Oliver Hugo Stanley

I t gives me great pleasure to introduce you to our baby boy … our little Ollie, although in more formal circles he’ll have the option of using his full name which is Oliver Hugo Stanley.

He’s been with us just over a fortnight now and we couldn’t be more in love. He has a head full of thick black hair, blue eyes and and is the spitting image of Stuarts Dad – which is a little disconcerting at times, but he smells absolutely delicious and is oh so scrummy!! He’s also such a boy, feeding non-stop, pumping like a trooper and letting out the cutest little sigh once he’s finished eating. I could genuinely just eat him up!

Compared to Ettie, Ollie is super chilled and will happily sleep for hours at a time, only really raising his voice when his little tummy rumbles. We joke that he pretends to be asleep to get a bit of a break from his sister who is constantly smothering him with kisses, but perhaps its because he’s just used to hearing all the madness from inside the womb.

Ollie’s entry into the world was a fast one at 51 minutes – but I’m going to write up his birth story in more detail shortly. To summarise he was born here at home, on our bed and weighed 8lb 5oz, which is a whole lb and a half bigger than his sister. Neither of us ever expected to have a boy so when I asked if the baby was ok and Stu replied ‘yes he is’, it was the biggest surprise and I spent the next few hours just looking at him saying ‘its a boy, its a boy, what are we going to do with you?’

Because he was a boy we never had any names picked out or any clothes ready for him to wear, so I spent the first few evenings after his birth making use of the night feeds and doing some online shopping to stock up his wardrobe. We also took over a week to decide on his name, which became pretty stressful towards the end because everyone kept asking. My first choice was to call him Hugo, primarily because I liked the name, but Stu liked Ollie and so I let him make the final decision because he was so amazing during the birth. We both like the idea of a name you can lengthen in a formal situations, so he’ll be christened Oliver, which works well alongside Arrietty as its another character from children’s literature which I quite liked the idea of. The name Stanley comes from the name of a pub in the village where I grew up. I’ve always liked the name, but like it even more than it is something which reminds me of Cumbria.

Whilst he was healthy when he arrived, there was quite a lot of meconium in his waters so we had to transfer to hospital for observations overnight. Thankfully everything was ok and we were home by 10.30 the next morning to introduce him to his big sister.

Ettie has taken to the role of big sister superbly well. I was worried she might feel a little left out having to share her Mummy and Daddys attention but it hasn’t been like that at all. She’s constantly looking after him, wanting to help change his nappy and if he cries she’ll go over to him, stroke his head and raise her voice saying ‘it’s ok little baby, it’s only Mummy’ to comfort him. She’s such a little superstar. If we do try to have a little one on one time with her, like at bath time, she’ll actually object telling us to ‘bring baby’ along too. It makes me so incredibly proud to see just how loving and caring she is and I feel so so lucky, its made the whole transition from one to two children so much easier.

Other than their sweetness, Ollie is completely different to Ettie when she was a baby and I sometimes find myself looking at him and having to do a double take! Ettie is fair with dark eyes, while Ollie is dark and his eyes are already blue. Ettie has long skinny legs whereas Ollie is much shorter and stockier and whilst Ettie fed a little bit, every couple of hours, Ollie absolutely LOVES his food and would feed continuously if I let him! Ettie calls him ‘little piggy’ on account of the little grunting and snuffling noises he makes when he’s looking for food. It’s such a cute little sound, but it is very funny and I can see what she means. We joke that he’s just like his Daddy because as soon as he opens his eyes, he thinks he should be eating and he won’t really settle until there is something in his mouth! When we had him weighed at his 10 day sign off, he was already heavier than Ettie was at 10 weeks old! I find it so strange how we’ve made two babies from the same DNA and yet they are so completely different. Its going to be so interesting watching them grow up.

Here he is, our boy at one week old lying on the spot where he was born. It makes me so emotional looking at this photo and I feel so incredibly lucky to have two healthy beautiful babies. The transition to two children has been a little tougher on the emotions than I imagined, but that’s mainly because I wasn’t expecting to be so utterly consumed by the overwhelming emotions that come alongside your heart doubling in size!!

I’m going to take a little bit longer off the blog, breathing this little man in, but I’ll be back soon. Until then

Happy weekend xxx