Max & Me: Lincoln's Half Birthday

My sweet little baby boy isn't a newborn anymore. He's 6 months old, full of beans and into everything!

Lincoln is such a happy little guy now that I almost forget how much of a rough start we got off to.

The first two weeks after he was born were absolutely beautiful. We spent 5 nights in hospital before coming home and whilst he screamed a lot and hated sleeping right from the start I was in that delicious newborn place where everything was perfect. I fell in love with him from the very moment that I laid eyes on him, and in those first two weeks I remember loving when he would wake up to feed in the night because it meant I got to spend time with him.

During those two weeks I was also filling orders for my shop and planing and throwing Max's party and I think I was running on pure adrenalin because the next four weeks were the hardest of my life. Lincoln wouldn't sleep at night, he would feed and then scream for almost two hours, then finally fall asleep only to wake up and hour later and do it all over again. Every single night. On top of that Max started waking up crying each time he heard Link screaming and the only thing he would want was for me to come and lie in his bed with him. So some nights I would leave Sean with a screaming, inconsolable baby and go sleep in Max's bed for half an hour at a time before feeding Lincoln again. It was hard. I took it all out on Sean and would get so angry with him. I think I did just as much screaming and yelling and crying as Lincoln! To his credit Sean took it all on the chin and just keep on trying to help me settle Lincoln, night after night after night.

I was also having a really hard time feeding Link, I had so much milk and it was coming out so fast. He was gulping down so much air with each feed and seemed to have really bad tummy pains. I hadn't been able to feed Max past the four week mark and really wanting things to be different this time, so Sean and I set the goal of making it through to 6 weeks of breastfeeding and then seeing how things were then.

At the six week mark everything seemed to change. My milk started to settle down and Link was finding feeding so much easier. He started to go straight back to sleep after each feed and started to have one four hour stretch of sleep each night. I made the decision to talk to my Dr about how depressed I was feeling and noticed that my outlook changed right from the minute I decided to talk about it. I started to fall in love with Lincoln again and was finally enjoying being a Mum of two.

Since then things have just been beautiful! Link teased us by sleeping through the night a couple of times when he was around ten weeks, but it didn't stick. He generally wakes up to feed 3 or 4 times each night, but he goes straight back to sleep afterwards so it really isn't too bad.

At about four and a half months he started trying to crawl, which was crazy!! It took him about 5 weeks to work it out and now he crawls around everywhere and gets into everything! He's also worked out how to sit up and he loves it. He will often just sit in the middle of the floor smiling his adorable gummy smile at everyone and everything. He's just started to pull up on furniture this week so I don't think he's got any plans to lie around and be a little baby.

He loves Max and Sean, but I am by far his favourite person in the world and that makes me so happy. We have this beautiful bond and I am so glad that those early stressful days are behind us.