He's The Daddy

Now I know this is supposed to be a blog about Oscar, but allow me to write a few words about his Daddy and my husband, Neil.
Now, Neil has always been an all-round top bloke, but during the last roller-coaster year he's excelled himself. Oscar and his mum are very lucky indeed to have him around, to name but a few reasons:

• He buried his nose in pregnancy books so he could 'fight my corner' during the birth and be as much help as possible
• He finds the funny side when Oscar poos/wees/throws up on him
• A nice home-cooked dinner invariably finds its way to me after I've finished the last feed before bedtime
• He doesn't shy away from changing really atrocious nappies
• He told me I was looking great even when I was the size of a house in late pregnancy, when I had bags under my eyes that had to be seen to be believed, and when I had baby sick all down my T-shirt
• He sings funny little songs to Oscar to make him smile
• He took time out of a very busy day at work to take him for his first injections
• He asks me if he can get me anything on each and every night feed, and stays up and keeps me company on particularly tough nights
• He's there for almost every bathtime
• He disproves the theory that men can't multi-task

Given the above, I don't think anyone could dispute the fact that Neil deserves an almighty big thank you from the bottom of my heart. I'm sure his kindness and hard work will be rewarded in a year or so when Oscar grants him hero status.

Magical Three Months

Oscar is now just a few days away from turning three months old. Experienced mothers seem to refer to this particular milestone as something completely wonderful, when the endurance marathon of early parenting gives way to a period of easier living in which your offspring transforms from a scarily fragile newborn to a smiling, gurgling, playful little person. Oscar can now amuse himself with his toys for fifteen minutes or so, giving me the chance to perform some of the everyday tasks that I took for granted prior to childbirth (such as brushing my hair, or making a sandwich with two hands).
It's very easy to get into the habit of wishing this special time away in the name of developmental progress ("Won't it be nice when he starts eating/says his first words/wins the Nobel Peace Prize", etc). But I know that when he's too big to snuggle under my chin after he's had his milk, all warm and gorgeous and snuffly with hair as soft as silk and his lovely baby smell wafting up to my nostrils, I will miss those moments so very much.

Bundle of Joy

I strongly suspect that we have what some textbooks refer to as an 'active baby'. He runs horizontal marathons on his changing mat, attempts to mosh whenever there's music playing and does his own special brand of cot aerobics. After one particularly sleepless night (Oscar decided to put himself through an extended exercise programme from midnight until 6am - ouch), as a last-ditch attempt to get him to sleep Neil decided to swaddle him (which is something we haven't done since he was about two weeks old) and it did the trick spectacularly well, the sandman arriving less than 60 seconds later. Since then our little boy has been swaddled up tight every night (he looks like a spring roll with a head) and has been sleeping like a baby at last, and consequently has been far more chilled in the daytime. Hurrah!
Some experts believe that babies shouldn't be swaddled after the first six weeks as it arrests their development - I say pish tosh - he's merely swapping the cot aerobics for a Dynaband workout. I expect him to have muscles like Popeye by the end of the month.

A Little Treasure

Oscar has made amazing progress in the last couple of weeks. He's growing like a weed and his eyes are like saucers for most of the day as he takes in all the new things around him. His current favourite activities include tongue poking competitions with his daddy, doing impressions of Animal from The Muppets on his play mat (batting the toys hanging down as if they were a drum kit), and babbling away in his own baby language to anyone willing to converse with him. Neil and I continue to be completely enchanted by the little scrap.

It's Hard To Be Green at 3am

We've fallen off the eco-wagon with a bump. The lure of a convenient, throwaway, disposable lifestyle is pretty irresistible when the baby catalogues are full of environmentally unfriendly products that give you a few more minutes to yourself in the day and a few more hours of kip at night.
For the first weeks of his life, Oscar wore cute little cloth nappies. At first we were feeling very pleased with ourselves - the nappies looked very comfortable, were easy to wash and dry, didn't leak and didn't end up in a huge pile in a landfill site - what more could a new parent want? But as Oscar started to take in more liquid, the nappies (that I'd bought second hand) gave up the ghost (probably due to the fact that they hadn't been looked after properly by the previous owner) and started leaking within a few minutes of us changing them. Now I like to think of myself as an environmentally conscious parent, but when it's the middle of the night and you've spent two hours trying to get your offspring to visit the land of nod, the last thing you want to deal with is numerous nappy changes when you could ensconce your baby in a super-absorbent (albeit hideously chemical-packed) disposable nappy. So we switched from cloth to 'eco-friendlier' disposables which contain a much larger percentage of biodegradable materials than standard nappies. This temporarily salved our consciences, until I attended the West London 'Real Nappy Night' last week, where I discovered that sadly these still play havoc in landfill sites due to the large amount of organic matter contained within. So we're taking a big deep breath and jumping back on the wagon by ordering some nice new cloth ones. Oscar is growing at a rate of knots, and we've broken into 3-6 month old size clothes, which he will be filling even more efficiently soon as cloth nappies tend to be a lot bulkier than disposables. However we're counting our blessings: when he's learning to walk he will have something nice and soft on his behind to land on when he falls over... and we won't be adding to the EIGHT MILLION nappies that end up in landfill each and every day in the UK. A sobering thought - if an 80-year-old man digs up the nappies he wore as a baby, the chances are they will still be in pretty good nick. Enough said.