Bump - the first month

Our beautiful son is now just over a month old. I realise weeks have gone by since my last blog post, but I have to say this parenting lark is taking up a great deal of my time! Just finding time to shower and clean-up the house if tricky enough, let alone writing an email or two or, God forbid, blogging!

Having said that though, we've come a long way since he was born. As I mentioned in my last post, I really struggled with breastfeeding, and it really upset me. It was something I was determined to do, and there was very little support here from the hospital staff, who basically just said that if I couldn't breast feed him, I'd have to give him formula, and that was that. Not what I wanted to hear! Luckily a combination of a British midwife out here, my husband's support and some bloody minded determination (plus our son getting significantly stronger) won the day, and I'm now managing to feed him myself almost exclusively. I am incredibly relieved, but it was a battle that took a lot of energy out of me, particularly at a time when I needed all my energy to adjust to new motherhood.

I was suffering from a nasty case of the baby blues until recently. I can only describe it as PMT on steroids. I really felt like I was losing my mind at times. In was incredibly hard, not just for me but for my husband too, who ended up dealing with a tearful me on a daily basis. Thankfully the dark cloud seems to have lifted now - and about time.

I'm determined to enjoy our son, who is simply incredible. I stare at him sometimes, just amazed he's ours.

News-wise, we've managed to beat the bureaucracy over here and now have a British passport and residence visa for our son, which means we can head home to the UK in July to introduce him to our families. We are quite nervous about travelling with him for the first time on a plane, but I've been getting tips from lots of other families out here. Fingers crossed he's a good flyer!