You can't just 'go with the flow' with a baby | Cheryl Gibbs

It’s also been an ideal chance to work on getting her into some kind of routine.

She’s nine weeks now – I still can’t believe this – and I thought it would be a good opportunity to attempt to get her out of the complete new born ‘sleep and eat whenever you want’ routine and attempt some sort of schedule.

Last year when I went on holiday to Italy with Matt and my mum, I took a book with me called 7pm to 7am Sleeping Baby Routine which was a book by Charmian Mead that helps parents get their babies into a sleep schedule.

While I’m not trying to get Harley to sleep for 12 hours a night (yet), I thought I’d enlist the help of Charmian, who also works as a remote consultant helping parents to get their babies into a sleep pattern.

I was amazed that after just one day of working with Charmian that Harley slept the longest period she ever has, but by day three it became apparent that it wouldn’t be quite that easy.

I’ve been working with Charmian to try and get Harley into a pattern that works for us and works for her and she’s doing really well on it, roughly sleeping six hours overnight before waking for a feed and going back down again – I can’t grumble at that.

I always said before we had her that I didn’t want to get into a routine with her and that I wanted to ‘go with the flow’ – well that attitude went out the window as soon as she was born! Unless I was prepared to whip my boob out at any given moment when Harley demands, a routine was necessary.

I’m mixed-feeding Harley so she gets breast and bottle and it’s clearly working because she’s a little porker now, weighing 11 and a half pounds. Clearly something’s working so as tough as self-isolation is, the three of us are well and truly getting used to each other.

Mummy and daddy are slowly getting their sanity back thanks to some much needed sleep.

Clapping for carers shows how grateful we are for NHS

Matt and I joined in with, what seemed like, the whole of Clanfield when we clapped for the NHS.

I really thought as Clanfield is generally quite a quiet, reserved little village, not many people would be out in force but I was very wrong.

I welled up with tears as I heard the rumble of people’s applause and banging of pans at 8pm when it felt like everyone came out to show their gratitude and appreciation for the people who really are keeping Britain moving.

Clapping for carers is just something we can all do to show how grateful we are and I don’t think it’s asking too much of us, as a nation, to take a few minutes out of our day to clap and say thank you.

I’m going to make Matt’s birthday as special as I can

It’s my husband Matt’s 40th birthday this month and it’s certainly not going to be the birthday we had planned. He had a party organised at our beloved BT club in Cosham which has had to be cancelled.

We also had a big family holiday booked in for June to celebrate his birthday, which again will also likely be postponed to another time.

But I’m going to do my best to make it as special as possible, so I’ve asked all our family and friends to log on to Zoom (a group video call platform) so everyone can sing Happy Birthday to him. I’ve also organised for an afternoon tea to be delivered by the Ship and Bell, Horndean. One thing’s for sure, he will never forget this birthday! ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​