Conrad feels much less fragile and more ‘solid’ now. He makes eye contact and smiles more and more (whenever he’s not troubled by stomach pains or by having thrown up…). When I’m feeding him, he likes to keep eye contact with me, so I meet his gaze and chatter away at him. Every so often he’ll raise his left eyebrow, as if to say “Really? Are you sure?”. Generally he’s awake more now during the day (apart from a 4-hour sleeping session around 9/10am to 1/2pm) and will sit in the baby bouncer, moving his arms and kicking his legs quite happily at times looking around the place, though he does seem to prefer leaning against my shoulder and I try to let him do that as much as possible – it’s lovely to just sit and hold him, he’s so tiny and soft…
He really is a tall little boy: he takes up almost the entire length of the carry cot already, so we’re starting to wonder what we’re supposed to put him in soon – he’s only 7 weeks going on 8, so actually not quite two months old yet! Every time we’ve given him a bath so far, he’s cried when lowered into it (presumably due to being taken by surprise a bit) but then quietened down quite quickly. A lot of boy’s clothes have phrases like’ Daddy’s/Mummy’s little monster’ or just ‘little monster’ on them, but ‘monster’ was actually Ian’s nickname for Conrad’s sister – Conrad’s Daddy refers to him as ‘man cub’.
Conrad and I had a day on our own yesterday (Wednesday 30th July), as Jessica spent the day at farmor and farfar’s. We didn’t do anything much exciting, though, I’m afraid, apart from being able to take things at a different pace and going food shopping. It was lovely to have a day when I could concentrate on Conrad, though. He still spends most of his days sleeping, but I’m concerned that he won’t get enough of my attention on a regular basis as he starts to pay more active attention to the world around him. Hopefully I will find a way to share my attention well between Conrad and his sister.
Conrad’s colic is still going strong, though we’ve had the odd peaceful night without it (wish I knew what’s been different on those occasions…!). It can start as early as 4pm, if he has a feed then, and carry on for 2-4 hours. Or he’ll have a few colicky hours during the evening, night or morning. Often he’s got two lots, poor thing. It’s not always continuous crying but can be on and off, but he can cry desperately when he has stomach pains – his tummy is hard like the skin on a drum, he pulls his legs up and gets red in the face.
Most of the time I manage to find a way of rocking Conrad which does seem to soothe him, at least for a while, sometimes helping to send him off to sleep. Holding him upright against my shoulder, or in front of me facing me with his back against the length of my lower arm, whilst ‘waltzing’ about the place in long sweeping steps is a favourite. Or holding him across my lap and him facing me with both my arms for support (almost as if I were about to breastfeed him), rocking him either using very small, fast movements or slower movements letting him ‘fall’ towards the floor. But I’m sure that whatever I do serves more as a distraction than anything else – most things seem to work only for a little while before I have to try something else. But if I can at least distract him a bit, it’s worth it.
Gabriella