The summer is a different story, a stage is set up in front of the Ayuntamiento at the end of June and it stays there until September. Every Saturday there is some form of entertainment and pretty much the whole village gets dressed up and slowly make their way to the square,stopping along the way for a spot of tapas.

Last Saturday was the first time we have managed to make it down there due to the fact that the entertainers don’t normally start until around midnight so we made the most of having a babysitter (Charlie’s Nana) and joined the rest of the village.

I have to say we struck lucky as, instead of the normal Spanish singers with a backing track or synthesizer, we got to see a ‘real band’ called Bueno Sombra. The band was fantastic and my only criticism was that they were not on for long enough.

This year is different, Charlie wakes up early in the morning and has 2 or 3 naps during the day. Unfortunately, because I am working from home I can’t take this opportunity to sleep through the heat of the day and instead use the time to catch up on work or chores.

The Spanish on the other hand seem to spend most of the day in hiding and enjoying a nice long siesta and they normally come out to play around 9pm and they get louder until around 11pm when its cool enough to go to sleep.

By the time we have managed to get Charlie to sleep and had some tea its just in time for our Spanish neighbours to turn the volume up. The option of getting an early night is out of the question seems as our bedroom is at the front of the house.

I have decided that next year we will have to adapt in the summer, Charlie will be older and hopefully it will be easier to get him to sleep whilst we are out. We are going to have late nights, late mornings (for Charlie) and long siestas and hopefully we will all cope with the heat better and still manage to get a good days work done.

Its funny really but I have actually found these last few weeks harder than when Charlie was a newborn and waking every three hours. Maybe this is because I had gotten used to getting a good 7 hours sleep or maybe I have actually forgotten what it was really like in the beginning. Either way it drove me crazy.

I mentioned before that I had some theories well here they are. Firstly I put the problem down to the possibility that he was about to cut his first tooth, he had all the signs, vomitting, pain from gas (reminding me of the days he had colic) and the fact that his hands were constantly in his mouth.

My second theory is something called sleep regression. Apparently babies go through some pretty tough developmental stages when they are learning something new. Their minds are working overtime trying to master their new skill and this can effect their sleep and their ability to sleep.

All of this would make sense as Charlie is currently learning how to crawl and has started babbling and I have also heard that the pain of cutting a tooth is more than an adult can handle.

I am pleased to say that he changed back to his normal self overnight, well nearly, his new thing is waking up at 4.30am every morning but fingers crossed the more he tires himself out crawling the longer he will sleep at night!

Whilst I was pregnant Gizmo & Binx had to be treated for kidney problems and at the time the Vet told us that if the treatment did work it may come back and if so there wouldn’t be much that they could do. Thankfully the treatment did work and both cats were back to normal.

Unfortunately whilst we were back in the UK Gizmo was pining for us and he stopped eating, this was enough to set off the kidney problems again and last Wednesday evening he passed away.

So we were down to three cats…until Friday evening. We noticed that the cats hadn’t been around for a while and when we checked it turns out they had managed to open the door to the roof terrace.

Binx didn’t have any desire to leave us so he was just chilling out on the roof terrace but Misty & Domino had gone. When we came back downstairs again we found Domino clinging onto the rejas outside the downstairs window, she obviously decide against the “great escape” but Misty had other ideas.

So it seems that we are destined to only have the two cats now. Misty has reappeared on the roof terrace, maybe just to let us know she is ok, before promptly dissappearing again. I’m sure she will come to visit from time to time but can’t imagine she will be moving back in after living the high-life in the Village.

The last picture of Gizmo

When he was around 5 1/2 months he found that if he pulled his knees underneath him and used his head as leverage he could move forward. Recently he has started dragging himself along. He is getting so close to a proper crawl and can manage about 5 seconds on his hands and knees. I think the cats are starting to get worried now though especially when he gets that mischievious look in his eyes and starts heading towards them!.

He has also started babbling more and hasn’t shut up for the last two days lots of ba, ma, da….the competition is on now what will he say first Mama or Dada??.

Charlie on the move

So here we are all excited about Charlie moving and talking…how long will it be before our mantra is “sit down and shut up”?.

Charlie enjoying the Sea Lion show

I have mixed feelings about Charlies first trip to the UK. On the one hand it was fantastic catching up with Family and friends and of course Charlie revelled in all the extra attention. Whilst we were there we spent time in England and Wales, had three parties and even had a trip to Twycross Zoo.

On the other hand the extra attention made it practically impossible to get Charlie to sleep meaning we had an overtired little boy and daily screaming fits.

Then there was the weather, only in the UK can you have 3 seasons in one day. The morning we set off for the Zoo it was cold and damp and threatened rain, by the time we got there the weather had improved and was like a lovely spring day. Half way through the day it turned into Summer. Whats that all about?.

Being out and about with Charlie was quite different to here. It took a bit of getting used to being able to walk around town without strangers stopping us and looking in the pram or asking personal questions.  Another difference was the way the British react to a crying baby in a public place, over here if a baby is crying the Spanish either don’t notice or they try and make the baby laugh, which more often than not makes them cry even more. In the UK people actually give you filthy looks!!

I have one final rant about good old blighty and thats the security checks at the airport. Don’t get me wrong I do think its important to have security checks but I cannot believe how far they go. It took us nearly 10 mins to get through. Charlie had to come out of his baby carrier and I had to take my shoes off, then we had to take everything out of our well stuffed bag because there was some soap in there. After that we had to open the ready made cartons of formula and taste everything any creams/gels that we had in the bag (like sudocrem and teething gel) had to be put on our skin) and all of this was done whilst holding a wriggling 5 month old baby.

OK rant over, I said at the beginning that I had mixed feelings over our trip to the UK but in all honestly spending time with Family and Friends overrides everything so better go and book our flights for the next trip.

Pretty much as soon as we got on the plane he started screaming, unfortunately it was a quick turnaround on the flight so we didn’t have time to stand up and calm him down.

The poor thing was hysterical and we felt absolutely helpless, not to mention completely stressed out. We resorted to a quick dose of Apirital (baby paracetemol) and after 10 minutes of screaming he fell asleep for the duration.

As we were waiting to get off the plane Charlie turned on his charm again and I was preparing myself for comments about his screaming fit, amazingly instead of negative comments everyone kept saying how good he was?. Now to be honest I actually don’t care what other people think but I’m intrigued, I mean did they not hear him? were they just being polite? or does Charlie’s smile have magic capabilities that wipe away any negative thoughts?……

The Very first picture of my little miracle

My little miracle will be 7 months old in a couple of weeks so I thought it was about time that I write about my experience of having my first baby in Spain.

I have spoken in my previous posts about my pregnancy which, until 30 weeks, was pretty much plain sailing. I tried to getting myself as organised as possible and, although I was pretty scared about the birth, I had a mental picture of the whole experience.

Unfortunately things didn’t quite go to plan. I was admitted into the Costa del Sol hospital,in Marbella, at 30 weeks with a water infection. As soon as I was settled into my room they started the treatment of antibiotics through a drip.

This was on the Wednesday and was told that the norm is to be admitted for 2 days and providing everything was ok I would be sent home on the Friday.

On the Thursday evening I sent my hubby home so he could get a decent nights sleep and go to work in the morning. That evening I set my laptop up and watched a couple of films. During the last film I started having some pains, which turned out to be contractions, it was around 11pm by then and I buzzed the nurses. When theycame they told me to buzz them again if they were 5 mins apart. I think it was around midnight when I got the nurses back and they wheeled me through to have the babies heartbeat monitored.

All in all it was a pretty scary night, I kept asking if I could call my husband but they said no need, and I ended up in a delivery suite, on my own, whilst the medication to stop the labour kicked in. I even got to hear a baby being born in the next room.

I was monitored and put on complete bedrest to make sure I didn’t go into labour again and as a precaution I was given 2 steroid injections to help develop the babies lungs. The following Monday the doctors were happy and I was discharged, with strict instructions to put my feet up.

I was so relieved to be out of hospital and back in my own bed and I spent the evening planning my extended maternity leave. Unfortunately someone had other plans and at midnight that night I started having contractions again so we grabbed my bag and rushed back to the hospital.

I then spent the next 35 hours being monitored, going into labour, having the labour stopped, scans, blood tests, examinations and so on until 10am on 17th December when the doctor came in to tell us that my latest blood test showed that there was a risk of the baby having an infection and it was best to get him out and because he was transverse it would be by emergency caesarean.

Although I had been pretty scared throughout the whole experience that moment was terrifying. At this point my baby was only 31 weeks + 5 days old and his estimated weight was 1.5 kilos. The hospital staff were fantastic and sent through an Irish Midwife to reassure us as best she could and talk us through the procedure.

Fifteen minutes later, after signing various consent forms, I was whisked through to the operating room. The midwife was there with me and explained that they were giving me an epidural and that I would be able to see him when he came out but the chances were I would not get a chance to hold him, as he would be taken straight to special care.

The next thing I knew I was being wheeled down to recovery and my hubby was telling me that he was ok,he weighed 2 kilos and they had to knock me out in the end because I couldn’t relax for the epidural.

I spent the best part of that day in recovery and was finally taken back to my room at teatime. I still hadn’t seen my beautiful boy yet and when I asked the nurses they said hopefully that evening or tomorrow, so all I had was a photograph that hubby had taken on his mobile phone.

As it happens it was the following morning that I got to see my son for the very first time. He was tiny but perfect.

Now 7 Months Old

7 Months later Charlie is doing fantastic, he weighs 6.3 kilos and is 66 cms long, he is also doing fantastic developmentally too.

Don’t get me wrong I KNEW it wasn’t going to be easy but I was convinced that with my organisational skills I would manage.

So where have I gone wrong? for the first month or so Charlie slept in-between every feed. How fantastic BUT with him feeding every three hours day and night and us new parents still trying to get to grips with having a newborn and the inevitable sleep deprivation, his sleep time was better spent catching up on washing, eating, sterlizing, sleeping, cleaning etc.

It’s ok, I thought, as he gets older we will know what we are doing and have a routine, yeah right!!. By the time Charlie was 2 or 3 months old and all the visitors had gone home we started to emerge from the haze, he started sleeping longer between feeds during the night and the sleep deprivation started to pass.

Now all we needed to master was getting out of the house before the day was over. I couldn’t believe it the first time we decided to leave the village and go out for the day. At this point Charlie was still feeding every three hours so after his feed we started to get ready, packed the changing bag, and faffed about with the car seat again – I really do believe that car seats should carry a warning sign ‘ Not to be used by anyone without a university degree’.

By the time we were convinced we had everything ready it was time for his next feed. Total time it took to get out of the house – 3 hours. I am pleased to say that after a few attempts we got it sussed and now I can get out of the house in 15 minutes.

My new objective was to fit in all of Charlie’s hospital, Doctors & Physio appointments around general day to day life.

Now I seem to have gone off track a little here but basically the point I am trying to make is that I seem to have spent the last six months on the cusp of getting into a routine where I can manage being a Mom with working from home, only to find that something else comes up that I need to master.

Oh well, maybe I wasn’t as well organised as I once thought, better step it up a gear.