ONE MONTH WITH EVANGELINE

I am genuinely shocked at how quickly time has flown but Paul and I have managed to keep our tiny human alive for an entire month! It has definitely been full on and we have squeezed a lot of things into our first month of being parents to our tiny girl. She’s still not in her Newborn clothes just yet but she’s certainly chunked out over the past few weeks, we’re kind of glad that she hadn’t outgrown any of her clothes before she arrived! She’s doing so well at feeding and sleeping but the unexpected UK heatwave has definitely made her uncomfortable and unsettled at times. All in all, she’s a happy little thing and has brought so much joy to everyone around her, you genuinely cannot feel sad when you’re in her presence!

Once we were home from the hospital (and I had a few days to recover from the fact that I had just given birth to a real person) I created Eve’s Instagram account. I knew that I wanted to do a monthly update of how we were all doing on my blog so I thought that incorporating an Instagram account would make it a lot easier for me to document our month in photographs! It’s also a place where I don’t feel bad for serious LOOK AT MY BEAUTIFUL BABY photo spam and something really lovely for me to look back at as she grows. I’m slightly jealous of her Instagram account as it’s had a lot more love and planning going into it over the last month than my own. I’m sure that I can learn to balance the two over time – bare in mind I usually sit editing and planning her content at 3am whilst I’m using a breast pump to make her next feed.

Our first two weeks were spent between my Mums house and Pauls Mum and Dads whilst we settled with the realisation that we had been given this tiny thing to bring home and look after. It was so helpful to have the extra support especially as I was healing from the birth and we were both on medication for the first 10 days. We were also so excited to get Eve home and settled at our own house and straight away it felt like home having her there. When I was feeling a little bit more human we took her to be registered, “Baby Potter” was cute but it didn’t quite suit her so she is now officially Evangeline Maisie Egan and scarily looks so much like Paul ever since we got her birth certificate. One of the things we had planned before Evangeline was born was her Newborn photoshoot and I was so glad that we did. When she was just six days old we took her for her photographs and it was such a lovely experience with her being so tiny, the photographs are absolutely stunning and a beautiful way for us to remember her when she was so small.

Paul celebrated his first Fathers Day when Evangeline was just 8 days old. I was not capable of leaving the house at this point due to hardly being able to walk and we had only been home from the hospital for four days so my Mum had to turn into my personal assistant and run around the shops to sort out his presents. I gave her a clear guideline of what to buy but it was definitely hard work not just being able to nip into town for an hour to get what I needed for him! A week after that we had my Mums and Pauls birthdays to celebrate, I had joked with them that Evangeline was their present and online shopping was the only option for me to get everything sorted out in time. On the morning of Pauls birthday he nipped to the gym for a couple of hours which gave me enough time to get his presents and balloons ready. We had such a lovely day and he didn’t seem to mind that he was completely overshadowed by his daughter and I was just grateful that she managed to sleep through me climbing on and off the bed to re-hang a balloon banner about 20 times as it kept falling down!

One thing I did not realise is the number of things that a baby needs to survive, like an entire village. You can’t just take one muslin with you, obviously you need ten just in case you need to create a human parachute in an emergency. With this being said we took Eve to Scotland for four days at just three weeks old, we even braved the Virgin trains which are lovely but the aisles aren’t wide enough to push a pram down? I of course overpacked and over panicked but she slept through the four hour journey there and back with no problems at all and we felt like super incredible parents. It was so lovely for her to be able to meet some of Pauls family whilst we were there and she returned home with a whole wardrobe of knitted cardigans and bonnets for winter. If it wasn’t ridiculously hot I would take photographs of her wearing them now because they are SO cute but we are lucky if she can wear more than a vest at the moment!

And now we’re one month in our little girl is getting more of a personality every single day. She’s so alert and loves being around others, the majority of the time she’s easily pleased if she’s having a cuddle. We’ve seen hints of little smiles but nothing that we are 100% sure of just yet, we think it could be any day now though! This week she’s started to play and interact on her mat which is great if she’s wide awake and we need to do something, especially now Paul has gone back to work and it’s scarily just me and her. I’ll keep you updated next month with how we’re getting on just the two of us but Paul went back to work today and we missed him terribly!

If you’ve enjoyed looking at the photographs then feel free to have a follow of Evangeline’s Instagram to keep up to date with the cute baby spam.