I can’t believe how bad I am at blogging! Kyle will be 6 months old next week, so clearly I have been very, very busy.

Watch me grow

Life with a baby is so different, than it was before. Even having au paired and nannied for 4 years, hasn’t prepared me for what life is like when the child is yours full time. I absolutely love it, but we have had our fair share of challenges.

• Kyle is a sensory seeker, also known as FOMO. He has been since he was born. He is always alert, and following everything that is going on. He hates to be left alone and is very easily distracted from feeding and being put to sleep.
• Until about a week ago, it was almost impossible to get Kyle to sleep without swaddling his arms. In the Durban heat this has proven difficult, as he was waking up from being too hot! Last weekend we made the first attempt to let him sleep unswaddled, and it worked.
• Breastfeeding was not as easy as I had expected. Kyle was not a natural, and still chooses a relatively narrow latch. Pumping when I started work was even harder for me. At 4 months we switched to formula during the day when I am at work. I was surprised at how big a deal that decision was for me. Now that it’s made though, I am enjoying my moments of breastfeeding him even more. The tension and stress of leaving enough expressed breast milk is gone. He also now gets a bottle of formula at bed time, which means Daddy gets to really share in the bedtime routine.
• Kyle hates the car! HATES it! I have never known a child who screams so much when in the car. It’s really only in the last few weeks that he is getting more tolerant of short trips. In the beginning, the moment the straps of the car seat came down, he would start screaming. We once had him scream for almost an hour while we were driving. Car trips were torture for me.
• Kyle only recently decided to take a dummy. This has been helping with car trips a bit. He only has a dummy during car trips and when going to sleep.
• Day sleeps are a bit of a problem! During the work week he sleeps on his nanny’s back in the carrier. This means that on weekends, the only place he will sleep is in the carrier with us. And not if we are sitting or standing still. We have burst 3 exercise balls already, while bouncing our little boy to sleep! His aunty on the other hand manages to get him to sleep in his cot – so I have no idea what we are doing wrong.
• We are using cloth nappies on Kyle. The challenge with this is that I have become rather addicted to them, and the child now has enough nappies to last 2 weeks without a wash. And I still can’t stop buying them. They are just so adorable!