My new Connecta arrived (with the Cave painting fabric) which means I can now wash the other one without worrying about how we will manage without it.

Ingrid was more talkative than ever today. She has been rather quiet until now, no babbling like I would have expected from a baby. But tonight she was making all kinds of new sounds all the time.

She has been really dissatisfied for the last few days, whingy during the day and sleeping lousily during the night. A phase, I thought to myself, hopefully a short one. Perhaps this language explosion puts an end to that phase.

Went to Spitalfields market in the late afternoon – the crowd has generally thinned by that time. Noticed that I now need to keep a safe distance between Ingrid and all the interesting things around her: she wants to explore everything. Clothes, foodstuffs, and all sorts of fragile items: fun for adults to look at, but not suitable for being chewed by a baby.

I think Ingrid has finally beaten her conjunctivitis. But she still has a runny nose and occasionally coughs hard enough to make her throat hurt.

Sunshine again after a week of poorish weather, and we had a nice walk.

Ingrid came home with mysterious green stuff around her fingernails. Alien goo? Finger paint?

Hosted an NCT coffee morning (where local mums with babies get together at each others’ homes once a week). I’d volunteered to host one before I knew which days of the week I would be working, and didn’t want to cancel it when I found out that I’d be working on Tuesdays, so I took the day off. Two of the babies who came were 9 weeks and seemed so tiny. Either I’ve already forgotten how small Ingrid was as a newborn, or else she never was this small… or both.

Ingrid is still sick and wants to be held all the time. I am very grateful (again) that I was introduced to babywearing. Interestingly she also accepted sitting in the pushchair. Almost as good as Mom?

Housebound due to rain through most of the day.

Ingrid’s cold was back with a vengeance today. Fever again. On the other hand her eye infection is almost gone.

She has been taking less milk, and I have noticed my milk supply slowing down, so I made extra sure to eat and drink a lot today, and expressed the surplus after every feed. I definitely do not want to be forced to stop breastfeeding yet.

It was raining when we went out for our usual afternoon walk. Ingrid was snug as a bug of course, but I was having second thoughts about the walk… and then just as I had decided to go back home she fell asleep. I really didn’t want to wake her because she hadn’t gotten much sleep today. So I grumbled but walked on. And lo and behold the rain stopped moments later, and I had an unusually nice walk, past nice-smelling freshly-rain-washed rose bushes and twirping birds. And Ingrid slept a whole hour!

Last night Ingrid was awake and screaming for 90 minutes in the middle of the night. Then she slept an hour and then cried for another hour. None of the usual calming methods worked – rocking, patting, shushing, singing, holding. She just cried until she was done and then she went to sleep. And this evening she has done the same thing twice already. I hope this isn’t the beginnings of a new habit.