At Home With Maggie

She's hardly ever happy, Maggie. Or, rather, she is only when she's being played with - when she's being made to be happy. Apart from that, she never stops howling.

We're hoping that it's something she grows out of. That she's just hypersensitive to things like wind or being unable to get to sleep. That is, we're hoping that she's just a bit of a moaner. A lot of a moaner.

We should call her Malice. Malice and Alice.

On the plus side, we can see that since being home she's that little bit more alert and lively. And we've had a few moments of triumph: such as her tolerating - though not necessarily liking - water on her lips. She's also been taking in and swallowing spoonfuls of Infacol, which is quite treacly and tasty. Also, she can obviously see, although perhaps not too well. She fixes and follows, but it's erratic and tends to be only with certain objects.

She also looks much better. She doesn't look so much like an obviously sickly baby.

On the down side, we can tell that her limbs are stiffening. So we need to step up the physiotherapy. Which may, of course, achieve nothing. But you never know. She hates being in the pushchair and the car seat which, as you can imagine, is a real pisser. When other babies get themselves into a state, a quick trip out can be just the thing to soothe them. She does, however, like the sling - because she likes the closeness. A solution to the pushchair problem may be to swaddle her so she feels enveloped.

I think it's time that we, tentatively, start to treat her a little more like a normal baby. Her cot will be here next week so she can start going to bed properly. And maybe start being ignored a little more. For her sake and for our sanity. And, you know, to help get her in to a routine. It worked a treat with Alice - bed around 8pm, up at 8am.

By the way: Hurrah for Alice. Who is, I would contend, the best baby in the world: bright, loving, happy, quiet and very, very sweet. She reminds me very much of Louie, who was also the best baby in the world.

So it's very hard at the moment. We take it in turns to stay downstairs with Maggie so that one of us can get some sleep. No point us both being awake all night. It's been moderately successful. She has melatonin to help her get off to sleep because it's often the case that she's most upset between around 10pm and 1am. From there she gets from around three to four hours sleep. Which would be tolerable if we didn't have to wake to feed her a couple of hours later - and then stay awake for an hour while she's fed. All the while hoping that she doesn't wake or isn't sick.

She needs to put weight on so they're going to consider upping her feed. Hopefully during the day. So that we can get to a stage where she doesn't have to be fed so often during the night. That'd be nice.

I wrote the above a few hours ago. It turned out that she was a little better this evening, a little more settled and responsive to us trying to soothe her. So much so that we managed to watch two and a half episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm while she was awake.

But then there was two hours of trying to get her to sleep. She's still awake now. I don't know how she does it.

I'm quite busy with work at the moment so the bulk of the care is down to Shannon. She is, I have to say, doing a fantastic job. I don't tell her that often enough. Partly because it seems faintly patronising and trite when I do say it. It's extremely hard for her and I sometimes forget that this is her first time as a mum. And it wasn't supposed to be like this. Really, if you were watching her in a film you'd be crying your eyes out.

But she is doing a wonderful job with both of the girls. They're in the very best hands. As am I.