Ella brought spring!

It's already been more than a week since Ella was born and it's flown by! Already now she starts to be more awake and alert - but still not much fun for Iluka... who, I think, is finding it hard to adjust to having to share her parents with this new person. She's very caring and gentle with her, though, so that's good.

And spring has finally come and there is just a little bit of snow still to melt. Iluka and Seb spent some of the day in the garden doing gardening.


And here she's enjoying some time reading with him. It's great to have him around and for the first time ever the other night she woke up calling for him and not for me! I don't know what we will do when he's going back to work...


When Ella was a few days old I took her to the paediatrician at the hospital where I would have given birth if it had not happened at home. I got there for 9am when the doctor started her round on the birth ward. There were lots of women with newborns, all waiting to have their babies checked by the doctor. They had to sit on terribly uncomfortable chairs outside the room where the doctor checked the children - each child probably took about 15-20 minutes. And the poor women, just after having given BIRTH, had to queue up there, waiting and waiting and waiting to be seen, because the doctor did not go from room to room and did not have the time to wait and call each new baby to the check up room one after the next...
And I saw a dad coming to meet his new baby with his 2 year old son. The little boy looked so intimidated and scared in this new environment and as soon as he saw his new sibling he burst into frantic tears. It looked so unnatural, so awkward and scary for this little kid.
And I sat there and I was soooooooooo happy that I had had Iluka at home.

Anyway, here's Ella as she looked when we went out on her first outing.


And here she is in the sling.


And here she is from this morning, 1 week and 1 day old, just after a nappy change.


I had forgotten several things about having a newborn: those EXPLOSIVE poos that manage to reach their necks, somehow. The pain involved in early breast feeding. How quickly they grow out of clothes (I did not buy enough - also due to the first point that I mentioned). And just how plain cute they are!