she’s eating, sleeping(occasionally) and best of all we’re getting smiles and goo’s… more about that in a bit.

Ange is doing great, she’s really tired and has a bit of a cold at the moment so I’m trying to provide as much TLC as I can / am allowed to. Neither of us are good patients but we both try which is important. It’s really cool to watch both of them together, lots of playing and activity, well as much as you can at only 9 weeks.

The smiles like I say are getting more frequent, and we’re now sure it’s not just wind!…  It’s also clear that Emily is all about the thinking and planning for world domination, starting of course with her parents.

You can just tell for use that she’s calculating just how much of a smile of a goo she has to give to get her way… we stand firm together against her however… well until I cave in!

The drive home  from work is full of excitement to get home and see both of them, we’re doing combination feeding which means I get to do the bottle. It’s a really good thing from my point of view as it lets me be involved more and gives Ange a bit of a help. We play Russian roulette with Nappies , turns out that like life, nappies are similar to chocolates.. you don’t know what your going to get and some times here are interesting bits in there!

So Emily is now officially 1 week old, I did think about getting a cake sorted out for mum & dad to celebrate but frankly I was too tired, and her poor mum is exhausted . I think we knew or thought we knew that it was going to be a lot of sleepless nights but I don’t think that we realised nor were we told about the emotional effect as well.

Emily as it turns out is more of  a grazer than a gooner when it comes to her food, keeps the wind down but means that meal times turn into hours and very long sleepless nights. It seems that midnight is the ideal time for her to wake and start eating… meal time seems to be till 4:30am…. I’m starting to worry that our daughter will become a socialite that expects meals to last for hours and include witty conversation and insightful comments… well, eventually.

Outside of meal times we obviously have the other end to deal with, they seem to be coming thick & fast and I’m thinking about starting a table / chart of nappy speed records, perhaps open it up to all comers or maybe just have a Star in a nappy change competition. It really is becoming a bit of  a pit stop exercise, the prep work is really quite in depth, the new nappy is fully prepared and opened for the fast and effective placement, the nappy bin lid is opened ready to take the pre-owned nappy, the wipes are soaked ready for use…. and we’re off!

Between the flailing arms and legs, the gurgles and screams I usually start thing think of ear plugs & safety glasses, it’s only a matter of time before I think I get caught mid change with a sneak attack. Anyway, old nappy off, there is that small period of time when you marvel at the sheer volume of what a person this small has produced, then of course you hear the advice from the midwife in your head in a kind of Obe Wan Kenobi way… ‘is it heavy?’.. eh?.. oh yes, did she have a pee?.. knowing that junior is producing urine is an important element of tracking things, what goes in must come out etc so this becomes an obsession, you’ll find yourself looking at soiled nappies and trying to tell if it’s just one or the other or both. For the innocent bystander not knowing what your doing that I'm sure cold like rather disturbing… they don’t warn you about that at antenatal classes!

It’s not long in the week when you realise that you have in fact only had 3 hrs sleep in the last 48-60hrs and that all of a sudden you can no longer lift your arms, focus on small things like your TV or the wall!  This it seems can only be fixed by indulging in that fabled past time of sleep. People keep telling us, sleep when the baby sleeps… yeah well, that only works if the baby does sleep!… plus when junior does finally sleep it’s so quiet that you spend most of your time looking at them and thinking… awe they are so peaceful, what a wee angel, or hmm… is she breathing?… I’m sure it’s paranoia and the fact that she’s new, and of course we’re new to this but I do find myself sneaking up to the crib and just leaning over to check for breathing, which is dumb as we’ve got a monitor and one of those movement boards that you put in the crib or cot that sends out a piercing alarm should junior get comfortable and not move enough. The Engineer in me knows that we’ll get a chunk of ‘false calls’ when it goes off and junior is just sound a sleep, well till the alarm goes off… then the parent in me thinks, hey I’ll take every precaution I can to make sure she’s ok… and let mum & me relax and get some sleep.. I’ll keep you posted on that.

So day 2 of Emily being part of the family and it's just fab. She's noisy at times, very sleepy and produces some really sticky nappies! But it's fantastic. I'm tired, my other half is really tired and jn?.. well she's pretty happy I think. We get her home tomorrow and I've spent the day either at the hospital helping mum or here setting things up, an old Scottish tradition of not bringing baby stuff into the house until you have a baby... turns out it just adds a heap of extra work you don't need to be doing! Still, it's done now and I've caught up on a few more chores tonight so time for some sleep, while I still get some!

Well, it's happened, Bubs has arrived!.. Emily Arrived on Thursday at 19.09 at night after 36hrs or so of labour and a set of forceps to help her out at the last minute.

She's a good 3.3kg (7lb 4oz) bundle of stunning loveliness that has just taken complete control of her mum & dad within minutes of being born!

We thought we were pretty ready for her to arrive but as it turns out, we were wrong, probably in more ways than we know about just yet, but neither of us I think expected the sudden incredible and uncontrollable wave of emotion that hits and the complete and total instant love you have for this little person.

She's stunning, loud, blue eyed, we think red headed but it keeps changing every time we look at it to strawberry blond or sandy brown. Already we know that she's a strong willed little girl, she has a vice like grip with those hands and if she doesn't want that arm in the sleeve then your going to struggle.

I know she's already figuring out what she has to do to get mum & dad's attention. The way she lays there in your arms looking at you with her eyes, you just know that behind them a little brain is ticking over, ether she's thinking,

Well, time for a bit of a blog about things other than photo's for a bit. Well except from maybe one image.....

Yep.. We're knocked up!... well I say, but I mean my other half Angela but I did my fair share so it's good to share the acclaim eh? So throughout the posts here and in subsequent ones you'll see me write we're or us or we when in actual fact it's all Angela having to do the work but there you go.

Firstly... yes that's our scan, how clear is that!?... so that means we've finally passed the 'magical' 1st trimester (even getting the technical terms going here).

We're actually about 4 months gone now so things are starting to settle down a bit for Ange on the nausea side of things although the tiredness is still there, who wouldn't be at growing a whole new person eh?  When we got the scan done the little critter was fully of action, dancing around in side there, from the looks of it Bub's has inherited Dad's dancing style, which can only be a good thing I feel, hard to tell if Bub's is a Ginger as yet though - we hold out hope.