All sorts of lapsed bloggers have been crawling out from the woodwork and behind stones this Christmas period. I feel inspired to join. If anybody out there isn’t on FB/my text list/the grapevine and is thus unaware, baby Jenny joined us on December 20th (just: 1.11 am). I may be a biased and rose-tinted mum – and it may be early days – but she’s a pretty perfect baby and her big sisters are thrilled. More photos can be found here, including one of M&T dragged from their beds to meet the new arrival, and for those of you who enjoy such entertainment her birth story will follow just as soon as I can bear to put her down for long enough (and as soon as I find time without a babe-in-arms that isn’t immediately claimed by another child or some essential household task. Or sleep.) All I will say for now is that independent midwives rock, and are worth every single penny.

Her first couple of days of life were spent on the sofa snoozing and feeding (she is a champ and has gained a lb already, at 10 days old) and generally getting over the whole pushing out a baby at way past one’s bedtime thing (didn’t get to bed until after 3 the night she arrived). My favourite event was surprising Sara, in whose house we had been at 5 pm on Saturday (no baby): her face was a picture when she walked into our living room at 10 am on Sunday to find a whole new human being had arrived overnight! On day 3, we finally managed to put up the Christmas tree and were visited by a different midwife; this one had wondered the day before J arrived if it would be worth trying a wee bit of homeopathy: we had discussed whether it would work if you didn’t believe in it. She maintains it clearly does (I think she’d have arrived regardless). Day 4 my milk arrived – I need say no more for anybody who has been through it – as did my parents.

A pleasant if necessarily quiet Christmas: mum and dad came and cooked goose and trimmings (and now they have gone I can put selected leftovers in the bin but shh don’t tell!) and occupied M & T with games and crafts. They (the girls) had clearly absorbed all the propaganda about santa not coming if one didn’t go straight to sleep: when I went up to tuck them in and fill their stockings, I found two girls lying perfectly straight under completely undisturbed duvets, clearly neither of whom had twitched a single muscle since bedtime. Both slept until 745 which was quite a present for us, too. [Aside: at a week old I find it hard to evaluate whether J is “good”, but I am getting a lot more sleep now than when I was pregnant, which probably means she is. I was asked today whether she was sleeping through, which struck me as a bit nuts.]

J and I had our first outing yesterday – her first ever trip outside the house, my first venture beyond the garden shed for 10 days. Lovely to get walking not waddling and I so enjoyed getting the baby sling back out. Today was busy with the health visitor (a profession of which I have not been given cause to revise my opinion), a trip to the hospital for J’s hearing test (all clear) and a new tumbledryer as mine picked the perfect time to break down. J has experienced three short car rides so far and has screamed through them all which does not bode well for next week when we must go to Surrey.