Aargh! Our baby's gone all spotty...

Ellie's get acne. It's pretty common in babys, but no less hideous than it is in 14 year olds. We now only take her out in public with a Tesco bag on her head. (Note to any social workers - This is a joke only. Not true. We love her very much.) We might not stick any new photos up for a while...

Despite paying for a builder to break her arm (probably) so she'd get out of changing nappies, Granny Maggie found that Ellie's new pushchair can, sadly, be pushed with one arm. So here she is - Enjoying a walk in the park with the lovable parasite.  

Important correction

Those of you who like to know such things will no doubt be fascinated to note that Eleanor Sluyter was in fact born weighing 8lbs 13oz - slightly less svelte than previously reported. Audrey is adamant that this is a fact of historical significance.

On another note, she also now officially exists, after we registered her birth at the Manchester Registry office. Her full name is Eleanor Megan Sluyter. For our own amusement, we wanted her name to have some nerdy-computery connection. "Megan" is merely the formal version of "Meg". Short for megabyte. In future years she'll be able to boast that she was named after a decent broadband connection speed. We are confident that this will be a great asset to her in later life.

Some days, Ellie seems less like an evil devil-baby, and more like an actual small person. It's horribly manipulative of her, we think. 

It might have taken half an hour to assemble, but Ellie's new gym is obviously going to be worth every penny.  

Much to her grandmother's horror, Ellie shows an encouraging level of attentiveness for watching Euro 2004. Here she is rapt by the opening game of the tournament. We have high hopes that one day, she'll be entirely raised by gadgets.  

A few days from home...

When you've just given birth, rest is the most important thing. You have to give your body time to recover from the trauma. So the midwives will tell you. Ellie doesn't agree. According to Ellie, when you've just given birth, Ellie is the most important thing. It's not easy to rest when you are waken every few hours by an enpurpled screaming machine. After a couple of sleepless days at home we decide to take up my mother's offer of a few days with her in peaceful North Lincs where we can continue to look after Ellie, but where, crucially, someone will look after us.

So for 5 days we try to get as much rest as possible. My mother lives in a village called Belton and because there is nothing at all to do there it is a perfect retreat. A few times Ellie gets terribly upset by something or other at 4am, and I end up strapping her to my chest in the Baby Bjorn sling and taking a walk. The weather is beautiful and one morning I find I'm up at daybreak, strolling through a field with my iPod playing some beautiful chilled out music watching hoards of baby rabbits bouncing through the hedges and it's so serene that it's an enchanting effect. I suspect that it won't be quite like this at 4 in the morning on a drizzly Manchester winter morning. But for now, it's quite blissful.

We swing past the hospital on the way home to get the harness checked out. All is fine. Her hips are still in joint. We'll be back in 4 weeks, but until then we can't take it off, and it's kinda getting a bit poo stained... But standards of normal hygiene don't seem to bother us much these days.

Here's Ellie in her new Pavlik Harness. Doctors didn't warn us about the adorable side effects.  

That dislocated Feeling

So anyway, when you've just been born the doctors like to run all sorts of tests. They'll come along and prod you and waggle various limbs to see if it annoys you. Ellie's main objection to this was that it woke her up, but it's just as well they checked because it turns out she's got dislocated hips. They popped them both in (which made Ellie very purple for a few seconds) but it's a potential problem so she gets an ultra scan so they can check the joints.

We get referred to Booth Hall Children's hospital (really good place) and after another scan the nice folk there suggest that we stick Ellie in a Pavlik Harness. This is basically a velcro exo-skeleton that keeps Ellie looking like a frog. It doesn't bother her at all, and although she'll have to wear it for the next few weeks it does have the added bonus from our point of view of stopping her from dipping her heels into her own poo every time we try to change her. The idea is that this will keep her legs firmly in the hip joints while she continues to grow. Because we caught this so early there's an excellent chance that it will cure the problem permanently. It's a common enough condition, and we're not too worried about it. It's just the first, I suspect, of a series of things that will go wrong. Hey ho.

Leaving hospital & going home

Tuesday 8 June and Audrey and Eleanor are coming home. Audrey is exhausted, sore all over (I'm lying here. She's sore in some very specific places, but let's keep it upbeat, yeah?) and just wants to go home. The hospital staff have been brilliant, but it's time to go home.

Eleanor is starting to come out of her early drugged-up state and is becoming a bit more animated. Only a bit mind. There's a bit more gusto to her screaming when she's hungry, but she's only awake about 20% of the time.

Nappy changing isn't that bad. Her poos remind me of the green spicy stuff that you get with popadums in Indian takeaways. Hmm. Not sure that's a good association to make.

In this modern age it's not too surprising that Ellie has 6 grandparents - and with no competition (Audy and I are both only children, you see) they'll soon be entirely under her control. The two mums are first to see her and both are smitten. The first night at home is quite an experience, but we get through it, and in the morning nothing seems as bad as it did when she was feeding at 4 in the morning. She's so damn cute you just forgive her. But yeah, it's going to be zombie time for a while now.

All the women in the street have been going nuts over her. This is a disturbing power that newborn babies have.

Day two. We like to think she's got a bit of a Jean-Paul Gaultier look going here. This was taken at St Mary's Hospital, Manchester. 

So here she is. Eleanor Sluyter. The flash on the camera disguises just how weirdly purple she is. But this is pretty cute stuff isn't? (We won't see her with her eyes open again for days...) 

Day One

Eleanor Sluyter was born at 10.13 on 6th June 2004. The same day that Ronald Reagan died. We'd like to think that a little bit of Ronnie's spirit has been passed on to her, but when she is asked if she wants to bomb Moscow she just gurgles a bit and then falls asleep. So it's open to interpretation, I guess.

She is born startlingly purple, by forceps, after the longest 12 hours of Audrey's life. The entire labour thing was pretty hideous really, but amazingly, just a few seconds after Eleanor arrives all is right with the world. She even stops looking quite so purple.

The very first photo is taken when she is just 40 minutes old. Looking back, it's an amazing picture. We don't see her eyes open very often.

We always used to be amused by how every parent thinks their child is beautiful - but dammit, there's some pretty manipulative design work gone into these baby things. If something's just going to sleep eat and cry all the time it's going to need something else going for it, and she does. We think she's gorgeous. We are now slaves to her evil plans...