More pictures of Evelyn

(The link to the pictures is at the end of this post.)

The last few days have been exciting and exhausting. I've managed to take quite a few photos of Evelyn, but it's been much harder to find the time to sort through them all and post them online. As I write this Evelyn is asleep in her moses basket, resting next to me on the sofa, and Kirsty is asleep in bed. We've decided that the best time for Kirsty to sleep is whenever Evelyn wants to sleep, because whenever Evelyn is awake she wants feeding - often for 2 hours at a time. This is fine in the middle of the afternoon, although it stops Kirsty doing anything else. But when it's 3am, its hard for Kirsty to stay awake during the feed. She has a lot of sleep to catch up on, after getting absolutely no sleep at all from when labour started (5pm Sunday) until after we left hospital (Thursday night).

Evelyn was awake throughout the night for her two nights in hospital, and sleepier through the day: her body clock seems to be upside down. Sharing a room with three other newborns didn't help either, as they would all set each other off.

On her first night home, Evelyn also didn't sleep much, but this time it was my turn to look after her. She didn't want to sleep and wasn't happy unless she was being cuddled and walked up and down. Between the hours of 1 and 4 AM I worked out exactly the right speed to pace in order to keep her quiet. At that speed one lap of the flat takes about 45 seconds. I probably did this over a hundred times.

Last night was much better, Kirsty's milk has started to come in properly instead of colostrum. Evelyn is loving it and feeding for up to two hours at a time. This means lots of wet nappies, but it also means that afterwards she'll sleep for 2-3 hours, which is marvellous. This morning she did even better than that, sleeping from 6:30am to 11:30am. A new record.

Thank you to everyone who has sent cards, emails, text messages and gifts. I'm sorry we probably won't manage to reply and thank you all individually. We're very grateful and touched to hear from so many people.

Finally, a very big thank you to Kirsty's parents, who came and cooked us dinner last night. It was delicious (so much better than Kirsty's diet of hospital food and my diet of takeaways from the Chinese restaurants nearest the hospital!), and really nice to see you both.

Right, I better go, as Evelyn is beginning to stir, so I will stop rambling an actually provide links the the photos that were promised in the title of this post.

Here are the pictures

More of Evelyn's first day including her first photo from 50 minutes after she was born

Days 2-4, mostly in the hospital, with a few at home.