Week 3 of Nicolas's life

So I've just come back from my first post pregnancy run. My jelly belly jiggled alot along with my new big bazookas... but I managed 4kms without stopping. Quite proud of my self. And now I am on a exercise high. SO glad my folks arrive on Tuesday so that I can really start running again and lose all this weight. Thing is, is that when you are breast feeding you SO cant diet. But YAY, we have full time baby sitters for the next month!! We are so blerrie organised.

So Nicolas has been a star lately. He is awake a lot in the day and sleeps through in the night. Well practically. Like from 11pm to 5 or 6am. His being awake so much in the day means ALOT of work for me... but it is SO worth it when he sleeps through.

Breast feeding is going much better although he still needs the nipple shield now and then on my right breast as a booster. I have one SuperBoob (left) and one dud. We sometimes give him a bottle of breast milk, usually when we have visitors or we go out, and he takes that no problem. Don't even need to warm the milk which is a bonus. And I'm slowly slowly building up a store of frozen breast milk so that we are able to go away next month for 2 days and leave him with my parents.
He does have SUCH sharp little nails that do claw at my chest though when he is SERIOUSLY hungry or just fed up. And often he likes to just suck for a bit longer even though he is getting no milk out. Not good for sore nipples. But it keeps him settled when he is in a niggly patch. And thats all you want when he just cant be soothed... anything that works! We just started giving him gripe water last night. It seems to help a bit. So between the gripe water, his dummy, his comfort sucking and his favourite position (seated, leaning forward with his chin in our hand) and having his back tapped and rubbed we eventually get him to sleep after a feed. It often takes more than an hour though... thats after an hour of feeding. But he sleeps so well at night now so it almost doesn't bother us.

We had Nic's 2 week check up with our paediatrician last week. He weighed in at 3.5kgs which our paed was very happy with. He also was not as yellow, so less need for cooking him in the sun. And his eye gunk cleared up after I started (finger) pumping his tear ducts thanks to our paed's advice.
I also went to my gynie for a quick check up and my stitches are healing nicely which is good. Hence my ability to go running 3 weeks after he was born. YAY!

Nicolas's his cord fell off on Monday (the 9th) evening. So glad to see that ugly little thing go. And now its so nice to stroke his smooth tummy. I have started giving him baby massages too. I follow a chart. He seems to really enjoy our sessions.

Another milestone reached - I took him out on my own in the car to visit a friend. Hem had her gorgeous little boy a week before us so we had LOADS to chat about. We compared notes on EVERYTHING. And moaned about the delights of our post pregnancy bodies. And swapped books on baby stuff. Hem is such a great girl, I'm so glad to have a friend in the same boat.

We've now had plenty of visitors. We even had a braai at our house yesterday for 10! We took Nic to the shops in the morning (he slept the whole time) then when we came back I had a 2 hour session with him while Benedikt did all of the cooking and organising bless him. So we were ready when everyone arrived. And Nic practically slept through the whole thing in doting arms! So it was easy peasy really. And the fact that our friends were super helpful. Its all about inviting the right people too!