Week One

Asher is almost a week old already! I was certainly pretty sure he was on the way by this time last week...

We've been trying to take at least one photo of him each day. (But why stop at one? He's so cute!)

Here's how the first week has gone:

Asher's first outfit (he didn't wear it for long!)

Asher was born in a birthing pool early on Monday morning. He came out wrinkly (but not as wrinkly as some babies) and spent most of his first 12 hours wide awake, just staring at me and Noah. He finally fell asleep just before we left the hospital and, much to our relief (as we were in a daze of exhaustion by that point), he stayed asleep for a couple of hours after we got home. That evening was a blur of feeding him and sleeping, and I honestly can't remember how we got through the night! But we did, and woke up so happy and proud of our baby boy.

Contemplating Uncle Thom

On Tuesday Asher was a whole one day old! Uncle Thom came to see his nephew and was very pleased to be Asher's first real visitor.

Me being all maternal...

On Wednesday morning we were starting to feel a little despairing. Asher had hardly slept all night, apart from a few minutes at a time when he was being cuddled. He seemed to want to feed fairly constantly and we were starting to wonder how people possibly manage to look after newborn babies. Fortunately, that evening, Grandma arrived! Hooray for (grand)parents! My mum has been happy to spend hours just cuddling Asher whilst me and Noah sleep - not to mention cooking for us and doing absolutely loads of laundry! Thanks Mum!

Kicking back on Thursday

Now with three fully grown adults available 24/7 to care for Asher, we finally managed to get a bit of sleep on Wednesday night and woke up feeling much better on Thursday. Here's Asher hanging out in one of his favourite starry babygrows. He's a bit of a fashion icon and likes to have at least three outfit changes each day, preferably into brand new clothes. He has a few different ways of letting us know when he's bored with what he's wearing...

All wrapped up for his very first outing

On Friday we decided that we wanted to get out of the house and take Asher for his first stroll around the block. We put him into his pram suit (labelled '1 month' and so massive that when I was putting him in the pram Noah was concerned that I was twisting his leg, until I explained that his tiny limbs didn't extend into the legs of his suit...) and covered him with blankets then went out for a 15-minute stroll. Asher met a neighbour and two people from church whilst we were out. So many new people!

Bonus photo of Noah striking a "stroller advertisement" pose

Friday night was interesting... Asher fed fairly constantly until about 3:30 in the morning. I was beginning to despair of getting any sleep at all, but Noah took him downstairs where he slept in the pram until about 5am. Then after another feed he went to sleep in his moses basket for three hours! We were amazed! If only we can get him to do this in the night...

Saturday's photoshoot

Unfortunately we had to wake Asher (and ourselves!) up before he finished sleeping because we needed to take him to the clinic on Saturday. The midwife said all was well. Asher had a busy day on Saturday, with more visitors after the clinic. He also decided whilst I was taking the above photo that the first time I laid him on his lovely handmade quilt from his Grandma Leeann would be a good time for another outfit change... grr! Hope we can wash the blanket!

And now it's Sunday, and our seventh day of being parents. Asher is confusing us a lot with his feeding/sleeping plans, but we're getting through it (with a lot of help from Grandma!) and we are both thoroughly delighted with our wonderful baby boy.