Babies: the joy, heartbreak and cuteness of a baby's first year

LAST year we introduced you to Generation Alpha, 100 beautiful babies born in 100 days. Now our cheeky little boys and girls are celebrating their first birthdays.

LAST year we introduced you to Generation Alpha, 100 beautiful babies born in 100 days. Now our cheeky little boys and girls are celebrating their first birthdays, and we’re thrilled to bring you this collection of photographs and interviews with their exhausted parents about everything from teething to tantrums.

Jarrah Smith

Jarrah Smith

Mother Rianna Mackaway: He’s permanently happy, just a happy little guy. He loves people, loves kids, loves attention, very curious. Since he learnt to stand up it’s gone a bit downhill getting him to sleep at night. He sits and stands and sits and stands in bed. Teaching him to self-settle at nine weeks was great for us. We just let him cry it out. In the early weeks, though, we just cuddled him whenever he needed it.

17 February 2013

Flynn Hurst-Denny

Flynn Addison Hurst-Denny

Mother Alana Hurst: Flynn’s nickname is Shovel because he just eats everything, he’s got a massive appetite. No one can carry him for long. He has a ginormous bottom. He fits in my four year old’s undies He’s inquisitive and cheeky — more so than my two girls. I’m having to move half the house out of the way from him. He’s quite funny. He pulls these faces and I can have conversations with him, even though he doesn’t say anything. I feel very strongly bonded with this baby. It’s this crazy, intense love.

18 February 2013

Anna Pratt

Anna Pratt

Mother Ronelle Pratt: She’s wonderful; very playful and sociable. Sometimes I wonder whether we’ll get a rude shock. She’s quite strong-willed, if she doesn’t want to sleep right now, she makes sure I know about that. I haven’t gone back to work yet. We were quite conservative and careful about how much we invested in terms of getting into debt, we bought an apartment — we chose to sacrifice some of those comfort aspects to not be under pressure of me having to work.

19 February 2013

Vida Bernadini

Vida Bernadini

Mother Emilie Bernadina: Vida is very strong minded and knows what she wants. My first wasn’t like this so I’m kind of scared of her. Vida had reflux at eight weeks. It was horrendous and she cried day and night for a week. You can understand how people go crazy, nothing would settle her. She went on medication, which she is off now. I went back to work when she was nine months for financial reasons. My advice: It doesn’t last long, so don’t get hung up, it all changes by the time you think you’ve got it.

4 May 2013

Cullen and Abigale McLennan

Cullen and Abigale McLennan

Mother Jennifer McLennan: Just having the twins in my life is a blessing. I lost a lot of babies, three official miscarriages, but many more suspected. We are just so grateful, even on the hard days, we consider ourselves extraordinary lucky. The only way to describe Cullen is fun loving and funny. He finds himself hilarious and it’s very entertaining for us. Abigale is very strong willed and very stubborn. I’ve worked in child care and even though I’ve had so much experience, these two have thrown hurdles my way. As a nanny I can get other people’s twins to sleep at the same time, but my own, no.

30 April 2013

Skylah and Kalista Boyd

Skylah and Kalista Boyd

Mother Chantelle Coonan: Skylah is every outgoing and loud and Kalista is pretty much the same, they are both happy little girls. At ten weeks the twins got RSV, a respiratory virus and Kalista dropped back down to her birth weight. That was pretty scary and the worst part of the year. I stopped breast feeding then and went onto the bottle and they haven’t looked back. My advice to parents is take a deep breath and walk away for five minutes if you have to, then come back and deal with it.

29 April 2013

Mia Doyle

Mia Doyle

Mother Rhiannon Edwards: Mia is very energetic and walking now. She likes attention and she’s very funny. The best part has been just watching her hit all her milestones. Teething was the worst part. She was crying for days on end and it did get very hard there for a while. We’re both only 18 so we’re not sure about another baby, not any time soon. My advice to new parents I just make baby your number one priority.

2 May 2013

Joshua Black

Joshua Black

Mother Amanda Black: Joshua is an outgoing little boy who never gives up. If he falls and bangs his head he gets back up again and tries again, so he is very determined. Having Joshua circumcised was the worst time. My husband was with him and I walked in and heard him crying and it was so distressing because we were doing it for his benefit. My advice is stay calm, baby picks up on your stress, so pop bub somewhere safe and walk outside for a couple of minutes and then go back in.

5 May 2013 

Nina Aitken

Nina Aitken

Mother Ling Chyi: Nina is interested in everything, especially her two big sisters. She does have a temper and she can be quite stubborn, but every day is such a surprise, just her presence is wonderful. Nina got sick when she was eight weeks old and we worry so much about whooping cough because we live in Byron Bay. That’s the worst part, every time you go out you get paranoid. Nina is vaccinated and there was no reaction. My advice is don’t listen to any bad information on vaccination, talk to those in the know.

5 May 2013 

Ashvika Sharma

Ashvika Sharma

Mother Ashima Sharma: Ashvika is pretty smart and responsive and she is a very active baby. The whole year has been the best part but when she said ‘Mama’, on Father’s Day, that was the highlight and ‘Mama’ was her very first word. When she was only one month old, she had a murmur in her heart and we went to Westmead and had all the scans and saw a heart surgeon, but everything came out perfect, but we were so scared for 24 hours, it was hell.

6 May 2013