The Thomsons

This blog has moved to www.aaronandsheri.wordpress.com

2010-07-05T11:08:00.001+10:00

Hi Everyone,

I have moved the blog to www.aaronandsheri.wordpress.com
please go there to view updates on this blog.

Thanks :)

Salmon patties?

2010-07-02T20:59:00.003+10:00

Grandma: "I'm going to make some Salmon patties for when Trish comes."
Me: "Oh, what's in them? I bet Hannah could eat some."
Grandma: "Mostly just potatoes and tuna."
Me: "Tuna? So um... is there any salmon in the "salmon" patties?"
Grandma: "No."
Grandma doesn't know it, but she is a comedian.

On another note, I figured out how to get a photo of Hannah that doesn't consist of her running towards me with her arms out in hopes of stealing the camera. I just sit her down with a container of raisins. Next time I'll get out the digital SLR instead of the little hand held. Maybe I'll even get out the light tent, and dress her up. Oh the possibilities.....

P.S. Hannah loves eating lemons. As in scoop out the innards, and feed them straight to her. No "Oh Mommy, this is so sour, why are you giving this to me!" face, just happiness that she gets to eat lemons. Still can't find a fruit she doesn't like. Maybe I should try durian.

Why so much noise?

2010-07-01T15:53:00.003+10:00

I've always liked getting the ads/circulars in the mail. I look forward to them every week. Last week, Aldi's ads showed they were having a huge toy sale. This of course, led me to arrive at Aldi's just before 9am on sale day, with Hannah and Grandma in tow, in a quest for birthday presents. Who would have thought that sale day at Aldi's is like a pride of lions who have been starved for a week, ravenous for their next meal. People were lined up in no real order, more like mobbed up, outside the door, waiting for pole position when the automatic glass doors were turned on. People tried to get in front of each other and made a mad scramble for the toys (and tools, tools were there too). Luckily, I made a wise choice and left Hannah outside with Grandma while I joined the mad dash in search for a toy I wanted. For those of you reading this from the U.S., let me explain a little about Aldi's. Aldi's is no ordinary shop. It's a German grocery store giant that has started the quest to take over Australia by offering good food of their own brand (and some name brands every so often) at basement prices. They don't always have the same things, but there are some staple items that they do always carry. The rest of it, mostly the non food items, are only there for a week at a time, sometimes not coming back for over a year. Sometimes they have massive toy sales, sometimes they have no toys at all. Sometimes they have gardening things, sometimes they have none. When they run out of their special items, that's it, no more. We did get the desired presents for Hannah, and escaped without any bruises or confrontations. I did bend my nail back while trying to pick up a big box though. That kinda hurt.

It's very cold here at the moment, 0-1 degree in the morning (Celsius, not Fahrenheit). Even so, Hannah loves nothing more then running down the hall way sans clothing, giggling and squealing to anyone who happens to be around. Every time I get her ready for her bath, I put her down for just a moment while I put her dirty nappy in the nappy bucket and no sooner then I've put her down, she's off. I'll have to let her run around for longer when it's a bit warmer, but for now, I just chase after her, snatch her up and get her in the bath, giggling and bouncing the whole way.

For as long as I can remember, I have had a red coloured mole on on my chest, sometimes visible to anyone depending on what kind of shirt I wear and how high it is. Don't worry, I've had it checked out, and there is nothing wrong with it. I tried telling that to Hannah, but she won't listen. She seems to feel that said mole needs to be removed asap. This of course involves her flinging my hair out of the way, pulling down my shirt, and then trying to scratch and pull the mole off.

"WAAAAAAAA!!!!" I looked at the clock. 5am. I grabbed the baby monitor and turned on the sleepy music. Hopefully Hannah would fall asleep again by the end of the music. She didn't. I got up to go and pat her. And pat her and pat her and pat her. I'm trying to wean her. It's not going so well. I patted her for 2 hours, then it was time to get up for the day. She didn't relent and sleep, I didn't relent and give her boob (until 7am, as it was time to get up for the day). We've been down to 2 feeds in 24 hours for quite a while now, but I thought it was time to get down to 1, in hopes of then having none just after she turns 1. I, of course, wanted to get rid of the overnight feed first. Hannah, of course, had other ideas. Seems she's quite fond of the overnight feed and has no problem crying for 2 hours straight to get it. After 2 nights of our battle of wills, Hannah won. I gave in and fed her. New plan: get rid of her dream feed (when I go in her room at 9:45pm, and without fully waking her, feed her, and put her back to bed). She hasn't missed that feed one bit, and sometimes she is sleeping right through without waking up for her overnight feed. It would help if she ate her dinner, I'm sure, but she doesn't seem to like dinner for some reason.

Why is it that microwaves, washing machines, etc. always make obnoxiously loud beeping noises when you push their buttons? Seriously, I'm pushing buttons on the microwave to make it heat for one minute. I can see my button pushing is working from the screen that now says 1:00. Why the need for the beep? Do manufacturers have a joint mission to wake up sleeping babies and annoy everyone? Why is there no off switch for obnoxiously loud beeps? Or at least a volume button or something. Then if I leave the food I just heated in the microwave for a longer then the microwave deems acceptable after it's finished heating, it will beep at me more. And then more and more, until I take it out. Does the microwave think I'm senile? I've forgotten that I put something in there?

I was thinking I might change my blog to a more normal blog, that is one that is updated every couple of days, but not so long each time. What does everyone think about that, do you prefer the once per week long blog, or would you rather a every couple of days not as long blog (and each entry would probably be more well written as I wouldn't get distracted by tv or something while writing it)?

Hannah the great

2010-06-21T15:47:00.006+10:00

Time since birth: 11.5 months (she's almost 1!!!)

Stopped at a stoplight on the way to drop Aaron off at the station, something on the vehicle in front of us caught my eye. I did a double take. The truck in front of us had testicles. That's right, testicles. Why on earth someone would attach a pair of testicles to a vehicle is beyond me. Not only that, but why would someone design, manufacture, and sell such an item? Wouldn't you be embarrassed to drive around with plastic testicles on your truck? When the light changed to green, the truck was off. The testicles started swaying back and forth at an alarming rate. Just like staring at a fire, I couldn't take my eyes off them. Surely they are some sort of driving hazard as well as being super bogan-y. How could someone not look at a pair of plastic testicles vigorously swaying back and forth on a truck? Only in Penrith.

A couple of days later, stopped at the very same set of lights, but on the other side of the road, I saw something else one would only see in Penrith: there on the car in front of us was a sticker. "Vaginatarian." Seriously, someone actually put that on their car? I bet the occupant of that car gets no dates. Maybe he gets dates, but then he brings them to his car to transport them to date spot, they see the sticker, think "wanker!" to themselves and then pretend to be sick and not go out with him.

There was so much work to be done when we moved in here. That was to be expected since we were moving in with a hoarder. Not like the I have to much trash I can't find my pet cat kind of hoarder, but a hoarder none the less. I started with the kitchen. Looking in the cupboards, I found 2 toasters. Not to mention the one that was out and being used. I also found no less then 6 dinner sets, 2 different sandwich presses, and oh the list goes on. Grandma told me that her Mum always said "If you keep something for long enough, you'll always find a use for it." I guess that motto stuck with Grandma. Lucky for me, I coaxed her into getting rid of some of it. Otherwise there is no way our stuff would have fit in the cupboards at all. I found a cupboard full of platters, none of which I'd ever seen being used (and I used to live across the road from Grandma, so I was over a lot).
"Can I give this away Grandma?" I could see her mind working. "How long have you had it?"
"20 years."
"how long since you've used it?"
"20 years. Ok, you can give it away."

Next I started on the pantry. The pantry was choc-a-bloc full of stuff, most of which I thought rather questionable. I went through every single item in that pantry and checked every single expiration date. I actually found food that expired in 1992. That's right, it was EIGHTEEN years out of date. I'm not sure which is more shocking, that there was food in there 18 years expired, or the fact the 1992 was 18 years ago. I'm getting old!

I can hear you screaming inside, "what about Hannah?!?! How is Hannah going, what is she doing?" She is GREAT! My little wonderful baby has been walking for a month now, and she is getting cheekier every single day. She has a little hand puppet with a duck on each finger that she loves to carry around and tell everyone that it is "DUCK!" We often ask her where duck is and she'll stop what she is doing, look all around, locate it, yell "DUCK!" and then trot over and pick it up. I bought her a little (well, compared to her size, it's big) purse to put some toys in and take with us when we go out. She loves to carry it around even when we're at home. In fact, she doesn't just like to walk around, she prefers to walk around while carrying something. Preferable something big and heavy like my purse or Aaron's 1 litre water bottle full of water. Sometimes even the washing basket.

Everywhere we go, she wants all eyes on her. Hannah will squeal loudly until some random person in the supermarket looks at her, and then she will smile and bounce and giggle at them. One day a lady was talking on the phone when Hannah started her cheekiness, and the lady got so distracted by Hannah that she told the person on the other end of the phone that she would have to call them back as "this really cute baby keeps smiling and giggling at me and I just can't think at the moment." We went to a newcomers dinner at church the other night (we're not really newcomers as we went to the same church for a long time last time we lived in this area, but I suppose we were away for 3 years), and once again Hannah was up the her mischief. Right when the minister was addressing everyone, telling people about the church, etc. Hannah decided that she wanted the spotlight instead. She kept walking up to people, getting them to look at her, and when they did, doing a really funny, loud, fake laugh while smiling. Of course everyone then looked at her, which only egged her on more. She is so cute though, how can you not laugh and smile when she does such things?

Now that this is the length of a novel, I'll stop writing. But don't worry, we have the internet now, so you will hear about the antics of Hannah every week.

Quest for the internet

2010-06-21T15:14:00.002+10:00

Yay, finally the blog is back!! The only reason I didn't (couldn't) write it sooner was lack of the Internet. We moved in the middle of April, and have had the worst time getting the Internet since then. You'd think it would be easy to give someone your money in exchange for a service, but, as we have found, it is not.

The quest began when we first moved. Aaron signed up to get Internet with TPG, a provider that for some reason has twice the download limit for half the price, just what we wanted. After a while, they notified Aaron that they could not provide us with the Internet unless we switched our phone line to Telstra. Seemed like a bit of a hassle, so we decided instead to do some research and find someone else to provide us with the Internet. Unfortunately there are not very many providers in this area, so after much thinking, we decided we would in fact switch to Telstra and then get TPG.

I called Telstra, went through all the hoopla needed to sign up to switch to their company, and was told it would be done on or before 2 weeks, and we would get a letter in the mail when it was done letting us know so. So we waited. And waited...and waited.... After 2.5 weeks (I would have called sooner, but was laid up with food poisoning which saw me puking more in 1 day then I have in all my life combined, followed by an injection to stop the puking, and my refusal to ever eat chicken from Chicken Man ever again), I was sufficiently annoyed and phoned Telcrap (I mean Telstra) to find out what was wrong.
"Your application was denied," I was told.
"Ok, why is that?" I asked them.
"I'm not sure. Do you want me to put the application through again for you?"
"Um, I would like to know why we were denied first. What if we put an application through, wait another 2 weeks, and then find out I was denied again?"
"Oh."
He gave me another number to call to find out why our application was denied.
"The sales person filled out the wrong form. She filled out the form for a new number, not the form for transferring a number from another provider." I was told by huffy customer relations officer.
"So why didn't someone call me and tell me that rather then just letting us wait and wait and wait, thinking the whole time that a phone line will be installed?"
"Sorry, but that was not my department, it was sales. Do you want to put another application through?"
"Would I have to wait another 2 weeks?"
"Yes. It would be like filling out a whole new application, the whole process would start again."
"So let me get this straight, because your company stuffed up and filled out the wrong form, and then failed to notify me, I have to go through the whole process again even though I should already have a phone line."
"Um...yeah."
"That's ridiculous." Click. I could feel myself getting flustered, and I really didn't want to yell at random unsympathetic customer relations dude, especially in front of Hannah, so I just had to hang up. Of course there was no way we were going to switch from Telcrap after that. Seriously, if they said something like "we're really sorry that happened, if you put in a new application, we will have someone connect your line tomorrow (or even the day after that would have been fine)." But no, that would have been too hard.

The quest began again. Aaron called another Internet supplier only to be told that we'd have to switch to Telcrap. This company, however, actually told us why (if only someone would have told us sooner!!): we have the privilege of having a fibre optic telephone wire. We thought all this time the reason we had to switch to Telcrap was because we had some geriatric decrepit phone line that was incapable of providing broadband/ADSL/ADSL2 Internet. Oh how that changes things! That really only left us with one choice as most companies don't provide for such high speed fibre optic cables. We had to go with Optus, the provider of said high speed phone line. Yeah, they are more expensive, but you know what? They have wonderful customer service (when I signed up for their Internet, they sent someone 2 days later to connect it and give us the little box thing, and they even told me beforehand what time and day they were sending someone, and they were super friendly and obliging), and the fastest Internet in Australia, so it's worth it.

Finally, we have the Internet. Insert sigh of relief here.

The Ringlet

2010-04-07T21:26:00.004+10:00

Time since birth: 9 months Yeah, I didn't write last week. We're moving next week, and I've been flat out packing, organising, etc. Not to mention it takes twice the time to pack when you have to clean every single thing you pack to make sure that no mold/mildew comes with us. Dirty, dirty apartment (I won't miss you). I don't really have time to write proper stories and things this time either, so I'm just going to tell a little of what's been happening: Hannah figured out a few weeks ago how to pick up very small objects and accurately get them into her mouth (she could pick them up for a while, but getting them in her mouth when the little object was in her fist rather then between her fingers was proving difficult for her), which is good when she is feeding herself peas and corn (both of which she loves, and loves to feed herself), but very bad when she's attempting to feed herself dust bunnies, and random bits of who knows what that she finds anywhere and everywhere. Who knew there could be so many tiny pieces of string all over the floor? Where do they come from? Even after I just vacuum, she finds things. I'm sure she's eaten her fair share of random stuff, I often see her chewing but can't pry her little mouth open to remove whatever it is she had before she swallows it. Or maybe she didn't actually get anything into her mouth but thinks she did, so she makes chewing motions. Or maybe she is punking me. Hannah's fourth tooth is now free of her gums (much to her delight), and she now enjoys biting even more then she used to. Especially Daddy's nose. She has been biting Daddy's nose since the day she was born (there is photographic evidence of this), but now she does it and then gives a cheeky little "ha ha Daddy, I got you!" grin when she's done. Often she will crawl over to me for cuddles and then bite my shoulder. Or try to eat my hair. She goes in for the cuddle, then when she pulls back again, she has a mouth full of my hair and a very accomplished look on her face. I bought Hannah her first little pair of shoes. It's getting cold and she refuses to keep socks on (or if she does, she eats them while they are on, so then they are all wet and I'm sure her feet are then colder then they would have been without any socks at all). I know it's crazy to pay $50 for a pair of baby shoes, but that is exactly what I did. They had cheaper ones, but wouldn't you know it, she got my wide duck feet and couldn't fit in any of the cheaper ones. She also had to have the T-bar style ones as her also fat feet stuck out of the other ones too much (again, just like me when I was a baby. I've heard stories about my fat little feet not fitting into the baby shoes. Plus I looked like I ate other babies for breakfast). The T-bar ones only came in gold, so now she has bling feet. On the plus side, she can now wear socks and she can't get them off because there are shoes over them. Booyah. Oh, and she can stand by herself for up to 10 seconds at a time. When she realises, she can't stand anymore. I took some photos of Hannah's ringlet. Yes, just the one. Well, I guess there could be more, but all of her long hair just goes into one giant ringlet down the middle of her head. It kinda looks like a ringlet mohawk. Anyway, I put some photos of it in this post for viewing pleasure. She sure doesn't get that from my side of the family (if you've seen photos of me, my mom, or my dad with curls, it's only because at some point in our lives, we have all had perms. Yes, even my Dad (haha, your secret is out!). If only I had those photos...). Ok, so I didn't mean to write so much, but, stuff happens. Might not hear from me next week, still so much packing and stuff to do!! At least I won't be also running around getting the car inspected for rego (um...that is short for "registration" for you non Aussie's), finding the cheapest CTP greenslip (Compulsory Third Party insurance that you must have before you can actually register or renew your car's registration), and transfer of title papers. On an annoying note, you'd think that "comprehensive" car insurance would cover everything, right? Well, not here. Here, you have to have your CTP greenslip, which ONLY covers you for third party injury liability, then if you want any other kind of insurance, that is separate. "Comprehensive" does not include compulsory third party liability insurance. Highway robbery? I think so. And how much does a CTP greenslip cost (I know you are wondering)? Well, for us and our car, it's $639 for a year. How much does comprehensive cost on top of that (if we want it)? Another $600 something dollars. How much does third party property damage (like if we hit another car and their car was damaged) cost? $100 something. How can they call it "comprehensive" when clearly, it's not. RUDE!!! Ok, going now, really, I am.

The poo incident

2010-03-25T14:51:00.003+11:00

Hannah:
Mommy has been trying to teach me to clap. Ok, I should say trying to get me to clap because I learned how to a while ago. I just haven't had anything so good that I needed to pull out my new clapping trick for. Until today that is.

Sheri:
I have been trying to find a good pair of black shoes for a while now. Well, I found lots of them, but finding them in my size is another story. Needless to say, Hannah has been bored out of her mind in the stroller for a couple of shopping trips now. Today I finally found a good cute little pair of black flats that actually fit me. They even have some sparkles on them! Just as I picked them up after trying them on, Hannah clapped! I got so excited that I dropped everything right there in the middle of the aisle and loudly said "Yay!!!" while wildly clapping myself. I'm sure I looked a little looney to everyone around, but I don't care, my baby clapped and I was going to encourage her no matter what.

Hannah:
Mommy had been trying on shoe after shoe while I sat there, watching, bored bored bored in my pram. "This is the one Bubba, it's cute and it actually fits!" Hallelujah to that Mommy, let the boredom end! Now that was a reason to clap!
"oh, these ones are cute too," Mommy reached for another shoe. NOOOOOO!! In my disgust, I cried. And you know what? Mommy didn't try on any more shoes.

Sheri:
Every Saturday I get to sleep in. Aaron gets up at 7ish when Hannah wakes up, changes her nappy, gets her dressed, and then plays with her until 8, when I get up and feed her. I love my Saturday morning sleep ins, and look forward to them every week as only a sleep deprived first time mom can. Then on Sundays, Aaron gets to sleep in while I get up at 7ish when Hannah wakes up. Good deal I think. This Saturday, however, something disrupted my little much needed sleep in.
"Boo!!!" I heard Aaron calling me from Hannah's room. Hmmm...Should I pretend to be asleep? It is my sleep in morning after all.
"Boo!!!"
"What?" It must be urgent, he knows I love my sleep in. I got up.
It was the smell that hit me first. I always know when Hannah has done a poo, but usually the smell seems to be a little contained at least. This time it seemed to be everywhere, seeping into my nostrils from all directions.
"I need some help." Aaron said. I looked down. There she was, stark naked, Aaron holding her armpits so she could stand up. I looked down further. I wonder if my face gave away my surprise, horror, bewilderment, and ultimately the sense of ewwwww that I felt right at that moment. She was wearing a nappy when I put her to bed. Unfortunately, she seems to have found a way to take it off. I have no idea how, she was wearing a sleeping bag after all. I guess she wanted both Daddy and Mommy to pay her some attention that morning. Did I mention she always does a poo when she wakes up? Hannah's feet were COVERED in poo. Aaron called her "Poo Shoes." Next to her little cheeky feet was the nappy, freely sitting at the bottom of her sleeping bag. All over her sleeping bag...poo. Everywhere. Yes, this was definitely a 2 person clean up job. I had a look at her bed and sure enough, a little turd and it's poopstreak friend sat there, patiently waiting to be cleaned up. I had only put those sheets on the day before! When we got her new pink soft sleeping bag for $20 at Target, I thought the slit in the front and back so you could put them in their sleeping bag and then strap them into the pram or car seat or what have you, was a fantastic idea. Now, not so sure. Safety belt slits are apparently good de-nappying and poo escaping holes.

Hannah - other stuff this week:
We went to Grandma's house on the weekend, and I got to play with the little walker thing that Grandma bought for me. It was so much fun! It has 4 wheels and a handle so I can stand up, hold on, and then walk, walk walk! Mommy sat at one end of the hallway, and Daddy on the other. I couldn't figure out how to turn the walker around, so I would walk down the hallway, then Mommy or Daddy would turn me around and I'd walk back the other way. I wish I had one of those at home!
One day I was in the bath, and I grabbed the side of the bath and stood up. "oh, there's a boat," I thought. I grabbed it, held it in both hands, and put it in my mouth. I always have to see if something is edible. Of course, Mommy tells me that lots of things I think taste perfectly fine aren't for eating. Like the other day. I found a nice looking hair ball under the tv stand and put it in my mouth. Mommy said it wasn't edible and pulled it out of my mouth, but I got to eat some of it. Anyway, what were we talking about? Oh yeah, so I had the boat and was trying to eat it when Mommy said "What a clever girl, you're standing all by yourself!!!" Oh, wow, I really was. But then I realised and couldn't balance anymore and sat down. I can stand for about 5 seconds now all by myself!! Mommy and Daddy get so excited when I do, so I'm going to try really hard to stand longer.
My mouth really hurts. I try to sleep like a good girl, but it's really hard because my gums are so sore. My top tooth is trying to grow, but it's being really mean to me and taking a long, painful time. I have a cold too, so I keep coughing and waking myself up. I don't like teeth.

Pigeons

2010-03-17T21:04:00.002+11:00

Hannah:
"What's that?" I would ask my Mom Mom, but I'm little, I can't talk yet. I watched it move around and bobb it's silly little head up and down as it walked. I wonder why it does that? I don't do that when Mom Mom helps me walk. It doesn't seem to have any arms. I think I'll follow it and see what it does.
"Hannah, you are so cute, are you chasing the birdies?" Mom Mom said
Oh, so it's a birdy. I thought birdies flew. I haven't seen one walking around though, what a silly birdy. I wonder why it's walking in big circles instead of flying. I'll crawl faster and try to catch it so I can ask it. I wonder if it speaks Bubba? Birdy walks too fast for me, I can't catch it! Mom Mom is laughing. I guess she thinks the birdy and it's bobbing head is funny too. What's that?
"No Hannah, you can't eat leaves, you already tried that remember." Oh yeah. Oh, I forgot, I was chasing the birdy. Oh, he can fly! I don't think I can fly. No, I definitely can't fly. I guess he'll get away from me.

Other stuff this week:
Hannah enjoyed her first jumping castle and face painting experience yesterday. She actually stayed relatively still while getting her face painted. So cute! Daddy held her on the edge of the jumping castle and bounced her up and down. She loves bouncing! We couldn't let her crawl around inside as the bigger kids would have unintentionally trampled all over her. Guess she'll have to wait until she's bigger. There were colourful animal balloons that she kept trying to swan dive out of our arms to grab off other kids.

The countdown is on until moving day. Next month! Can't wait....

There was something else I wanted to write about, but I can't remember what it was. Maybe I'll remember next week.

Go Go Gadget Arms

2010-03-10T20:25:00.003+11:00

Time since birth: 8 months

"Mum. Mum." I looked down to see Hannah standing, holding on to the chair I was sitting in with a funny look on her face.
"Blleeett." She threw up a little and gave me another funny look.
"BLLLEETT." This time it went all over my pants and the floor.
"What's wrong Sweat Pea." Some times she does little spit ups, but this was not normal behaviour for Hannah. Her little eyes were pleading with me, but I had no idea what she was trying to tell me. She still looked like something wasn't quite right. I patted her back.
Something caught my eye "What's this?" I asked as I reached in her mouth. I grabbed a hold of it and pulled. To my surprise and amazement, and entire unscathed leaf emerged from her mouth. This was no tiny leaf, it was about as long as my forefinger, and as wide as 1.5 of my fingers. Pretty big for a tiny baby mouth.
"Where did you get this from?" We were inside, and as far as we could tell, there was not a leaf in sight. She hadn't been playing outside either, and I hardly took my eyes off of her the whole morning. She hadn't been choking on it, just looked rather uncomfortable as it was in her mouth and down her throat. Cheeky baby.

I think we are living in the apartment of continual disappointment. First there was the mold (that keeps punking us no matter what we do), then the windows that the painters stupidly painted shut (and didn't put the screens back on when they were painting), and the bathroom taps that are so leaky you need super strength to turn them off, the crappy toilet seat that was growing mold under the clear top bit where it was sealed in there and I couldn't ever clean it, the oven that will only work if you set the timer (and I sometimes forget and think it's heating up only to find out it's cold when I go to put dinner in), the fan in the laundry room that sometimes works a tiny bit, but mostly just makes "I'm dying kill me now" noises, the cockroaches that won't go away and poop all over our dishes, the blinds that fell on my head because they weren't put up properly, snails eating all of our mail, noisy old windows that make creepy loud banging noises at the slightest hint of wind, a lawn under our bedroom windows that is supposed to be for our apartment only but other people do loud things like hammering on, and now, to top it all off, we went away for one night, only one night, only to find some sort of maggots crawling all over the ceiling in the kitchen. Not one or two or three, but heaps of them, and moths flying around in the cupboard (so maybe that type of moth comes from maggoty looking things?). It's not like I left food out or dirty dishes in the sink. I did every single dish before we left, and emptied the garbage. I really don't want to know where they came from or why they all of a sudden decided to take over the kitchen. Let's just say there were lots of scared girly noises with flailing arms made by me, and then Aaron walking on the kitchen benches in order to get and kill all of the disgusting little maggoty things. Can't wait to move!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think that babies have go go gadget arms. Things that should be very much out of Hannah's reach seem to always make their way into her inquisitive little hands. She somehow managed to reach all the way up to the tray of her highchair to pull off a magazine. It's only a portable, goes on top of a normal chair high chair, so it's not as high as a normal one, but still, the tray is way above her little head.

Hannah has turned into quite the little chatter box, mostly when we're in the car. She usually says Mum repeatedly, but can also say: Dad, bum, bubba, and what sounds remarkably like hi, but isn't quite.

Mum Mum

2010-03-01T13:19:00.003+11:00

"Achoo!" Aaron called me from the bedroom "Boo, you have to come see this!" I went in and looked at Hannah. A giant snot bubble was coming out of her nose. Poor baby. At the same time though, I had a little laugh, and got out the camera. I had to document her first grossly hilarious snot bubble. Hannah has been a bit sick since last Saturday. She got a cold, probably from one of the kids in creche. I took her to the doctor last Saturday just to make sure it wasn't an ear infection or anything (I can never be too careful with my little baby!), as she also had a fever. They said it was just a cold. She woke up numerous times every night since her poor little nose was blocked. Babies only breathe through their noses, so they get quite distressed when it's blocked. Needless to say, I'm in a state of zombie-ness. I didn't write last week, due to said zombie-ness, and well, I really couldn't be bothered. Hannah gave me, Aaron, Grandma, and The Jess her cold, so when she was sleeping, I was sleeping. Blogging just seemed like entirely too much effort. She still has her cold. I think it's getting better though. She doesn't seem to be coughing as much, and I haven't had to wipe her nose all the time. We borrowed a vapouriser from someone at Church (thank you Beth!!!!!!), which really really helped her night sleeping. The first night, she only woke to feed once, which was a vast improvement on the 5+ times she had been waking due to a blocked nose. I think I need to invest in one of those. So worth it!

I was supposed to take Hannah to Tresillian (place to get help with baby sleeping problems http://www.tresillian.net/) on my birthday (hey, I wasn't about to turn down the earliest appointment they had, even if it was for my birthday), but they called one morning and asked if I could come in. Sure I had to hurry and shower, get Hannah ready, get our lunches ready, nappy bag, toys, sleeping stuff, etc., but I wanted to nip this non napping crisis in the bud asap, so I said yes. I won't lie, it was really hard. The whole idea is controlled crying; teaching Hannah to put herself to bed. Sometimes she does the "I'm gonna die" cry (where it certainly sounds like if I don't come in right then, she will die), which rips my heart out. They told me that if that is what gets me in there, then that is what she has learned gets me in there. She isn't hungry, hot, cold, wet, etc when she does it, so it's not anything to worry about. The plan consisted of first waiting 15-20 minutes after I put her down for her nap to let her try to put herself to sleep (even if she is crying, I don't go in), then if she is crying, go in, lay her down (she is usually standing), pat her back (she sleeps on her tummy) and settle her down, and stay for a while, then go, and come back every 5 minutes or so. It took her 35 minutes to sleep the first time, and she slept for 1 hour. Much better then the 15 minutes she was doing before. Oh, and I can't feed her to sleep anymore. Ok, this time, I really won't give in, I will not feed her to sleep anymore. For her second nap of the day, she didn't nap at all. We tried for an hour and a half, but got nothing except ear piercing cries. Poor Bubba.
I also had to make a bedtime routine, and stick to it every single time. Our new routine is: put sleeping bag on, give her a cuddle, sit her in her cot, read her a story, lay her down, put the blinds down and turn the sleepy music on, stroke her hair and say "sleepy time," turn the light off and exit the room. The first couple of days were pretty hard, but they are supposed to be. Now for her naps, I'm happy to report that she goes to sleep within 5 minutes, but usually within 1, and if she cries, it's only a weak little protest cry, then she is out. Sigh of relief. Nights aren't going so well, but I'm pretty sure that is just because of her cold. It has been taking an hour or more to get her to sleep at night then she has been waking and waking (except for the last few nights when we borrowed the vapouriser). As I said though, I'm pretty sure that is just her nose giving her grief. Why is it that when you have a cold, the stuffy nose seems way worse at night??

Hannah would like everyone to know that she is a little Aussie (for those Americans reading this, that is pronounced Ozzy, like Ozzy Osbourne) girl. Aaron was eating vegemite toast one morning when, as usual, Hannah crawled over and looked at him with those "Daddy, you know you want to give me what ever it is that you are eating" eyes. I said she could try some vegemite toast. I thought for sure she'd absolutely hate it, but to my surprise (and bewilderment), she loved it. I think she would have eaten Daddy's entire toast if he let her.

There is one thing that all moms can't wait to hear - when your little one says Mum, Mama, Mum Mum, or the like, for the very first time. I was feeding Hannah her lunch when out of the blue, she said Mum. clear as day, not a "what did you just say" kind of thing, there was no question that she said Mum. I don't know if she knows what it means (I would like to delude myself to say that she does), but she certainly knows it gets my attention. If I'm in the kitchen and she is in the living room, she will crawl over to the makeshift barricade I made (two blown up thermarest mattresses across the doorway, one side held in place by the couch, the other with a vacuum cleaner, reinforced with a chair in the middle of the door way to prevent the bust ins that were happening), stand up, look at me, and yell "Mum!" How can I not give her a cuddle or a smile or play with her when she does that? Every time she says Mum I'm pretty sure my smile gets a little wider. I better watch out or I will end up looking like a demented clown or something. She also said bum this morning. I suppose that was bound to happen when she says Bubba and Mum all the time. Put them together, and what do you get? Bum. Hahahaha, bum is so much funnier when it's a baby saying it!

And yes, it is my birthday this week. Happy birthday to me. I'm getting old.

To finish off, here is a little rant, as it annoys me every time.
Dear newspaper publishers: Why must you put staples in your newspapers? Do you like to unnecessarily contribute to depleting the worlds steel supply? I can't figure out the purpose to using staples to bind together your newspapers which already stay together as they have a nice fold right down the centre. Do you like to spend money unnecessarily on staples? Pay for unnecessary machines to put said useless staples in your newspapers? "Can I read the sports section?" someone asked me. "Sure," I wasn't reading it, and sharing is caring. "Oh wait, sorry, I can't pull out the sports section because this silly newspaper is STAPLED TOGETHER." Why don't I just pull the section off? I would, but you use unnecessarily large staples which fail to free sections of paper when you pull at them. Instead, half of the page is torn away, the other half still sticking unnecessarily to the big stupid unnecessary staple. Why don't I just pull the staple off? Sounds easy enough, but we're not talking about normal easy to pull off normal sized staples, we are talking about unnecessarily large nail breaking, finger poking, don't want to unbend staples. "Hey, want to put some newspaper through the shredder to make some guinea pig bedding?" "Great idea. Oh wait, we can't, it will kill the shredder because it's STAPLED TOGETHER!" What were you thinking newspaper publishers?

Sticky Fingers

2010-02-15T16:02:00.003+11:00

I was just being lazy, trying to get the job done in the shortest time possible. I sort of had to though as Bubba was getting into everything when she started crawling. I moved everything just out of her reach. Now she's started pulling herself up on anything and everything she can find (the coffee table, couch, shelves, tv unit, our knees, even the vacuum cleaner), which means everything I moved before is no in her reach again. We're running out of places to put things. Can't put anything on the coffee table or it will be pushed, pulled, or thrown off, then eaten, bashed or chewed on. I have to follow her around the house making sure she doesn't fall over when she attempts to "cruise" (pulling self up and then moving sideways along whatever furniture it was she pulled herself up on). She also seems to have this crazy notion in her head that she actually has balance and then lets go of whatever she is holding on to. FYI, she does not yet have balance. Luckily for her we are always there to catch her (hmm... maybe that is why she does it, she does love being scared, if peekaboo is anything to go by). I guess she can balance a little, she can hold on to stuff with just one hand and stay up just fine. She's just a little dare-devil!

How is it that babies wake up for garbage trucks, people who talk too loud, noisy kookaburra's, a loud fart, the front door opening, etc, but when there is a loud thunderstorm with cracking lighting overhead, nothing? Not even a little peep. I don't understand baby sleep even a little bit.

I'm going to be sore tomorrow. I used muscles today that I forgot ever existed. That happens every time I start doing tae kwon do again. Ok, so I haven't done it much since I was a kid, but a few years ago The Jess and I went for a while at the uni. I could hardly walk the next day. I'm sure I had a bit of a swagger, and goodness, did my body feel a bit special! I know I'll be feeling exactly like that tomorrow. It was fun though, and a really good work out. I really miss doing tae kwon do. I did it from 4th to 9th grade when I was a kid, then stopped. Everyone thought it was because I lost interest, but really (sure, I'll set the record straight even though it's embarrassing) it was because I started my women troubles and was petrified that it would leak through to my white tae kwon do pants. I saw it happen to one of the other girls, and I did NOT want it to happen to me. What if after sitting on the mat stretching, I got up, only to find I had leaked all over myself and the mat? How would I ever show my face there again? I know, silly, but this is what a 14 year old girl thinks about. So, when aunt flow was paying me an unwelcome visit, I would tell my dad that I didn't want to go, but I didn't say why, he thought I wasn't interested anymore (after this happened for a week straight for a couple of months), I was too embarrassed to tell him the real reason (you don't really talk to your dad about such things), he didn't want to pay for something I wasn't interested in, and that was that, we didn't go anymore. I always missed it though. You're laughing aren't you Dad? There is a place within walking distance to us that even has a women's class on a weekday morning. Apparently you can even bring your baby/child as all the ladies do. Can't go every week though, it costs too much. I'm very excited to get back into it though, even if I do look like I swallowed a giant coat hanger tomorrow.

Uh-oh, I could hear Hannah stirring. She had only been alseep for 20 minutes. She grizzled for a while, then all was silent. Success, she put herself back to sleep. Or so I thought.... After another half an hour, she was making protests, so I went to her room. She hadn't gone back to sleep at all. Instead, she had been plotting how to grab anything and everything, pull it into her cot, and then play with it until she got bored. And to think I thought I moved everything far enough away from her sticky little grip. Clearly I underestimated my cheeky little monkey. When I opened her door, there she was, sitting in her cot surrounded by her loot. Cheeky little monkey!

Communication station

2010-02-09T11:29:00.002+11:00

Time since birth: 7 months

I think I should be grape scented. I wear purple all the time (my favourite!), my hair is purple, my earrings are often purple. Someone actually asked me why I have purple the other day why my hair is purple. I said because I like purple. I think it looks nice, but I'm sure a little purple haired Mommy looks a little funny (except that I don't care, if other people want to judge me by my crazy hair then I don't want to know them anyway). Apart from that one question though, no one has said anything about my hair at all.

Hannah crawled over and sat near my feet (I was on the couch). She looked at my yogurt. "Eh!!"
I looked at Grandma "I think she wants some yogurt."
I got up to go get her a bubba spoon. "Eh!!!Eh!!" She didn't like me going away. I suppose she thinks I carry spoons around in my pockets. Or maybe that they are just part of me and I can just whip them out whenever needed.
I sat on the floor and gave her some of the yogurt. She ate half and then crawled away quite happy and pleased with herself. Wow, she is learning to communicate better. She is amazing.

Last week I took Hannah to the Early Childhood Health Clinic to address her napping problem. They gave me a referral to Tresillian (a place that helps with sleeping problems with day stays, home visits, and if it's really bad, week stays), and told me that I need to stop feeding her to sleep. Oh that will be hard. She has always REFUSED to have booby unless it's right before nap/sleep time. I have tried and tried and tried, but she always refuses the booby until right before a sleep. They told me that at this point, her napping is more important then that milk as she is eating solids and has an over night feed. I took her home and put her to bed - without booby. To my amazement, she slept. And slept. She slept for 1 hour and 45 minutes. Turns out it was a fluke though. Sometimes she takes 1.5 hours to get herself to sleep (I'm also supposed to not go in there for a pat before 20 minutes), then she only sleeps for 15 to 30 min. Crazy baby, you'd think she'd be absolutely buggered from all that crawling, and then conk out for like 2 hours. She just seems to be a little bundle of infinite energy. She still won't have any booby when she wakes up, except for in the afternoon, so I have been pumping and putting it in her breakfast and letting her drink it out of a sippy cup while she eats her solids. I'm still waiting for Tresillian to call me and let me know when I can come in for a day stay.

Since I had to change the nap time routine to not include booby, I now give her some quiet time (put her in her cot while I do my daily bible reading out loud to her), put her in her sleeping bag, give her a cuddle, tell her it's nap time, turn on the sleepy music, then leave the room. The other day I was reading to her when I looked up and got a bit of a shock. Giving me a cheeky "look what I can do" grin, Hannah was standing there in her cot, holding on to the rail. Now every time I read to her, she immediately stands up, and remains standing the entire time, looking very pleased with herself, and giving me the biggest whole face grin whenever I look at her. She's so cute!!!

The super-cheekiness has begun

2010-02-01T14:17:00.002+11:00

I finally did it- I told the people next door to shut up. At 10pm someone was playing acoustic guitar and singing. That wasn't a problem though, the songs were soft and actually lulled me to sleep. Then came the bongo (or similar) drums. They invaded my sleep and woke me from my wonderful slumber. Enough was enough. I pulled the blinds up and stuck my head as far out the window as I could, to see where the noise was coming from. On and on the badly played bongos went. Without thinking, I yelled. "SHUT UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Wow, I can't believe I actually finally did it. To my surprise, they actually did. They shut up almost immediately. But then I felt bad. I should have been a little nicer about it. I should have maybe said "could you please quiet down, I'm trying to sleep." Of course that might not have been so effective. Ahhh, I could go back to sleep. Or could I? Probable drunk and or high people had just been yelled at to shut up. Hmmm...would they try to do anything to me? I felt extremely glad at that moment that there are bars on all of our windows. I suppose they probably didn't even know from which apartment complex, let alone unit, the shut up came from, but that is not what you think about at 11pm after being woken from your deep slumber to the sound of horribly played bongo drums, possibly by psychopaths. This time I really would have called the cops to make a noise complaint. loud tv and or music (the recorded kind, not badly played live kind) is one thing, but bongo drums?

How do you tell a 6 (almost 7) month old that they can't sleep sitting up? Hannah will only breastfeed before she goes to sleep or has a nap. I know it's not ideal, but she usually falls asleep while I feed her (I have tried many many times to feed her other times, but she is a stubborn determined little thing, and will ONLY breastfeed before bed no matter what I do), then I put her in the cot, she rolls over onto her tummy, and that is how she sleeps. Now though, after about 2 minutes, she wakes up. I'm sure she always has, but then she just repositions herself and goes back to sleep. But now she can get to the sitting position all by herself, so what does she do? She wakes after 2 minutes and then sits of course. The sitting then gets her all awake again, she gets over tired, she cries, I go in, lay her down, pat her back, she sits back up immediately, I lay her down, etc. I've tried staying in there while she plays around in her cot to get herself all tuckered out again. She will get tired again, but of course, the whole process repeats. I've tried letting her cry for 10 minutes initially, go in, pat for 1 minute, leave her for 3, pat for 1, etc. Nope, that doesn't work either. As soon as I lay her down, pop! she's back up. I don't think she realises that she is only 6 months old. According to baby books, this whole sitting up from laying, crawling, etc. thing, is not supposed to happen until about 10 months. Needless to say, it's been a long, tired few days, with mommy (sorry, I mean me. Once you have a baby, you start automatically referring to yourself as "Mommy" in the third person in hopes that sometime soon, baby will call you that too) going a little insane. She did get to 15 minutes this morning before she woke up. I guess we're making some progress.

I'm glad Hannah doesn't yet have top teeth, otherwise I would probably be missing a nipple right now. I tried to resettle her with booby (I know, bad habit, but I was desperate, the patting/sitting up cycle had been going on for an hour with no progress), but she wanted none of it. Instead of sucking, she decided to clamp down and not let go. Once I pried my nipple out of her cheeky little mouth, I could see teeth marks. That is something one never ever wants to see on their nipple. Ever. Lucky for her she hasn't bitten me again. If she starts biting me regularly, or if she draws blood, I'm withdrawing booby from her permanently. I'm not totally cruel though, I'd still express and give it to her in a sippy cup. She would hate it though. She probably would refuse to drink it, and then after not eating anything for a while, I'd give in and she'd get booby again. Stubborn little thing (but oh so cute).

We have to find a new place asap. Hannah is getting into everything. She crawls all over the house, ripping everything off shelves, opening drawers and cupboards (and squishing her little fingers in drawers a few times. She is too fast, I'm right next to her, so I can see as soon as it's going to happen, but by the time I get my hand between the drawer and it's frame, she's already shut her fingers in it), trying to climb the dishwasher when I'm unloading it, trying to open doors that I've shut so she can't go in other rooms. The list is endless!! She much prefers random household things to her toys these days. At least she is easily entertained (even though it means I'm following her around the house, trying to make sure she doesn't get into too much mischief!). Oh, and she is still being super cheeky at meal time too, giving me food showers and/or refusing to eat. Oh the cheekiness... (but we wouldn't swap her for the world!).

And then she sprouted teeth

2010-01-28T09:20:00.005+11:00

"Ok Bubba, time for a nappy change." I put her on her back on the change mat. I took her nappy off, deflected wandering hands, and turned to get a new nappy. I turned back to find Bubba crawling away. She then sat just out of reach on her bare little bottom. That's right, she can now crawl, and go from crawling to sitting and sitting to crawling. Today she followed me in to the kitchen a few times and then sat on the floor and watched me do the dishes. Sometimes when she cries after I put her to bed, I go in there to pat her only to find her sitting up in her cot. Lay her back down and she just sits up again. Ok, in all fairness, that was only one day, and she was teething and in pain. After I gave her some baby panadol, and a cuddle, she went to sleep. She won't let me look at them, but I caught a glimpse once when I opened her mouth with my finger and then pushed her tongue back with my other hand, and saw her little tooth. Next to it was a crooked little tooth about to come through. I'm just glad that she (so far...) doesn't bite me. I really don't want a bloodied nipple. I read that some babies go off their food when they're teething. I'm glad there is a reason why she hasn't been eating her food properly. Hopefully she will return to her eager eating glory asap.

The three of us went away for the Australia day long weekend (which actually wasn't a long weekend as the day off was Tuesday, but we made it one anyway). We went to the Abercrombie caves with friends. We went for a couple of long bush walks (3 hours) which Hannah absolutely loved. She was attached to Daddy by the baby bjorn, kicking her little legs, babbling away. The second day, we went to see the caves. I brought my camera to snap away, and hopefully get some good pics of the caves. As soon as we got to the entrance, the battery died. Unfortunately I didn't bring the spare batteries on the hike, so I had to rely on the point and shoot and hope that Friend 2 got some good photos with his film SLR. As it turned out, he forgot to bring spare batteries for his flash, so I guess we all had to rely on the point and shoot. Clearly we are all awesome.

When we arrived, it was dark out, so we didn't really see any of our surroundings. I heard some rustling when I woke up and went to the kitchen. I looked out the window and was surprised to see a huge hill right outside. I could have touched the hill if I could pry the screen off the window. There on the hill was a herd of wild goats, having their morning graze. The next morning we saw a family of Kangaroos on the hill, including a joey. Even the little joey was sticking his little head out of his mothers pouch grazing with his mum. We even saw a wombat run across the road in front of us (we were on foot) one night.

I bought a bottle of fake baileys (I was going to get the small $10 bottle of baileys but then saw the fake baileys large bottle for $10 and thought it was a no brainer) to have a couple of nice tasting drinks after Bubba went to bed, only to find it tasted horrible. I thought maybe my tastes changed after not drinking for so long. I took a sip, made a face, waited a while, thought I must be imagining it, took a sip, made a face. The others looked at me funny. Friend 1 tried it. "No, it's not just you, this if off." Friend 2 tried it. "yeah, this is off." Glad to know it wasn't just me. I only bought it the day before, so don't you worry, that bottle-o will be hearing from me.

6 month check up

2010-01-20T10:11:00.003+11:00

"As soon as her nappy comes off, she grabs herself. Is that normal?"
The baby nurse laughed. "Yes, they all like to do that. Boys like to try to pull their bits off."
"I'm afraid she is going to hurt herself, she's not gentle or anything." Not to mention I now have to contain a hand as well as two legs whilst I change a nappy. Otherwise she gets a fist full of poo.
"She'll be fine."
Hannah had her 6 month well baby check up at the early childhood centre. I forgot the list of questions I made, but I seemed to remember most of them.
"She steals all of the other babies toys. Not just one toy, she doesn't stop until she has all the toys and they have none."
The baby nurse laughed. "She's very assertive and determined. She's too young to know that it's not acceptable to take all the toys though. You'll just have to watch her carefully if the other mums think it's a problem."
"How much food should she be eating?" I really had no idea.
"Half a cup to a cup per meal. When they start eating protein, their main food source should be food, not breast milk. Still breastfeed her 4-5 times in a 24 hour period, but she should start dropping a night feed once you up her quantities and give her protein at lunch and dinner." Awesome.
"She often needs to lay in her cot and cry for 5 minutes before she will have her before bedtime booby. Is that normal and ok?"
"Some babies just need to wind down like that. They get so stimulated during that day that they need some wind down time. Some babies are ok after you read to them quietly, others need to scream it out. Screaming is not the way the majority of babies go, but it's not harmful." Phew.
Darn, I forgot to ask about napping. Little Miss Hannah isn't so fond of the naps. Sometimes she won't sleep at all, others she will sleep once for 2 hours, other times half an hour each (2 naps per day is what we aim for). It's so unpredictable. Oops, should have remembered my list!
She also told me I can start making her food lumpier and introduce more meats, cheese, yoghurt (Hmmm..spell checker is telling me that yoghurt is spelled yogurt, but I swear it has an h. It is telling me it has an h if it's plural though. Strange), and even toast fingers. We're in for some fun, I think!
I gave her some cheese that very same day. I grated it (as I was told to) and put it in her broccoli, sweet potato, and potato mix, and gave it a stir. She took an unsuspecting bite and made the "what the heck is this terrible stuff" face. Then she gave me a food shower. She blew every last it out of her mouth and continued to do so if I got the spoon anywhere near her. She grabbed for the container and held it. She grabbed for the spoon. 'Why not,' I thought. She wasn't eating it, so at least she could play with it. To my surprise, she actually ate it. As long as she was holding the spoon (with me also holding it, although she clearly thought she was doing all the work) and the container, she ate it. After a couple of days, she ate it just fine.
Next, we tried yoghurt. I got some of the natural kind as I thought it would be the least offensive taste wise, the most mild. I got the 'what the heck are you feeding me' face again. I tried some myself and found it was quite tart tasting. No wonder she didn't like it. I didn't even like it. Guess I'll have to find a different kind of yoghurt to give her. Or maybe some cottage cheese, she might like that. Next on the list though, is tuna. I made a nice batch of really soft pasta, tuna, broccoli, and sweet corn, whizzed it up in the blender, and put it in an ice cube tray in the freezer. Tomorrow, she will try her very first portion of fish.

This week

2010-01-13T15:07:00.001+11:00

Tuesday:
Hannah hasn't been interested in her afternoon naps, so I decided that today would be the day to cut her day time naps down to 2. I kept her up for 2 hours before her first half (rather then the usual 1.5), and she fed and went down great. I gave her some banana for breakfast for the first time. I really thought she'd like it, but she made funny faces and then refused to eat anything else after (hmmm...sounds a little like me when I was little). I guess I'll try again tomorrow. She went down for her second nap just fine, after being awake for 3 hours (instead of the usual 2), but then woke up after half an hour and proceeded to scream the house down when I tried to get her back to sleep.
Maybe all the irritation is teething though. She has been pulling at her ear to the point where she has actually scratched the inside of her ear 3 times and has dried blood all over it. I would just wet a cotton bud (Q-tip) and get it off, but she would flip about and then I'd probably end up bursting her eardrum or something equally horrible, so I just let it clean itself.
We went for a walk this afternoon to the supermarket (it's about 20 minutes away by foot). The lady in front of us in the line to the self checkout kept staring at Hannah. I know she's cute, but I thought that this lady must just think she's super cute. I went around the front of the pram to talk to Hannah and saw the dried blood in her ear. No wonder the lady was staring. I don't want to know what she was thinking, but I'm sure it wasn't good (OK, so that happened last week, but I forgot to write about it then).
I went through Hannah's closet today to organise the mountain of clothing. I can't believe how many clothes she has! I found an entire bag of size 00 and 0, which she is in right now, that I forgot was even there. I had to reorganise her dresser just to make everything fit, and the bottom of her closet is absolutely full of garbage bags now labelled with the size of clothing they contain.

Wednesday:
Hannah got up twice to feed during the night. That's what she's been doing for a while now. There was a point where she was getting up 4 times, so I'm grateful for 2. Most of the other babies in my group are also getting up twice. I wonder why they do that now? I mean they used to get up once or not at all, and now they routinely get up twice. Oh well, it's certainly better then 4 times! Unfortunately the racket outside also woke me up. Just as I was getting back to sleep from her second feed at 5am, I heard a noise which sounded remarkably like someone heavily sweeping a tarp right inside my bedroom. I'm pretty sure it was a street sweeper, but who knows. I wonder why noise ordinances don't cover garbage trucks and street sweepers. I like to be sleeping at 5am, not lying in bed awake and annoyed at all the noise outside. That of course, was followed by the kookaburra's "laughing" at 5:30 like they always do, in some tree right near our unit, which was then followed by Hannah waking up from all the noise. She put herself back to sleep though, and eventually, I went to sleep too.
I tried to give Hannah some banana again. I learned from my mistake last time, and gave her the apple (which she likes) first. She still doesn't like the banana. I will keep trying though. They say it takes babies up to 10 times of trying something before they might like it. After that if they reject it, you know it's because they actually don't like it, not because it's unfamiliar.
I put Hannah down for her nap at 9:30. She went out like a light, so I got in the shower. 10 minutes later I heard her grizzling through the baby monitor. I finished my shower just in time for the screaming to start. 1 hour and 1 boob later, she was finally back asleep. She slept for nearly 2 hours which made me late for lunch with the girls. Why is it that the only time they have a really good nap it's when you're supposed to be somewhere?
We have our tv set up to start recording a chosen show 10 minutes before it starts and continue recording for 10 minutes after it's supposed to finish. So you'd think we would definitely be able to catch the end and start of our programs, right? Well, it seems that the Australian networks are a lot special and even though the shows are not even remotely live, they can't seem to stick with the times they are supposed to be on. Is it really that hard to start and end a program on time? We only just found out who was voted out in Survivor. Just as Probst held up the very last vote, the recording cut out. And that was 10 minutes after it was supposed to end. Seriously, why do you have to annoy everyone stupid tv networks?? And it's not just that one program, this is a regular thing. That is why we have it set to record 10 minutes before and 10 after. We used to have it set for 5, but that just didn't cut it anymore. I think we may have to go to 15 soon. I should write channel 9 a complaint letter....

Thursday:
I put Hannah in her highchair with some reservation. She has been crying and arching her back in attempt to escape every time I put her there to feed her. I didn't know anything about high chairs when we bought it and therefore didn't realise what a ridiculous design it is. The back is not sturdy, but rather is held in place by the straps that secure baby in. So baby can't sit up properly and is instead swallowed up by the chair with just a little head poking out. No wonder she doesn't like it. I ended up feeding her her new big girl multigrain rice cereal in my lap on the floor. I think I may need to visit ikea for the simple wooden highchair, the kind she likes so much.
A mortgage broker was supposed to come and talk to us today, but he cancelled at the last minute. When he called to cancel he said he was sick and that he would leave it up to me what I wanted to do. That was basically saying he can't really be bothered, so the option to not see him is on the table. I took it. Just because we are not buying a really expensive house around here, and instead are going to move west where things are actually affordable, doesn't mean that we are a waste of anyone's time. I'll find someone who actually cares.

Friday:
Hannah slept really well this morning. She napped for 1 hour and 45 minutes. But then this afternoon she wouldn't sleep at all. Then she had to have her 6 month injections. She didn't even cry for the first one. She even smiled at the girl who was holding down her chubby little leg. She had to have another injection in her other leg and I think she screamed for both after the second one. Then she looked at me with the sad "how could you hold me down while they hurt me like that Mommy?" look on her face and then stuck out her bottom lip. I felt HORRIBLE!!

Saturday:
Wow, she slept right through to 3:50am and then wanted a feed. At 5:30 she woke again. "I don't know why she is awake again," I said to Aaron crankily. I went in her room and picked her up. She could have easily been mistaken for a furnace, she was burning up. I took her bubba bag off and gave her some baby panadol, some comfort booby to stop the screaming, and then put her back to bed. Sometimes when they get immunised, they get a fever. She never has before, but I guess there's a first for everything. Poor baby.
I took Hannah grocery shopping at lunch time. Some crazy woman almost backed right into us when I was pushing Bubba in the shopping trolley in the parking lot. The car wasn't moving and there was no room for us to get by in front, so we looked both ways and walked behind her. All of a sudden, she started backing up. Then as she was backing, looked in the rear view mirror and slammed on her breaks missing us (well, me, I started running as soon as she started backing, so Hannah was in the clear) by only a couple inches. Seriously, who starts backing BEFORE looking to see if there is anything behind them. Especially in a parking lot, where there are lots of small children who don't look where they are going? That's actually not the first time that that's happened to us either. Once a couple weeks ago, we were walking on the sidewalk next to the street and someone started backing up out of their driveway when we were already half way through their driveway when they started backing. Another case of not looking before backing. It's amazing what amuses babies. Hannah played with a tube of Lucas' paw paw ointment for 25 minutes. I suppose it is rather versatile, she can chew it, pass it from hand to hand, examine it, try to pull the writing off of it, run it along the bed as if it were a toy car, and of course, her favorite, hit Mommy with it.

Sunday:
I gave her some pureed chicken and sweetcorn to try this morning, and she loved it. Huh, she doesn't like banana, but loves broccoli, pumpkin, potato, sweet potato, avocado, chicken, and sweetcorn. I haven't offered the zucchini again since the um...incident. I'm still a little scared.
It was hard leaving Hannah by herself with someone other then immediate family, but we bucked up and did it. She had her very first time in creche while we were at church. It was a little strange being in church without her. We could actually focus on the sermon rather then trying to keep her quiet and entertained. We picked her up straight away rather then milling about like we usually do. We peeked in and saw that she was happily playing on the floor with one of the ladies. They said she was very well behaved the whole time and didn't even cry once. What a good girl!

Monday:
I know I usually do my blog on Monday's, but Hannah and I went to Parramatta to meet The Jess and Romana and baby Violet. Hannah squealed and got excited when she saw Violet even though she has only met her once before. I guess she likes Violet.
In the evening, Hannah and I had dinner with Aaron in the city. Walking back to the bus stop, a gust of wind came and I had a horrifying Marilyn Monroe moment. But not just for a second. This was like the wind had a vendetta against me. My entire dress was up past my butt long enough for me to try to get it down, fail, then say to Aaron "I'm having a little bit of a problem here!" and it was still up. I could hear people laughing. "What underwear are you wearing?" Aaron asked. I thought about it and then told him "Black ones." Phew, I wasn't wearing ugly embarrassing granny panties. When I got home, I realised I wasn't wearing the black ones at all, I wore those yesterday. I was in fact, wearing ugly embarrassing white, half see through granny panties. Not half see through because that is the way the came, but half see through due to wear. I think it's time to buy new underwear....

And then she spoke

2010-01-05T12:07:00.005+11:00

Time since birth: 6 months

"Bub-ba."
"What did you say?" Surely I was hearing things. Maybe she babbled something that kind of sounded like Bubba and then my brain deciphered it as "Bubba" without me even realising.
"Bubba."
Wow, she really did say it. "Boo, Bubba just said Bubba!!!!" I was so excited. It was so cute. I never thought she could get cuter then she already is, but I was very wrong. Her cute little face speaking cute little words makes her way cuter.
Everyone's heads were bowed, some people folded their hands (I am a hand folder, it just doesn't seem right if I do it without folding my hands), the church was silent apart from a member of the congregation who was up front, praying into the microphone.
"BUBBA BUBBA BUBBA BUBBA!!!!!!" Apparently Bubba wanted everyone to know that she can now say her nickname. We laughed. It was a good way to end her very last time staying in church with Mommy and Daddy. Next week she is going to creche for the very first time.

Aaron had last week off work, so we decided to have a nice day out. We were going to visit the aquarium, as I haven't seen it, and thought that Bubba might like it. Aaron looked up prices on the internet and found it was $30-something each. Ok, we're too cheap to pay that. We will go when Hannah is older and can actually appreciate it (yes, I'm cheap). I swear when my parents were here it didn't cost near that much to go there.
Instead, we opted for miniature golf. We thought Hannah would like watching the ball be putted around the course, but she was a bit bored. Maybe it was just the ridiculous humidity of the day that was making her cranky. It was making all of us uncomfortable and sticky.

Hannah had her very first shopping trolley (cart for you yanks) ride today. Since she sits up now, she would be able to sit in the baby seat in the trolley. I put her in and fastened the belt. She grabbed the front of the trolley, kicked her little chubby legs joyfully, and had a good look around. She absolutely loved it!! I was wondering how I would do the shopping on my own now that she is getting so heavy. I used to either wear her in the baby bjorn, or have her in the pram (stroller for the yanks) with someone (Aaron, Grandma, or The Jess) pushing her while I pushed the shopping trolley.

I think we're going to need a playpen in the very near future. Hannah can now put herself in the proper crawling position, with her knees on the floor, her arms straight, and her back flat. She gets herself all flustered and cranky because she can't quite figure out what to do next. She has mastered going backwards, but the elusive forward steps are still evading her. She did sort of inchworm herself a little forward the other day, and looked very pleased with herself. It's only a matter of time until our little baby is properly mobile. Lucky our lease runs out in April so we can get a place that is a bit more baby friendly. In other words, isn't the size of a sardine can so the play area isn't in the same space as the folded up home weights bench, the wall of awesome (board game shelves), and the tv entertainment unit. Lots of stuff for tiny hands to grab, ruin, put in her mouth, hurt herself with, etc.

Aaron made a video of Hannah, but I can't figure out how to put it on this blog from youtube (I'm a little special), so here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0USKlB8wb1o

The Christmas Edition

2009-12-31T09:21:00.003+11:00

My hair was slicked back, wet with purple hair dye that was dripping on to my back. I was wearing only my nursing bra and bikini bottoms while cooking pancakes on Christmas morning. I hope none of the neighbors could see me through the windows, it must have looked like a crazy house! Usually when I dye my hair, I wear old ugly t-shirts and put old ugly towels around myself. I was not at home though, and I didn't have any old ugly shirts, and the only towels were nice hotel bright white ones. I don't think my Mother in Law would have appreciated her nice towels suddenly turning purple. The Sister in Law wanted to live vicariously through me and suggested I dye my hair. I thought it would be fun to have purple hair (that goes away after 8 washes...) for Christmas, so I thought, why not? We had a good Christmas, lots of good presents, good food (prawns on the BBQ, chicken skewers, pasta salad, fruit salad, gelato, fruit flan), and a nice lazy day.

Hannah loves opening presents. She does, of course, want to eat the wrapping paper. I think she likes the paper better then the actual present inside. She's no longer allowed to chew on paper or cardboard as she has learned how to take bits off with her gums and then tries to eat them. After fishing a few bits of paper out of her mouth, I banned paper and cardboard from her list of toys. I was actually able to get some smiling photos of Hannah. We were out to lunch one day when she went a bit hyper and started squealing, yelling, jumping, and giggling. I got out the camera, and to my amazement, the hyper activity didn't stop, she didn't stop and stare at the camera like she normally does. I was able to get lots of smiling photos, and since that day, she smiles for the camera like she's been doing it her whole life.

I hope no one looked at me through the window of the car on the drive home. They would have been in for a very big shock. I'm sure it's not everyday that you see someone in the passenger seat of a car using a manual breast pump while going down the freeway. I didn't really have a choice, Hannah was refusing to nurse (too much to look at, it was very hot and sticky, who knows really), and I am not really a fan of exploding boobies, so I pumped. Yes, I could have done it in the bathroom at a rest stop or something, but 1, that would have added extra time to the already long journey, and 2, is pumping in the filthy bathroom at Macca's any less weird then pumping while in a moving vehicle? I think not. I was very worried about the drive home from Byron Bay. Hannah has never really been a fan of car rides, and we were going to drive from Byron Bay to Tamworth the first day, then Tamworth to Sydney (via Penrith) the second day. She never fails to surprise and delight us though. She was wonderful the first day. Even though she didn't have much sleep in the car (she can't sleep very long in the car seat, I think because she usually sleeps on her tummy and obviously can't do that in her seat), she was happy, didn't cry, and was quite content. We stopped frequently to let her out of her seat, and to give her some food. By the last couple of hours of the journey on the second day, she had had enough. She pretty much screamed for an hour straight, until we stopped in Windsor for some lunch. Poor Bubba.

I know my blog is a day late. Monday I didn't even realise it was Monday. Aaron has the week off, so it felt like it was Sunday. Then Tuesday I meant to do it but the camera was out of batteries so I couldn't get the photos on the computer to put on the blog (and I forgot to charge it until the evening). Then yesterday I was too busy. Oh well, I'm sure you'll live.

The Plane Trip

2009-12-22T09:13:00.006+11:00

Hannah
I don't really know what's going on. It's 5:30 in the morning and Mommy and Daddy are getting things from my room trying to be quiet but not succeeding. I wake up of course, and to my surprise, they pick me up, change my nappy, and put me in the car. Grandma is here too. I'm really excited. I know they want me to go to sleep in the car, but how could I?

We went in a really big room with lots of windows with strange huge car type things (only very funny looking) outside. Mommy walks me around the building pointing to the strange cars. She tells me they are airplanes and that we are going to ride on one with Grandma. I'm a little confused though, I thought I was an airplane? Mommy and Daddy often lay on their backs and put me on their knees and move their legs around and say I'm an airplane (or aeroplane if it's Daddy) bubba. So if I'm an airplane, how can this giant car be one too?

Someone says that the airplane is delayed because it needs to do a "high powered engine run." Whatever that is. "Lucky I brought her food." Mommy says. We go in the mothers room and Mommy tries to give me some booby. I'm still so excited for whatever we are going to do, so there is no way I'm going to have booby. I eat the avocado and apple that Mommy brought for me though. I can eat that and still look out the window at all of the big giant cars (airplanes?) going up and down.

A loud voice comes on again and says that we can't ride the plane we were going to ride, but that we have to ride a new one, from a different gate, so Mommy packs up me and all my toys and off we go to a big room next to the one we were in before. They say our take off is going to be 3 hours late. Lots of people around us are very cranky and saying rude things and being mean to the people behind the desk. Mommy gets excited though because they give us all meal coupons to use while we wait. I'm even more excited because now I can get away with not taking a nap.

Mommy spreads out my blanket on the floor of the big building and puts my toys on it. I'm having heaps of fun, I get to play with all my toys, Mommy, and Grandma, all while getting to look out a giant window full of giant cars going from the ground to the sky and the sky to the ground (maybe we were in giantville? Am I going to turn into a giant?), and I get to look at all sorts of funny looking and interesting people who all tell me that I am cute and have such beautiful blue eyes. I finally get hungry enough to have some booby just before we get on the giant car/airplane, and when we sit down in the giant car/airplane.

Grandma tells Mommy to have the window seat so that I can look outside while we take off (I wonder what take off means?). "This seat belt is useless!" Mommy says. She attaches it to her seat belt and then fastens it around me. It's really uncomfortable, and I don't think it's really doing much. I wonder why I have to go in that special seat thingy when I ride in Mommy and Daddy's car, but in this giant car/airplane, I get to sit in Mommy's lap with a funny useless seatbelt? I have some more booby and fall asleep.

I wake up and smile at Mommy. I'm happy that I'm still in her lap. Usually when I fall asleep on Mommy, I wake up in my cot. Mommy holds me next to the little window and takes lots of pictures. She says she wants to document my first plane ride (is plane the same as airplane/giant car?). A loud voice comes on saying that we are about to start our decent (whatever that means). Ouch! My ears start to hurt and I cry. Mommy puts her finger in my mouth and I suck. Huh, all better. Mommy always knows what to do! I stop crying. I look out the window and all I see is white. It starts to get bouncy. Mommy says we are going through a cloud. Oh, I get it now, Mommy pretends I'm an airplane when we play airplane bubba, and we are going through clouds! What fun!!! So I'm not an airplane after all, this is an airplane, and Mommy and Daddy just pretend I'm an airplane for my amusement sometimes. Clever.

Mommy and Grandma keep telling me what a good girl I am. Grandma said that if I was older, she'd give me a treat for being so good. I can't wait until I'm older so I can get a treat! That sounds good!

Sheri
I put my feet on the edge of the platform and hold on to the side. "Now reach out and grab the bar," the man says. I know I have to extend my arm to do so, but it won't budge, it's stuck in the L position. The man assures me he has a hold of my special belt and once again prompts me to lean forward, extend my arm and grab the bar with my right hand. I look down. I'm about 2 stories high, standing on the platform. I'm not afraid of heights, but did I mention that I'm afraid of falling? When I was little, Grandma (not the one in Hannah's story, that is Aaron's grandma) used to take me to swimming lessons. When I passed all of the normal lessons after a number of years, I took diving lessons. Not like SCUBA diving, like diving board diving. I was fine with the normal diving board, but put me on the high dive and I would freak out a little. They had to give me a rubber ducky and tell me to throw it under the diving board onto the side of the pool just to get me to dive off it. I guess it distracted me from the falling part. It worked, but only when I had to throw the ducky.

When I was 18, I went to West Virginia with my Dad. We went white water rafting, but stopped for lunch at a spot where people jump off huge rocks into a deep pool of water below. Everyone did it. I went last. I ran in hopes that I wouldn't be able to stop and would just have to do it. Nope, I stopped dead just before the end of the rock. I stood up there for a good 5 minutes, trying to will myself to jump, but I just couldn't. I had to walk down the long way. How embarrassing....

Now I'm on a platform, 2 stories high, about to try out the flying trapeze. That's right, I'm at circus school, a Christmas present from The Jess. She is here too, as is Trish, Jimmy, and of course, my little girl is watching me to. I can't let her see me fail. The man assures me he has a hold of me, and against my better judgement, I lean forward and grab the bar. He says to reach out and grab it with both hands now. This is even harder. Now I'm completely at the mercy of a random man whose name I don't even know, to make sure I don't plummet face first into the net below. I know, there is a net, and I'm also attached to a rope on both sides of the special belt, but tell that to my fear of falling.

Ok, I have both hands on the bar. "Hup!" the man calls. That means I'm supposed to jump off the platform. I don't go anywhere. He reminds me the call means jump, and calls it again. I close my eyes, and my feet leave the platform. I'm flying through the air, a smile wide on my face, while hanging from the bar. "Hup," he calls again. That means I'm supposed to put my knees over the bar. I hesitate just a little and then find I can't put my knees up. It's too hard if you don't do it at the right time because then you don't have the momentum to do so. I keep trying and trying anyway, but can't do it. I'm really disappointed.

It's my turn again, and this time there is a woman at the top of the platform. Once again it takes me longer then it should to grab the bar, but when the man calls "Hup," she pushes my feet off at the same time. I like this method much better. No room for hesitation. "Hup," I don't hesitate and before I know it, my knees are over the bar. "Hup," I let go with my hands and arch my back. Now I'm hanging by only my knees, 2 stories up in the air, flying on a trapeze. I feel amazing.

It's my turn again, and now we get to try a catch. Everything is going smoothly. "Hup," I'm flying through the air, my knees holding me to the bar, my back arched, my hands reaching. I'm not even sure how it happens, but somehow, my knees leave the bar, my hands reach out, and then I'm hanging by a monkey grip by a man who is hanging upside down from another trapeze. Now there is no containing my smile. I think if it were possible, I could power an entire city with my smile right now.

Other things that happened this week:
I took Hannah to the beach a couple of times, and she loved playing in the sand, but for some reason, even though she loved the water before, she cried both times. The theory at the moment is that maybe her bottom hurts when the salt water touches it. She has nappy rash for the first time in her entire life, and it looks very sore. Poor baby.... She is trying with all her might to crawl, and can now put herself and push ups position, only her hands and the balls of her feet touching the ground. She can easily move herself backwards, but can't quite go forward yet. This morning I saw her go in the proper crawling position, knees under her, arms extended. It's only a matter of time now.... I gave Hannah a rusk this week as she just wants to chew on everything. I gave her paper or cardboard sometimes, but now she has figured out how to get chunks off in about 2 seconds flat and a few times I've had to fish them out of her mouth, so no more paper or cardboard for her. She loves rusk though. As soon as I gave it to her, she put it in her little mouth and chewed and chewed and chewed like she had been doing it her entire life.

Sorry there are no pictures, but we are on holiday and I'm writing this from a borrowed laptop. I will put photos up next week (when you will hear about our 12 hour road trip home. Fingers crossed that Hannah won't mind it too much. She isn't a huge fan of the car).

I can't believe she can sit!

2009-12-14T20:46:00.002+11:00

The UFC is finally coming to Australia. FINALLY!!! Aaron said he wanted to buy me tickets for Christmas (which I think is an awesome present by the way). SNAP!! They sold out the day they went on sale. How rude! Now most people wouldn't pick me as a UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship for those of you who don't know) fan, but I love it! We even went to one in Las Vegas. We flew from Paris to Frankfurt to Los Angeles, then drove (ok, Aaron drove) straight to The Palms casino where it was being held. No hotel stop, no shower, only a quick trip to taco bell (why is there no Taco Bell here, it's very sad), then straight there. We were very late too, we only got there in time to see the main 2 fights and the tail end of the fight just before them. So when we found out the UFC was coming to Australia, we got very excited. I can't believe they sold out already! I think I'm going to scour e-bay, and if that doesn't work, then we might go on the day and keep the scalpers in business. At least with the success of ticket sales, maybe that means the UFC will be back here sometime.

After last weeks night out, I was keen to give it another go, hoping that getting away would be a bit easier this time. I fed Hannah early, The Jess got here on time, things were looking good. Unfortunately, Hannah didn't think she should go to bed half an hour early. She started bawling her eyes out as soon as I put her down. I thought she'd settle and sleep with a little patting, so I left The Jess to it and went on my merry way (after putting on my dress of course). I told her to message me when Hannah was asleep. 15 minutes later I still hadn't heard anything, so I texted The Jess. Still bawling. Oh Hannah was ripping my heart out. It was hard enough leaving her there bawling her eyes out, but to know that she still was.... I met Aaron at the posh seafood restaurant where his work Christmas party was. I thought a cocktail was in order, so I ordered a chocolaty one that was frozen like a thick shake. Mmmmm.... I was still worried about Bubba though. I kept checking my phone and texting The Jess for progress reports. She cried for 2 hours and then finally went to sleep. Poor little Bubba. I think next time, I will make sure she is sleeping before I leave, even if it means I will be late. I just didn't want to miss out on all the yummy seafood. There was way too much food by the way. I had an entree of king prawn which was so so so yummy (best part of the meal I think), followed by a GIANT piece of salmon with mashed potato that I couldn't even eat half of. Plus, there was a seafood platter for the table, and lobster mornay. Then, there was desert, and I had another cocktail. Hannah wouldn't be needing a feed until at least 12, so it was safe to have another one. I shouldn't have after all that food though, my tummy hurt, so we went home early. I'm such a light weight.

I know babies aren't supposed to sit up until they are a bit older, but Hannah has decided that it's time. One day she could sit up for a short period of time, then fall over, the next she could sit up like a pro. I timed her, she sat up for 10 minutes before reaching too far for something and going sideways (and I caught her of course). She is so clever. She can also roll in all directions, front to back and back to front, but prefers to go to her left. One day she was supposed to be napping but instead decided to roll around her cot, give me a cheeky smile, then giggle hysterically. I couldn't help but laugh, it was so cute. Then of course she did it more. So much for nap time.

The day after tomorrow, Hannah will experience her first airplane ride. I'm so excited, I think she will love it. There are lots of people to look and smile at, a window to look out, planes to watch at the airport. I can't wait (except I will miss Aaron until he joins me in a weeks time).

5 year anniversary :)

2009-12-07T12:26:00.005+11:00

If a baby vomits after trying a new food, it could have an intolerance. How do you know if your baby is vomiting vomiting, or just spitting up vomiting? It's like going into labour, you just know.

I was so excited to go out for our anniversary without Bubba. I even fed her early so I could get a move on. At 6:45 I was done feeding her, she was all sleepy eyed, and just needed a burp before I put her down. I put her over my shoulder and started patting. Nothing. I kept patting. She made a funny coughing noise that I haven't heard before, so I looked at her. And that is when it happened. Vomit was everywhere. It somehow made it's way around my entire arm. Not just the top , not just the bottom, all the way around. It was all over my shirt, all over my pants (which were my nice make my butt look nice jeans that I was planning to wear on my anniversary date), all over the floor, all over the magazine I was reading while feeding her, all over her wondersuit, all over her sleeping bag, all over my still exposed boob. How do you know if your baby is vomiting vomiting. Oh my goodness, you will know! But then there is the question of why. Is it food intolerance, sickness, fluke, who really knows?? I had to change Hannah, clean the floor, re feed her (she threw up her entire dinner, boob, and the carrot and zucchini she had at 5:30), wash myself. So much for my early exit.

What was I going to wear now? I had a nice outfit planned out, I wasn't wearing the shirt at the time (as I was sure I'd get milk on it if I fed her in it), but the pants were now inoperable. I tried the shirt with the only other pair of jeans I can fit in (I only have 3 pairs, and the last pair is the best, but was always tight before I got pregnant, so I can't even do them up now). Ugh, it looked terrible. Ok, plan b. But what is plan B? I looked in the closet. I got out the red dress that The Jess gave me and I haven't worn before. I tried it on. Oh dear, it showed every unwanted curve, underwear line, and belly pooch. Hmmm.... What to wear.... Then I remembered the "California Beauty Slim Lift Body shaping Undergarment" that my mother in law gave me while I was still pregnant. "You will love this after you have the baby." She said. I laughed at such a notion. Surely by the time I was going to go somewhere where I wanted to look nice and non flabby, I would actually look nice and non flabby. Before having Hannah, I was a size 8 and 48-50 kgs, so such a thing was quite foreign to me. I happily found the fat flattener (which I will now refer to it as) and put it on. Nice, it really works. I can't say that I've ever worn an undergarment that went from the middle of my thighs all the way to my boobs, but hey, I wasn't complaining. The only shoes (apart from heels, and I despise wearing heels and feel whoever invented them needs a swift kick in the butt) I have that go with the dress are shoes I bought and wore whilst pregnant when my normal shoes got too small for my swollen fat feet. Oh well, they'd have to do.

I shut the car door when I got out at Artarmon station and nearly screamed. Right there, on the door, was a very large, ugly spider, staring right at me (at least I felt like it was). It wasn't a huntsmen, so who knows what kind of poisonous freak spider it was. I quickly sauntered away. Going up the stairs at the station, I could feel my feet slipping around in my fat shoes. Darn those fat pregnant feet that stretched the life out of my shoes! I somehow tripped up the stairs and landed on my knees. Everyone looked at me. Yup, I felt really cool at that point. I'm sure my fat flattener was now showing as well. The night did not get off to a great start.

I met up with Aaron at Town Hall and we walked to the Japanese restaurant we planned to eat at. This particular place does yum cha but with Japanese food. And I love all the little dumplings and yum cha-ey stuff. Closed until mid December. Ok, well I guess we can't eat there. Next door was Seoul Ria. I'd never had Korean food before, so we decided to give it a go. When we got in, Aaron realised that he had been there with his old work before, and it was really good. We ordered a big sizzle pot thing (can't remember what they are actually called) where they bring all the food to your table and cook it right there. I really wanted a cocktail since I hadn't had an alcoholic beverage in over a year, but, they didn't do cocktails. Humph. They did have a Korean raspberry wine though. I don't usually drink wine, but I like raspberries, so we ordered a bottle anyway. It was good as far as wine goes. I just sipped it throughout the meal, and drank the equivalent of about 1.5 standard drinks. I think the combination of me being a lightweight anyway, and not having a drink for so long really made a difference. I was tipsy off 1.5 standard drinks (much to Aaron's amusement).

After dinner, we headed one street over to a cafe Aaron found on the net that also has boardgames. You order desert, and also a board game to play while you sit there. Who ever thought of that deserves a medal. Brilliant idea. I'm sure we probably already own every single board game they offer, but it's the fun novelty factor that entices me. Unfortunately, they were also closed. I guess we will have to go some other time. Instead, we headed to baskin Robbins where I indulged in some chocolate peanut butter ice cream. It's about time the peanut butter ice cream hit Australia!!!! Despite the hiccups, we had a really good night, and I can't wait to go out again sometime.

Other things that happened this week: Hannah started trying to crawl. When she is on her tummy, she puts her knees under herself. Not long now I'm afraid. Better get a playpen. She also rolled from her tummy to her back a couple of times, but doesn't do it regularly like she does back to front. We had a Christmas party with our antenatal class (the girls I meet up with every week). Hannah helped open her present and got some really cute outfits from her boyfriend. She sucked on his arm for a while too, cheeky monkey. I think Aaron and I will have to teach Hannah about sharing, she keeps stealing toys from all the other babies. The party was on a hot day, so we went for a swim for half an hour or so and Hannah absolutely loved it. I got the Christmas stuff out to put up but then couldn't find the tree, so I had to buy a new one. Lucky I'm the queen of bargains and picked up a 6 foot tree for $20. Score!

I finally cracked it

2009-11-30T09:36:00.004+11:00

"I'm going to go look at her" Aaron said.
"What?" I asked.
"Don't you ever just like to look at her?"
"Yeah, I do it all the time."
Aaron came back down to the laundry room where I was washing nappies. "You have to see this, she's so cute!"
Not quite knowing what to expect, we went in her room. I peered in the cot, and there she was, on the very edge, halfway up, one arm through the bar and touching the wall, sleeping on her belly.
"Is she breathing?" I half freaked out, it didn't look like a normal Bubba sleeping position.
Aaron put his finger near her nostril "I'm pretty sure I can feel it."
That wasn't good enough for me. I gently put my hand on her back. "Yeah, I can feel her breathing." Phew. And maybe this means she won't wake up every time she rolls on her tummy. Houston, we may have success!

1am- She's on her belly again and screams for a feed
2am - "waaaa!!" The belly sleeping success is clearly not going very well. She's not happy, she's on her belly again. I go and turn her over and calm her down. Slightly losing my marbles.
3am - Oh my goodness, she wants me to turn her over again. Bag of marbles getting smaller.
5am - She is sick of sleeping on her belly again and cries for me to turn her over. More marbles leaking out of my bag....
6am - Dear Lord, I think I'm going to lose it. You know you are about to lose it when you dreamt about someone asking someone else how to do a moustache combover (um...what is wrong with my brain?) and then are awakened for the 5th time by a screaming baby that doesn't know how to polley rolley (but can rolley polley).
I feel like Taz, the Tasmanian Devil. I wish I could just spin around in a cloud of destruction whilst shouting expletives, because at this point, that is what I really feel like doing. Instead, I gather my marbles back up, take a deep breath, and go turn over and calm said screaming baby. I'm so tired and frustrated and know that somehow, I'm going to crack. Rather then indulging in my Taz fantasy, I sat there, patting Hannah, trying to get her back to sleep, and I cry. I don't usually cry, but when you've been up 5 times in one night (and she was never even up that much when she was a newborn), and are having crazy dreams about moustache combovers, something's gotta give. I've finally cracked it. I decide right now that later today, I'm going to march down to the shops (ok, drive) and buy a rolley polley preventer (not actual name). The baby nurse said those can help (or the baby can figure out how to roll over it, but even if it gets me once peaceful nights sleep, it will be so worth it), or there are special sheets you can get that velcro baby in. Now in my head, that means baby wears a velcro suit, and then is plastered to the bed much like one of those game shows on tv where they don helmets, and velcro suits, jump on a trampoline, then get stuck to a velcro wall. Instead they are sheets with flaps etc. so you sort of harness baby in. I think my version would work better. I go to bed feeling only slightly better, but still like my bag of marbles is only half full. Luckily Hannah gives me another hour of sleep and when I wake up, I have regained most of my marbles. I can't wait to get my rolley polley preventer. Fingers crossed it actually works.

As soon as I got home with the rolley polley preventer, I fed Hannah and put her to sleep. Oh my goodness, she put herself to sleep, no patting needed, and slept for an hour and a half. I think I like the rolley polley preventer. She woke up twice that night (would have been once, but I was too lazy to dreamfeed her and she didn't appreciate it). The next night she only woke up once. Unfortunately it was down hill after that. She keeps waking 3 times a night, trying and trying to roll over in her rolley polley preventer (actually called a sleep positioner), and getting upset that she can't. So basically, she gets upset if she doesn't sleep in it because she wakes up on her belly and wants to be rolled over (and calmed down after waking up with such a shock at being on her tummy), or, she can sleep in the rolley polley preventer and then wake up cranky because she can't roll over. I can't win. I just hope this stage doesn't last long, I really enjoy sleep!

"Boo!" Aaron yelled from the bedroom.
"Yes Boo" I said (yes we are weird and we both claim the other one is Boo).
"Can you get me a cloth?"
"Ok." I brought it in. Hannah was over Aaron's legs playing Airplane Bubba. She looked at me and gave me the cheekiest grin I've ever seen. I looked at Aaron. His lips were pursed shut and he had an "I can't believe you just did that" look on his face. Something white was all over his face. I laughed my head off and Hannah laughed too. She thought it was hilarious that she threw up right on Daddy's face.

Since starting solids, Hannah has had really sticky, messy, smelly poos (instead of quite runny, mustardy ones). This morning she had a nugget. I don't know if babies are supposed to do nuggets, but there it was, all nuggety in her nappy. Maybe she is a little constipated? She didn't have a lot of poo yesterday either. Hmmm...How do you know if they are constipated? Do I just get some prune juice anyway, and mix it with her rice cereal, or do I assume all is fine since there was a bit of poo (just not her usual volume or consistency)? Maybe I worry too much.

The week of accomplishments

2009-11-24T11:58:00.004+11:00

"WAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!" Aaron and I looked at each other. It was only 9pm, what was Hannah doing waking up screaming right now?
"You cheeky Bubba," I heard Aaron say from her room. I went in to see what all the fuss was about. "You cheeky little monkey!" I said to her. She looked up at me from halfway down the cot, facing the wrong direction, with a puzzled expression. I'm not sure if she knew how she got on to her belly. Did she do it in her sleep, or did she do it on purpose. I could already tell this was going to become a problem. Aaron tried a number of times to put her back to sleep, but she just kept rolling as soon as he put her down. I gave her a feed which knocked her out, then I put her down. My success was short lived, she woke up on her tummy a number of times that night. If only she knew how to roll back over....

Hannah hasn't had a proper nap since Saturday. Or was it Friday? I can't remember. I think she's out, then 5 minutes later, WAAA!! I find her on her tummy again. Yesterday I sat in her room and patted her belly for an hour an a half (the amount of time she is supposed to nap for). She slept for 20 minutes, and I had to prevent her from rolling over on a number of occasions. When she is in her light sleep, she moves around a lot, puts her legs straight in the air, and then brings them down to the side and bang, she's on her tummy. She used to just move her head from side to side like a crazy person and rub all of her hair off. After a while, she would go still, in her deep sleep.

I've been hearing a lot about Baby sleeping bags recently. A lot of the girls bought them for their babies because they wiggle around in their cots and end up with no blankets. Hannah either kicks her blankets off, or puts her feet straight up in the air, making the blankets slip over her head. I think it's time for a sleeping bag. Add the now rolling, and there is no way she can have blankets. She could get all tangled up in them. I saw some at the shops for 60 something dollars. Seemed a bit steep to me, so I did what any industrious girl would do. I made my own. Then the weather decided to be a gross 40 degrees (104f), and my wrap was made useless (too hot!). I plan to make another one with a better design this time, and a bit thinner for summer.

Even though it was extremely hot outside, I was freezing. It was bed time, and I was piling on the blankets. My muscles were all achy. Aaron came to bed asked me if I was crazy (for having blankets on). "You're like a furnace!" I felt Aaron's skin. It felt rather cold. Had he just been frolicking in a refrigerator. I felt mine. Next to Aaron's, mine felt like the sand at the beach on a stinking hot day. You have to run on it because if you leave your foot down too long in one spot, it hurts. Yep, I had a fever. I didn't sleep well at all, with all the coughing and feeling like I was trying to sleep in an ice chest even though my skin was burning up to touch. After I fed Hannah, I'd had enough and turned to the panadol (ok, cheap pharmacy brand imitation) for some relief. An hour later I woke up feeling like I was in the desert. I kicked off all the blankets and felt my skin. Phew, I was normal again. I didn't feel well when I woke up, I was still achy and felt like I just wanted to lay down, so I asked Aaron to stay home from work so he could look after Hannah. Awesome husband that he is, he did, and I laid in bed all day long (except when Hannah wanted booby of course).

I went to the doctor the next day as my cough was worse and I still would have a fever if I wasn't popping fake panadol (FYI, they are fine to take when breast feeding, no need to call CPS on me). Ew, I have bronchitis. The doc gave me some antibiotics (again, also ok to take while breastfeeding...), and I'm feeling much better now, but still have the obnoxious cough, and still feel like my windpipe is trying to escape through my mouth.

I always thought that chocolate, or ice cream was a good treat, but Hannah has found this week, that toes make a tasty treat. Last week she found her feet, but this week, she has been enjoying trying to eat them. I wonder what they taste like? I bet ice cream and chocolate taste better. Ok, I don't need to wonder what they taste like, I lightly bite her toes all the time, she thinks it's funny (they don't taste like anything in case you are wondering).

She also thinks it's hilarious to blow raspberries while I feed her. Not while she's having booby, but while she is having her proper food. I put it in her mouth, and "ppppphhhhffff," I'm showered in food. She grins cheekily. Cheeky little monkey. I probably shouldn't have laughed the first time she did it, but it was pretty funny. I think I encouraged her. My bad.

Grandma has her bet on that Hannah will be crawling at Christmas time. Since she has all this new found tummy time (since she puts herself on her tummy every time you put her down), she has discovered that she can push herself up off her elbows, have her arms straight, with her hands still on the floor. She then kicks her little feet like she really wants to go somewhere, and tries to pull herself along the floor. Look out everyone, Hannah may soon be mobile. Our flat is so not ready for that! I think we will have to buy a play pen.

Bubba makes boys cry

2009-11-16T13:29:00.002+11:00

Trying on one of my bikini's, I looked in the mirror. Finally, my linea nigra is starting to fade. It's still there, but not so loud and proud as before. I'm glad I can fit into my bikini's, but I still have 3 kilos to lose before I'm back to my pre pregnancy weight. No rush though, it's only been 4 months. I put my shorts on the other day too. I tried them a month or so ago, and couldn't get them past my hips/butt, let alone do them up, so I'm ecstatic that I can fit in to them now.

"Ouch!!" Ok, well that's what he would have said if he could talk, but he is just a 4 month old baby, so he curled out his bottom lip, and started crying instead. Hannah has started to take interest in other babies, and reaches out to touch them and grab their hands. Unfortunately, she gave Archie a nipple cripple while she was at it. He wasn't the only baby she made cry that day, baby Connor also cried when she grabbed his hand too much. Watch out, we have a little heart breaker on our hands!!

Bubba and I went to the beach with the girls on Wednesday. I was a bit worried that Hannah might not like the water as it is still quite cold, but she couldn't have cared less. As soon as I put her little feet in the wet sand, she started bouncing (she does that when she's happy). The little waves crashed over her feet, which she also loved. She watched her feet as the water went out, burying her little toes in the sand. I didn't want to keep her in too long though, her little bubba feet were getting quite cold.

Speaking of feet, Hannah has discovered that she has some. She can entertain herself for ages, just laying on her back, grabbing her toes. Or, she lifts her head and shoulders up, as well as her feet, and looks at them for a while.

I like that Hannah is now exploring the wide world of food, but I don't like the increasingly smelly, sticky poops. Last night, she ate 2 TBSP of rice cereal (with breast milk), and another 2 TBSP of sweet potato (with breast milk). This morning, she had a really smelly, sticky poo. I hate to think what her poos will smell like when she is over 6 months old, and getting more solids then breast milk!

Pee pee bath, beach time, mummified, and up all night

2009-11-09T14:32:00.005+11:00

Time since birth: 4 months
Where has the time gone??

I'm not impressed, I have a cold. The skin around my nostrils is bright red and peeling due to excessive nose blowing. I sound like I have a frog in my throat. I feel like I have a frog in my throat. My nose has turned into a faucet. I've been feeding Hannah with kleenex stuffed up my nose so it doesn't drip on her. I must look rather funny, a boob hanging out with a bubba attached, kleenex hanging out of my nose. I think Hannah might have caught my cold. Last night she was up 5 times. Never in her life has she been up 5 times before (I kept records, I checked). She doesn't seem sick though. I suppose there are a million other reasons why a baby would be up so many times. The first time (10pm) she seemed gassy, the kind that burns when it comes out. I patted her and she screamed as she did huge farts. I thought she had done a giant poo, but upon nappy checking, all I found was pee. I gave her some booby to settle her down and then she went back to sleep. 12pm - the crying started again. She seemed a bit snuffly. I gave her some booby and she went back to sleep. 2pm, surely she can't be hungry again. I patted her and let her suck my finger (after I sanitised it) and she went back to sleep. 3pm, awake again. I gave her some more booby which she took ravenously. 5pm, I could hear her grizzling, and crying a bit on the monitor, but I didn't get up, it didn't sound urgent. She went back to sleep. As I said, there are so many reasons why she could have been waking up. Maybe she was too hot or cold (it was pretty hot at the beginning of the night), maybe she was uncomfortable with wind or just the way she was wrapped. Maybe she was hungry. Maybe she just couldn't resettle herself after her sleep cycle (babies have sleep cycles of about 45 minutes). Who knows. I just hope that tonight is better. I feel like a zombie today. Maybe more like a mummy, I do have kleenex hanging out of my nose. I could walk around with my arms in front of me and scare small children if I wanted to. Come to think of it, zombies and mummies are quite similar. Maybe mummies are just zombies with bandages? Yes, I know I'm random.

The race that stops the nation. That is the Melbourne cup. I like to dress up for the occasion, as I have done for a few years now. It's fun to put on a nice dress and put a fascinator (or hat, whatever takes your fancy) in your hair to watch the race. I'm not particularly into horse racing (I feel a bit sorry for the horses, I think backyard horses would get so much more love and attention), but it's a good excuse to dress up. I was going to wear the fascinator myself, but I put it on Hannah for a bit of a laugh. She looked so cute that I left it there. We went to the pub with Grandma to watch the race and I could hear everyone commenting on how cute Hannah was as we walked by.

Aaron usually gives Hannah her bath, but sometimes I feel like a bit of a bath, so she has one with me. We have a bit of a special hot water system in this apartment building that only refills once per day (well, night, sometime in the middle of it). There is enough water for 2 showers with a bit left over, or a bath and a shower. Needless to say if Aaron and I both wish to stay clean, Hannah can't have a bath as often as needed, so she ends up having a shower with Aaron most of the time. I felt like a bath, so after I had a relaxing nice bath, in came Aaron with Hannah for her wash. He stood her up in the water, holding under her armpits to balance her. Her lower half is usually under the water, but since she was standing, Aaron could clearly see that she did pee pees as soon as she got in. I wonder if she always does that. Is it gross that I didn't get out? I mean I was already in there, It was already in the water, we were out of hot water, and getting out wasn't going to change the fact that it was already on me. It's not like it was a huge volume or anything either, she is only tiny. I think Aaron is a bit scared of having a bath with her now. It's funny, before having a baby, I would have been mortified to think that I would be in a bath with pee, but now, after being peed on, pooed on, vomited on, finding vomit in my hair at the end of the day and not knowing when it got there, etc., a little pee does not bother me. Of course if I could control the matter, there would never be pee in the bath with me, but it's out of my control, so what can you do? Shortly after the pee fountain, the bathtub became a spa. Little bubbles came up all around Hannah. I take it she likes to fart in the bath too. Maybe she was just gassy that day. Lucky for me, there was no follow through. That, I would have vacated the bath for.

It was supposed to rain on Saturday, but it ended up being a very nice day. We went to a lunch at someone from Aaron's works house near the beach, so we decided to take Bubba to the beach for the first time. I had already purchased her a really cute little swimming suit. Well, it's not so little, it like a rashee with legs. It covers her from her neck, to her wrists to her ankles, and is SPF 50. Don't want the bubba getting sunburned!! I also bought her a sun tent. It's like a dome tent that you sleep in when camping, only it has an open side. That way you can always have shade at the beach and not burn the Bubba. We didn't stay long at the beach as it was quite windy, but Hannah seemed to really like it. We stood her in the sand (holding under her armpits, she is a super baby, but she can't stand yet...), and she smiled and wanted to bounce. She loves to bounce. She bends her little knees and then pushes and who ever is holding her then pulls her up as if she is jumping. She loves it.

Freak Cartoon, Sick, Horrible Mommy, Rice cereal, and Dreamfeeds

2009-11-02T15:20:00.004+11:00

There's nothing on TV on Sunday mornings. Hannah was having a nap, and we like to have some constant noise so she doesn't get used to napping in silence (we don't want to have to tip toe around the house while she is napping!). We settled on the Sunday morning cartoons. My how they have changed since I was a kid! There was a cute lion and lioness, walking upright, the lioness wearing an apron. All seemed well until the lioness said (and these are the exact words) "We have the house to ourselves, and I'm still in H-E-A-T...." while suggestively kissing her lion husband and looking at him seductively. Seriously, is there ANY reason why something like that needs to be in a child's cartoon?? How on earth did that get past editing, then why would the network agree to put it on tv, and what sort of freak show pervert draws and writes that in the first place. I mean really, it was so unnecessary. When I was little, I watched cartoons about a little bird who "taut he taw a puddy tat." What has the world come to??

I wanted to put the washing out, so i put a towel on the ground and laid Hannah on her back while I pegged out the washing. I'd turn to check on her every few items, but when I turned, she was on her tummy, halfway off the towel!! She was quite chuffed with herself. I picked her up and she gave me the biggest, most accomplished grin. Of course she wouldn't do it again though, not while mommy was watching!!

The next day she rolled on our bed twice, but this time from her tummy to her back. Clever girl!

Lately Hannah has been getting up twice during the night, making me into somewhat of a zombie. I have gotten used to only waking once, or not at all, so I decided that I would figure out a way to make her only get up once. First on my new plan: Don't let her nap past 4pm. Sometimes she has a late nap but then wants to get up for the day at 4am. This isn't usually a problem, but once in a while she refuses to sleep during the day and then wants a late nap. I can't really blame, her, playing is so much more fun then sleeping!! Second part of New Plan: dream feed at 9pm. What is a dream feed you ask?? Simple, I went into Bubba's room at 9pm, picked her up without unwrapping her, and put her straight on to my boob. She doesn't actually wake up, but has a full feed while she is half asleep. Of course I was secretly hoping she wouldn't wake up at all after taking such measures, but she only woke up once, so I deemed the whole exercise a success.

Monday morning Hannah wasn't quite herself. She didn't want to eat much, was lethargic, and had disturbingly bright green poos. Think Kermit the frog, and that is the right colour. I took her temperature and found it was 38 degrees (Celsius that is). Just a slight fever. She cried most of the morning. She didn't even want to play, which is so unlike her. Since she was a bit lethargic, I thought it would be the perfect time to cut her nails. She usually flails about, making it rather difficult. Wow, it has never been so easy before! I must have gotten a bit too confident. She let out a huge painful cry, similar to the one I've only heard once, when she got her shots. Her tiny little thumb was bleeding. I cut her. I felt like the worst mom in the world. I cut my little baby. She cried for about 5 minutes, but I cuddled her the whole time. I felt so bad. At least she forgot for a moment that she didn't feel the best.

She still wasn't feeling well that afternoon, so I took her to the doctor. The doc took her temp (which was now normal), and checked her heartbeat, in her ears, in her mouth, etc. She looked fine. Doc thought it was probably a bug of some sort. It is common for little girls to get urinary tract infections as their poo has a tendency to go everywhere, including their poor little baby bits. Doc gave me 2 specimen cups to go home and catch her wee with. Doc also told me if she gets any worse, bring her back in or go to emergency if it's the middle of the night.

Tuesday morning she was looking and feeling much better. She smiled at me and wanted to play when she woke up. I had to complete my urine catching mission first though. Now, it's much easier to catch urine on little boys. You just have to attach a bag thing to his boyhood and wait (this is what one of the girls told me when her little boy had to be tested for a UTI). With girls on the other hand, you need to be a bit more patient, and employ your cat-like reflexes. I laid her out on her changing mat, nappy off, collection cup in hand, lid unscrewed but still sitting on it so as not to contaminate the future specimen, and waited. It didn't take very long, she always pees when she has her nappy off. I used my said cat-like reflexes and, kept hold of the yellow lid in one hand, and like lightning, pressed the cup below the stream of pee. Success! Urine collected. Not a lot, but hey, babies don't pee a lot anyway. It was enough. FYI, she doesn't have a UTI, and is fine now.

We weren't going to start Hannah on solids until she was at least 5 months, but, she had her first rice cereal (with booby milk) on Saturday. She was fussing at the beginning of all of her feeds for the last few weeks, so I took her to the early childhood centre to see the baby nurse. She recommend I introduce solids. They are not in any way to replace the breast milk, they are just for something a little extra. We don't give it to her until after she has had a full meal of breast milk, and then she only has about a teaspoon. The first time we gave it to her, she didn't really know what to do. She held it in her mouth for a little bit, made a funny face, then swallowed it. Most of it ended up all over her face. Not because she spat it out, but because she had never had a spoon in her mouth before and didn't really know what to do. She had some for the third time this morning and has started opening her mouth in anticipation. Next weekend we can introduce some mashed potato (with booby milk). You are supposed to introduce bland vegetables before fruits, and only introduce something new every 7 days.

Exposed, butt cream, and baldness

2009-10-26T13:59:00.006+11:00

I looked at the drain. Hair was everywhere. I put the conditioner in my hair and ran my fingers through it. My hands were full of hair that was no longer attached to my head. If you look at the bathroom sink, you will see my hair everywhere. It's also all over the floor, and I keep finding it in Hannah's hands and on her clothes. I seem to be molting. I would be really really worried except that I read that about 3 or so months after giving birth you start losing all the extra hair you grew while
you were pregnant. It's quite unfortunate for me as I didn't have very much to begin with. I really don't think I grew any extra while I was pregnant either, so maybe I am just going bald?

Riding the bus home one day, I sat in the wheelchair/pram section. Not because I had the pram (sorry, stroller for you americans), but because there were no other seats. Hannah was snug in the baby bjorn (baby carrier thing that allows you to wear your baby). I pressed the button to let the driver know to stop at the next bus stop. I waited until the bus came to a complete stop and then I stood up. The chair decided to come to life and folded itself up as I stood. Usually you have to manually fold
them up and down. I quickly got off the bus, not daring to look back to see if all the other passengers did indeed see my buttocks that was exposed when the rogue seat went up, taking my dress with it. I'm sure they did see the granny panties I wore that day (because all the better ones were in the wash) my bottom hanging out the sides, stretch marks and cellulite fully on display. I still wonder how my butt got stretch marks shortly before I gave birth, but not even a tiny stretch mark decided to make residence on my belly.

"Time for a nappy change Sweet Pea." I laid her down on the change mat and pulled up her dress. I undid her nappy to find a mustard coloured poo. I cleaned her up and put a fresh nappy under her bottom. She loves to kick on her mat sans fastened nappy. "Would you like some butt cream?" I asked her. "hahahahahahahahahhaa!!!" She giggled. Apparently she thinks butt cream is hilarious. She must have mommy's sense of humour. "would you like some butt cream?" I asked her again. "hahahahah!" She was on a roll. She had never cracked up before. Sometimes she gives little singular or double giggles, but never a crack up. I asked her a few more times and got lots more giggles. I think she indeed did want some butt cream (my words for nappy rash cream, or whatever it is actually called).

A day in the life/head of Sheri

2009-10-19T14:21:00.007+11:00

Time since birth: 15 weeks

The cup of tea I made this morning is sitting in the microwave, waiting to be consumed after it's 3rd nuke of the day. I am only now brushing my teeth and it's 11am. I haven't showered today, and I'm living in my sweats. A lot of days dinner consists of something haphazardly thrown together such us eggs on toast because there is no time to make anything else. I'm in bed at 8pm. I refer to myself as Mommy or Mama, and to Aaron as Daddy, and then talk about myself in the third person. I am mom to an infant, the most rewarding, challenging job in the world. Below is a day in my life.

6am - Hannah is grizzling, "Mommy, I'm awake, please come and get me now!" I go in her room and she gives me a giant smile and squeals at me. I love it when she does that. I try to feed her but lately she much prefers to play before eating. Playing is much more fun then eating! She always does a giant poopy in the morning. After changing her, I lay her on her mat and so she can kick with her nappy off, one of her favourite activities. She babbles to me and blows raspberries as she kicks her little heart out. She does a snart (sneeze and fart at the same time) which produces projectile poo poo. Luckily I have laid an old magazine out from the bottom of the mat, and the poo lands on it. After having to scrub the carpet and my pants a few times, I've learned my lesson.

I put Hannah on her baby play gym mat thingy so she can bat at and grab the hanging toys and play with the giant plush caterpillar (ok, it's really a centipede, but I don't like centipedes, so I call it a caterpillar), and coloured rings that I lay on her belly. Of course they go straight to the mouth and receive lots of slobbery attention.

7am - booby time! She eats some then tries to be cheeky and looks at me with the most adorable blue eyes and gives me a cheeky little grin and starts telling me about her morning. I know I shouldn't encourage her to be distracted during feeding time, but she is so cute, I just can't resist smiling back at her and stroking her hair lovingly. She gives me an even bigger smile then goes back to feeding. She makes me smile. After she's finished I wrap her up and she share's with me her disgust at having to take a nap by voicing a large whinge as I wrap her in her bubba straight jacket. She has to have the special Houdini can't get out of it wrap or she'll manage to free her hands then startle herself awake when she hits herself in the face with them. I put her in her cot, put on her bubba nursery rhyme music, and then leave the room. I can hear her whinging for a while as I do the cleaning, but eventually she falls asleep. She's not allowed out of her cot for 1 hour and 30 minutes. If she wakes up again, which she often does, I pat her belly until she falls back asleep.

Mmmm that cup of green tea sounds pretty good about now. I might sit down, drink some tea, and have a snack. I put the tea back in the microwave. I made it this morning, but haven't had time to finish it. DING DING DING. Who made the finish noises on microwaves so loud? They obviously didn't have a sleeping baby in the house. It seems when I'm trying to be quiet I become a super clutz. I drop cutlery, knock things of the table, trip over cords, you name it, I do it when trying to be quiet. Maybe I'm just super special.

I can see 3 people coming down the stairs outside in front of my house. KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK. They are knocking so loud I think the door might fall down. More importantly, they might wake up the bubba. Was it really necessary to knock that loud? They could clearly see me sitting on the couch sipping me tea when they came down the stairs. It's not like they had to try to awaken me from a deep sleep or anything. Before I even realise it, I've jumped up, bounded to the door, and proceeded to crankily tell the intruders to be quiet, the baby is alseep. They ask me if I've heard of the "spiritual mother." I say no and give them an I'm so not interested look. They don't take the hint and keep going. "are you a christian?" they ask. Yes I am. "and you haven't heard of the spiritual mother?" I think maybe I haven't understood them properly as they don't seem to speak english very well. "What?" I say (stupidly). They ask me if they can come in for 2 minutes to tell me about the spiritual mother. I say no and once again tell them to be quiet as my baby is sleeping. They don't get the hint and won't let up so I eventually have to shut the door in their face. My blinds are open so rather then have them still staring at me while standing next to my door, I also shut the blinds. Spiritual mother? Seriously, I don't know what bible they are reading. Not once did they mention Jesus or even God. I decide to tape a note to the door to deter people from ever knocking so crazy loud again. "DO NOT KNOCK LOUDLY baby might be sleeping." Problem hopefully solved.

Hannah starts crying. I go in there and try to calm her down to no avail. I pick her up and sit on my rocking chair. She starts farting and screaming. Sometimes I think that her farts burn her little bottom. I wonder what I ate last night to give her such a problem. She is fine after she gets all of her farts out. I didn't eat chili or anything. Maybe it's the broccoli. Grandma says that gives bubba gas. I let her out of her straight jacket and she looks me in the eyes and reaches her beautiful little hand up and starts touching my face. She sticks her fingers in my nose, mouth, ears, and touches my cheeks. We're bonding, and it's good, but her little bubba fingernails are scratching me so I put my finger next to her hand so she'll grab it and forget about touching my face.

She looks at me and makes farting noises with her mouth. Slobber goes everywhere. She finds it hilarious and I laugh. The room is a lot darker then it used to be. I look towards the window and admire my handiwork. A couple of days ago I noticed that the sunlight was getting through the blinds and onto her cot. I found a cot blanket with teddy bears on it in the closet which is about the same size as the window, so I made a curtain out of it. I think it looks pretty good.

Hannah's hungry, so I decide to feed her on the couch so I can use the computer. I still need to finish Grandma's 80th birthday present. I'm making her a this is your life book filled with photos from when she was a baby until now, and then getting it printed in a hardcover book. I see a photo of Bubba and realise her ears are starting to stick out like mommy's. Poor Bubba, she got the Beath ears. Hopefully she will get Daddy's thick hair to cover her stick out ears. I think she will as she already has a mop of unruly curls.

4pm - uh oh, start of the "arsenic hour." I take Hannah for a walk. We go up the huge hill near our house and my lungs burn. I'm very out of shape. We walk for an hour and I can feel my buns burning. They got a good workout with all the hills. I can't wait until I get the 3 wheel pram from Grandma so I can go jogging with her and get into shape for summer. I may still have my linea nigra, but I'm still going to wear my bikini. Hannah loves going for walks.

5pm - I have to hold Hannah and walk around in the house as she is quite cranky in the afternoons. As I said, it's "arsenic hour." We play aeroplanes on the bed and she giggles. It's a good distraction for a cranky bubba.

5:30 - I start to feed her but she keeps falling asleep so it takes a while. She's so cute though, sometimes I find it hard to disturb her

6pm - Daddy's home!!!!!!! My sleepy baby is suddenly full of life and gives Daddy a huge smile. He puts her on his shoulders and she holds on to his ears until they turn an unhealthy shade of purple. She loves riding on Daddy's shoulders. He leans forward so I can kiss her cheek while she is on his shoulders and she giggles. I change her nappy and put her pj's on. She is outgrowing them and her toes barely fit into the feet of the pajamas. She has the cutest big fat rolls on her thighs. I think she is going to be a fat baby like Mommy was. I give her the other booby.

7pm - bedtime. I wrap her up and put her in her cot. I turn the music on and read to her from her book of bible stories. She wants to tell her own stories though and starts babbling really loudly. Daddy is laughing in the other room. I leave the room and don't hear a peep from her until 3am when I give her a feed. Then everything starts all over at 6am.

Other things that happened this week: We celebrated Aaron and Grandma's birthdays (they share a birthday) by going out to yum cha for lunch and eating a very rich brownie cake that I made. Grandma cried when she saw the book we made her for her birthday. Aaron got something like 8 more games for his birthday. I think that means we have a hundred and thirty something now.

Farts, Squeals, Cot, Fat, and Toys

2009-10-12T11:18:00.000+11:00

Time since birth: 14 weeks

Pppfffllttt. Burp (how do you spell the sound a burp makes??). "Good girl! Get that wind out!" I've noticed that I'm not the only mom that praises her baby for "getting her wind up/out" (burping and farting). Newborns seem to have a difficult time getting their wind out sometimes, so when they do, we let them know how good they are. I still tell Hannah she is a good girl when she burps (I usually laugh when she farts. How such a big noise comes out of such a little baby is beyond me, but it's very very funny. Sometimes she even looks right in my eyes and gives me a really cheeky grin when she farts). So, if we praise our babies for burping and farting, but then get older children in trouble for it, when does it become socially unacceptable? Doesn't it confuse kids that one day they praised for it, the next they get in trouble? When is the cut off for being able to burp/fart in public (and by in public, I mean in front of people other then your family/friends you feel comfortable enough to do that in front of)? How do you explain it to your children after they have been able to do it freely all of their lives?

Ring Ring. I was calling the dentist's office to make Aaron and me an appointment. "I think the line is breaking up," the receptionist said. "No, that's my baby," I replied. Hannah was making so much noise, the lady seriously thought there was something wrong with my phone. Grandma was playing with her, and she just discovered how to squeal in delight. She was pretty much in one giant squeal for about an hour, she was so excited to play with Grandma. I've been trying to get her to do it for me, but she will only do little ones. I guess Grandma is her favorite. She adores Grandma. I tried to film her doing it, but as soon as the camera comes out, she stops what she is doing to stare at it (that goes for still camera's too).

I've been pretty tired this week as Hannah was having a growth spurt. She was waking up 2-3 times per night (she usually wakes up once or if I'm lucky not at all). Babies have a growth spurt at around 3 months old, and hers was a beauty, she gained 700g in 2 weeks! I haven't weighed her yet this week (I weigh her on Wednesdays), but I think she has gained a fair bit this week too. She weighed 5.8kgs last week, so maybe she will crack 6 this week.

It was 9pm, an hour past my bedtime (no laughing, Hannah goes to sleep at 7, so if I want a decent nights sleep, that's just what I have to do). Following the instructions I got from the Google (haha), I was still getting us nowhere. The Jess pulled into a 7-11 to get some gas. I called Aaron and told him where we were. He got on google maps and laughed. "You're like 3 streets down from where you're going." "But we've been down the road twice, and I haven't seen the street we're looking for." He had to explain it to me about 3 times (I'm very special with directions... I don't know how I was ever a pizza delivery girl). The road we were on turns to the left, and goes straight. We were supposed to go straight instead of veering left (road designers, why, oh why would you do that? One road does not need 3 different names in one mile!). Finally, back on track.

There was a van in the driveway, and the lights in the house were on. "There wasn't supposed to be anyone home," I said to The Jess. "Well, I drove you all the way here (which wouldn't have been far had it not been for my special interpretation of the google directions), we have to get it now." "Ok, let's go." We light-footed our way to the garage. We could see someone sitting on the couch. "Maybe he's house sitting, I was told they aren't coming home until tomorrow." "What should we do." "Let's just keep going." It seems the man on the couch was either ignoring us or had really really bad peripheral vision. We grabbed the some pieces of the cot and snuck back to the car. I was a little afraid the man would be waiting for us with a baseball bat when we went back to get the rest of the cot. Luckily he wasn't. "I don't know how he didn't see us, but I really don't think he did." "That, or he knows we are there, but doesn't want the social awkwardness of saying anything." "Maybe." We got the rest of the cot, loaded it up, and drove off. I sent a text message to the cots owner, letting her know that we picked it up. She was away until the next day, but told me I could go ahead and grab it out of the garage if I wanted to. We did feel a bit like robbers though, since there were people there.

The next day, I got a text message from the cots owner. She said her husband was home at the time and hosting a bible study. She said we were good robbers, no one saw or heard us even though we were right there and could see someone through the sliding door. Don't worry, we have no plans of getting into that line of work....

2009-10-06T07:29:00.000+11:00

Time since birth: 3 months
Total weight loss: I decided I'm not going to update that every week from now on. I'll just let you know when I get back to normal

Dear Boobies,
Please refrain from leaking while I sleep. I don't particularly enjoy waking up in a puddle of milk (nor does Aaron enjoy trying to cuddle me while sleeping only to be met with sticky milk). I fed Hannah only 4 hours before waking up in said puddle. Why would you leak on me like that. I really thought we were past that, it's been so long since you previously made puddles in the bed. How about you go back to waking me up when you are full by feeling sore and engorged, instead of leaking everywhere? I promise I'll be happy when you wake me up that way. Ok, maybe not happy, but not cranky.
Thanks,
Sheri

Pllffttt. Grandma and I looked at each other and giggled. We were with Hannah in the waiting room at the cardiologists office. Hannah gave us a cheeky grin and did another big fart. We couldn't contain ourselves this time and burst out laughing. Hopefully everyone else in the waiting room knew it was the baby making such noises and not me or Grandma, but we couldn't stop laughing anyway. PPPLLFFTTT!! Hannah was trying to blow Grandma's lap off. Tears started rolling down my cheeks from so much laughing. Changing her diaper, I saw the biggest poo Hannah had ever done. It was a 4-wiper poo. I usually only need to use 1 or 2.

The Cardiologist called us in and I took Hannah's shirt off. He got out the ultrasound thingy mabobby, put it on her chest, and she giggled. Amused, the cardiologist leaned down to try to get her to laugh again. Bang! Hannah kicked him in the face. She thinks it's amusing to kick people (probably because we laugh when she kicks her little legs, and we laugh harder when she kicks us with her little legs). I couldn't help but laugh, and then explained to the cardiologist that it was a game we play.

Hannah was very well behaved during the exam, and the little hole in her heart has amazingly shrunk a little bit. It may close completely, but even if it doesn't, it's unlikely to do her any harm. We don't have to go back until she is 2 years old. As soon as the cardiologist was done, Hannah decided she was hungry and screamed the house down.

In the waiting room, I whipped out my boob. Grandma tried to shield me with the pram. Judging by the horrified expression on her face, I'd say that in Grandma's day, people didn't just whip their boobs out in public to feed their babies. I don't mind feeding Hannah in public, but there are some people who I would not feed in front of. Top of the list: all of my male relatives. Also, the ministers at church. For some reason, I just couldn't do it in front of them, it would be weird.

Playing with Hannah on the bed, Daddy sat her up. She looked pretty stable, so Aaron let go. Hannah sat up un aided for about 30 seconds. I rushed to get the video camera, but she doesn't like to perform with the camera out. I think the camera itself is far too fascinating. She loves technology too (Daddy's girl!), always grabbing at and touching keyboards, laptops, mobile phones and ipods. She's a clever girl!

It was good being heavily pregnant during winter rather than summer so I didn't get too hot, but there is one drawback. The electricity bill! At $496, the electricity bill for keeping Hannah warm was our highest ever.

2009-09-28T12:00:00.000+10:00

Time since birth: 12 weeks
Weight loss this week: 0, nada, zip, zilch:( (well, I gained weight last week and lost it this week bringing me back to exactly what I was last time I actually wrote the weight loss in the blog. I have started lifting weights again, so I'm going to tell myself that I gained some muscle then lost some fat...).
Total weight loss: 11.1kg

I looked at the clock. 5:56am. The baby monitor next to the bed was broadcasting Hannah's "I'm waking up now" grunts/cries. Time to get up, baby's hungry. There was a red glow coming from beyond the blinds. "What's that saying? Red sky at night, sailors delight, red sky in the morning, sailors take warning. We're in for a real storm today," I thought to myself. I put on my pajama pants and bathrobe and went to Hannah's room. "Mommy's here Sweetie Pie," I said, patting her belly. She gave me a huge good morning smile. I put her on her change mat to check her nappy. "What have you got in there this morning Bubba? Have you done a poo poo?" Cheeky grin. She has recently started doing a GIANT poo in the morning, and then either a couple of little poos through the day, or none at all (she used to do about 8 poos every day). I let her kick on her mat with her nappy off for about half an hour. She loves having her nappy off. "Ok Bubba, are you ready for your breakfast?"

7am. The eerie red glow from beyond the blinds was still there. I stuck my finger in the blinds and pulled down one of the slats (or whatever you call them). Red. Everything was red. It looked like Armageddon. Maybe there was a bushfire? No, not much bush in this area. Crazy intense sunrise? No, the sun should be up already. Cylons invasion? Probably not. End of the world? Possibly. The photographer came out in me and I grabbed my camera and went outside without a second thought. Not enough light. Better get the tripod. The smell of dirt filled the air. Even though I'd never been in a dust storm before, I knew that's what it was as soon as I stepped outside.

After I took a few photos (not too many as I didn't want to be breathing in all that dirt for very long), I went inside to watch the news. Turns out the dust travelled for something ridiculous like 1600km from the outback, turning Sydney into the twilight zone. By the end of the day, it had travelled all the way to far North Queensland. They said it is the worst dust storm in Sydney's history. Aaron didn't want to walk from the bus stop to work inhaling all that dust, so he was allowed to work from home that day.

After being cooped up inside all day, I decided I would get out and about the next day. I messaged the girls, and some of us met up for our very first Mum's and Bub's movie session. The cinema only charges $9 instead of $16 (or whatever ridiculous price movies are these days) for you to take your baby in a movie and disturb all the other patrons. No, the babies were all really good for the first 2 hours of the movie, they just got a bit restless for the last half hour.

I am happy to report that I have succeeded in my quest to get Hannah to drink a bottle. Well, I haven't tried again since that fateful day, but I'm hoping it wasn't just a one off. My boobs were so sore they woke me up at 6am, and Hannah had been asleep for nearly 11 hours. I pumped some milk, and decided this would be the perfect opportunity to get her to drink the bottle. She woke up after an 11 hour sleep (no, she doesn't usually sleep for 11 hours straight. It's usually 7-7.75, feed, then another 2-3) so ravenous, I don't think she would have minded drinking milk out of toilet bowl.

2009-09-21T10:33:00.000+10:00

Time since birth: 11 weeks
Weight loss this week: can't remember and since there is a baby on my boob I can't go look....

"Ouch!" What the.... I looked down to see why my my boob was suddenly in pain. First in my line of sight: nipple. Below my nipple was Hannah, sucking away hungrily. Hannah is a self latching, all i do is put her near the nipple and bang, she does the rest. Sometimes though, she does it sleepily with her eyes closed, resulting in the hickey below my nipple.

Aaron and i would really like to go out for the evening and let The Jess babysit Hannah, but Hannah absolutely refuses to take a bottle. We're not even trying to give her formula, but expressed mommy milk. I tried expressing then giving it to her straight away. Fail. I got a special teat that acts and feels like a nipple. Fail. She screams if the bottle even comes near her. I guess she likes my boobies too much.

It's the best feeling when your baby smiles at you. Sometimes she smiles so big she has to shut her eyes to accommodate her rising chubby cheeks. Hannah has also started giggling. Grandma was in Hannah's room chatting with her (she answers back with her cooing) and i heard a very loud excited giggle even though i was in the living room. Yesterday i read her a very colourful baby book called "The magic bus" (not to be confused with the magic school bus. "The magic bus" is way better as it's bus is bright purple) which she absolutely loved. She giggled at every page.

I was walking to the bus stop from the shopping centre when i spotted something odd in the window of the discount beauty products shop. Placenta cream. I really should have read the back of the container, there are just so many questions! Is it made from placentas? If so, human, or animal? Is it a foreign product that was simply lost in translation? What is the cream used for? Oh, how I should have checked....

If you have a baby, I highly recommend the book "What to expect in the first year." It has a month by month guide, with FAQ's, and also what your baby should be doing, what it is probably doing, and what it may be doing at that age. I'm happy to report that Hannah a clever little girl. not only has she done most of the things for her age, but also some of the stuff that older babies do as well (i.e. holding her head in place while I pull her up by her hands from laying down to standing up. Sometimes she even engages her little tummy muscles as well and helps me help her stand up in addition to holding her head straight). She can hold up all of her weight if I help her stand (all I do is balance her, she takes all her own weight). She is a very clever girl. She has also discovered her that her hands are indeed her hands. She loves to intertwine her fingers and hold her hands together, and then stuck on the intertwined fingers. She may not grasp toys yet (unless I put them in her hands, then she will hold them for a short period of time), but she grabs my clothes, fingers, hair, etc. She's such a good little girl!

2009-09-14T10:57:00.000+10:00

Time since birth: 10 weeks
Weight loss this week: forgot to weigh myself before eating this morning....

One of the bonuses of breastfeeding is that you don't get your period. I went to the bathroom one morning and to my horror, found that i had started my period. WTF?!?! Of course i immediately googled the matter and found that some women get their monthly when their baby starts sleeping 6 or more hours per night consistently (because you then don't breastfed during that time and have less of the period suppressing hormones). It can be lighter then normal, and shorter, and not every month. Bubba didn't like it either. the hormones can affect the taste of your milk. She would take a couple sips, scream, try again, scream, and so on, until after about 20 minutes she decided that was as good as it was going to get and just ate it anyway. This happened every feed for three days. On the plus side, she has been sleeping 8 hours straight at night time. Last night she slept for 9.5 hours straight. She has been refusing to sleep during the day though (unless I take her for a walk, then she sleeps in the pram for the duration of the walk, but wakes up as soon as we set foot in the house. How does she know???).

I forgot to write about our guinea pig last week (or maybe I was just blocking it out). I went to feed them the week before last and found Speedy dead in the corner of the cage. I think motherhood has made me a bit soft as I did shed a few tears. We wanted to bury her, but we have no garden tools, so Aaron wrapped her up in newspaper and threw her in the bin. At least she had a good long life. She was about 4 and a half years old (guinea pigs usually have a life span of 3-5 years). She was our first little baby and will be missed. We still have Stinky and Smarty, both are doing well despite the loss of their friend.

Maybe it's because I'm American, but I think toilet humour is quite funny. Hannah does too. I make farting noises to her and she smiles. Once she even giggled. She also finds it quite funny while she's sitting on you to lift her little bubba butt, fart, put it back down, and then giving you a cheeky little grin. Of course the funniest thing in the world of Bubba is when she projectile poops on Mommy (which happens when her nappy is off and she coughs).

We went to one of the antenatal girls houses this week for our catch up. We were able to line up all the babies (in birth order) and take a some photos. I look forward to our catch up each week. Some times you just need to get out of the house and talk to people who are going through the same thing as you, and compare notes ("is your baby sleeping more then 30 minutes at a time during the day, because mine isn't. How often does your baby poo?" stuff like that. You probably wouldn't want to hear our conversations right after the births!). Hannah seems to have a little boyfriend too. She and another baby always look at eachother every time they meet. Sometimes the even smile at eachother. All of our babies are within 6 weeks of eachother, with Hannah the second oldest.

Aaron went to visit some friends in the Penrith area on Saturday night, and didn't get home until 11pm or so. He still woke up at his usual 6pm, so he was quite tired on Sunday. We were sitting on the couch, and I could see him drifting off to sleep out of the corner of my eye. It was that eyes close, head goes down, wake suddenly to pick up head kind of sleep. He got past the head falling down stage and nearly face planted from the couch to the floor! He only just startled awake in time to catch himself before possibly needing a trip to the emergency room for a broken nose.

2009-09-07T12:17:00.000+10:00

Time since birth: 9 weeks
Weight loss this week: 500g (1.1lbs)
Total weight loss: 11.1kgs (24.5lbs)

Anyone could see the muffin spilling over the top, the scent of chocolate filled the air. Hold on, I'm not talking about muffins, I'm talking about the unsightly muffin top I sport when I put on my pre pregnancy jeans (or any jeans really) (and the scent of chocolate is the new lynx men's spray deodorant that was lingering in the bathroom, long after Aaron went to work. mmmm...chocolate). At least they fit now, and well enough to put on, and then actually wear out somewhere without feeling like my legs/butt are in a straight jacket. Thank you butt, for finally deciding to shrink.

Poor Hannah had to get her immunisations on Wednesday. I took off her pink pants (yes, pretty much all of her clothes are pink, and yes, I like it that way. I would like to find some purple stuff, but that has proven difficult), and the doctor had me hold her on her side. The doc then wiped her tiny defenceless leg with a cotton bud and whatever solution they put on there to clean the area, and then jabbed Hannah with the needle. Poor Bubba never saw it coming. The room filled with a high pitched "oh my goodness, I'm going to die" loud, loud scream from Hannah. I think my heart broke a little right at that moment. I've never heard her cry like that. Unfortunately, the 8 week immunisations require 2 shots. We repeated the process on her other thigh, and I nearly cried myself. I think I would have lost it if she had to have 3 shots. To hear your baby in such pain and distress really does break your heart. The doctor put a little band aid on both legs, but one of them fell off as it was full of blood. Poor little bubba!! I put her in her pram after and then wheeled her off to the bus stop. She fell asleep and then slept for 2 hours. Luckily she doesn't need any more immunisations until about 6 months (I think anyways).

I finally did it. This week, I took a shower while no one else was here except for bubba. She was still sleeping when Aaron left for work, so I figured I'd take the plunge and try for a shower. I was always scared of her waking up screaming while my hair was full of shampoo. Seriously, then what do you do? You're in the middle of your shower, and you're baby is screaming. Do you finish your shower, and let your baby scream herself sweaty in the cot, or shove a towel around yourself and pick up baby while you drip shampoo all over her and your entire house?? I didn't have to live out either scenario. She slept the whole time. I kept my eye on the baby monitor the whole time though.

As soon as I got out of the shower, I heard a strange noise coming from the monitor. "What was that?" I thought. The noise came again, longer, louder, and clearer. Hannah was doing a giant series of farts. I laughed out loud, naked and dripping, in the bathroom. I quickly got dressed, brushed my hair and teeth, and put moisturiser on as I knew it was only a matter of minutes until she woke up, her britches filled with a giant poo. Sure enough, I was right.

We've discovered that Bubba likes to give kisses. If we put our cheeks to her lips, she will give a little lick. Okay, so I'm not sure if she is just trying to see if we have a flavour, thinks the cheek is a nipple, or is actually trying to cute, but it doesn't matter, it's very cute.

Aaron got to celebrate his first Father's Day yesterday. Hannah made him a nice card (with mommy's help...), and some coupons (good for a hug, kiss, etc.), and ordered him a mouse pad with her photo on it. Aaron said it was his best Father's Day ever. Haha.

This morning I was showing Grandma the beached as video on you tube
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdVHZwI8pcA. Hannah LOVED it! She couldn't tear her eyes off the screen and kept smiling at it. I showed Grandma some videos before that, and Hannah didn't have any interest what so ever, but I guess she likes the cheeky cartoon whale.

2009-08-31T11:14:00.000+10:00

Time since birth: 8 weeks
Weight loss this week: 200g (.44lbs)
Total Weight loss: 11.6kg (25.57lbs)

Grabbing a little pink jumpsuit, i checked the tag. i was checking the sizes of all Hannah's clothes as she grew out of 0000 and into 000. Low fire danger 000. Low fire danger? What, as opposed to all of those spontaneous combustion baby jump suits? Seriously, why do all baby clothes say that on the tag? Are the babies all going to use their pink jumpsuits as protection to go fight fires? Is it like those aussie bushfire danger signs (they let you know what the probability is for a bush fire, low, all the way to extreme), telling me there probably won't be a fire today?

We learned about settling techniques at mothers group on Tuesday. I have been doing it wrong the whole time. You are not supposed to rock and pat them all the way to sleep on you, then put them down as they will immediately wake up, no longer in the warmth and comfort of your arms. That is why Hannah has had all of her naps on mommy and daddy. Instead, you are supposed to put them in their cots when they get sleepy and then rock and pat them while they are in the cot. We've been doing the new way since Tuesday and Hannah likes sleeping on me much better then in her cot. It's been working for the most part, but her naps are not as long (she used to sleep 2-3 hours on me, and now she sleeps for 1 hour in the cot. Except at night, she has always been a good sleeper at night). It does take up to an hour and a half to get her to sleep sometimes.

Another $400 was spent on my boob. I had a fine needle biopsy which was much better then the core biopsy i had last year. For a core biopsy, they give you some anesthetic, then make an incision (in my case, i could still fell it so more anesthetic had to be given through the incision which was really really painful). A thing that looks identical to a piercing gun is then used to take the sample. The doctor pulls the trigger, and bang, a very loud noise scares the life out of you. The poor boob is then bruised for a couple of days, and your all done. This time, a very thin needle was inserted, jiggled around, repeated, then all is done. When they inserted the needle, they said "yep, that's milk." So, pretty much nothing to worry about, it's just a fibrous benign lump that is now filled with milk (and gave me stretch marks). Of course I have to go to the boob specialist and pay $200 to get the official results next week.

Sometimes I'm up at 4 or 5am to feed Hannah. I could hear this strange noise coming from outside. On closer listening (it wasn't that close to here), i realised it was a rooster. now correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't roosters supposed to shout (what is the word for the noise a rooster makes??) at dawn? It certainly isn't dawn that early. Last night, i was up at 2 and heard the rooster. I think he is one confused bird.

2009-08-24T09:37:00.000+10:00

Time since birth: 7 weeks
Weight loss this week: 1kg (2.2lbs)
Total weight loss: 11.4kgs (25.13lbs)

Monday I went for our 6 week check up. We had just gone out the door when Hannah did the biggest chuck ever. It was all over my clothes, her clothes, the baby carrier, and herself. By the time I changed both of our clothes, gave Hannah a bit of a sponge bath, and got lost on the way there, we were quite late.

At the check up, they checked my stitches (first time since I got them), which were "healed quite nicely." They checked my blood pressure and felt my tummy to make sure my uterus has gone back down. Everything was fine. They also gave Hannah a check up, and weighed and measured her. Finally, she is over 4kg. Only just, she is 4.1kg. She has also grown 7cm since birth.

After our appointment, Hannah was hungry, so i decided to try out the parents room at the shopping centre. There was a nice couch, TV, microwave, change tables, etc. It was quite nice and i didn't even have to worry about Hannah crying as no shoppers would be able to hear it.

I don't know if any of you have watched wipeout before, but it seems every time i watch it, i laugh so hard that tears come out. Aaron and i watched the other day and there was this large woman who was a bit scared to jump onto the big balls. Lucky for us, the "motivator" was employed. A big squishy block hit her in the bum, knocking her off the platform and onto the big balls. She was already covered in mud. As she hit the big ball, watery mud flew out of her top and hit her in the face (pretty sure her boobs hit her in the face too), she bounced off the big ball and tumbled into the muddy water below. Aaron and i both had tears from laughing so hard.

Hannah held a rattle for the first time this week. Sure, i may have put it in her hand, but she still kept a hold on it, and shook it a bit before dropping it. We've been practising every day since then, it's good for developing her coordination and such.

I walked to my first mothers group on Tuesday. Even though it's in a different town, it only took me 20 minutes. Apart from one other girl, I'm pretty sure I'm about 10 years younger then every one else. i guess people are having them late these days. It was good though, there was a baby nurse there and we got to ask any questions we wanted. Everyone seemed to want to know all the same things, which is reassuring. I just thought that maybe Hannah was a bit strange, but when i asked about her rubbing her face on our shoulders and chest, i found out that is normal (although i still don't know why they do it).

One morning, i had Hannah on her change mat, with a diaper under her, but not on. She likes to lay there and kick her legs and coo. She did a giant vomit and i had to sit her up as she was doing it so she wouldn't choke on it. It was like 3 big vomits in quick succession and got everywhere. Immediately after that, she did a big poo all over, and as soon as i took the nappy away, she peed everywhere. Interesting morning alright.

Grandma went wit me to the boob specialist to mind Hannah while I was in there. I don't think Hannah likes doctors offices, she always screams when she is there. Poor Grandma. If i wasn't breast feeding, they would take my lump out, but since I am, I have to have another biopsy (not fun, but i will get into that next week) on it just to be safe. He said he's quite sure it's harmless, but because of it's size, wants to be sure. If the lump is still there when Hannah is a year old, then they will remove it. Hopefully my boob won't resemble a deflated balloon after that. Since the lump is now filled with liquid, doesn't that men that when they take the biopsy, it could all leak out?? Turns out, that is possible. Ewww. Guess I'll find out on Thursday.

We have private health insurance, but does it cover Hannah's heart appointment, my ultrasound, biopsy, boob specialist, or the gap in doctors fees when they don't bulk bill? Not at all. So what exactly is the point of paying $200 a month for private health insurance?

Hannah has been a fantastic night sleeper recently. She slept for 8 hours straight 2 nights in a row. Unfortunately, i haven't been so lucky. It seems a neighbor has taken to clarinet playing at 10pm. I mean really, who plays the clarinet at 10pm? Everything seems amplified when you are laying in bed trying to sleep, so to me, it sounded like there was a dying moose right outside my window.

Friday I had my first post natal pilates class, where i found out that due to pregnancy, i have 2cms of separation in my ab muscles. Basically that means that there is 2cms in between my abs down the centre of my belly. I'll have to work out to fix it. The class was really good though, i used muscles i forgot i had.

2009-08-16T15:03:00.000+10:00

Time since birth: 6 weeks
Weight loss this week: Forgot to weigh myself this morning, can't be bothered to right now
Total weight loss: see above....

I would have thought that by 6 weeks my linea nigera (or whatever it is called, that line that goes down the middle of my stomach) would have disappeared, or at least started fading. It is still there, loud and proud. My lochia has pretty much stopped now (about time!!!), which I'm extremely happy about.

I was brushing my hair the other night, and couldn't get the brush through a bit in the front. On closer examination, I found there was something white that had dried in my hair. Baby vomit.... I have no idea how long it had been there (well, I mean it was that day sometime). I guess you know you're a mom when you find baby vomit in random places.

Speaking of baby vomit, sometimes Hannah vomits (well, spits up) quite a bit. Then I think "is she sick, does she have reflux, is this normal???" Some of the girls (from my antenatal class, we get together every week) were wondering the same thing, so they asked about it at their mothers group. They were told that if the baby isn't upset after spitting up, then it's not a problem, they either drank too much, or it came up with a burp or something. Phew, she doesn't get upset when she does it, so everything is a-ok.

For some reason, Hannah likes to take her morning naps on me (or Aaron on the weekend). I try to put her in her cot a few times but each time she cries, then it gets to the point where if I don't let her sleep on me, she is not going to get enough sleep, and considering she doesn't get a lot of sleep anyway (she sleeps 11-15 hours in a 24 hour period, they say babies should get 16-18), I relent and let her sleep on me just so she gets some sleep. I'll have to ask about that in my mothers group which starts on Tuesday. Hannah likes to keep us on our toes when she sleeps on us. Her favourite position seems to be face first on your shoulder. I have to keep my hand on her back just to make sure she is still breathing and not suffocating herself. I don't know how she breathes when she is face first on me, but somehow she does.

Finally, I don't have roots down to my ears! The Jess came over on the weekend and dyed my hair for me. I am now a brunette (with a reddish tinge), and it only cost me $9.99 (but since there are no pennies in Australia, it was really $10).

I will have a very busy week this week. I have my 6 week check up tomorrow to make sure I'm all healed, etc. after giving birth. Tuesday I have my first mothers group, Wednesday, my boob specialist appointment, and then on Friday, I should be starting a postnatal pilates class. I left the registration a bit late (I'm faxing it tomorrow), so hopefully I will get in. I'm also going to take Hannah to the shopping centre to get some groceries. If she gets hungry, I can just take her to the mothers room which, I'm told, has TVs so you can feed your baby and not be bored.

2009-08-10T11:56:00.000+10:00

Time since birth: 5 weeks 1 day
Total weight loss: 10.4kgs (22.9lbs)
Weight loss this week: 500g (1.1lbs)

I woke up in a cold large puddle. It took me a bit to figure out what was going on, then it hit me. My boobs were leaking again. Not just a little bit, I was laying in a puddle. I looked at the clock, 3am. Hannah had been sleeping for 7 hours. Uh oh, is she ok, is she still breathing? I heard her little "I'm waking up" noises on the baby monitor. Phew, she's ok. I wish she slept for 7 hours straight every night (I like getting lots of uninterrupted sleep)! I hoped I had enough milk left in my boobs, as opposed to all over the bed, to feed her (I did). Apparently, if I go to long without feeding, my boobs become self milking.

Hmmm... how do you clean up a giant puddle of milk from your mattress?? I pulled off the sheets and put salt on it. The salt drew out a lot of the milk, and then was vacuumed up. Still wet. I repeated bout 4 times, but it was still wet! I spent the night sleeping at the foot of the bed perpendicular to how one would normally sleep on a bed while trying to let the milk puddle dry. Aaron spent the night on the couch. Still wet the next day, I opened the windows and let it air all day. Finally, a dry bed. Hopefully it won't start smelling (so far so good though).

After said incident, I started wearing a bra to bed, with breast pads inside. The bra tends to creep up during the night and sit halfway up my boob, which can block milk ducts and lead to mastitis. Surely I'm not the only one with this problem. How do other mothers protect their beds and boobs at the same time? I still don't know the answer to that question, but I decided to wear a tank top and stick some breast pads in there. Fingers crossed I won't have another giant leak, as I'm pretty sure it would go through the shirt and pads.

I was getting ready to go on a pram walk and lunch with my antenatal class girls, carrying Hannah around while doing so. We were in the bathroom, about to brush my teeth when she gave me the biggest, sweetest smile I've ever seen. It wasn't the usual "I'm doing a fart" involuntary smile either, it was a genuine "mommy I love you" smile. She has been sparingly dolling out smiles ever since.

At our lunch that day, at the pub, we saw the channel 9 finance reporter and weather girl. Every single one of us had our boobs out, nursing our hungry little babies. I don't know if the weather girl gave us a look of disgust or support, but she definitely gave us a look. Maybe she just thought it odd that we were at the pub (FYI, the meals are good, there is hardly anyone there at lunch time, and there is ample room for pram parking).

Friday, a friend from church came over to take Hannah to the park with her girls and give me a chance to catch up with the house work. It was the first time I've been away from Hannah. I worried about her the whole time (is she hungry, is she crying, does she need a nappy change?), but still got so much done in her absence. It's amazing how much you can do when you have a time constraint.

As for the mammogram, I have to go see a breast specialist next week (there goes another $175). The mammogram report suggests it's nothing to worry about, but also says to see a specialist for follow up. We are beginning to think they just refer you to anyone and everyone to get them all more money. Why do w have to go back to the doctor each time? I mean, the ultrasound report suggested further investigation, but they could have just told me that, I could have mad the appointment to get the mammogram, and so on. Instead, it's doctor, specialist, doctor, different specialist, doctor, and so on. It seems incredibly inefficient if you ask me. If I have to go back to the doctor after my boob specialist appointment just to get the results of the appointment, I think I will scream.

2009-08-03T08:48:00.000+10:00

Time since birth: 4 weeks 1 day
Total weight loss: 9.9kgs (21.8lbs)
Total weight loss this week (well, for the last 2 weeks): 2.9kg (6.4lbs)

Yay, I can finally fit my bum into a pair of my pre-pregnancy jeans. It's so not the point that I can barley button them, they give me a muffin top, and they are too uncomfortably tight to actually wear anywhere. I did borrow a pair of size 10 (aussie size 10 that is, don't get too scared my american friends!) pair of jeans so I don't have to always wear the one pair of pants that I own that actually fit me (and they aren't even jeans).

A good thing about being pregnant is that you don't get your period. Unfortunately, what people fail to mention is the bleeding after birth (called lochia). It's like you have to make up for all of those months of not bleeding. Some people are lucky and only bleed for 2 weeks. Me, not so lucky, I'm still bleeding. Of course, it's a lot lighter then right after birth when I got it all over the hospital bed in my sleep (I'm sure they get that a lot), but it's still annoying.

I had my boob ultrasound last week. It took a while as I have so many lumps, and you are laying down, so I pretty much fell asleep. I did actually drift off a few times. She understood that I am a new mom, and we don't get as much sleep as before, so she was very understanding. She told me my big lump is now 4cm long, 4 times bigger than it was last year, and filled with fluid. They don't think it's anything sinister, but recommended further investigation.

Further investigation lead me to my first mammogram. I felt very out of place in the waiting room, amongst all the old ladies, and even more so as I also had a crying baby with me. Hannah couldn't come in with me because of the x-rays, so all the ladies who worked there fought over who got to watch her. Lucky she's cute, or I might have had to leave her screaming in her pram outside the door as no one would have wanted to watch her. I never tire of people telling me how cute she is.

I have been told that a mammogram is so painful you almost pass out, so I was quite nervous about the whole thing. Also, I wasn't too crazy about the thought of having my boobs pancaked.

First, you take your top off and bear all to the mammogram technician (who, lucky for me, was a woman). Next, place boob (with help of woman) on flat plate thing and wait for top plate thing to come down and pancake boob. Then, watch as your milk sprays all over the mammogram machine and narrowly misses the technician. How embarrassing.... Repeat with other boob. Next, the flat boob squisher plate turns sideways. Slot your boob for squishing from the side this time, watch milk go everywhere, including dripping all over self this time, and repeat with other boob. It didn't actually hurt that much, and was over quite quickly. I haven't gone back to the doctor yet to get my results, so tune in next week to find out.

Little Hannah also made a trip to the hospital this week for her appointment with the cardiologist. What an expensive week (cardiologist $400, mammogram $200). She still sports a hole in her heart between two ventricles, and it is unlikely to close. Luckily though, it is not causing her any problems and shouldn't in the future. We do have to keep an eye on it throughout her life and we have to go back in 8 weeks (when her systems are done making the womb to world transition) to make sure all is well.

Saturday we took Hannah for her first long car trip to Penrith. We thought she'd love it as she loves the movement of the car, but she did a poo right after we left and then cried the whole ride. Can't say that I'd like to sit in poo either. On the way home she slept the whole time and then continued to sleep for another 3 hours before waking up for a feed. She doesn't poop at night so we didn't have that problem on the way home.

2009-07-26T19:11:00.000+10:00

Time since birth: 3 weeks 1 day
Total weight loss: don't know, keep forgetting to weigh myself before eating
Weight loss this week: see above

I'm starting to get used to middle of the night feeds, posseting (spit up/baby vomit), crying, etc. You're in the hospital for 2 nights (some people are there for only one, or none!), then you go home, and really have no idea what you're doing. I have to admit, I called the midwives at the hospital at night more then once when I was still "under their care" (which was until Hannah was a week old) to ask questions. The charts all say baby poo is yellow, what if it's green? I call and ask. I think I'm just a paranoid mom. Is it ok that she only sleeps for 12 hours in a 24 hour period (it is for now, call back if it doesn't improve)? Is that going to affect her development (no, the average 16-18 hours sleep per day is an average, some babies sleep for 10 hours, others 20, depends on the baby)? Is it ok that she poops about 10 times a day, a lot of the really small little poops (yes, some babies poop after every feed, some do just a couple of big poops, everybody poops!)? She gets the hiccups a lot, is that normal (yes, and it doesn't bother infants apparently, although Hannah doesn't seem to like them much)? She gets a lot of wind, is it ok to use infacol (wind drops for babies that bind all their wind together so they can easily get it up in one big burp/fart. And yes, it's fine to use it does not harm them one little bit)? How do I know when one boob is empty (still not really 100% sure on that one...)? The lump in my boob has exploded to about 5 times the size that was, is that due to hormones (probably, but I will have an ultrasound on it again just to be sure. Then if it looks dodgy, I will have another biopsy. I had one a year ago, and it was just a fibroadenoma, which is benign. I think my body just likes to make lumps and tumours to scare me)? They probably think I'm a pest calling so often. But you know what? We just want the best for our baby, and want to make sure we are doing everything right.

Grandma gave me a book a number of months ago called "What to Expect When The First Year." I just started reading it, and found that I'm normal. I'm not the only one that goes into baby's bedroom to look at baby while she is sleeping just to make sure she is breathing. I'm not the only one who worries that I'm not making enough milk, or that she is not getting enough milk. Apparently pretty much every mother on the face of the earth does these things, which probably means that a lot of mothers call the midwives at the hospital to annoy them with questions like I did. The book answers a lot of questions, and has a month by month what to expect. I highly recommend it.

The other night, I woke up to the sound of crying on the baby monitor. I wasn't feeling particularly hot, but I thought I must have been, as I was sweating between my boobs. It took me a bit to realise that it wasn't sweat at all, my let down (when the milk starts flowing) has decided to not wait until Hannah starts sucking, but instead starts when she cries. I had milk all over my chest. Lucky I bought a few boxes of breast pads before Hannah was born.

I have a special chair in Hannah's room that I feed her in (except sometimes during the day I feed her on the couch now that I'm skilled enough to do so). It's a gliding rocking chair, with a boomerang pillow that I put on my lap to lay Hannah on so I don't have to actually hold all of her weight. I lay her on her side on the pillow, across me, with her mouth on the chosen boob. One day, after feeding her, I noticed she had a wet patch on the front of her onesie, off to one side. How in the world did she wet herself there?? I could understand it a bit if she were a boy, maybe it was pointing there when laying on his side or something, but a girl? At the next night feed, it happened again. How in the world are you doing this, little one? That is when I realised that when feeding on one side, the other side leaks. She didn't wet herself at all, I wet her! I don't particularly like wearing a bra to bed, so now I just put a breast pad between me and Hannah during the night feeds. Problem solved, no more wet Hannah Banana.

Friday I met with some of the girls from my antenatal class (and a couple of the husbands were there too as they had not yet gone back to work). We (girls) decided that we want to meet up regularly and go for pram walks (a walk while pushing babies in prams) and lunch. I decided (ok, Hannah's tummy decided) that would be the perfect time to try feeding in public. I don't really want to be one of those "hi, here's my boob" people, so how do you do it discreetly? We all went to the local cafe, but they seemed none to happy to accommodate us and didn't even try to help us move tables so we could all sit together and have room for our prams (even though they didn't have any customers at the time, and would have gotten a nice chunk of change since there were quite a few of us), so instead we went to the pub. Hannah decided before we arrived that it was meal time, so I had to do it. It was quite awkward at first. I got one of the girls to hold up a cloth while I attached Hannah, but when you have to do it a few times (she likes to be burped a few times during each feed), that is just not practical. On the other hand, I didn't really want everyone to see my boob and nipple, so what do you do? I tried to do the cloth thing myself (throw it over your shoulder, try to attach baby), but how do you see what you are doing? That didn't work. I finally decided the best way is to bring baby to boob, then when baby's head is blocking view of boob, that is when you pull up your shirt. Before you bring baby's head to boob, unhook feeding bra so all you need to do when baby is blocking view of boob is pull up shirt, and bam, baby is on nipple, and unless someone was really trying to see and at the right angle (like sitting right next to you), no one will see your goodies. At least I don't think they will. I feel a lot more comfortable with the whole thing now. The build up was nerve wracking, you just have to do it.

We still haven't taken Hannah to very populated places (like shopping centres) (she has only been for walkies around where we live, to the pub for lunch, bible study, and church). Maybe we are being over protective, but we are afraid of taking her where lots of people are because we don't want her to get their germs. Swine flu is on the prowl, we don't want our little Hannah Banana to get swine flu! We decided that when she is 6 weeks old, then we will start taking her out. Her little immune system is just not ready for the world yet (or our silly brains, one or the other).

The linea nigra (line going down the centre of my belly) is supposed to go away after birth, but I wonder how long it takes. Mine is still there, loud and proud. It does look rather odd, with no big pregnant belly to accompany it. It hasn't even remotely faded. I still can't fit my butt into my pre pregnancy jeans (which fit me with the belly belt until the last couple of months of pregnancy when my butt seemed to expand), yet I am quite small, so I must have been really small before. And I always thought I had a big bum. I suppose I've just gotten bigger all over, so you don't really notice that I'm bigger then before I was pregnant (it's in proportion is what I'm trying to get at. I don't make a lot of sense, must be lack of continuous sleep).

One night, I awoke to something touching me. As I woke up more, I realised I was being patted. Aaron was patting me like you pat a baby. Rhythmically, gently, patting my hip (I was on my side). He must have been dreaming about holding Hannah because he was fast asleep. I grabbed his hand and held it against my hip. I got some nonsense, not actual words asleep garbledy goop in response.

Everyone tells us how cute little Hannah is. People even say she looks like a doll. I may be biased, but she certainly is cute! I may be weird, but I often just look at her while she is feeding, or sleeping on my shoulder, and marvel at how absolutely cute she is. Her little face is just perfect. When she gets an upset tummy (wind), I wish I could just take away her pain so she never has to feel it. I want to protect her from everything. I guess that's just being a Mom.

2009-07-20T16:25:00.000+10:00

Time since birth: 2 weeks 1 day
Total weight loss: 7kg (15.4lbs)
Weight loss this week: 100g (.22lbs but I weighed myself after eating and fully clothed so this is not too accurate)

Last Monday (a week ago today) a nurse from the early childhood centre came to do a home visit. She checked Hannah's jaundice (which is now gone), weighed her (she had gained over 200g since that Thursday, which is really good), pushed on my tummy to see how my uterus is going, and asked any questions that I have. She said we were doing really well and that I seemed really calm for a new mom. I find it very odd that after getting stitches when Hannah was born, not one person has checked the stitches since then. I had a total of 4 home visits (3 from midwives, 1 from the nurse), and some checks in hospital, but no stitch check. This seems very odd to me. What if they are infected or not healing right or something. I wouldn't know, I don't know what vajayjay stitches are supposed to look like (nor can I see down there anyway...). I'm sure they are fine, but I still find it odd. I would think that would be something that needs checking.

I can't remember if I mentioned it last week, but after you have a baby, your appetite goes out the window. I had to force myself to eat 3 meals per day for a week and a half. I could only get through small portions. The nurse said that is normal, and is due to hormones, etc. I'm happy to report that I now have my appetite back. Unfortunately I have not been drinking any milk as Hannah had lots of gas and I read online that sometimes this can be due to mom's ingesting milk products. So, I'm giving up milk for a week to see if there is a change. It's torture though, I LOVE milk!! I don't think she has been as gassy though. Poor little Hannah gets quite distressed when she has too much wind. her poor little tummy hurts. Hopefully I can reintroduce milk slowly to my diet. I will have to ask the nurse about such things.

It's funny how things change as soon as you have a baby. I never used to go out without at least a light dusting of my mineral makeup, but now, who cares, I just had a baby, I don't have time for that! I've been living in sweats since I got home, and only shower every other day (except for washing my stitches which I do every day). I walk to the shops in my sweats and take Hannah for walks in my sweats. That is just what happens after you become a mom. I don't want to be daggy for the rest of my life, but for now, while little Hannah is so young and in need of attention all the time, I just don't have time to make myself look nice.

I am so thankful to our church and it's members. They have been bringing us meals since we came home from hospital. I don't know what we'd do without it. There just isn't time (or energy) for cooking dinner at the moment. Hannah doesn't really like to sleep during the day (she is sleeping now, but it's the first time she has slept today, and it's 4:40 in the afternoon), so that doesn't really give me time to tend to any house duties or cooking. We are very grateful!

My coccyx is still sore, but getting better. I can now sit on the couch and breastfeeding chair (cushioned gliding rocking chair in Hannah's room. Hannah and I love that chair) without a folded towel under each cheek. I still can't drive as the seats in the car are quite hard and I have to sit really awkwardly in the car. If it was an automatic I might be able to drive it, but as it's a manual, I'd have to sit properly to have both feet doing what they are supposed to, and that is painful still.

Hannah loves it when Mommy or Daddy holds her in a sitting position so she can stare at our faces. Sometimes she even smiles. She may not like to sleep during the day, but at night, Hannah is wonderful. She usually sleeps at about 10pm after a feed, and then sleeps for 5 hours. Another feed, diaper change, and settling (45min - 1 hour total), and she sleeps for another 2-4 hours. Another feed, etc, and she sleeps for another 2-4 hours. I get lots of sleep luckily (most nights, but we have had the odd bad night). She is just so cute.

Hannah was really unsettled yesterday. She didn't sleep all day. We went to church last night, but she cried so much that Aaron had to take her out to the car and just sit with her the whole time while she bawled her eyes out. I wish I knew how to make her feel better when she is so unsettled. We check her nappy, feed her, make sure she is not too hot or cold, give her cuddles, etc, but still, she cries. I guess it's just because she is a baby. She looks tired (yawning, and other tired signs), wakes up about 5 min after putting her to bed. I suppose she will grow out of it though. Better to be like that during the day then all night though! She does sleep when I take her for a walk in her pram. She will be bawling her eyes out all the way to the top of the driveway, then, as soon as we hit the sidewalk, she is out. She will be out the whole walk time, until we get right outside our driveway, then she is up and screaming again. I don't know how she knows we're home, but somehow, she always does. She is too smart for her own good I think.

I find getting out for a walk does wonders for me too. I like to get some fresh air, and it really puts me in a good mood. I might be really stressed or upset from trying to settle Hannah all day, but as soon as we go for a walk, I'm refreshed. Good old vitamin D (the happy vitamin) I suppose. I guess that is why all the baby books tell you to get out everyday no matter what, even if it's just to the mailbox and back. Good advice, I second that. I like going for pram walks so much that I emailed all the girls from my antenatal class (we all keep in touch and meet up sometimes) and suggested we all meet up fairly regularly after everyone has their babies (one popped yesterday, and another today, a couple more to go) and go for pram walks. I've gotten favourable responses so far.

Anyway, Hannah might wake up soon, so I'm going to go now. ToOdLeS!

2009-07-13T10:21:00.000+10:00

Time since birth: 8 days
Total weight loss: 6.9kgs (although it looks like a lot more!)
Hannah's birth weight: 3.3kg (7.27lbs)
Hannah's birth size: 48cm (18.89in)
Hannah's birth date: 5 July 2009

It all started on the 4th of July. In the morning I started getting very irregular contractions that didn't feel like the usual braxton hicks. We decided we should get to the shops and get a microwave asap as after the baby is born, we would be getting meals delivered for 2 weeks by members of our church (that we would need to heat up). We've had some issues in the microwave department for quite some time now. We had to leave the our old one at our last place as it had a cockroach living it in. Not too long ago, my friend May gave us an old one they had. It worked for a day, then made a loud noise and started sparking. So, we went to buy a new one. We were going to go grocery shopping too, but I wasn't really feeling the best at the time. As soon as we got to the shops, I heard a little girl say to her mom "that girl is so fat!" referring of course to me. I thought it was hilarious though.

Aaron set up our brand new microwave as soon as we got home. I think microwaves have conspired against us because this one didn't work either. So much for that idea. There was no way I was going back to the shops now!

In the afternoon, my contractions started to get closer together and a little more intense, so we decided to put on my TENS unit. After all, it says it's most effective if you start using it as soon as you are in proper pre labour, which I knew I was. I had also lost my mucous plug that morning. By evening, the contractions were even closer together and more painful. I found it most comfortable to sit on the floor on my yoga mat, and then drape myself over my exercise ball and start rocking when a contraction came. We tried to put funny movies and things on to distract me as well, but it didn't work very well. I called the delivery suite when my contractions were about 5 mins apart, but they were still a bit erratic, with some at 4 something, then others at 7 something, so they told me it wasn't time to go in yet. Aaron would also give me a hard back massage when I got a contraction which helped a lot.

I wanted to get some sleep as I knew I would need energy for the next day, so still wearing the TENS unit, we went to bed. I did manage to sleep between contractions, but woke up again with each one. I still felt rested though which was good. The contractions were getting more intense over night, and by morning, they were just under 5 minutes apart, and about a minute long, so we called the delivery suite again. They told us to come in so they could check my progress, and bring a bag just in case. Contractions in the car were the worst. You can't get into a comfortable position, you have to just keep sitting there. Aaron suggested I start making noises to help get through them. I'm sure we looked very interesting driving down the road, me with my eyes closed, a look of agony on my face, and making loud low gutteral grunting noises. I had to lean against the car and put my face on my arms when we arrived as I got another contraction.

They took me to the check up room straight away when I arrived, and monitored me and the baby for a while. Baby's heart rate was really good, and I was having some big contractions, but being in the hospital scared them away somewhat. They did an internal and said I was 3cm dilated. We were sent home for the time being, but told if the pain got too intense, if my water broke, etc. to call and come back. I had a bag of waters in front of the baby's head which was pushing on everything and making me feel like my insides were going to explode. When we got home, Aaron ran me a warm bath to see if that would help. I got in, but only for a couple of minutes. The contractions were being far too painful. We called the hospital again, and went back.

We got there at 10:30 and this time they took me to a delivery room. They were really quiet that day (I turned out to be the only one to have a normal delivery (non c-section) that day, so they gave me one of the group practice rooms. Group practice rooms are bigger, and have bigger baths as well. They did an internal and found I was 5cm dilated, so they said I should be ready in about 5 hours. We tried the bath again, and it was quite soothing. That is until a contraction came along. I couldn't just lay there during a contraction. I felt I needed to walk around or something. Plus I couldn't have my TENS unit in the bath (unless I wanted to electrocute myself). Sorry, but I wasted a whole lot of water in the bath I didn't really use.

I kept trying different positions during contractions to try and find something more bearable. I tried laying on a mat on the floor. It worked for a while, but then I needed to get up again. I don't know how I didn't feel it, but when I got up, there was a big puddle. My water had broken. Oh yeah, we also put on the classical music as soon as we got there to make it more relaxing and homey (worked nicely by the way).

I finally found that walking around while clutching the bottom of my stomach was the way to go. As I walked around, Aaron would walk with me and coach my deep breathing and rub my back. The contractions kept getting stronger and closer together, so sometimes I would also deep breathe the gas. I'm not sure if it was the gas itself, or concentrating on the rattley noise it made when you sucked on it, but it seemed to help.

I felt like i really had to pee but every time i tried i couldn't. The midwife put a catheter in to drain the urine. not pleasant let me tell you! It seems there was a little head pinching the urine escape route.

After a while i started getting the strong urge to push. the midwife kept telling me not to, but sometimes i couldn't help it, my body just did it. Aaron would then coach my breathing and I'd pull out of it. But then i felt something. As they were telling me not to push i yelled out "it's coming!" They took one look at my face and knew it was time to check. About 5 mins earlier they told me they only do the internal every 4 hours so at 2:30 when there was a shift change, the new midwife would check me. I was promptly checked and told i was ready. They were amazed that i dilated so fast as it was my first baby. They asked me what position i wanted to be in then it was push time. i dragged myself over to the mat on the floor and draped myself over a beanbag.

finally, i was allowed to push. it's so much easier when you can actually do something. i pushed with all my might. i could feel something fly out. all at once i felt extremely scared (it flew out what if they didn't catch it?), and relief (wow that was easy). but then something wet splatted all over me and i knew it wasn't over yet. they said it was like a water balloon, shot out of me like a cannonball. when it landed it burst all over everyone. it was my forewaters. i kept pushing with each contraction, the head getting closer each time. finally i could feel it. i gave n all mighty push and it started to come out. but then my contraction finished and it went back in. nobody told me I'd have to birth the head multiple times until it got past the point of no return. i think i almost got it out three times before i felt the agonizing burning sensation of me tearing and the head reaching it;s widest point before finally coming out. i was in a world of pain now, between contractions but torn and still stretched over baby's neck. i pushed with the next contraction and easily birthed the rest of the baby. i didn't even notice the doctor giving me a shot (to help detach the placenta).

They passed the baby to me between my legs from behind. i didn't even think to check, i was just going to hold it, but the midwife said "what is it?" "it's a girl!" i exclaimed, and put her on my chest. my placenta wasn't detaching so the midwife was pulling on it and pressing on my uterus. it was quite painful. after a while they told me to give a push. i didn't think anything would happen but when i pushed, the placenta practically flew out. i guess i like projectiles....

I was covered in blood and there was blood everywhere. I was sitting in a giant puddle of blood. I was worried i'd lost too much but they said it was about 400ml which is normal.

She fed straight away until they got me on the bed for my stitches. Aaron got to hold her while i was being tortured. i inhaled a large amount of gas and felt floaty as they gave me local anesthetic (my first actual pain relief of the ordeal). i could feel pulling and it seemed to take ages as they stitched me in layers. i'm not sure exactly how many stitches i had except that it was more then 10. ewwww.

before i got to go to my room, i was told i had to pee,shower, and carb load myself so as not to pass out. you really do feel lightheaded after giving birth. it's like every ounce of energy has been zapped from you and you have nothing left. luckily they take you to your room in a wheelchair.

i managed to get through labour with only the TENS and gas, but only because of Aaron's encouragement, coaching and praise. he is the bestest!

After sifting through all the conflicting info given by different midwives, we seem to be getting caring for Hannah down. She is a beautiful little girl, and a little treasure.

I'm hoping my stitches and bruised coccyx will feel better soon, but other then that, we are doing well.

2009-06-29T07:41:00.000+10:00

Pregnancy: 39 weeks 1 day
Total weight gain: 16.9kgs (37.25lbs)
Baby size (approx head to foot): 50.7cm (19.96in)
Baby weight (approx): 3.3kg (7.27lbs)

The count is in the single digits and less then a week away!!! Of course that is assuming Mushi decides to arrive on or before my due date. It's CRAZY to think that at ANY TIME I could go in to labour!! We are very much ready for it though, we just want to meet little Mushi (and I just want to get him out of my pelvis!)!! The Jess thinks that Mushi will be born on the 1st of July, and has thought so since the beginning. That is her dad's birthday and babies in the family tend to come on other family members birthdays (Aaron and his Grandma share the same birthday, as to a cousin and aunt or something along those lines). Or, maybe the 12th of July as that is Aaron's Mum's birthday (as well as Jennifer, my cousin's, birthday). I'd much rather it be on the 1st, I don't want to have to waddle around being very uncomfortable until the 12th. I, on the other hand, think Mushi will come on the 4th. It's Independence day in the U.S. plus The Jess has a ball that day, and I think it would be funny if she had to turn up to the hospital in her ball gown while a bit tipsy. Would make for some interesting photos. Aaron thinks it will be the 5th.

When I went to the hospital for last weeks appointment, I was told I was "fully engaged," meaning Mushi's little head is right down in my pelvis and ready to be born. That doesn't necessarily mean that he will be born asap, as first babies can descend a few weeks or more before being born. It does mean that he is in position and ready and could come at any time. The hospital appointments are generally uneventful. They take my blood pressure, measure my fundal height (which is inaccurate at this stage since they can't measure the bottom of my uterus as it's sitting in my pelvis), feel the baby's position (laying on his side, head down, on the right side of my uterus. Good position to be in), listen to his heart rate, ask me how I've been feeling. At the appointment before the last one I had to take a lower vajayjay swab to check if I have strep B (or something similar sounding, but I think that is what it was checking), a bacteria that naturally lives down there and is not harmful usually, but can cause strife to the baby while it's being born. Happy to report I'm negative on that front (which means I don't have to have an antibiotic drip while giving birth. Phew. Don't like needles!!).

I've been getting heaps of Braxton Hicks contractions lately, but they still don't hurt at all. I don't even feel them all. Sometimes if I'm paying close attention, I can feel them start (my uterus becomes hard), but usually I just notice when I touch my belly and find that it's quite hard, then softens after a bit. Maybe I will be one of the lucky ones who doesn't even realise they are in labour until the endish of the first stage because the contractions don't hurt. Apparently that is how some people end up having to race to the hospital and give birth very soon after they get there. Usually you know you are in labour for quite a while before hand. Even though I know that most labours don't begin with the water breaking (despite what the movies might have you think), I have this irrational fear that mine will break in an embarrassing public place (i.e. on the bus, at the store, at church, etc.). Let's think about this: say I'm grocery shopping, I have a trolley full of groceries, but am not quite done yet. My water breaks. Do I finish my shopping, go to the checkout, then call the hospital? Do I ditch the groceries, and immediately leave? Of course I don't drive by myself (Aaron is teaching me to drive the manual car, and I'm not quite confident enough to drive by myself yet. I'm a wussbag), so that would add another element to the equation. Do I then get a cab home, call someone who lives close by to come pick me up, get on the bus, wait for Aaron to come and get me?? Be good water, don't break in public!

It is getting quite uncomfortable for me to do anything. Every time I stand up, there is a head on my bladder and I always feel like I have to pee (which maybe could be mistaken for a bladder infection except that it goes away when I sit down and take some of the pressure off). Again, due to a head being in my pelvis, there is a lot of pressure on my tailbone, and in the general butt area which can also get quite uncomfortable. Hard chairs certainly don't help this either. When I eat, my belly prevents me from getting too close to the table. I end up getting lots of my dinner all over my shirt. Why don't I just lean forward over my plate you ask? Mushi doesn't like it when I lean forward, it must squish him. He immediately lets me know with a swift knee in the top of my uterus. Not like the kind he does when playing poke my limbs, but a sort of "knock that off mommy, I don't like to be folded" kind of way. I've started keeping a towel next to me so when I eat I can drape it on myself.

A few people have asked me if I'm going to have photos of my labour. I do want photos, but only of the waist up. I don't mind having photos of me making hideous "oh my goodness, this really hurts" faces, but I don't need to see photos of the baby coming out or anything. I don't need to see that place anyway, I certainly don't need to see it with a head sticking out, and no one else should be seeing that part of me either (except Aaron and the doctors of course). I've heard that some people have those photos in an album at home, and actually show people. To me that is like saying "hello, here is my vagina." So no, no photos South of the border thank you very much.

I finally took my citizenship test on Tuesday. It took me about 3 minutes (which was going through it twice to make sure I didn't accidentally choose the wrong answer for any of them), and I got 19/20. I couldn't remember who Australia's first prime minister was. If you have read the citizenship textbook, the test is quite easy (well, except the one question...), but if you haven't read it, you probably would fail miserably. I was going to eat lunch with Aaron later that day, since I was already in the city anyway, but I finished so quickly, I had 2 and a half hours before our lunch. Even though I've always been embarrassed by this prospect, I went to the movies by myself. I didn't particularly want to walk (I mean waddle) around for 2 hours as my feet would end up the size of fully inflated balloons. The only movie that finished in time to meet Aaron for lunch was in Gold Class, so I thought what the heck, I just passed my test, I'll treat myself. I was still quite embarrassed to be going to a movie alone (no offence Dad, I know you do that a lot), but then the only other person in the gold class cinema was a random guy who was also by himself (several rows in front of me, luckily not nearby as that would have been very awkward). Oh, did I mention I was watching a total chick flick, The Proposal? I didn't feel so embarrassed after that. Although expensive, Gold class is very comfortable. They have big overstuffed recliners that you sit in. Perfect for a very pregnant woman who needs to put her feet up.

Thursday, I had someone from Baby BeeHinds come over and do a nappy (um...diaper) demonstration. As I said in the blog months ago, we are going cloth. Cloth nappies are not like the used to be. Now they are fitted, have inserts to catch more pee, have snaps to make them bigger or smaller depending on your baby's size, etc. They are very good. The ones I got are "one size fits most," so I won't need to buy anymore nappies, they are good from newborn to something ridiculous like 3 or 4 years old (I hope Mushi is potty trained before 3...). Sure I spent $533 on them, but if I were to use disposables, I'd be looking at at least $2000 (and that is a conservative estimate) for the time Mushi is in diapers. Plus, we can use these for our next baby. They will take about 10 days to get here, so hopefully we will already have a baby by then....

I know this post is long, but what the hay, I'm going to keep going. No one is forcing you to read this. Saturday, The Jess and I decided to go to Pancakes on the Rocks (for those U.S.Aliens reading this, Pancakes on the Rocks is a Pancakes restaurant at the Rocks in Sydney. No ordinary pancake place though, this one serves chocolate pancakes with chocolate syrup, and chocolate ice cream. That is one of their concoctions anyway). I wrote down the driving directions, and we set off. Things got hairy only a few minutes into our trip when we accidentally took the harbour tunnel instead of the bridge. The directions tell you to take the Bradfield Highway (not actual name, but I can't remember it's actual name at this time), but then the road signs use no such highway name and just give you highway numbers (like 1). So, I ask you, how are we to know which lane to be in?? We chose a lane that takes you over the bridge, as we knew we needed the bridge (we knew that much at least), but at the last minute the silly lane forked, one to the bridge, one to the tunnel, and we ended up in the tunnel. We did then find some of the roads listed later in the instructions, but didn't realise we were now coming at them from the other direction, so turned left when it should have been right, and ended up having to pretty much tour the whole city. An hour later, we found the road that Pancakes is on. Or so we thought.... After we parked, closer inspection of the street sign revealed that some hooligan had turned the sign so it was pointing at the road we were on, but should have been pointing to the road next to it. No big deal, we'll just walk. That's all fine and dandy usually, but it turned out to be quite a long walk, and I really really had to pee. We had to stop at a very posh hotel on a pier and ask for directions, as well as to use the bathroom. Luckily they humoured us (probably because a young guy was on the desk, and guys always take quite a shining to The Jess). Finally, an hour and a half after leaving the house, we got to Pancakes (this should normally take under half an hour). By that time, I wanted a real meal and not just something sweet (what is wrong with me?!?!), so after all that, I ordered a savory crepe, and The Jess got the nice black forest pancake (but I stole some of it). After sitting at the table for a while, another waitress came and insisted we move to a booth as it would be more comfortable, and then had a go at the other waitress for putting a heavily pregnant woman at the table with the hard chairs. I have to say, I did appreciate the booth. I like booths anyway, but at the moment, they are even better!

Ok, last paragraph, I promise. I read that babies tear ducts work in the womb, but can't yet function outside the womb. I think that is probably a good thing. Seeing your tiny little bundle crying will be hard enough, but imagine if it also had all those tiny little tears coming out as well. It will be a shock to see tears for the first time though. I just can't wait for Mushi to come out!! Come on Mushi, we want to meet you. Hopefully by next weeks blog we will have a little Mushi to write about (although then it won't be Mushi anymore, it will have a boys or girls name...).

2009-06-22T08:37:00.001+10:00

Pregnancy: 38 weeks 1 day
Total weight gain: 16.5kg (36.37lbs)
Baby size (approx) head to foot: 49.8cm (19.6in) although all the websites and books differ a bit on the baby size and weight guesstimate
Baby weight (approx): 3.1kg (6.8lbs)

38 weeks, almost there!!!!!!!!! I've now had a taste of the hospital after spending 3 hours there on Friday night. I had a bright red bleed (not a whole lot of blood), so I called the hospital straight away. Anytime you are bleeding they want you to come in (unless it is old blood with lots of mucus which at this late in pregnancy, would be the mucus plug. Eww...). Hmmm...should we bring the hospital bag? We decided that we should, just in case. Oh, and the bag with all the snacks and drinks (very important!). We did have to add some things to it first, as it wasn't quite finished. The bag now lives in the car so it will always be ready. We arrived at 10pm, and they took me to a room which seemed to be used as some sort of check up/recovery/waiting for the doctor room that held 4 beds with curtains around each one (Aaron was parking the car). I was hooked up to a fetal heartbeat monitor and contraction monitor by a midwife as soon as I got there. We found the fetal heartbeat monitor is kinda like a campfire, you just can't stop watching it. Then the questions started. "Is the bleed from high in your vagina, or low." Um...if I knew that, I wouldn't need to be here now would I? "When was your last anti-d shot (because I have a negative blood type)?" Hmmm... week before last? You have my chart right there in your hand, why don't you open it?? "Why did you get your last anti-d shot?" Because they told me to. I certainly didn't invite a shot in my butt. What kind of a question is that? How am I supposed to answer that? "Where is your placenta." Now the only reason I knew the answer to that question is because I had an ultrasound to find out if it was too low still. I'm quite sure that normally, people don't know that. Seriously lady, have a gander at my file that is in your hot little hands, all this info and more is contained there. "What were you doing when you started bleeding." Oh the embarrassing question... I had just finished using the epi-no. I figured this is why I was bleeding, just a bit of over zealous inflation resulting in a little tear, but they have to be sure.... She said the baby is doing great, it seems like i've just had a small tear low down, not anything to do with the baby or my cervix, but I would need to wait for the doctor for the final "you can go home now." And so we waited.... And waited.... Apparently the ward was busy that night. Lots of babies being born. A couple of times I heard faint screaming followed closely by little baby cries. The rooms are mostly soundproof at least. Meanwhile, the person to the left of me (only separated by a curtain) was also attached to a fetal heart rate monitor, only her baby's heart rate was going crazy and kept setting off an alarm (which was driving us nuts, it was so loud, and continuously going off). Seems she can't go home until her baby's heart rate settles down into a normal range. A bit later, they wheeled someone in who had just had a baby and then gone into theatre for a small surgery. Some of her placenta did not come out and was stuck inside. She had to have it removed surgically and then they inflated a balloon inside her uterus to prevent it from collapsing (or something along those lines. Your only separated by a curtain, so you can hear everything, but at the same time, do you try actively not to hear, to you just casually listen, do you actively listen to find out what sort of problems you can have in your own labour, what do you do? I didn't hear every single work, so I'm not 100% sure about why the balloon was there, or when it would be removed. We could hear her baby crying, so it too was there with her. Every time Mushi moved around, his heart rate would go up, then back down again when he stopped. That is normal though. We were also amused watching the contraction monitor. It was usually quite low, between 10 and 20 (not that we know what those numbers meant), but then it climbed all the way to 80 for a little bit, then went back down. I didn't feel any pain or anything, my belly just felt a bit tight if you touched it. Hello Braxton Hicks. I thought I'd only had one of those (because I had one that was quite painful), but I've been proven wrong. I just didn't know that I was having them. Good uterus, try not to cause me too much pain.

Finally, 3 hours after coming in, we finally saw the doctor. I had to remove my clothing from my lower half to have an invasive exam. In goes Mr. Speculum, another person is there to shine a torch into my nether region, and the doc checks my cervix. No sign of trauma, cervix hasn't started softening or dilating yet, and all is well. I just tore myself a little tiny bit with my epi-no (I got it pretty big, but I got it the same size the day before. It really does feel like giving birth when you push it out when it's fairly big. Only it's not as big as a baby's head, so it gives you that feeling without all the pain. I feel much more empowered knowing the kind of feeling there will be though. It's not so scary anymore). Doctors orders "No sex or epi-no for a few days to let yourself heal, then you will be fine." We gathered all of our stuff (I brought water and a magazine, had taken off my shoes and coat), and then Aaron went to go get the car. Just when I thought we were free, the nurse came up and said to wait a couple of minutes, I may need a blood test. Awesome. Blood test at 1am while Aaron has already left to go get the car. Sure enough, they did want to take my blood. Wanted to make sure I had enough antibodies for the rh factor (you get them from the anti-d shot). I thought maybe I'd have to wait ages again for the doctor, but they were all about to perform a c-section, so they got to me right away so they could then go operate. And finally we got to go home. I think I will be more comfortable in the delivery room now after spending 3 hours in the hospital bed though, so it wasn't all bad.

We had a very busy day the next day. We woke up late, had an hour and 15 minutes to shower, eat, get ready, grocery shop, get some weight plates and weight bench, then get to our friends house for lunch. Needless to say, we were 45 minutes late, but that was still a really good effort I thought. Next up was a manicure party for another friends birthday (for me, Aaron stayed at the other friends house and played wii with the boys). We gave ourselves lots of time to get there, but it was pouring down rain and Sydney drivers are not so used to that, so traffic was crawling. Then we discovered none of us had the unit number we needed to go to and we couldn't get a hold of the boys to find out for us. Eventually we did though. We entered an apartment building, but oddly it didn't say it's address anywhere (helpful, I know). We decided chances are this is probably the right place, so we buzzed the unit number. Some man answered and didn't seem to speak a lot of english, or just had no idea what was going on, but buzzed us up. Hmmm.... We got in the lift where we finally found the address of the building (on a little plaque thing in the lift), and found we were not in the right place. We're not quite sure why he buzzed randoms like us up, but whatever floats your boat. We didn't go up though, so he was probably very confused after that. We did find the right place, and had a good time at the party.

As soon as I got home, Aaron and I were going to visit Grandma and The Jess for dinner. It was still raining out, and I was nervous, but it was time for me to drive all the way to Penrith (I'm learning to drive our manual car). I successfully got us there in one piece (after missing the entrance to the motorway and having to turn around). Long day, but good. Yesterday we had a good rest.

I have been studying the "Becoming an Australian Citizen" guide this week as I take the test tomorrow. Australians don't even know the answers to a lot of the questions. I don't really know why I need to know which Australian's over the years have won the nobel prize, why and what year, in order to be a citizen. Wouldn't speaking english fluently be more useful since Australia is an english speaking country? Some of the questions and info is good, especially if you come from a completely different culture and have no idea what would be expected of you as a citizen, but then some of it is just ridiculous. Oh well, I have to take the test to become a citizen, so wish me luck! FYI, the national flower is the golden wattle, and Australia's constitution came into effect 1 Jan 1901.

2009-06-15T14:49:00.000+10:00

Hmmm... I don't know what is going on with the blog, it seems some stuff from today's post is out of order (the stuff that is blue). I'm not sure how to fix it as before I post it I turn the text white, so when I go to edit it, I can't actually see any of it. I've tried highlighting the whole thing and then changing the colour to black, but for some reason, that only changes the colour of the bits that are blue. I'm puzzled....

2009-06-15T11:14:00.000+10:00

Pregnancy: 37 weeks 1 day
Total weight gain: 15.8kgs (34.83lbs)
Baby size (approx head to foot): 48.6cm (19.13in)
Baby weight (approx): 2.8kg (6.17lbs)

I've been getting nosebleeds on a near daily (nightly to be more accurate) basis. I woke up with one last night, and have had one 4 in the past 6 nights. Only my left nostril though, nothing from my right. I guess if the little blood vessels in my right nostril would like to escape, they will first have to emigrate to my left nostril. Then they can burst and go free just like their lefty neighbors. I'm beginning to think that maybe my left side is just defective. When I was little, it was one of my left toes that broke when my horse backed into a fence, scared the bollocks out of herself, jumped forward, and landed on my foot. I broke my left leg, and then a bone tumor and bone graft in my left leg (ok, so my leg broke because of the tumor, but that is not the point). It was my left that had a lump that needed a biopsy (cancer free, but not a fun process). My left eye's vision is worse then my right. And now, my left nostril likes to gush blood in the middle of the night (nosebleeds are normal for pregnant women. I asked at my last appointment just to be sure). It's no wonder Mushi likes to reside in the right side of my uterus.

I've finally bitten the bullet and given the epi-no a go. I can't say that it's at all pleasant, but each time I use it, I can blow up the blue silicone contraption a little bigger then the last time. Hopefully my lovely perineum will remember all the work I've put into it, and while I'm giving birth, not tear on me. I have to hold the contraption in place the entire time because it seems the female body doesn't like such torture and tries to push it out all by itself. I suppose that comes in handy during delivery though.

I am still having very vivid dreams (a normal part of being pregnant). The other night I woke myself up with my "don't tickle me" grunt/whingy noise, and really thought that Aaron was tickling my feet. Poor Aaron didn't know what was going on when I told him to stop tickling me. Turns out I was dreaming. Other dreams are quite vivid too, but I know they are not actually real because they usually include things like my pony talking to me, or being on the Island from Lost with Aaron trying to figure out what the heck is going on. It's the realistic dreams that cause problems. I couldn't figure out if I actually had a conversation with Aaron about going grocery shopping together, or if I dreamt the conversation. I had to ask him, only to find that it was indeed a dream. I like the strange dreams better, at least I know they aren't real.

height (measurement from pubic bone to top of uterus) was actually less then the week before because Mushi has descended into my pelvis (not all the way, but most of the way). I knew when he was doing it because of all the wiggling, but the next day, we could actually see that my belly was lower. At my last hospital appointment on Friday, my fundalMushi has moved down and they can't measure accurately when the head is in the pelvis (as it is lower then the pubic bone). This new position brings good and bad news. The good news is my lungs have a bit more space, as does my stomach, so I can eat a full meal without feeling sick. The back news is every time I stand up, I feel like I have to pee (due to a head putting pressure on my bladder).

How to torture a pregnant woman: Get a wonderful looking piece of chocolate cake (with strawberry on the side, and chocolate sauce zigzagging back and forth over the top), keep it in front of you for half an hour, but don't eat one little bit of it. Don't even touch the spoon. But, don't offer it to anyone else, just leave it there, making the pregnant woman next to you wonder the whole time if you are ever going to eat it. Aaron and I were on a comedy cruise around Sydney Harbour on Saturday, and that is exactly what happened. Aaron and I were both served the cheesecake (which was very yummy), but were hoping that they would do the traditional thing and alternate the 2 dishes with every other person. We had it all figured out before they started serving that we would go halves so we got to try both. The person next to me didn't take even one little taste of his cake, so I was tortured by it staring at me, wanting me to eat it for quite some time. By the time we docked, it was still sitting there, but the man who it belonged to had not come back to the table. I contemplated grabbing it many times, but we were at a table with lots of randoms, and I'm sure that would've looked a bit sketchy. I like to tell myself that it didn't taste very good as no one who had the chocolate cake finished it, and everyone who had the cheesecake left no remnants on their plates.

as her attire allowed her legs plenty of moving room. Her skirt only came down to the end of her bottom. I don't know how someone can leave the house in such clothing. 1) wouldn't they be cold, it's winter! 2) wouldn't they be "You may have seen our first guest on The Footy Show, or Rove Live. Give it up for (insert name here, I can't remember what his name is). Hmmm.... He certainly does look familiar.... Oh, they should have said "or you may have seen him keeping you in good spirits and amusing you during ad breaks if you have been in the audience for Ready Steady Cook." That is where I'd seen him before (which I thought was hilarious and random). He was very funny, especially when poking fun at the guy from Rooty Hill with a mullet at the first table. There were a couple of disturbances early in the night though. One of the passengers missed the boat and then got a water taxi to bring him to us in the middle of the harbour. It cost him $80 which was more then the cruise itself. We felt comforted after seeing the water taxi pull up though. At least we knew if my water broke or something, all we had to do was call a water taxi and we could high tail it off the boat (luckily we didn't need to). Later, a girl fell down the last couple of stairs from the top deck. I don't know how that happenedembarrassed (I would!)? 3)wouldn't they be worried that the tiny skirt would head north and expose their bottom and nether region?? 4) is it really necessary to show that much skin? The cruise was very fun though, we had a really good night out.

My pregnancy books are telling me to get as much rest as I can from now as labour is very tiring etc. Ok then, if the books say so... I'm going to spend half the day with my feet up. I like that idea.

2009-06-09T08:10:00.000+10:00

Pregnancy: 36 weeks 2 days
Total weight gain: 15.5kgs (34.17lbs)
Baby size (head to toe): 47cm (18.5in)
Baby weight (approx): 2.6kg (5.7lbs)

It seems I'm getting bigger and more awkward by the day. My involuntary grunting noises when getting up are getting louder, my feet swell more, I get more reflux, I have to pee more often, my internal organs are getting more squished, and feet in my ribs are becoming more frequent. But, it's all part of the experience, and I know that soon we will have a little bundle of joy. I am to the point where I just want to get it out of me though. I think you know you're ready when the "get it out of me" feeling becomes stronger then the fear of labour itself. I'm certainly getting to that point, and fast.

Last week was my first week off work. I feel so much less tired now that I don't have to wake up at 5:15 every morning. Now the alarm goes off at 6:30 (for Aaron), but I don't get up until 7 which is awesome!

The other night Aaron showed me a website called broken telephone picture (http://www.brokenpicturetelephone.com/). It's like telephone (chinese whispers for the aussies), but the first person writes something down (can be anything, like half human, half bear, half pig (I know that doesn't equate, but it's funny), eating a pie), then the next person has to draw it. The person after that gets the drawing and has to write it, then the next person draws it and so on. I don't think I've laughed so much since the hypnotist show in Vegas. I was laughing so hard, I was honestly scared that I might A) wet myself or B) prematurely break my waters. Luckily neither happened, but if it had, I would have been unsure if I had wet myself, or my waters had broken. I can just see that, going to hospital saying my waters broke, docs have a look, give me a puzzled expression, then tell me I must have wet myself because my waters are indeed intact. Note to self: do more pelvic floor exercises, just in case....

Speaking of that region, my shiny new epi-no came in the mail last week. What is an epi-no exactly, you ask? The epi-no is a contraption made of some sort of squishy, maybe soft plastic material that is attached to a little hand pump ball. You put the blue squishy oval thing in your nether region, then pump the ball so that the blue squishy thing expands, therefore stretching your perineum. It is supposed to make you less likely to tear or need an episiotomy during childbirth. As I've said before, anything to lower that risk, I'm going to try. You can also use it to strengthen your pelvic floor muscles before and after birth (so you don't wet yourself...).

My second baby shower (put on by my church) was on Saturday, and I had a lot of fun. There was a game where everyone had to bring a baby picture of themselves, then we had to guess which one was who. I only got 2 correct. Newborns don't look anything like what the older person will look like! I know I certainly didn't (I'll put a photo of myself on here just to prove my point...). There was so much food there! Cupcakes, cake, some sort of chocolate slice, peanut butter cookies, muffins, quiche (which was really really yummy!), it was all so tasty!!!!!!!! I got lots more good baby stuff too, which means we don't have to buy too much stuff.

Yesterday we went to the supermarket and fruit shop to get some groceries. I have been craving pudding for a week now (yes I'm strange, but we all know this), so we wandered around Coles looking for the pudding aisle, and couldn't find it anywhere! How dare Coles hide the pudding from me. They should have a giant flashing sign with arrows that points me in the right direction. Or at the very least put pudding (or even jello/jelly, since they'd be on the same aisle) on the sign that tells you what is in each aisle. I still don't have my pudding. I'm going to try a different coles on Wednesday.

We decided to go to Kmart while we were at the chase (the shopping centre where we went to coles and the fruit shop) to get a cute little dresser for Mushi that we had seen there a while back. The Chase is doing lots of renovating and remodelling, and adding of sections, and even though Kmart is staying exactly where it has been for years, Kmart is remodelling. Every time we go there, things are in a different spot. We wandered around the store for quite some time looking for said cute dresser with no luck. We finally asked someone who worked there (when we could find one that wasn't already trying to show someone else where to find something) who pointed us towards one end of the store. No dresser there. We asked someone else. They pointed us in a different direction. On our way over, we saw someone else and asked again (we had already been where we are going and didn't see any furniture). Person number 3 pointed us in an entirely different direction. We decided to follow 3rd person's directions via 2nd persons, just in case. Good decision, we found the dresser hiding on the back wall with a couple of other dressers just where person 2 told us they would be. They used to keep all of the furniture together, but it seems now everything is everywhere. At least we got the dresser. Now we actually have somewhere to put Mushi's clothes. Bonus, the dresser has a giraffe on it, is very cute, and was only $50.

I haven't said anything about the "baby brain" for a while now, but I've certainly still got it. We went to church on Sunday after eating dinner (we go to the evening service) only to discover when we got home that I had left the oven on the entire time. I'm glad I didn't burn the house down!

As of next week, I will be considered full term, so not long now!!!!!!!!!!!

2009-06-01T08:28:00.000+10:00

Pregnancy: 35 weeks 1 day
Total weight gain: 15 Kilos (33lbs)
Baby size (head to butt): 31cm (12.2in)
Baby size (head to foot): 45cm (17.7in)
Baby weight (approx): 2.3kg (5lbs)

I finally had my do I need a caesarian ultrasound on Wednesday. The appointment started out ok, the technician checked Mushi's size and measurements, which were all spot on what they should be, with Mushi's head down, and bum pretty much right under my boob (so where my stomach has migrated to, I'm not quite sure), laying on his/her side. I asked if I get a disc full of nice images like I did at my other ultrasounds (which were performed elsewhere, this one was at the hospital). She said no. Darn. I couldn't even see the screen as she was performing the ultrasound. At the other place, the screen is positioned so both the mom and the technician can see it, so the mom doesn't have to just stare at the ceiling the whole time. Then I was told I needed an internal ultrasound ("transvaginal" I believe is the technical term...). Not again. I'm not really a fan of being probed in my bits, but if it means I don't have to have a c-section, then go for it. I had to put on one of those open at the butt gowns and then hello camera (well, ultrasound instrument). Mushi's head is right down in my pelvis, so the technician tried to push the head up a little to allow some amniotic fluid to get under his head. Mushi was having none of that though. He seems quite comfortable down there and refused to move his head (and instead protested by kicking me in the ribs). The technician was amazed at how much Mushi was moving during the ultrasound. I told her he is playing games. Usually when you push on my stomach that means it's playtime, and Mushi pushes back. Clever little baby. Anyway, after much prodding, the end of the placenta could not be seen at all by the internal ultrasound as it was too far away (which is a good thing). In the end, it was determined that my placenta is 7cm from my cervix, and no scheduled caesarian is needed. My placenta used to be 7mm from my cervix, so that was great news.

Thursday was my last day of work. I finally get to sleep in!!!! They took me out to lunch and gave me a cute little polar fleece blanket with a zebra on it for the baby. Now I get to rest up before Mushi is born, get the room ready, etc.

I mentioned before that I like surprises, but not surprise shots. Well, I got another surprise shot on Friday. I really wish they would warn me. Maybe something like "on your next visit, you will need to get another anti-D shot." Although, then I may have been stressing about getting the shot (I HATE needles!), so maybe I don't want warning. The Jury is still out. This time the midwife asked me if I wanted it in the arm or the butt. What? I have a choice? I didn't get a choice last time. She said she likes to give people a choice. I asked her which hurt less, and she said the butt. Butt it is then. Last time it didn't really hurt when I was getting it, and it didn't hurt at all afterwards. This time, it was quite painful, and my butt was sore for hours afterwards. I think maybe that particular midwife needs some more practice giving shots. She was quite young, so I suppose she was not as experienced as the older midwife I had for my last butt shot. Luckily I don't have to have another until after Mushi is born. Word on the street is they won't be routinely giving negative blood type pregnant women anti-D anymore because it takes too many blood donations (they are made with blood or platelets or some part of human blood) to make them and there aren't enough donors. There also isn't a huge chance that the baby's blood will mix with the mothers before birth if you haven't had any sort of bleeding or anything. The midwife said that Mushi is thriving in there. I never tire of hearing that. The ultrasound tech said after taking all measurements, heart rate, etc. that he/she is perfect. Good baby.

I had my first baby shower on Saturday. The Jess (my sister in law) organised it, and had it at her and Grandma's house. The greek in The Jess (I call her the Jess, she calls me The Sheri, that is just how we are) really came out, and there was food everywhere. I certainly wasn't complaining! I even got to eat oreos. Finally, I've only been craving them for like 2 months. I didn't want to buy any because I knew I would eat the entire pack. We played some funny games. Guests had to team up look through magazines, and then cut and tape onto a piece of paper to make their idea of what Mushi will look like. Oh was that funny. There were 2 comical entries, and one realistic one. The realistic one was really good, they even had the eyebrows and hair. I got lots of good presents as well, which is really helpful considering all we really have so far is clothes. My host Mum Linda even made us the cutest quilt for the cot, as well as a cute little knitted sweater. My host sister Lauren knitted us some booties and a beanie that match the sweater. Awww..... At the end, everyone had to take some yarn and cut a length that they thought would be the measurement of my belly. Everyone but Lauren was WAY off!!!! The Jess' string was nearly as long as she is tall (she's not that tall, but still...). Come on people, I'm not that fat! Most pieces were at least a foot longer then necessary. Lauren was only off by about 3 inches. She said she guesstimated how big she would be if she were pregnant, and then halved that. You're funny Lozza! FYI, I'm 97cm (38in) around the belly at the moment. The month I got pregnant, my waist was 60cm (23in). Of course now I'm measuring the biggest part of my stomach, and then I was measuring my waist, the smallest part. I don't want to measure my hips/butt. I'm not game enough to see how much bigger they are.

My stomach looks even funnier now. Apart from the battle zone that is my belly button, I now have a line running all the way down the middle of my belly. It looks like I have dipped a very small paintbrush in the cheapest, most orange, ugly self tanner I could find, and then drew a line all the way from the top of my belly to my bikini line (well, I'm assuming it goes all the way down to there, but since I haven't actually been able to see my bikini line for some months now, that is debatable. Lucky it's not summer, fixing up my bikini line doesn't go so well when you can't actually see it). According to the pregnancy magazine I was reading on the weekend, this line usually appears around 14 weeks if you are going to get it. Some women don't. I guess I'm just a late bloomer.

2009-05-25T07:56:00.000+10:00

Pregnancy: 34 weeks 2 Days
Total weight gain: 14 kgs (30.86lbs) but I did weigh myself at night rather then first thing in the morning before I've eaten or had anything to drink....
Baby size (head to butt): 30cm (11.81in)
Baby size (head to foot): 45cm (17.71in)
Baby weight: 2.1kgs (4.6lbs)

34 weeks. Wow, not long now! Good thing too because I just keep getting bigger! I can't believe I have gained 30 pounds! If I sit too long, my back starts to ache, if I stand or walk for more then about 2 minutes, my feet swell. If I lie down (on my side of course, wouldn't want to cut off blood flow to Mushi) too long, my hips hurt. Lucky for me, my couch seems to be quite comfortable for long term sitting (with me sideways, taking up the entire couch, with my legs extended). Some chairs/benches/couches make me ache in 1 minute flat. The very worst culprit: the pews at church. Luckily we only have 6 more weeks until I can be comfortable in the pews once again. After lunchtime, I will have reflux for the rest of the day and half the night as well. I suppose this is not surprising considering that my stomach is now smushed way up, and I'm pretty sure is sitting nearly level with my boobs. It doesn't seem to hold much anymore either, and I can never finish my dinner. When you look at this depiction of a 34 week baby, you can understand why:
Ok, that little copy and paste thing didn't seem to work... I'll put it on the side with all the other photos. Sometimes cheeky little Mushi likes to kick me in the actual stomach, which really doesn't bode well in the reflux department.

I think when Mushi gets older, he/she will really like to play games with us. Already, Mushi plays games with Daddy while Mommy is sleeping at night. Aaron told me that when he comes to bed, he puts his hand on my belly and then Mushi will kick him and have a good old time for ages. How I can sleep through all of this, I'm not sure, but do. Mushi also likes to play the "poke my limb" game. He sticks out a limb (not sure which one, it's really hard to tell!) so we can feel it from the outside, then we push it, he takes it away, and then returns it in another spot where we poke it again (and repeat). Sometimes I think it's an elbow, sometimes a foot, but as I said, really hard to tell!

plate. Anyone who knows me well will be quite shocked/flabbergasted/amazed at something I did this week. I, Sheri Thomson, tried beef. That's right, you read that correctly. It's very hard to argue with Aaron's logic. He said to me "aren't roasted potatoes and sweet potatoes some of your favourite foods?" Why yes, they are, I really like them (we had them this week, prompting this little discussion). "And you used to always say you hated them until you tried them a couple of years ago." Uh oh, I see where this is going.... "So if you thought you hated potatoes and sweet potatoes because you didn't like them when you were little, then you tried them and loved them, then maybe you will like beef if you try it." Slam dunk, how can I disagree with that?? We made an agreement that next time we went to Bento-ya (a good excuse to go there really), he would get the teriyaki beef and me the chicken (because that is what I get every time we go there because I have never tasted such good teriyaki in all of my life), and I will try some of the beef. Nervousness rising.... Also, in exchange for trying the beef, Aaron would buy me some gelato (mmm...). The day in question came all too soon and I found myself with a bit of beef staring at me from between my chopsticks. "Keep an open mind," Aaron said "you're not going to like it if you convince yourself you won't before you try it." Ok, open mind. He decided to mark this fateful day with a photo of me about to eat the beef. Ok, just go for it (I know these thoughts should be in italics, but you know what? I just can't be bothered). I put scary beef in my mouth and started chewing. That's right, I didn't just swallow it, I actually chewed it (not like when I started eating peas...put some in, swallow whole, wash down with water, repeat). At first, I was pleasantly surprised. I quickly realised though, that the pleasant surprise was just the teriyaki sauce coating the beef. Once I got past that, I really didn't like the beef. I did swallow though, so that in itself is an accomplishment. Now we know I definitely do not like beef. Not because I tried it when I was like 2 and didn't like it then, but because I actually tried it in adulthood. It's been about 24 years since I last tried beef, and sorry beef, I still don't like you. You can moo on someone elsesGelato, here I come!!!!!!!!!!

Disturbingly, I saw what Aaron would look like pregnant this week. The men were encouraged to try on the "sympathy belly" at our antenatal class. I asked the teacher how much the belly weighs, and she said it would be fairly heavy as it represents a nearly full term baby. We were all curious after that, so she went off to find the exact amount in the brochure or manual. "8 kilos," she said. We all laughed. That is a lot less then any one of us has gained. Later they showed us a video of babies bonding with their parents. Even when they are newborns, they will look into your eyes for a couple of minutes. It was so cute! I keep finding myself getting cluckier by the day. I suppose it's all the hormones.

we went again (after Aaron picked me up in We have decided that we need to either get rid of the computer, or tv to make room for a small home gym to keep us fit and healthy. First we thought maybe we would get rid of the tv, get a tv tuner card for the computer, and get rid of the tv and stand (or keep both, but get a small computer desk to put in our room). Off to IKEA we went. We looked at some computer desks, but then realised that we probably should have measured the proposed desk area before purchasing. After navigating the maze filled to the brim with crazy shoppers that is IKEA, we went home. Next we decided that we would get a big tv with the same resolution as Aaron's monitor so he can still play games on it by plugging it into his computer, but we can still use it as a tv. Off to IKEAParramatta as I had a girlie night with The Jess and Romana. It took us about 20 minutes to find each other in Parramatta. Would have been easier except the Church Street mall cuts Church street in two and I was confused as to which side Aaron and the car were on...). We picked out a nice compact tv stand that would leave lots of room for our future exercise bike and weights, as well as a little dresser for Mushi. Completing the maze once more, we finally found ourselves at the self service pick up point (for those of you who have not yet ventured to IKEA, you find what you want from the displays, write down the aisle and row number, then go to the giant warehouse and pick out the boxes yourself). First up, new tv unit. Out of stock. That's ok, let's get Mushi's dresser. Out of stock. We must have good taste. Another fruitless trip to IKEA. Lucky though, Aaron got the new big tv later that day and I don't think it would have fit on the stand we chose. Apparently we didn't learn our lesson about measuring from our first trip. We did at least get a very cheap breakfast, mine was $2.00 and Aaron's $2.50. I think maybe the eggs were made from powder, but I suppose that is to be expected for such a cheap meal.

Later that day, I went to Equip, a Christian women's convention/conference at Darling Harbour. I have never seen so many women in my entire life. I went to the elective on Hospitality, which I found quite good. After, they had an afternoon tea, but no food. Mel, Katherine and I decided we were quite hungry, so, tea mugs in hand, 10 minutes until the main talk, name badges on, we set out to the shopping centre food court. We found a Macca's (McDonald's for you non aussies), and finally, we could satisfy our tummies. I'm sure people thought we were quite strange walking around the shopping centre with non disposable tea mugs. The talk started with, well, I'm not quite sure what you call it really, maybe dramatic reading? There was someone reading for each character in the book of Esther. There was also a narrator, who I think, should have a career in movie trailer voice overs. He was just that good. The talk was very good also. The only problem was I couldn't get comfortable. Even though the chairs were nice and cushy, no matter how I sat, some part of me would be very uncomfortable, usually my back. I'm just getting too big and awkward I think! I suppose traipsing around Parramatta as well as IKEA earlier that day didn't help things. I'm still not sure why, but as we were coming out of the conference, there were fireworks going off in the harbour. Some from stationary platforms (or something) out in the water, and others off the back of 2 jetskis. It wasn't a holiday or anything, but we were complaining, everyone loves fireworks! We ate dinner at Wagamama, where, of course, I got the teriyaki. Not as good as Bento-ya though. As I said no one beats the teriyaki at Bento-ya. Embarrassingly, my nose decided it was a good time to start dripping blood. At least we had all finished our meals by that time. Nothing to see her folks, just pregnant woman nose bleed! By the time I got home, I think my legs were about to fall off. For the first time, the feet swelling went past my feet, and all the way up to my knees. I think I walked around way too much that day.

Tomorrow I have my last ultrasound to see if my placenta has nicely moved itself up. I hope so, otherwise I will need a scheduled Cesarean! I am looking forward to seeing Mushi again though. Hopefully they won't accidentally tell me Mushi's sex. I'll have to tell them when I first arrive that we don't want to know.

2009-05-18T07:32:00.000+10:00

Pregnancy: 33 weeks 1 day
Total weight gain: 13kgs (28.66lbs)
Baby size (head to butt): 29cm (11.41in)
Baby weight: 1.9kgs (4.18lbs)

Boy am I getting bigger (even though I didn't gain any weight...)! My belly button has pretty much popped all the way out (except for a little at the bottom, but I'm not entirely sure that will pop out), and I've had a few people tell me I look like I've swallowed a rather large basketball. I currently have one tiny stretch mark located on my belly between where my belly button ring went in, and where it came out. As I said before, that part of just can't stretch anymore! Now my belly button looks a bit like a war zone. First you have the target freckle, next to that (but still on my actual belly button) are two reddish wrinkles (that before this week had never seen the light of day). Move a bit north and you come to stretched out belly ring exit hole, little purple stretch mark on top of that, then stretched out belly button entry hole at the top. Oh, and the holes are quite red from all the stretching. I hate to think what they will look like when my tummy goes back to normal size (I'm telling you Mom, I will get it back to normal size!).

People keep telling me that I "look tired." Now I know they are trying to be sympathetic, but really, what they are saying is "you look a bit crap today." They usually follow up the tired comment with "how long have you got to go?" Conversation according to me: "You look a bit crap today. Good thing you don't have long to go, I can't imagine how crap you would look by the end if you had a long time to go." Thanks people. I much prefer the people that tell me I "look healthy." I've had quite a few people say that as well. I think they are the people who have been pregnant themselves, or had a spouse that was pregnant, and know that a compliment is much better then telling me I look crap. Here is a little etiquette guide to use when talking/interacting with a pregnant woman:

1. NEVER tell us we look tired. In our mind that says we look a bit crap, bags under the eyes, droopy eyelids, and so forth. We know we are tired and look a bit crap, but we certainly don't need you to tell us that.

2. Compliment us. Tell us we look healthy, that translates to "wow, you must be eating all the right things, exercising, and taking wonderful care of your baby. Good job!" Or, even better, tell us we are glowing. Even if we are not either of those things, it will still make our day (because involuntary grunting noises when we try to pick ourselves up off the couch or chair, and waddling like a duck don't make us feel overly wonderful).

3. If we are carrying something, offer to help (we like the gesture and attention), but if we say no, don't insist (and then take our bag while we are trying to fight for bag retention), that only makes us feel completely useless (and this after being told we look crap, I mean "tired" really doesn't go over well in our minds). We are pregnant, not quadriplegic. It's not like we are carrying a backpack full of bricks.

4. If the train or bus, etc. is full, offer us your seat. We get swollen uncomfortable feet, and really enjoy sitting down if we need to. Again, if we say no, don't insist. Usually if we say no, we are not quite as pregnant as you might think, and enjoy standing up while we still can (we still like the initial gesture of offering though).

5. Don't get annoyed or cranky with us when we forget things/forget to do things, etc. We have the "baby brain" and would forget our head if it wasn't attached. We genuinely don't mean to forget what you said/did/told us/what we were supposed to do, and we do feel bad for forgetting.

Once again, Aaron and I had an antenatal class on Thursday. We find these very informative, but sometimes they are rather frightening at the same time. Last week, they showed us an ancient torture device. Metal, large, a bit like gigantic salad servers. They could only be used for torture. But no, they were forceps! No thank you, do not come near me with those things or I will punch you in the nose! I don't know if you've ever seen forceps, but as I said, LARGE, metal, a bit like a giant pair of salad tongs. Girls, think giant metal speculum from hell. Not only does the torture device actually have to go um... inside, but you also need an episiotomy for them to be able to make an exit with the baby. Episiotomy to me seems like torture also. They also passed around a vacuum (the pulling out baby kind, nothing like the household cleaning kind, don't worry). This device was much more forgiving, and not bigger then the baby's head, so no need for the dreaded episotomy. Luckily they say forceps are not used very much anymore.

Later in the class, they showed us another birth video (again from the 80s). This time the woman had an active birth, on the ground on all fours. The head came out during a contraction, but what I didn't realise until then (I suppose I didn't really think about it) is that the head then just kinda sits there, for what seemed like hours waiting for the next contraction. I found that bit quite disturbing. The baby still had it's eyes closed, wasn't breathing or moving yet, it looked a bit dead, and just sitting there, hanging out of the mom. There was blood tinged mucus coming out of the baby's nose, which they told us was being expelled from it's lungs by the pressure of fitting through the birth canal. This is a good thing, otherwise the baby couldn't breathe upon full exit due to it's lungs being filled with the amniotic fluid it's been "breathing" in. Of course it might have been even more disturbing if the baby was looking around, and/or crying. On the next contraction, out popped all of baby, it started crying/moving/breathing, and all was well. We were also told that sometimes the mother, amongst all that pushing, does a bit of a poo. Now that's all well and good (well, extremely embarrassing, and probably horrifying for her husband to watch), but as I said, the head comes out and then sits there. If you did do a poo with all that pushing, depending on your position (remember, laying down on the bed is not the optimal position for giving birth), you could be pooing on your baby's head. Maybe the midwives catch it, I'm not sure, but hopefully I won't be a pooer as I'd like our baby to come out poo free.

I realised the other day that Mushi hiccups a lot. I don't know if he just started doing it, or if I just hadn't noticed when he was head up, but I feel it at least once per day now. Since he is in the correct position (head down and facing my spine), his cute little hiccups seem to reverberate through my intestines. I suppose that makes since as the little head is right next to my innards. Sometimes, I know he has his head turned to the side (usually when I'm laying in bed) because the hiccup reverberation is felt on my side, rather then my insides. FYI, hiccuping is normal for babies in utero, and once they are born.

I've started packing my hospital bag. I don't think the baby will come early, but you never know, and I like to be organised. I have all the important bits in there, muesli bars, fruit cups, gatorade, and hard candy. Apparently you can get a bit hungry while you are in 1st stage. Plus your "support person" will need some sustenance. I should probably start packing all the other stuff I will need as well (clothes, etc.). The hospital has a no budgie smugglers (speedos) or underwear policy for men, so I will also need to pack Aaron a pair of boardies (for assisting me in the bath and shower). He is also not allowed to be naked. The midwives see enough nudity in the women, they don't need it in the men too (or maybe they would be too distracted if there were naked men running around). Aaron doesn't really like to parade around naked, nor does he own any budgie smugglers , so I think we will be fine (although the guy in the 80s birthing video was wearing budgie smugglers. Maybe he is the reason for said policy?).

Yay, a nice lady who lives in the building I work in just told me that I look good, and pregnancy suits me. In your face all those who tell me I "look tired!"

2009-05-11T08:18:00.000+10:00

Pregnancy: 32 weeks 1 day
Total weight gain: 13kg (28.66lbs - it sounds so much better in kg's!)
Baby size: 28cm (11.02in) head to butt
Baby weight: 1.7kg (3.75lb)

Aaron and I have decided to use cloth nappies (well, Aaron doesn't really want to be shaking poo into the toilet instead of just folding up a disposable nappy, but I said he could take off the nappy, then give it to me). Aaron was asking me how much we would save this way, so, bored at work one day, I decided to do a comparison. The cheapest bulk buy disposables I could find came out at 31 cents per nappy, which on average would cost about $1355 per year, times 2 years (I'm not quite sure when you start potty training, but we'll go with 2 years to make things easier...) = $2710. Then of course, when you have another baby, you need to pay all of that again. My preferred brand of cloth nappies (the fitted, absorbent, waterproof outer layer, soft inner layer, with moisture catching inserts kind), Pea Pods, are $499 for 25 of them (including inserts, etc.), which accommodate baby from newborn to 9 months. Then you get another kit for the same price, which accommodates 9 months to 3 years (in case you have a very large baby, or a slow learner...). Total $998. Of course, you then get to use the same nappies for your next child(ren). I haven't factored in washing costs, mainly because I can't be bothered, but also because I have no idea how much money a load of washing costs. Detergent is pretty cheap, and you only need to wash them in half strength detergent, and we don't pay for water, it is included in the rent, then I will hang them on the line to dry. So, I can't see the washing costing $1700 over 2 years. I'm pretty sure we don't pay that much for electricity for 2 years of electricity as it is.

We went to our Antenatal class as usual on Thursday. This time, we learned about pain relief options and techniques. The teacher brought in a TENS machine (Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation) and let us try it out. When it got around to me, I put it on my arm (in labour you put it on your lower back, but the arm is easier for a trial), pushed the button, and turned the dial. I felt absolutely nothing. I kept turning. Nothing. I turned it all the way up, and still nothing. I was beginning to think there was something seriously wrong with me. Then someone realised that the machine had come unhooked from the pads attached to my arm. Relief, nothing wrong with me after all. I plugged it back in, turned it on, and startled every single person in the class when I jumped so far out of my seat I almost hit the ceiling. I didn't know I could jump that high. Usually I can't jump very well at all (height wise, I'm sure I could cover some ground if I wanted to). I forgot to turn the dial back down to minimum output before plugging it back in.... It didn't hurt, but boy did it startle me (and everyone else)! Later in the class we had big posters that we had to fill out as groups. One poster for each type of pain relief, with the pros and cons for mother, and for baby. One cheeky group put risk of electrocution - like Sheri, as a negative for the TENS machine. We are going to hire one of these contraptions, so at least I've learned what not to do with it!

The hospital also wanted us to know the full weight of making the decision to get an epidural. One nice male volunteer had to go before the class and don a lovely "sympathy belly." Anyone who has seen '10 Things I Hate About You' has seen one of these. The weighted vest with boobs and pregnant belly. Male Volunteer (can't remember his name at the moment) then had to sit in a chair while teacher told us everything that happens when you get an epidural, complete with mock IV lines, etc. By the end, I was determined not to have an epidural even more. Not only do you have the epidural itself (which is a hideously large hollow needle that, surprise!, has a tube inside that stays in your spine (well, not actual spine, but just outside the spinal column) so they can top it up), but you will also need a catheter (as you can't feel your lower self, and therefore can't feel your bladder and may well wee all over yourself, the bed, and everyone else), an I.V, and maybe something else too (I can't remember). Male Volunteer looked rather like a science experiment by the time everything was attached. There were tubes and things everywhere. Not only that, but they actually passed around an epidural needle. How to really really scare a pregnant woman: show her an epidural needle!!! OH MY was that thing GINORMOUS!!! Teacher (can't remember her name either...) said we should all have a plan in place before labour and tell our partners our wishes. I told Aaron to only let me have an epidural if I was screaming for one, and we had tried every other possible pain relief method (TENS, bath, position, massage, gas, morphine (they don't use pethadine anymore), etc.), and was still screaming for one. I figure if that is the case, then I must really really need one. There is no other possible way I want all those needles anywhere near me (unless I have to have a Caesar, then I don't really want to have my belly cut open without one. I think that would be far worse...).

On a better note, I tried the slow cooker (or crockpot for you americans) for the first time last week. I had my reservations, but I think my chicken stroganoff turned out quite tasty. It was so easy too; mix everything up, put it in, go about your daily business, then dish it up 5-6 hours later. Easiest home made dinner ever! I think it will come in very useful when Mushi is born.

Speaking of Mushi, his/her favourite new position seems to be foot in my right rib. It is rather uncomfortable, but at the same time, I still like feeling him move, to know that he is still alive and doing well in there. There's nothing like feeling your baby moving around in your uterus. It's also fun to feel my belly with my hand while he is moving. Then I can feel it from the inside and out. I can push on most of my belly which will be relatively pushable, then I come to a foot or elbow or something, and it is very hard. Aaron also likes to feel Mushi moving. It was quite comical when he decided to turn from head up to head down. My whole belly was moving every which way for a good 10 minutes. Aaron was there to witness it too. I didn't know what Mushi was doing at the time, but realised later that he was correcting his breech position. As I said before: Good baby.

2009-05-05T07:20:00.000+10:00

Pregnancy: 31 weeks 2 days (only 9 weeks to go!!)
Total weight gain: 12kg (26.45lbs ARGH!)
Baby size (head to butt): 27.5cm (10.82in)
Baby weight: 1.5kg (3.3lbs)

So I finally found the scales after moving, and put new batteries in it (it's one of those swish ones with BMI, water percentage, etc. as well as weight...), only to find that I now weigh (gasp) SIXTY KILOGRAMS!!!! My scale hardly ever sees 50kg, let alone 60. I've been reading Up The Duff, a week by week pregnancy diary by a very funny Australian woman. She had gained 17kgs by week 31, so I don't feel quite so bad. I'm not quite sure where all that extra weight has gone though. I can still fit into my pre-pregnancy jeans. Well, I put them on, zip them half way up, and then use the belly belt to fasten them. After halfway up you get to belly country, so obviously they are not going to fit over my baby belly. Point being, my butt has not expanded very much, it still fits into my jeans. I haven't purchased any maternity clothing what so ever (I just buy my normal Aus size 8 shirts, but get styles that are quite long and cover my half zipped pants). My belly is not super huge, my arms aren't flabby, my face isn't fat. So where did all that weight go? The midwife even said there is hardly any fat on my stomach at all, so it is really easy to hear Mushi's heartbeat. She had to turn her monitor thing down because it was coming in so loudly. She also said he/she is thriving in there, is the right size, and luckily, has been a very good baby and turned so he/she is no longer breech. Good baby.

One day last week I arrived at work, then about 10 minutes later my nose started gushing (well that's an exaggeration, but it was dripping) blood. I sat at my little concierge desk with a kleenex hanging out of my nose with blood on it, still greeting people as they went by. I'm sure I looked very professional. My nose bled for about 10-15 minutes, but that whole time, not one person noticed (or they did, but didn't want to say anything). This proves my theory that they don't actually say hi because they want to, but because they feel they have to. Some don't even look over when they say hi back to me. At least they are being somewhat polite. Maybe they just didn't want to say anything because they were on their way to work and didn't want to be late.

Last week Aaron and I put a night aside to set up our "wall of awesome." We now have a very large shelving unit that takes up most of one wall in our living room. And this large shelving unit is filled to the brim with (wait for it...) BOARD GAMES! That's right, we have so many, that we can make a wall of awesome. I meant to take a photo of our wall of awesome, to put on here, but then I didn't. I will do it today, so check back tomorrow for photos. We are waiting for 3 more board games to arrive in the post. 2 are on pre order though, so they may take a while.

Saturday we had an all day early parenting workshop. How to swaddle, bathe, soothe, etc. your baby. It was very helpful. There were all of these infant sized dolls to practise things with. Mostly though people would put them in funny positions (mexican wave, headstand, etc) while no one was looking. The knitted boob also made an appearance when we learned about breastfeeding positions. I don't know about you, but I've never heard of a pattern to knit a boob. There was one very brave man there. His wife is very very pregnant, due in a couple of weeks and didn't come to the class because she couldn't sit in the chairs all day. This brave man however, came on his own. I would find it hard to come on my own, and I'm the primary carer, the milk factory, the giver of birth. I can't imagine coming on my own if I were a man. Hats off to you brave man.

I told you a while back about my unfortunate belly button freckle that makes my belly button look like a target. Well now it looks like someone has tried to hit the target with something only to miss, and hit twice just above it. It seems the entry and exit for my belly button ring (which I took out long ago as it was starting to look ridiculous) have both stretched as much as they can, and are not turning red as they don't want to stretch any more. The holes also didn't used to be that far above my actual belly button, but I suppose under pressure, they decided to head north for a better chance of survival. Lucky I didn't put any laundry this morning, it's now started raining. Sorry, that was a random thought. I almost put some in this morning.

I've noticed that people around here don't seem to know how to drive. Yesterday when I was walking to the bus stop after work, I was crossing the street at the pedestrian crossing part of a roundabout. I was nearly to the refuge (in the middle of the road), only one leg still in the road, when a taxi came flying around the corner and honked at me. I looked before crossing, and there was no one coming. So excuse me Mr. Crazy Taxi Man, how dare I be crossing the road at a pedestrian crossing. I just can't believe he honked at me, like I was doing something wrong. Back to driving school for you Crazy Taxi Man! This morning, on my way to work, I had another incident at the very same roundabout. I had crossed the first part of the road, and was walking in the refuge in the middle, scanning for cars coming as I was walking. There was a car coming from my left, but he had his right blinker on, so I continued to cross. This crazy driver, with his right blinker still on, continued to go straight, and had to slow right down while I was crossing the road. Hmmm...Last time I checked, you don't put your blinker on when going straight through a roundabout. Maybe the rules have changed since last week??

Lately when I try to go to sleep, Mushi decides it's time to practise his Tae Kwon Do skills on my insides. Not even a minute after I lie down, it's practise time. Makes it very difficult to go to sleep, not to mention hard on my insides. For a little baby, Mushi sure is strong! The only problem with Mushi turning out of breech is the kicking. He used to kick the lower part of my belly, and towards the outside (I think he was posterior too), but now, he kicks my ribs, and all the other innards around that are smushed up around that area. He is very active too. They say if you don't feel your baby move 10 times in a day to go get checked out. I feel Mushi moving probably a hundred times per day.

2009-04-27T08:42:00.000+10:00

Pregnancy: 30 weeks 1 day
Total weight gain: scale ran out of batteries.... check next week
Baby size (head to butt): 27cm (10.62in)
Baby weight: 1.3kgs (2.86lbs)

It's crazy to think that in 7-10 weeks (considered "full term at 37 weeks, but due date is calculated at 40 weeks), we will have a little baby. That is really not that long. I'm kind of freaking out, we haven't picked up the crib, bassinet, or pretty much anything else yet!! We need to get on that ASAP so I can nest in Mushi's room and get it all ready. Yesterday Aaron and I walked up the road to a baby shop (pre-loved, new, and hire) and had a look around. We bought a really cute little Noah's Ark puzzle toy. It even has some hebrew (I think that is what it is, Trish told me, but I can't remember if it was hebrew or greek or whatever other ancient language the Noah's Ark part of the bible is written in) on written on it. The artist musn't have done his research too carefully though as in the background of the magnetic portion of the toy is another smaller fishing type boat. I'm pretty sure the bible says there was only the Ark floating around during the flood, and not random little fishing boats as well, but we'll overlook that... the toy is cute anyway.

A month of so ago, Aaron shared a photo from his RSS feed (um... Internet reader thingy, no idea what it stands for) that showed photos of funny mobile phone towers see them here http://waynesword.palomar.edu/faketree.htm). It seems these days they are trying to make them inconspicuous by fashioning them to look like trees. They still look pretty fake though. When we moved, I was waiting for the bus to work when I spotted a funny looking tree behind the petrol station. After studying it for a few minutes, I determined that said tree was indeed a mobile phone tower. There is no way that plasticy looking tree was real. I kept telling Aaron to look out for it because it was so funny, but he came back saying he couldn't see a cell phone tower tree. Hmmm.... Finally, when we were driving back from Penrith this weekend, I noticed some other trees that looked just like the cell phone tower tree, which did make me feel a little bit silly. Turns out, it's not a cell phone tower tree at all, but a real tree. In my defense, it doesn't look like all the gum trees surrounding it, and it does look very plasticy. Note to brain: after baby is born, please work properly again. At least I was amused for a week.

Oh, FYI, the bowls were in the cupboard of our old place, I did forget to pack them. They are nicely in the cupboards of our new place now.

The other day, I was making a roast dinner (roast chicken, potatoes, sweet potato and corn). The chicken had been in the oven for an hour, so it was time to put in the potatoes. I grabbed the oven mitts off the fridge (they have magnets at the top to hold them on the fridge), and took the pan out of the oven. I took off the oven mitts and put them on the counter. I would need them to put the chicken back in the oven. After putting the potatoes in the pan with the chicken (they taste so darn good when cooked in the chicken juice!), I put the mitts back on and was about a millimetre from touching the pan. To my horror, I realised that I wasn't wearing the oven mitts at all, but instead, I donned the bright pink, melt to your skin if you touch a hot pan, dish gloves that were sitting on the edge of the sink next to the oven mitts. Oh that was close. The absentminded baby brain at work again!

Thursday we had our third antenatal class. We got to go on a tour of the delivery suites. Luckily, the birthing rooms are all single occupant. I don't have to push a human being out of me while listening to someone cursing loudly while also pushing a human being out right next to me. You can adjust the lighting to make it darker in there, play CDs, have some snacks, use the shower or bath. There's even a sofa to sit on. The bed itself goes into wacky positions so you can squat on it, make it look like a giant throne. There is an exercise ball and mats if I want to kneel on the floor over the ball or something. I can pretty much give birth in whatever position I darn well feel like. That's good, I'd rather not lay on my back with my feet in the stirrups (it makes labour more difficult and makes you tear easier). The rooms are also very noise proof so if I scream bloody murder, no one on the outside will hear me. I'm hoping it won't come to that.... If the baby needs oxygen or extra warmth or something, there is a special crib in the room. There is no nursery, the baby stays with you. Unless of course, it needs intensive care, there is a special ward for that. I was quite annoyed about what they said about water births though. I was told during all of my check ups at the hospital that a water birth is fine at RNS as long as I was in one of the rooms with a bath (2 of them do not have baths, the rest do). They never told me that it also depends on which midwives are on duty. You can only have a proper water birth if there is a midwife on duty who is accredited with such things, and not all of them are. I much would have preferred it if they told me that to begin with instead of just saying no problem and writing water birth on my yellow card. It's not so bad though, even if no accredited midwives are on duty, I can still be in the bath right up until it's time for the baby to come out. That's ok I guess, just not as good as actually having Mushi in the water and then pulling him/her out (of the water) myself. This of course also depends on if I can have a natural birth anyway. I still have to have an ultrasound (at 32, 34, or 36 weeks, I can't remember which) to determine if my placenta has moved up. If not, I will have to have a C-section. I'd much rather push a human being out of me then have a c-section any day.

The door to the delivery suite used to be on street level so cars could drive straight up to it and the labouring women could go straight in. They no longer do that though. Over zealous husbands used to accidentally run the car through the doors in their frantic "oh no, my wife is in labour, must get her to hospital" panic. Now the new maternity ward is not on ground level and you need to take an elevator to it. Probably for the best. I hear they had to replace the doors way too many times.

The Jess and I are having an audition to be on Ready Steady Cook on Wednesday, so wish us luck!

2009-04-21T07:17:00.000+10:00

Pregnancy: 29 weeks 2 Days
Total weight gain: not sure, too busy packing, moving and unpacking....
Baby size (head to butt): 26cm (10.23in)
Baby weight: 1.15kgs (2.53lbs)

Just a word of warning with this post: If something doesn't make any sense at all, or if I'm rambling about anything or nothing, it is because I'm very very tired from working like a mad woman packing/moving/unpacking for the last week. I know I should have a rest, but there are things to be done darn it! Aaron said to me yesterday "you know you only work 4 hours per day because you are pregnant and need a rest right?" Me: "Yes, but I NEED to unpack everything!" Apparently I don't understand that things don't all have to be done at once, and can take my time. I'll work on that. My feet are still swollen from all the packing (I packed while Aaron was at work), and unpacking (again while Aaron is at work), but the sleep last night helped. I'll have a nice bath and a nap (not at the same time of course...) when I get home.

Our new place is lovely (can't remember if I told you about it last week, so here we go again if I did. Sorry). Wait, I think I did describe it last week, so I won't do it again. I could just look at the blog for myself, but I can't be bothered. We did find out that there are lots of cockroaches in our new place. Had we found this out when we first got the keys, we could have roach bombed it, but now it's too late. I don't want to be breathing in fumes that kill things. I don't think Mushi would appreciate that very much! The cans say you can re enter a room after 2 hours, but of course, the can doesn't allow for paranoid pregnant women. Instead, we put out a lure'n'kill in every room. They seem to be doing the job quite nicely (although a lot slower then the bomb). I spent all day last Friday scrubbing the inside of the cupboards which were filled with roach dander and poo, as well as more spiders then I think I've seen my entire life. Not poisionous ones (I don't think anyway. They looked like daddy longleggs to me. Oh dear, I just spelled leg with 2 gg's. Special...).

Yesterday I unpacked pretty much everything that was left to unpack (Aaron and I got a lot of it done on Sunday, and I got the kitchen pretty much done on Saturday). After unpacking every single box, I discovered a problem. Where are all the bowls? I'm not talking about just the small bowls, or just the large ones, I'm talking about every single bowl that we own (apart from the one that was in the dishwasher that I remembered to bring last minute). How do you lose an entire large box full of bowls? I looked in the car, in every room of the house, everywhere, but still, the bowls are nowhere to be seen. So how do you lose a box full of bowls? Well, you get a pregnant woman to do the packing, that's how. I'm pretty sure I forgot to pack them at all. I think they are still sitting happily in the cupboard at the old unit. I thought I remembered packing them, and was adamant that I had. But then, I really thought about it, and my memory was putting the large fruit bowl stacked with the other large bowls after washing it. I was assuming that was stacking it in a box, but the more I think about it, the more I'm sure it was the cupboard and not a box. Darn pregnancy brain! Luckily I'm going there today for the final inspection, so I can have a look. Unluckily, I will have to explain to the real estate agent why there is a cupboard full of bowls, and that I will need to keep my keys for one extra day to get said bowls when Aaron returns home from work. I can't exactly lug an entire box of bowls on the bus (or on the walk to the bus).

We had our second antenatal class on Thursday. The infamous knitted uterus made it's first appearance, complete with fake back, and knitted placenta and umbilical cord. I hope that's not what my uterus actually looks like (or baby for that matter!). We were given some homework as well, a photocopied sheet of a crying baby. Now we should have done the homework straight away, but of course, we didn't. I can't remember now if we are supposed to list reasons why babies cry, or what to do when they do cry. If we chose one and then it turns out to be the other, we are going to look very silly indeed.

Quite a few nights last week Mushi was having his party at 3am. I think he was trying to reproduce the get down tonight video from YouTube (see below). That's what it feels like anyway.

That's all for now, see you (well, write) next week!

2009-04-13T10:16:00.000+10:00

Pregnancy: 28 weeks 1 Day
Total weight gain: 9 Kilos (but the bump and baby are bigger. Maybe the ass has gotten smaller??)
Baby size: 25cm 9.84in (head to butt)
Baby weight: 1 Kilo (2.2lbs)

Since being pregnant, I have seen the inside of my belly button for the very first time. Before pregnancy, my belly button was just a slit (which I covered with a piercing because I didn't like it). Now though, the inside is about to become the outside. For a short while, I had a normal belly button, open, but with the inside nicely inside. Currently my belly button looks like something that should be used for target practise. There's the normal outside of the belly button, making the first ring of the target, but then comes the bullseye - I have quite a large freckle right in the middle of the inside of my belly button (which is nearly the outside now, making it look like a bullseye). So as if having a temporary outie isn't bad enough, my temporary outie looks like it's looking at you. I might have already told you about my crazy freckle, and if so, I apologise...I have the baby brain.

The other week I went to put something in the microwave, and something caught my eye, making me let out an involuntary little scream (I am a girl, what can I say). On closer inspection, I could see the offending movement was none other then a cockroach, the first one we have seen inside our apartment (oops, I lie, it was the second). This one though, was very unusual. This one is residing in between the outside glass and the don't-let-the-microwaves-through mesh in our microwave. Now for the bigger issue here: How did said cockroach get there? The mesh is far too small for even a baby cockroach to get through, or an egg for that matter (they are about the size of sunflower seeds with the shell on). There is no opening between the glass and the mesh, nothing is out of place. He musn't be able to get out either because he still lives there. That is right, we have had a cockroach living in our microwave for about 2 weeks now. We can't get it out, he can't get himself out. I still get a fright every time I go to put something in the microwave. It's just not natural to have something living in there (and with the baby brain, I always forget about it until I go to put something in there and see him crawling around out of the corner of my eye). Needless to say, we are not taking the microwave with us to the new unit. We will get a new one (and hope a cockroach doesn't magically appear).

The other day some brand new tenants arrived to live in one of the apartments where I work. They were fresh off the plane from Japan, and don't speak a word of english. About an hour after they arrived, they came down to the concierge desk (where I work) and tried to tell me something. They kept saying garage, and making a some sort of hand movement that was like opening a door. Of course I had no idea what they were on about, so finally they got their real estate agent Yuka (who speaks beautiful English and Japanese) on the phone to translate. Yuka told me that they had accidentally thrown away one of their passports and thrown the garbage bag down the garbage chute. We had a brand new manager who was in his second day on the job, so he got a nice initiation picking through all the trash in the garbage room with me, searching for the passport. He did finally find a bag containing some Japanese garbage (it had Japanese writing on it), but no passport. I came out and told the upset Japanese tenants (via Yuka), who then insisted that there was not one, but 2 bags of rubbish (how you make 2 bags of rubbish in one hour I do not know). This time new boss had a look on his own. After about 30 mins of searching, he did not find anything. Wouldn't you know it, later that day the tenants came down with big smiles and held up the passport for me to see. They had never thrown them away after all, but put them in a drawer in their apartment (next time maybe look through apartment before getting people to dig through rubbish??). Speaking of them, they just walked by and smiled and waved at me and said sorry (I'm at work). Aww they are cute (they are quite elderly).

On Thursday night, Aaron and I started our very first antenatal class, Birth and Beyond, at the hospital. As per every antenatal class that has ever existed in movies, we were shown a video of an actual birth. I must say though, it didn't look quite as bad as I suspected. We also had to do an exercise about what will change when the baby arrives. The girls were to make one poster of things, and the boys another. It was quite funny to see the difference in the poster. The boys' poster had things like: less time for fishing, more toy magazines laying around (which to them was a good thing as they like toys). Ours was more like: Less time as a couple (bad thing), gives you a sense of purpose. Aaron told me that one of the guys said "less time for titty bars." Then another said "or maybe more time." Then another concluded "ok, maybe the same amount of time for titty bars." Luckily, I'm pretty sure they were joking. We, on the other hand, were discussing how our babies all liked to wake us up at 3 or 3:30 in the morning to have a party in the uterus.

Aaron and I went to Trish and Grandma's house on Friday night (and so did The Jess and Shane) for a nice family Easter dinner. I would highly recommend staying out of the kitchen while Trish and Grandma are doing any sort of food preparation involving knives. They are both animated hand talkers, and they seem to forget they have a knife in their hands when talking. Grandma came to within 2 inches of The Jess' ear. I thought she was going to be the new Chopper Reid. We always laugh (and are a bit scared) when we see them with knives. If only we brought the video camera. They don't mean to be funny, but goodness me, they are hilarious. I'm just surprised there has never been an accident. I suppose that is because we all keep on our toes when we know they have a knife....

When I was little, my mom (I mean the Easter bunny) used to hide chocolate eggs around the house on Easter morning for my brother and I to find. I always thought that was quite fun (and um...still do), so this year, I hid some chocolates for Aaron to find on Easter morning. All was well until he only had one left, the first one (of 8) that I hid. I couldn't for the life of me remember where I hid that egg (and I had only hidden them about 10 minutes before). So, Aaron and I both searched. We still hadn't found it some time later and gave up, figuring we would find it. I did eventually find it. I was squatting next to Aaron's desk getting something out of his backpack when I saw it staring at me from on top the CD filer thing under Aaron's desk. That is the baby brain for you. You just forget everything!

2009-04-07T07:35:00.000+10:00

Pregnancy: 27 weeks 2 days
Total weight gain: 9 Kilos (although last time I weighed myself at night, and this time I weighed myself first thing in the morning)
Baby size (approx): 24cm (9.45in) head to bum (excluding legs)
Baby weight (approx): 910g (2lbs) (although all the books differ a little on this figure)

I like surprises, Aaron bringing me fresh strawberries, or making me a showbag for Easter, etc, but there are some surprises that I would really rather not get. I had my check up with the midwives at the hospital on Thursday, and SURPRISE had to have blood drawn. Now, surprise blood draws are certainly not my idea of a good time, and I was none too impressed. In the future, I would like to be warned about upcoming needles so I can prepare myself for them mentally (I HATE needles). They had to test me to see if I had antibodies to the Rh factor (as my blood is a negative blood type which only about 10% of the population has). I knew that I would be needing a shot of anti-D, but was never told they first had to test my blood. Rude! So most of you are probably wondering what on earth I am talking about. If a pregnant woman has a negative blood type, chances are her baby has a positive blood type (as 90% of the population does). If the baby's blood somehow gets into the mothers blood stream (which can happen during pregnancy, but mostly happens during birth), the mothers blood attacks the baby's and the baby can become very anemic. That is why at 28 weeks you need an anti-D injection (which makes it so that your blood does not attack baby's), and then again at 30-something. Did I mention that I hate needles?

Aaron and I did find a new place to rent. It has 2 bedrooms, a giant laundry room (you know you are getting old when you get excited about a giant laundry room), dishwasher (I hate washing up by hand), carspace (not so easy to find around here), and even a little outdoor bit with a table and 2 chairs and a small patch of grass that the piggies can munch on. We move on the 28th of April, and are very excited. We are going to get the car back this weekend (which means I have to learn how to drive a manual...), and I'm going to start packing today, with the boxes I found downstairs in very good condition.

Last night I woke up at 3:30 (well, I woke up before that to pee, and also many other times to turn over, but I don't know what time it was) to Mushi doing what felt like a full gymnastics routine in my womb. Then the annoying happened, I got a leg cramp and was faced with a dilemma: do I get up and interrupt gymnastics practise so I can soothe my leg, or grin and bear it for a while so Mushi can finish practice? I tried to calm my leg whilst in bed so as not to interrupt Mushi's gymnastics marathon (he doesn't like to move around much when I'm standing up, and especially not when I'm walking. I tend to rock him to sleep), but my silly cramp could not be contained. I still waited for a while until Mushi seemed to be finishing up, then I got up and walked laps around the living room and stretched my leg for a while. Finally the cramp went away and I could go back to sleep.

2009-03-30T11:57:00.000+11:00

Pregnancy: 26 weeks 1 day
Total weight gain: 9 Kilos (19.8 pounds) AARRGGHH!!!

I've decided to put the total weight gain in my posts as I think it helps all of you who are overseas to keep up with the development of our pregnancy. Of course, looking at the number, especially in pounds, is a little bit scary. The other day I tried to put on my only pair of shorts (apart from the house only kind) and horrifyingly couldn't get them past my bum. I'm going to tell myself it is because my bump is quite low and adds circumference to the lower area, but I deep down, I know that my butt has expanded a bit. According to all of the pregnancy books, this is quite normal, and will go away after birth (it better). I know 9 kilos seems like a lot of weight gain, but I certainly don't think I look like I've gained that much. It also helps that people keep telling me that from behind they can't tell I'm pregnant at all (keep the compliments coming!). According to the baby books and websites, you are supposed to gain 11.5-16 kilos (25-35 pounds) during pregnancy, gaining a pound a week every week after your first trimester. If this holds true for me, I should top out at about 15 kilos (33.8 pounds), which is in the normal range. Of course, according to all the books I'm always classed as "underweight" which means I should gain 28-40 pounds during pregnancy. That makes me feel a little better.... I would feel a lot better if my thighs didn't rub together when I walk, didn't feel like I was waddling, and didn't make involuntary noises when getting up. But, we'll let that slide. After all, I am growing a human being.

Yesterday I bit the bullet and bought giant panties to accommodate my growing bum. Really, they are only one size bigger then I usually wear, so that's not so bad. I've also discovered that the top of my bump makes a nice little table for putting a cup on. Granted I have to lean back a little bit for this to work, but I normally don't sit bolt upright anyway (note to self: must teach Mushi good posture). I'll have to get Aaron to take a photo of my belly table to put on here.

Now that I'm quite obviously pregnant, strangers, contractors at work, the person I'm buying a train ticket from, anyone really, will ask me when I'm due, or how long I have to go. I do find it entertaining when men ask though. There is that tiny bit of time between them asking, and me answering when I can see a look of sheer terror in their eyes, wondering for just a second if they have just asked someone who is not pregnant when her baby is due (something, which it seems, all men are terrified of doing). Then I tell them and can see the relief in their face. One of these days I will give them a funny look and then say I'm not pregnant, just to freak them out.

We are still continuing our quest for a different apartment to rent. We were actually approved for 2 last week, but they both wanted us to move in asap, and our lease doesn't end until 9 May. We didn't really want to pay for 2 apartments for a month as that is rather expensive, so we said no. We had a look at one that we really like on the weekend. Hopefully we will be apporved for it and they won't mind us moving in early May.

Aaron and I have also started a new project: Sheri's World. Right now it's just board game reviews (video, not just type) by me, and taped by Aaron, but later I want to do baby stuff and maybe some wii games as well. We made our first one last night, which was really fun. I'll put a link on here when we put it on You Tube. There are a number of other people who do board game reviews, but no other girls, so I think it will be interesting to a number of (nerdy) people (we kind of had in mind that the board game geeks would use it to show their girlfriends to get them into board games, but it's also good for anyone who likes board games, or those who want to get into board games). Even if no one watches it, we had a lot of fun making it, and will continue to make new episodes.

That's all for now, I will write again next week.

2009-03-22T09:20:00.000+11:00

As I write this, I'm sitting on my bed with my feet up (wonderful!!), and my sunburnt shoulders covered by an oversized comfortable t-shirt, while watching "The Italian Job." My idea of a good relaxing day (minus the sunburn). Yesterday I got all dressed up, including facsinator (the things girls wear on their heads to go to the races) to go to a hens day. We played a few rounds of lawn bowls (which contrary to what one may think, is actually quite fun). The sun was shining all day (hence the sunburn). None of us even thought to put on sunscreen for some strange reason. I suppose when you think bowls you think bowling which is inside, even though all of us know lawn bowls are outside. Point is, we all got sunburnt, even the bride who is wearing a strapless dress at her wedding one week from now. Hopefully her burn will fade.

We then went to a very nice terrace house (for those of you who don't know, a terrace house is a very narrow but tall, usually 3-4 stories, house that has others just like it connected on both sides. They were built in Sydney many years ago. Most have been renovated and restored and still stand today) that the maid of honour rented. She made a lovely high tea including scrumptious pumpkin scones which we all happily scarfed while drinking white peach tea and playing taboo. I unfortunately got one of the not so nice side effects of pregnancy whilst at high tea, very bad leg cramping, which made everyone worry and look at me kinda funny. I walked around for a little while trying to find a comfortable position so my leg muscle would untighten and we could play on. This took a while, but it finally went away. I also had an involuntary farting while sneezing incident, but luckily no one noticed. It's just so much harder to control such things when pregnant.

Mushi is kicking more now. At least I notice it more probably because he/she is getting bigger on a daily basis. Sometimes the little feet linger against my belly and I can almost grab one. You can visibly see a lot of the kicks. It's like my belly is alive! I'm also getting more and more akward in my movements, especially getting up. I must look really silly in the morning when trying to get out of bed. I have one of those long pregnancy pillows that I have to get over to then get out of bed. You wouldn't think that would be a hard task as it's only as tall as a normal pillow, which, let's face it, is not that tall, but when you have a big akward belly and all this extra weight on you, it's like trying to get over a mountain. I think I might have said that already in another post, but I'm pregnant, I forget stuff. Let's take yesterday for example. Since my strap broke on my big awesome purple purse, I have been using my small purse which only fits my wallet, keys and phone and nothing else. I decided yesterday to take out my wallet and just put in the money I needed and my drivers licence in case I needed it at the bowling club to be able to bowl (I did not), so that I could fit plenty of snacks in there also. What I did forget is my swipe card to get me back into my apartment building, and then up the elevator. Aaron was going to go to Penrith last night to see his friends, but luckily, his friends cancelled. So, I was able to get back inside once I got home. Aaron on the other hand, had to wait for me to actually get in to the apartment. He was looking at a few apartments to rent while I was at the hens day, but forgot his actual keys to unlock the door (sympathetic baby brain?). He had to go to Chatswood to shop, and see a movie by himself all day. Luckily between the two of us, we had everything we needed to get back home. Aaron bought the best juiciest strawberries for me while he was at the shops. MMmmmm... I might go eat some now.

2009-03-16T14:30:00.000+11:00

24 weeks Pregnant:
Aaron and I went away this weekend, a lovely present that Aaron got me for my birthday. We were both lucky enough to have Friday off work, so were able to leave at about 1pm which was quite good. I also got my very first Australian drivers licence that morning. About time, it's only been 8 years! We were both very hungry for lunch by the time we got going, so we thought we'd find some fast food or something on the motorway, but as time went on, nothing was found. We decided to stop in a little whoop whoop town called Mooney Mooney, which seemed to consist of a boat ramp, and one gas station/shop/burger joint. This was all the one store mind you. The things they had on their shelves were actually quite comical. They only had one of each item, and the items were quite random. If you wanted some rice, or plain pasta, you were just plain out of luck. If you wanted a blue odd shaped wooden thingy that kind of resembled a step stool (but didn't look like it would be very safe or level), then you were in the right place. They did however, have one thing of baby powder (but nothing else for baby). I should have taken a photo of what was on their shelves, but I did not. Anyway, we had fish and chips for lunch there. You would think the man who worked there (and probably owned it) would be happy for any customers, but instead he seemed a bit grumpy at the prospect of having to serve us.

The cabin Aaron booked for us was really good. It was so relaxed, had a bath tub (with jets), kitchen, bedroom, and a tv, dvd player, and cable. Not that the DVD player worked. It was a very good, relaxing weekend. There were some giant ducks hanging about as well that I fed out of my hand (after some coaxing). I was quite alarmed the first night when I got up after playing lots of board games with Aaron and my feet were very swollen and sore. That is the first time I've had that in my pregnancy so far. It felt so weird walking on them. Luckily we had the bathtub, I had a nice (lukewarm so as not to cook Mushi) bath and put my feet on the jets which worked a treat.

Mushi seems to really like church. Everytime we go, he/she is very excitable, moving all around and kicking up a storm. This week at church, I saw a lady in the bathroom who told me that a member of the morning congregation (we go to the evening service) just had a baby naturally that weighed 4.5 Kilos (9.9 pounds). I can't even begin to imagine having a baby that giant, and really really hope that ours does not weigh that much at birth. After all, I'm not that big. We had to leave fairly early from the supper/yakking after church due to my crazy pregnancy reflux. I forgot to bring my Rennie (prego woman safe antacids), and really needed to go home and have some so my throat didn't feel like it was being slowly burned into nothing.

This morning I took some fish oil tablets (to aid in the growth of Mushi's brain), and an hour or so later, I burped. It tasted like fish and I couldn't figure out why. I thought back, I haven't eaten fish in the last 2 days, what is going on??? Oh yeah, I had a fish oil tablet. Bad idea I tell you! I've been burping fish taste all day. It's not the most pleasant thing in the world. Note to self: next time, spend the little bit more and get "odourless" fish oil tablets. Only about 400 more left in the jar before that can happen....

Oh yeah, (see, the baby brain... it's making me forget stuff), on Thursday, Aaron and I looked at a granny flat in Chatswood (as we are looking to move out of our tiny 1 bedroom, preferably before the baby is born), but it turned out to be horrid. The picture that was posted on the website clearly showed a dining table, china hutch and couch. When we got there though, all we saw was a kitchen, 2 small bedrooms, and a little bathroom. I have no idea where they supposedly took the photo on the web from as there is absolutely NO WAY a couch and dining table would fit in that little place. One or the other would barely fit, but not both. The web also said it had a yard, which turned out to be a block of cement otherwise known as the carport that goes with the main house. Awesome. Needless to say, we did not apply for said granny flat, nor were we impressed. The agent didn't even say hi, which I thought was very rude. As if anyone is going to pay $370 per week for something that is smaller then our current tiny one bedroom apartment. Tell him he's dreaming. And so, the search continues. The problem of course, is that we have guinea pigs, and despite the fact they they are in a cage, and can't do any sort of damage to a house/apartment/whatever, they are not allowed in most places (and we don't want to lie and then sneak them in because that is not the right thing to do).

So to sum up being 24 weeks pregnant: I'm so awkward in my movements that it's comical (especially when trying to get out of bed over my long pregnancy pillow. It seems like I'm trying to get over a mountain, and probably looks that way), my feet have started to whinge at me by swelling if I don't elevate them some during the day, my stomach acid wants to eat my esophagus (can't be bothered looking up the spelling on that one, and I'm sorry, but it's just not a word that I need to spell on a regualr basis), Bending over to pick something up is somewhat of a production which includes involuntary grunts, I'm horrified by the thought of having a giant 4.5 kilo baby, and I don't great a great nights sleep because I have to wake up to pee at least once during the night. But you know what? This is all part of the beautiful gift of life that is growing inside me, it's just funny to write about. Oh, and one more thing, my belly button is threatening me more and more each day with thoughts of popping out. I wonder if it will suddenly just pop one day, or slowly become an outy. I shall soon (very by the looks of it) find out!

2009-03-10T10:20:00.000+11:00

Hello again! Right now we are 23 weeks and 2 days pregnant. My belly seems to be getting bigger with my belly button threatening to pop out. Despite my protests, my ass also seems to be getting bigger, but I could be imagining that.... Aaron and I got a toddler bible which we started to read to Mushi the other day. I'm starting to get fairly bad reflux, which apparently only gets worse as time goes on and Mushi gets bigger, pressing against my stomach and pushing the acid up.

For some reason, I want lots of foods which I sometimes used to eat, but now since I can't have them, really want them. I seem to be compiling a list of things I'm going to eat as soon as the baby pops out (although someone asked me if I could still eat them when breastfeeding. I'm not quite sure, but am really hoping yes!). I really want a kebab (not like meat on a stick, like a lebanese type kebab, with the dodgy chicken, tabouli, sun dried tomatoes etc.), even though one usually only eats a kebab when drunk/half drunk and nothing else is open, a chicken hotdog (although I do wonder if I could eat that now if properly cooked), Feta, brie, and camembert cheese, soft serve ice cream, runny yolk eggs, etc. It seems I may put on more weight after the baby is born, with all the things I want to eat!

I don't think I have weird cravings, but I do have cravings. Unfortunately, at the moment I'm craving things I can't get in this country. I could really go some peanut butter cup ice cream (why oh why didn't I get some on my visit??!!), and wheat thins (but not together, as I said, I don't crave weird things or odd combinations). If only I had enough room in my bag to bring back some wheat thins.... Ok, I need to stop now because it's just making me hungry.

I also have a serious case of the baby brain. The other day I was changing clothes after work, and got my dress and purple crop top out (so my boobs don't pop out of my dress), but then spent 10 minutes looking for the purple crop top only to find that I had already gotten it out of the closet. I also locked the work keys in the storeroom one day. They were locked in there all night until someone who was on after me could find a spare. I went to get a lightbulb out of the store room, but when I was confronted with all the different wattages and types, I put down the keys to search for the right one. Proud of myself for finally finding it, I left the storeroom and closed the door, only to realise that I had locked the keys inside.

Up until now, I didn't really get extra hungy, I just pretty much ate the quantities I usually ate. Now though, I'm ravenous! Maybe that is contributing to the expanding ass....

Thanks for listening (and it's so great that I'm doing this whilst at work, getting paid).

2009-03-05T14:38:00.000+11:00

5 March 2009

Hi Everyone,
Aaron and I decided to make a family blog so that you can keep up with our expanding little family. Today we are 22 weeks and 4 days pregnant. We have decided to call the little one Mushi while in the womb so we didn't have to call him (we don't know if it is a he or she, and have decided to wait until born to find out, but rather then saying it, we will say he) it anymore. Mushi currently enjoys kicking Mommy's insides, and teasing Daddy by not kicking when Daddy (or anyone else) is trying to feel it. Mushi is due on July 5th.
Yesterday was a very good day for us, I had a nice birthday, and Aaron got a new job that he will like more and learn more from. We are going to start looking around for a new place to live very soon as our lease runs out, and we currently live in a small one bedroom apartment which definitely won't work once Mushi is born.