Bertie on his first birthday
Parenting

On your first birthday

I can’t believe that in less than a week’s time you are going to be 1. It seems like yesterday that I was pregnant with you, waiting for you to arrive during the heatwave of 2018, and when I wrote this blog post.

What a year that it has been. I’ve gone from being a Mum of one child, to having two children to look after. I won’t lie – it has been tough. The early days of looking after a newborn baby after having a c-section whilst also having a toddler to look after, we’re incredibly draining. Luckily I had family around to look after me and you, to give your sister some attention, and to make that we were all eating.

You were a fairly easy baby. You would sleep and feed, and were generally very contented. We didn’t have to deal with any reflux, and nor did we have to use the dreaded Infacol before every feed. You would sleep for long periods of time at first, thank you for that, until the dreaded four month sleep regression kicked in. You would be up every hour, and I was desperate to get you back to sleep again whilst you were having a 2am party in your cot. Fortunately we managed to work through this with a wonderful sleep consultant who worked her magic and got you sleeping through the night again.

I think your sister was jealous of you at first – it must have been hard for her having someone who now took up all of my time. I would spend most of my days trying to field the two of you apart. She would always go in for the attack, but as you got older and stronger, the two of you have become firmer playmates. The turning point was when you began to sit up and move, and I saw that she began to include you in her activities and almost accept you into her life.

You’ve been on a couple of holidays including a trip to Spain when you were 3 months old, and your first trip to Wales when you were four weeks old. You’ve been to Center Parcs with the family, and travelled pretty much all over the UK in the car. Thankfully you are pretty good traveller, either falling asleep or staying fairly quiet.

As well as this you’ve been to three weddings, one when you were a newborn and I left you with a babysitter onsite for a few hours. Looking back on it I think I was pretty brave to take a newborn to a wedding. The next two were family weddings where I had to keep sneaking you off to the toilet to feed you – it’s really difficult to get nice dresses that are breastfeeding friendly for a wedding.

Your first Christmas was lovely and you got to see nearly all of your cousins. Speaking of cousins on my side of the family you gained two new cousins this year, and I can’t wait to see you all grow up together.

Since the start of the year we have been very busy, your house has changed dramatically. The past six month of your life have been spent living in a building site among the dust. You lost interest in all your toys and instead preferred to play with the tools and find loose nails on the floor. Now that the house is nearly complete, I am so pleased to have a house and garden that is easy for you and Freya to play in and hopefully has been designed to see you through childhood.

There is probably so much that I have missed from this, I could go on forever, but that would make this post really long. Today you showed your first signs of nearly walking. You pushed your little lawnmower around the garden with ease, and then managed to stand for about 30 seconds in the kitchen without holding onto anything. Well done!

Thank you Bertie for the past year, it has been a lot of fun, a lot of sleepless nights, a lot of juggling and most of all a lot of love.

Mummy x

One Comment

  • Stevie - A Cornish Mum

    Aw this is lovely! That first year goes crazily fast doesn’t it?! My eldest hated his baby brother on sight, which made things so hard to begin with, but they became so close as they got older thankfully, there’s only 19 months between them.

    Stevie x

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