By the time Claudia was 1 month old, we had started telling people her age in weeks instead of days. It was hard to know when to switch ... I think we cut over from days at around 3 weeks, and from weeks at around 3-4 months. There was something very weird about making the change ... I wonder when we will start using years!

Around this time, I began to feel a sense of real urgency surrounding me. At 20 weeks pregnant, I had been lucky enough to win a competition in Woman's Day magazine with a prize of a trip for 2 to London, with a side trip to meet the cast and crew of the Yorkshire TV program Heartbeat. I think my running a Heartbeat web site helped things here - but our departure date was looming closer and closer, and I wasn't sure I was really ready to take my baby overseas! At least the feeding was on track, and I was starting to enjoy the time spent breastfeeding Claudia. Breastfeeding releases a "sleepy" hormone (prolactin?) so I would sit and gaze at her in a dream-like state where time meant nothing. Meanwhile, in between feeds, I was racing around organising things for her trip. A word of advice - getting passport photos taken for a baby is no easy task - we will save this first passport to embarass Claudia with later, the photo is decidedly NOT pretty.

At 6 weeks I had my final checkup with Dr Jeanie, who gave me a clean bill of health. I had lost a lot of the weight I had gained in pregnancy, but was still easily 5 kilos over what I had been, and probably 25 over my ideal weight. I'm still keen to do something about that, but feel it can wait until I finish breastfeeding.

Claudia's first vaccinations were due at 8 weeks - two weeks after we arrived in England. I checked that it would be OK to have them at 6 weeks, and took her to the local council immunisation day. What a cattle call - there were mums and babies everywhere, and although it turned out that there was a system, it certainly wasn't apparent as I walked in the door. She was due for a feed, but I decided to wait until she had had her shots - DTP in one leg, Hib in the other, and the Sabin oral Polio vaccine on a spoon.

I foolishly watched her cute, plump little leg as the injection went in. One ... Two ... Three ... her cute little face crumpled in tears as she asked how I could do this to her. My somewhat bigger & considerably less cute face crumpled in tears as I asked the same question. We somehow got through the other shot, sniffling in synch, and then settled down to feed while we waited the required 15 minutes in case she vomited (in which case she would need the Sabin again). Of course my baby didn't vomit, she wasn't a vomity baby. [One thing I have noticed - it isn't wise to get too smug with a baby, they will always take note and adjust their behaviour accordingly. Little Miss Chucks-all-the-time-now is living proof of that.]

Stopping to buy baby Panadol (paracetamol) at the pharmacy, I discovered another of those things that just make you ask "why". I was given the choice of Baby Panadol or Baby Panadol Colourfree - the only difference being that the regular baby panadol has red food colouring in it. Call me paranoid, but isn't red food colouring associated with all sorts of bad things and something to be avoided? So why would I be giving it to my 6 week old baby who certainly wasn't old enough to insist that everything be a pretty colour? I'm not sure she was real impressed by the cherry vanilla flavouring either!

Terrified by the stories of screaming babies, I waited for a reaction to the injections. We looked for localised swelling at the injection site, monitored Claudia for fever, and watched for general grizzliness. Claudia lay happily, fed, then slept through the night for the first time. Once the injection was over, she never noticed a thing. I took note of the vaccination times, and vowed never again to take her on my own, as the council offer evening sessions so dads can share in the suffering.

The baby books I had flicked through (OK, OK, pored over assiduously, making notes and double-checking against one another) seemed to agree that we could expect the average baby to smile around 6 weeks old. I quite reasonably started trying to get Claudia to smile from about 4 weeks old. She would smile alright - just not at anyone or anything - that we could see anyway. At my 6 week checkup with Dr Jeanie, she assured me that Claudia looked like she would smile "any day now" so I spent the rest of the day watching her so I wouldn't miss the fateful moment.

By the time we got to Claudia's 6 week checkup (aged 6 weeks and 1 day), I was convinced that she would never smile. Dr Carolane the pediatrician commented on how strong she was (even while I was in hospital she would demonstrate her strong neck muscles by lifting her head off someone's shoulder ... and then losing that new-found control and crashing her head back against the unsuspecting person), and noted that she was "load bearing" - ie pushing with her feet when held in an upright position. He also tried, unsuccessfully, to get her to smile, assuring us that she would smile "any day now" (sound familiar?). We spent most of the visit discussing good places to go to in the UK; Dr Carolane had worked in Bristol, where we were planning to visit friends, and recommended that we visit the village of Castle Coombe. We sent him a postcard.

I told myself it was good Claudia wasn't smiling yet. She would just have started when we would be getting on a plane for 22 hours, so she would be keen to smile at everyone and everything. Then when we got on the plane, I told myself she would be smiling before we got to England. Then when we got to England ... but that's another story.