Kate and Andrew Scott

The Roller Coaster of Parenthood

Four weeks old today, adorable and in a 000 for the first time!

Originally uploaded by Kate Scott

We’d heard the tales, we’d read the books, we’d seen the DVDs, we’d attended the classes but it really is true that nothing can prepare you for parenthood bar actually having your own child. Sadly we no longer have all the answers, the reality of parenthood makes you realise that babies sadly do not follow the rules, I guess they haven’t read the myriad of books on the topic!

Harriet’s now (amazingly!) 5 weeks old and we’ve all learnt a lot about each other, although much remains a mystery (Harriet likes to keep us guessing). Harriet’s highlights of the month include:

• Harriet’s first and subsequent smiles. She currently only doles them out on special occasions but it’s just lovely to see her interact with us, and with others.

• Harriet’s first big vomit, which went down Kate’s sleeve, and also her first down-the-cleavage vomit which was about as great as it sounds (at least it was warm!). Happily our girl isn’t much of a vomiter but her few goes at it have been spectacular.

• Harriet’s impressive bladder, which not only holds gallons of urine, but puts it under so much pressure that it often escapes her nappy, and on one memorable occasion, escaped the confines of the change table and spurted across the room.

• Her first I’ve-totally-cracked it cry, which of course came at 4am, a couple of days after we first came home, and drove us mad trying to respond to.

• Her first nothing-is-going-to-calm-me-down-night, that exhausted us and her. For a baby that seems to want to sleep a lot, it’s bizarre that she works so hard to avoid doing it.

Every few days there’s something new. It’s amazing to watch her development.

This month we also had another interstate visit – from Rob, Donna and Tyler. It was great to be able to spend a week hanging out with them, since we normally only get to see them when we visit Perth. Tyler is now so much larger than when we saw him in May.

And given that we now have small children, it seemed only natural to go to an expo about them together with Rob and Donna. It was a bit crazy, with pram log-jams at every booth corner, but there were actually some good deals. We took a deep breath and bought our first cloth nappies – we’ll have to see how they go.

After five weeks off work, Andrew is back at Telstra this week. It’s been great that we could both be home together with Harriet in these first weeks, and it was amazing that we had the opportunity to do this thanks to Andrew’s long service leave.