Thursday 26 April 2012

Behold, A Son

We are settling in with our gorgeous new son, and loving our time as a family of four. Reuben is an absolute delight, and I already can’t imagine our family without him.

I’m struggling to believe that today he is a week old. In some ways, it feels like he’s been part of us forever, and yet this week has gone by in the blink of an eye.

It’s also very strange for me that he still isn’t technically ‘supposed’ to be here. This week was meant to be my first week of maternity leave. The first of two weeks of just me and my girl, before it all began. Apparently Reuben had other plans, and they haven’t turned out to be so bad at all.

I started writing my birth story while I was in labour. I had the need to do something with my brain apart from thinking about what was happening. So I stood up at my computer desk and between contractions I started writing about our morning. I’ve been adding to the story over the last week, and I was shocked when I looked at the page count and saw that I’m up to page five, and I still haven’t written everything down that I need to.

So I’ve decided to break the story down into parts, and share it with you in smaller pieces. In the interest of full disclosure, my birth recount is quite detailed, and is primarily written for me, so feel free to skip past parts (or all of it!) if you want to.

With that in mind, here is part one of my birth story… the part where Reuben was born:

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On the evening of the 18th of April I had a few period pain type contractions. They were reasonably mild, but stronger than Braxton Hicks or the light cramping I had been having for a few days. They were very irregular, but definitely made their presence known. They eased by the time I went to bed.

Throughout the night I was vaguely aware of a few more of these types of contractions. I think it was around 4am or so (didn’t check the time) that I felt quite a strong one. I went to the toilet, back to bed and slept between waking up feeling the cramps. Just before 6am I decided to start timing them. They were very irregular, and not very strong. Mayana fell out of bed and came into our room, so Pete woke up properly and I told him. It wasn’t too long before they started to feel stronger. I went to the toilet, and found some bloody mucous. I called out to Pete and asked him to call the midwife, while I went for a shower. I had a few mild contractions in the shower. The midwife said just to start timing, and that the mucous is a good sign that things are really on the move.

She said I would know when it was time to come. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t.

I got very emotional while in the shower, and had a good cry. Pete called his work and my work, and my parents (because we had asked my youngest sister to be a birth support partner). We had to organise what to do with Mayana. I was so torn between wanting this not to be the real thing (it’s too early, I’m not ready – my bag isn’t packed, car seat isn’t ready etc etc), but also thinking that I couldn’t go through this if it was going to turn out to be a false alarm. I found out that the news I was in labour had made it into the staff notices for the day, and started to feel like I thought I would feel like SUCH a dork if this all was false, and nothing was going to end up happening.

After my freak out in the shower I got dressed, and we asked Mayana what she wanted for breakfast. She didn’t want cereal or eggs, she wanted to eat the pikelets I had made the night before to take to the ‘Farewell Zoey’ morning tea we were meant to be having at work. I figured that would be fine, I definitely wouldn’t taking them to work that day!

So we went out onto the deck and ate pikelets with cream and jam for breakfast. My mum rang me while we were out there, and I had another couple of contractions on the phone. They were getting stronger and longer, but still not at regular intervals. I cried again when I was talking to my mum, but felt a lot calmer when I got off the phone. I went to the toilet again and found more lumps of blood-tinged mucous. At this point I became fairly well convinced that this was indeed the real thing.

We got Mayana ready for Kindy, and I told Pete that before we took her I wanted the three of us to have a walk around the Rose Gardens across the road from us. We wandered over, and while we were there my contractions started to become more regular. When walked back home, I rang my sister and told her she had better start driving, it was definitely the real thing.

It was very strange indeed to take Mayana to Kindy and tell her teachers, “Someone else is going to be picking Mayana up today, I’m actually in labour at the moment!” They were all very excited and asked us to call with the news.

We dropped into the shopping centre on the way home to get a few last things for the hospital and nappy bags. While we were in the car, my contractions slowed off considerably, but I had a few fairly intense ones once I was walking around again at the shops.

We got home, and the contractions had settled to around 5 minutes apart. It’s funny, when we moved to this house, one of the first things I said was how wonderful the huge claw-foot bath would be for labouring in. However, I had absolutely no desire to go in the bath, which was strange because it was the only place I wanted to be with Mayana. This time, I need to be up. I had to walk each contraction out, and found great relief in leaning over the veranda rail and swaying my hips.

We went about finishing off packing the bags, and doing some general tidying up and getting ready. At one point I had a sudden wave of exhaustion, and hunched over a pile of pillows on the bed. I had a really massive contraction while I was there and suddenly my whole headspace changed, and I realised I needed to go to the hospital. The midwife was right after all, I would ‘just know’. I felt that if we didn’t go now, things would move with too much intensity for me to handle the car ride.

Contractions in the car sucked. There’s no other word for it. I had been up on my feet the whole time so far, and sitting down through contractions and not being able to move through them was almost unbearable. The whole 25-ish minute drive, I had contractions between 1.5-2 minutes apart. Pete put our Sons of Korah music on, and I tried my very best to sing through the contractions, but I think it came out more as groaning. I also discovered great satisfaction in squeezing Pete’s hand. Especially in the last third of our trip, the contractions started to come at a whole new intensity, and I would groan and squeeze Pete’s hand through the whole thing, and when it ended I would say, “Sorry Pete!!!”, and he would laugh and tell me not to say sorry.

We f i n a l l y got to the hospital; the next challenge was finding a park. There are a lot of perks to having a baby in the middle of the day instead of the middle of the night, but the lack of available car parks was probably the big downside. We ended up parked up some little street across the road from the hospital, which meant a bit of a walk to the hospital, and of course the maternity ward is right at the back of the hospital! A little while and about six contractions later (at least I could walk them out now) we made it. We got shown to a birthing suite and told a midwife would be with us shortly.

Our midwife’s name was Heather, and let me just tell you she was incredible. I had no birth plan in place, (another thing I was going to do this week), but it didn’t matter at all... Heather just let things happen the way they were going to. She checked the baby’s heartbeat with a monitor externally – didn’t strap me up to a CTG the way they had with Mayana, but just held it on my tummy for a contraction. She kept me very calm, and engaged me in small talk conversation between contractions to help keep my mind straight (I found this really great – it helped me keep a much clearer headspace). Heather didn’t require or even request to do an internal examination until I asked for one. I think I had been there for around half an hour (Alexie had arrived by then) when I asked if she could check how far along I was. I know that dilation isn’t necessarily a fool-proof way of gauging how far you have to with a labour, but I felt the need to know. It was a gamble in my own head, I knew that if the number was ‘good’ it would urge me on, but if the number happened to be low it would be very discouraging.

Heather told me that I was at 7cm, but that the baby’s head still wasn’t engaged at all – it was still moving about up in the pelvis. The membranes however were bulging during contractions, and she felt that once they broke, he would drop into place quite quickly. Let the labour continue...

I have to say, it really is true the whole thing about you forgetting how much it all hurts once you have your baby. This second time around, the pain of it was so shocking to me that I realised I had truly forgotten how bad it could be. With each contraction I would lean over the bed, groan, and sway or rock my hips. I would squeeze poor Alexie’s hand (really, really hard if my still-aching hands four days later are anything to go by!!) and demand that Pete massage my lower back. I got so much relief out of Pete massaging me, I kept asking him to press harder and harder, until he was worried I would be bruised later (I am a little!) but it was so worth it!

I spent a while in the shower, on my feet, leaning on the shower rail with my head pressed against the wall. I requested ice-chips, and Alexie would stuff handfuls of them into my mouth between contractions. I had the water in the shower so hot that after a while I felt like I was going to pass out from the steam, so Heather suggested coming back out into the room for a while. She knew I was getting tired, and encouraged me to rest my head on the bed and close my eyes between contractions. I was mostly still standing at this point, although I do recall spending a few contractions on my knees leaning over the back of the raised bed. I hated being on the bed though, and despite my exhausted jelly-legs, chose to get back onto my feet and into my hip-rocking position before too long. I can honestly and truly say that the thought of pain relief never entered my mind during this labour. The idea of gas was abhorrent to me, I had hated so much how weird it made my head feel when I had it during Mayana’s labour, and I just didn’t want to go there. And epidural... honestly I never even considered it for a split second this time. I’m pretty proud of that, I’m not gonna lie.

With one contraction in particular, I felt the baby drop, and a whole lot of pressure starting to accompany the pains. Heather said she really wanted the waters to rupture before I tried pushing, and I knew my body wasn’t quite ready to push anyway. I went back into the shower for a while, but I was starting to become very tired and losing my birthing mojo. The pressure was definitely increasing, but those waters weren’t going anywhere. (I have to mention at this point how relieved Pete was that my waters didn’t break at home or in the car. He had a deadly fear that this would happen – particularly the latter. He asked if I thought he should buy a shower curtain for the car - I was highly offended – and he wouldn’t let me sit in there until he had put a towel down... haha).

Anyway, so I asked Heather if she could check me again, and if she would be able to break my waters if she thought I was far enough. She agreed to have a feel of how far the baby had moved, and if things felt right she would break my waters. So back up on the bed I went. I was fully dilated now, and baby had definitely moved down. Heather warned me that if she broke my waters, it would move things along very quickly, and I needed to prepare myself for pushing. Um, no worries!! It felt such a relief when my waters first broke, but this was quickly replaced by the “moving along very quickly” that Heather had warned me of. We were at the pointy end of things now! Heather told me just to listen to my body. Relax through the contractions instead of tensing myself up, and let my body push when it needed to. I’m not sure how long this part of my labour lasted for. I remember that I was holding my breath at one stage and ended up somehow hyperventilating a little. I had the weirdest sensation of tingling pins and needles all over my body – literally from my teeth to my toes – and particularly bad in my hands. My hands seemed to get stuck in this weird claw-like position, and I kept saying that I couldn’t move them. I could move them, I could slightly bend my fingers, but for the life of me I could not straighten them, or even shake them to loosen them up. It was so weird, and I remember Pete, Alexie and Heather all saying that they could see me moving them, and I couldn’t explain to them what I meant!

It wasn’t too long before I realised my body was ready to push in earnest. Heather talked me through it and encouraged me. I remember this time feeling that ‘ring of fire’ sensation 100 times worse than I ever did with Mayana. Heather told Peter and Alexie to look at the baby’s head starting to crown. I was still squeezing their hands at this point, and Alexie asked me if it would be okay if she was down at the ‘business end’ of things. I said yes, and Heather said that if it was okay with me, Alexie could deliver the baby! Of course, it was okay with me. Alexie quickly went to get gloves on, as it was not going to be long now. A couple more pushes and that head was out. I psyched myself up, trying to get the idea into my head that another few contractions and my baby would be in my arms! Another contraction came, and along with it that incredible sensation that comes with your baby leaving your body. That combination of intensity and pain and relief and overwhelming joy that happens all at once. Our son was born into the hands of his aunty and godmother (the first of many babies to be born into those very capable hands), then placed on my chest straight away, I looked at my husband and saw tears of joy running down his cheeks. I remember crying out, “I love you little boy” and then quickly looking at the other three and asking, “Is it a boy???”

Pete and Alexie confirmed that yes, it indeed was, while Heather told us that she didn’t know, she always forgets to look! We all were immediately enamoured with this slippery, squirming, squeaking little being who was lying on my chest. We were all telling him that we loved him and we were so happy to meet him. I looked at Pete and asked him what our son’s name was. We had two names on our list, but the one we chose was always the forerunner. We had always wanted to use both of the middle names, but hadn’t settled for sure on which order we would put them. Peter looked at me and said, “Reuben. Rueben John Alexander.” And so it was.

Our gorgeous little Reuben John Alexander was born about two-and-a-half weeks early, on the 19th of April 2012 at 1pm, two hours after arriving at the hospital.

Reuben // Behold, a son
John // By the grace of God
Alexander// Defender and protector of men

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Monday 23 April 2012

Introducing…

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Birth story coming soon…

Zoey xx

Monday 16 April 2012

Nesting

I was 37 weeks pregnant on Saturday. That means there are less than three weeks until we will meet our son. I’m not going to lie, I wouldn’t be upset if he decided to make a slightly earlier appearance (though I’m not holding my breath).

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I think I feel bigger than I was with Mayana. I think this baby is bigger than his sister. The crazy movements I feel this time… I don’t remember so much from last time!

We had a busy weekend finally getting things organised. I think I’ve hit the nesting stage, but it mostly feels good to feel like we’re actually prepared for this baby to arrive.

We have moved Mayana into the room across the hallway from us, and she will be sharing it with her baby brother when he arrives. We both feel really great to have her that much closer to us, and she is very excited about sharing with Baby Two. She is also quite enamoured with the fact that she now has a playroom.

Here’s what we accomplished on the weekend. I wish I had before shots, but I didn’t think that far ahead. Also excuse the quality of the photos, they were taken in bad lighting on my iPhone.

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We turned Mayana’s old room into the playroom. It looks even bigger without the bed and wardrobe.

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We have moved our old TV & the Wii into the room, so I guess it’s kind of Pete’s playroom now too. And we have a great big blank wall that we have turned into Mayana’s art gallery. It’s a very cool place to be!

The ‘sleeping room’, as Mayana has christened it, is much smaller, but still much larger than the average-sized bedroom, and has ample room for both of the kids. The rule is that this room is only home to beds, books and clothes… all toys belong in the playroom only (with the exception of Mayana’s new baby doll, Georgi, and her paraphernalia).

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Mayana’s side…

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Baby Two’s side…

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Mayana has moved some of her owl collection into her new room, and Baby Two’s animal contribution is going to be elephants. It’s a cute combination.

So the nesting has kicked in… I’ve even mostly packed my hospital bag, and we have been down to the hospital to tour the birthing suites and maternity ward [^Insert heart palpitations here].

Pregnancy-wise, things are going well. I get bigger by the day hour, but am feeling generally well. I’ve started to get puffy feet, but that’s a good excuse to put my feet up. My back and hips are slightly sorer, and I have developed a very decided waddle. But every day, I’m that little bit closer to meeting my gorgeous baby, and every day I long to feel him in my arms just that little bit more. I have my last week of work this week, and I have no doubt that it will fly by. I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to maternity leave!

Until then, I’ll be here, plodding along, steadily growing bigger, and closer to meeting my boy.

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Easterfest 2012!

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter weekend, and had a chance to remember and celebrate the real reason for the season, the death and glorious resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ!

This year, for the 13th year in a row, we spent the weekend at Easterfest: the marvellous Christian Music festival that’s held in Toowoomba at this time each year.

I’m pretty sure I say it every year, but I think this year was the best so far. Somehow after the craziness that occurred with the freak flooding of Easterfest in 2011, this year’s festival just seemed to pull together in an amazing way that was community-minded and God-filled.

Mayana once again was an absolute legend. This kid is a born rocker, and it doesn't cease to amaze me how well she copes with such a huge weekend. We make a parenting decision each time we go to the festival that it’s one weekend a year, and three days with no routine, crazy hours, and lots of noise is not gonna kill the girl (or us). Amazingly, she really just makes it work. Each day she napped in her pram, and crawled into a various lap each night at around 8-ish, announced she was tired and promptly fell asleep. Some of the music was a bit loud for her, but we soon fixed that with a pair of baby-muffs, and she was ready to rock with the music a few decibels lower. Each day she took a trip to ‘Kids Island’ to have her face painted, but other than that she was content to just hang out with various family members, usually myself, Aunty Joce & Kami… and she has taken away a very special memory of her first dodgem car experience with Opa!

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The final night was the only one that Mayana was still awake when we left (although she had had a 2-ish hour nap earlier in the evening). This meant that she was awake for the Family Variety Show, which is a new festival event and was one of my favourites. Mayana was quite impressed with the orange puppet, Zoe, who emceed the event (and who she thought was the one off Sesame Street), and with the Magic of Christopher Wayne. The kid has been doing magic tricks ever since.

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We shouldn’t be surprised really, Mayana is after all a seasoned Easterfest veteran. How many kids can say that they’ve been to their fourth Easterfest at the tender age of three? Even Easterfest was impressed with that!!

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Half of the fun of Easterfest is catching up with friends, and this year’s was no different. Our family My very dedicated husband saves a spot in a particular place on the hill for each of the evening shows, and we are usually joined by a whole lot of wonderful friends, making the experience that much more wonderful.

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This year our lovely friends from Iron & Clay both performed and joined us on our little possie on the hill. It was so great to see and catch up with them!

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Other highlights for me this year included the incredible Empty Chair Project, Melbourne Gospel Choir, Mercy Me & Michael W Smith. The Lads came back for the first time in a few years, and I enjoyed them as always. The Sunday night combined church service was very powerful, with Darlene Zschech leading worship, and a very impacting message from Allen Myers.

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The Melbourne Gospel Choir always gives me goose-bumps with their amazing harmonies!

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There is something pretty special about coming together with thousands of other Christians to worship God for the combined Resurrection Sunday service!

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It was a somewhat different experience for me this year, being you know, 4 weeks away from having my baby. I got to hang out with my mum and Aunty Joce, and we all agreed that having a pregnant woman around had its perks… it meant that we sat down a lot more and therefore ended up listening to a lot more music than we usually do, instead of flitting around between venues (I’m not much one for flitting these days).

I was pretty exhausted by the end of the weekend, but I had the most fabulous weekend, and I wouldn’t have missed it for quids.

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This year, we were given the opportunity to stay at this gorgeous little retreat property owned by a local Catholic school. We had beds, cooking facilities, showers and toilets, and it was cheaper for us than camping! Needless to say we have already booked this accommodation for next year!

We all had a brilliant weekend, and can’t wait to do it all again in another 12 months or so (we’ve got our tickets already!), this time with two youngsters in tow. 

If you ever get the opportunity, I can’t recommend spending the weekend at Easterfest highly enough!

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And I have been for over a week now! It doesn’t feel too much different than 24, but here I am.

I had a lovely birthday, I got spoiled by my husband and daughter, and spent a lovely day with the latter when the former went off to work. We went to the markets with a friend and her daughter, and shared left over red velvet cake when we got home.

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My two favourite people made me feel like a Birthday Queen!

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Peter got me a sun-lounger for the veranda, that I had been eyeing off for ages!

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And Mayana chose me some very gorgeous jewellery all by herself!

In the afternoon we hit the road to Noosa, and made it just in time to attend a very special Passover Supper that our adopted grandparents shared with us. It was beautiful, and a lovely experience to have on my birthday.

So I had a lovely day, and another birthday is down!

But not over yet… sometime after this baby is born, I’m off to my favourite hairdressers at Salon Unique for the full works… cut, colour, wax, tint… and whatever else they can throw at me. My lovely parents have given me a makeover! So…. now I’m on the hunt for a new ‘do. I’m thinking of going lighter again…. I think some time on Pintrest is in order!

What ideas do you have??

xx

Wednesday 4 April 2012

Birthday Week // The Party and The Cake

Did you know that tomorrow is my birthday! I’m going to be 25… a quarter of a century. Crazy, no? I feel pretty good about what I have accomplished in my 25 years… a university degree under my belt, married for 6 and a half years, a three year old and a second child on the way… Not bad for 25 years I’d say!

In our usual tradition, we have been enjoying Birthday Week, which of course started off with our luxury weekend away. On Monday night we had a whole lot of friends over to share a meal. It was a very nice evening, I hope everyone enjoyed it as much as I did!

In another usual tradition, I also ended up making my own birthday cake, and I have to say, I’m super proud of this one…

It was a Red Velvet Cake with Marscapone Cream Cheese Icing. I’ve made red velvet cake before, but I think this one turned out even better…

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I wanted to stack the cakes, so I sliced the top off of one to make sure it was a nice, even surface to stack onto. I crumbed up the sliced off part (and I may have eaten some of it too) to use as decoration on top of my cake.

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I think it looked quite effective!

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Inspired by a certain My Kitchen Rules contestant, I also decided to try my hand at a piped chocolate butterfly. For a first attempt, I was very pleased with the results.

And here it is… the finished cake in all its glory:

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And it tasted pretty delicious too!

If anyone is interested, I got the recipe from here. The only thing I changed is that I wasn’t able to buy buttermilk (there was none in my whole town it seems!), so I made my own by mixing milk with sour cream until it reached a buttermilk-like consistency. As far as I could tell it didn’t make any difference to the end product.

Yum!

An ‘Us’ Weekend

Pete and I don’t get all that much time with just the two of us. We used to have date nights once a month, but have moved to a town where there is just not too much scope for places to go on a date night, and somehow that has fallen by the wayside (**note to self, reinstate date night!!)

Becoming a couple where both of us are working, as well as having a toddler to organise, has been hard for us to get used to. All that rush in the mornings to get everyone out of the door on time, and both us us so whacked from work of an evening that it’s all we can do to veg on the couch for an hour or so and watch TV.

So we were very keen to squeeze in a weekend away, just the two of us, before this baby arrives. After hearing only good things about the Wotif mystery deals, we decided to get brave and try one, and ended up with a night at the Hilton Brisbane for around $160. We were assigned a Deluxe King Room, but upon check-in, we were upgraded to an Executive King Room! It was very lovely. The Hilton is quite impressive, and in its grand foyer area, we couldn’t stop giggling because we felt like we were imposters who shouldn’t be somewhere so fancy! Our room was also very lovely (with fancy features like a heated mirror which didn’t fog up no matter how hot you had your shower), but the best bit of all was I was with my husband, and we could just hang out, with nowhere to go and nothing to do… unless we wanted to of course.

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After spending most of the afternoon reading and snoozing, we decided to take a stroll over to Southbank – which is one of our favourite places to visit when we go to the city. We just wandered around, caught the end of the markets, and decided to have a go on the Brisbane Wheel (which we’ve always talked about doing but never done). It was lots of fun.

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We had planned on dining somewhere fancy, but neither of us were very hungry and didn’t want to fork out a whole lot of dollars for something we couldn’t finish, and ended up going a bit more casual, and popped right next door to O’Malley’s Irish Pub.

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There was a live band playing, and it’s a pretty cool place with great food at a great price. We had a lovely night, topped off by ice-cream from Royal Copenhagen.

We had a great time together, enjoying each other’s company and refocussing on what it means to be ‘us’ again.

I love my hubby!

Monday 2 April 2012

35 Weeks

Flip! I officially have less than 5 weeks until my due date. Insane.

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I have officially lost sight of my toes. In fact, I had to lean forward quite a bit to find them for this photo. The baby is feeling quite big, and movements now don’t feel so much like kicks as scrapes, as he moves his limbs (sometimes quite painfully) along my insides. It has been fun to try and guess whether those sharp poky bits are knees or elbows or feet, even if they sometimes do bring a tear to my eye!

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I am well and truly running out of clothes now. I have mostly gotten away with stretchy or flowy summer dresses up until now, and it’s frustrating that less than five weeks out I have to actually fork out for some maternity-wear. But at this point it’s that or naked, and that’s not going to fly!

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I am feeling well, still reading my birthing books and other people’s birthing stories (which really does little more at this point than bring back memories of how flipping much labour hurts) but I’ll get there. I spoke to the midwife at this week’s appointment about visiting the birthing suites, and I’m hoping we will get a chance to do that before I actually have to use them. They only allow visits on Sunday afternoons (their quiet time, who knew?) and we are well and truly running out of weekends!

We have decided to have Mayana and Baby Two in the same room from the beginning (for a number of reasons), and I am excited about setting up that room and moving Mayana in, hopefully in the next week or so, so we can get things sorted and ready.

So all-in-all, another week of pregnancy down, another week closer to meeting my son. Nothing too eventful, which is probably a good things, and I am enjoying my pregnancy and my bump and these last few weeks of having my baby safe and sound on the inside.

Can’t wait to meet him and cuddle him on the outside though!!

A Peek At My Week

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This week has passed by in a blur. On Thursday morning, my work collegue and I suddenly realised that Friday was the last day of school. And we had so. much. to. do. Cue minor freak-out/panic. I’m actually feeling kind of relieved that I am going back for week 1 next term, so that I have a chance just to wind some things up and finish some things off.

I am, however, extremely grateful and excited that it is time for holidays! I’m looking forward to spending some time with my gorgeous Mayana-bird, getting my house tidy and shiny (I’m feeling the nesting bug starting to set in), my birthday and of course EASTERFEST!! It’s going to be a big week.

But we’re not talking about next week, this post is supposed to be all about last week.

So let’s have a look at those photos, shall we?

You can see that I finally finished Baby Two’s crocheted elephant. He’s pretty cute. I modified the pattern to include a t-shirt, because I wanted to give him some colour. And after much instagram/twitter/facebook discussion, I decided on buttons for eyes. I wasn’t sure about the black (they were the only matching ones I could find), but they’re growing on me.

I also made an Apple Tart to share at our department morning tea. It was my first attempt at a sugar-free version, and I thought it didn’t turn out too bad. 

You can also see the mess that my chooks have been making of my potplants. I was a little bit heartbroken because they have totally ripped out and destroyed our strawberry plants, which had finally just started to flower. Very sad.

We also had a department dinner this week, to farewell me into maternity leave. It was a lovely evening out, and my collegues spoiled me rotten, with gifts for our whole family. I’m especially looking forward to using the Hogs Breath Cafe voucher they gave us!

This weekend, my gorgeous hubby whisked me away for a weekend at the Hilton in Brisbane for some ‘us’ time. It was wonderful, and I’ll post more about that later.

It has been a very busy, and somewhat stressful week, and the weekend away was just what I needed to refresh. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to relax and recuperate this first week of holidays… though I’ll have to do it all over again next week after Easterfest!

I hope you had a great week too! I’d love if you played along too!

Zoey x

 

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