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Your birth was everything I could have hoped for. It was so much more painful than I ever could have imagined but with your dad’s support, I achieved the drug free, water birth that I wanted and you came into this world at 8:55pm on August 27 2009 with a head full of black hair weighing 3.34kg. We spent the night together at the RPA birth centre and until I was transferred to the post-natal ward the next day and visitors were allowed, it was just the three of us – our little family. It was exactly how I wanted it to be.

You slept a lot during your first week at home and only ever woke for a feed. We could put you down awake and you’d happily settle yourself to sleep, without making a sound. You weren’t much of a crier and so well behaved when we had visitors. You slept in our room for the first 3 weeks and kept us awake at night with every little noise you made – we hadn’t worked out that they were your sleeping noises and often we would sit by your cot wondering what to do. At first, we couldn’t bear to leave you alone in a room by yourself so you slept in your snuggle bed in the lounge until we were all ready for bed.

By the second week, you’d become more alert, making sounds and smiling every now and then – especially when we put you under your jungle gym and played your nursery rhyme CD.

Your dad returned to work during the fourth week and misses you so much – he rings often during the day to see how we are going. We started finding a bit of rhythm and routine which makes it so much easier to get things done around the house while you sleep.

Your smile and giggles and gurgles makes all the sleepless nights worth it. In the fifth week, you started smiling back when we talked to you and this week you have been smiling and giggling constantly when I sing: “Fatty fatty boombah, where is your boombah?” - which doesn’t even make sense but you love it. It has been astonishing how you have progressed from a few smiles here and there to constant obvious interaction with us this week. You “talk” to us and we love it.

Everyone who meets you comments on what a beautiful looking baby you are. I know we’re biased but I don’t think they are just being polite. You are growing every day. Your eyelashes are getting thicker, longer, darker. You are learning to move around. I once left you on your jungle gym and when I came back you’d shuffled 90 degree on your back. I put you on your tummy to take photos of you on the couch and before I knew it, you’d shuffled over the edge and I caught you just as your head hit the floor. It was your first accident, one of many I’m sure, but it broke my heart to hear you cry. Now I watch you like a hawk.

Your dad gives you a bottle of expressed milk every night at around 10-11pm so I can get a slightly longer stretch of sleep before doing the graveyard shift. Getting up in the middle of the night is tough, but in those early hours when it’s just the two of us, I am reminded of how much you are worth getting up for.