Things I’ve learnt in the last four months:

• I should follow my gut.
• I know my baby better than anyone.
• I was right.
• It was worth it/He is worth it.
• God is good.
• Research is my friend.

And that’s just from the gassy baby saga. Which is thankfully now coming to a close. I wanted to document more fully the process we’ve been through with Lior’s wind, and how we’ve come to the conclusions we have about his problems. I have a tinge of regret that I didn’t share more here what was happening WHILE it was happening, but I know I wasn’t really in a place where I could share back then. And I felt WAY to much guilt about how much I thought parenting sucked at the beginning! I now know that it did suck, a lot, but that Lior’s problems weren’t just ‘normal baby things’, they were more serious, so I was right to feel upset and overwhelmed.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, then here’s the goss: Lior has an infant dairy intollerance. This has been the cause of some MAJOR discomfort for him, and has been a big stress in our family. Since removing dairy from my diet (and therefore him not getting any milk proteins via breastmilk) he no longer has any wind, and is the happiest baby you ever did see! I feel like we’re seeing him in more fullness. That his personality is shining through more, and that we’re getting to know him better with problems and interruptions.

I will do a bit of a mini-series here sharing our personal experience, as also links to reserach that’s helped us figure this thing out. Stay tuned!

Anyway, stubbornness is bad, right? It’s the reason why I take so long to say I’m sorry, why I can’t admit I’m wrong, why I get into arguments, and why I still sulk. I need to work on these things, and identifying the cause is the first step I guess.

But as I started to see when I was being stubborn, I realised it’s not all bad. It’s the reason I laboured so long, without pain medication- People told me I couldn’t, so I did. Kinda just to spite, them and kinda cause that was what I wanted to do, and no one could stop me. It’s the reason I don’t give up, it’s the reason I percivered so long trying to find the cause of Lior’s wind.

It’s nice to not just see the negative side of this personanilty trait. I think it’s something that’s designed to be a good thing, but sometimes instead of good, I use it for evil…!

Have you ever discovered something about yourself it would have been handy to know earlier in life? Are you a stubborn person too??

You are four months old. You are so beautiful and perfect. I absolutely love being your mum, and every week gets better than the last. I love my days with you- being at home, and watching you smile, learn and play. You are my sunshine.

This month we went and visited your Nonna on the Gold Coast, and we all stayed the night. You were a little unsettled. I guess you’re getting old enough now to know when you’re at home, and when you’re at someone else’s house. This month you also met a brand new friend- Tilly! She was born about a week ago, and is quite beautiful.

For most of your fourth month you still had really bad wind. I got really angry that noone was taking your pain seriously, and was sick of trying everything I could think of. I called lots of people- the doctors, the child health clinic, and the naturopath, and while I was waiting for the appointments I tried giving up dairy to see if you had an infant dairy intolerance. Well, it turns out you did. All this time I’d been avoiding other foods (and probably eating EXTRA dairy because of that) and it was the cow proteins that were making you sick! Well today, on your four month birthday you’ve been gas free for eight days! I am so happy, and life has improved dramatically for all of us.

About a day after you had no wind, I realised that while you were generally a pretty good sleeper, we had spoiled you a bit because you were in pain. It was time to help you learn some good sleep habits, so we did some sleep training with you, and now you’re almost a perfect self-soother! I know things might change if you get sick, or when your teeth get bad, but for now Daddy and I are enjoying having some time together in the evenings, and I’ve got so much more energy now that I’m not spending so much time putting you to sleep each day!

I do have to mention, that for a few nights there your wind and therefore sleeping at night was so increadibly terrible that Grandma had to come and stay just so mummy could get some sleep! You like having Grandma around- she came to visit and help mummy quite a few days this month.

You met your Uncle Jordan this month, which was pretty exciting. He was down from Daydream Island, and came for dinner to see how awesome you are.

In the last week we bought you a little seat for the bath. So it’s no more baby bath, and only the occasional shower with dad now. I think (hope!) you like sitting up in the bath a bit, and I’m looking forward to when you can play with your bath toys!

Did I mention how much I love you? I seriously do. I love watching you get better at tummy time (though still not your favourite thing!!), rolling to your sides, kicking and hitting the bats on the mobile above your mat, sitting up in your bumbo, looking around, smiling, snuggling into our necks when you’re tired, watching Pepper, chewing on toys, and watching the pages as we read you books!

Also, for the sake of record keeping, I fed you some mushy figs this week to help you poo. You’re terribly stuffy in there, and the naturopath recommended some figs and prunes to keep you a bit more regular! You don’t mind it, but don’t really like eating for very long. You much prefer the boob, which suits me just fine! I’m favouring the tummy massages for getting your poop out!

I think that’s about all for month four. You’re looking so grown up, and make my heart melt often. I love you.

Our days are filled with love and smiles and games. A comibnation of no more wind for Lior, and self-soothing to sleep means Lior is getting much longer, better quality sleeps in the day and it’s really making a difference to his demeanor for the rest of the day. It also means I am finally, for the first time in five or six months (the end of the pregnancy was incredibly exhausting- combo of baby + thyroid issues) I am PRODUCTIVE in the day, and getting things done. It feels great.

I know not all days are like this, and not all weeks are like this either, which is why I think last week deserves special attention and appreciation.

So, my first mothers day!

It was a pretty lovely day, with Lior giving my smiles and cuddles in the morning, a gift, and breaskfast in bed. I owe a big thankyou to Luke for organising everything, including a special little card from Lior with an almost hand print on it.

We headed up the coast after church and had lunch at mum and dad’s with my family (minus one brother, and plus Nana). It was a nice day, and I finally got round to taking the photos of I wanted of my parents and Nana and I with Lior. I’ll show you some later in the week, after Lior’s four month update, and some other posts that need to be shared!

Above: Lior ‘passing’ me the envelope with my card and present inside.

Above: The card from Lior and a massage voucher!

A few weeks ago we were sen this Yumbums bottom balm to try on Lior’s tooshie. Before I let you know how it went, I’ll let their website tell you what yumbums is all about!

Yumbums for Bubs is an all natural bottom balm which soothes, calms, moisturises and protects your baby’s delicate nappy area.

Yumbums blends organic olive oil, organic beeswax and organic coconut oil to create a natural protective barrier which also hydrates and maintains skin pH. Together with herbal extracts of Calendula, Chamomile, Golden Seal and Licorice root which have been specially chosen for their skin healing properties, Yumbums will keep your baby’s bum YUM!

Yumbums is proudly made in Australia and is formulated by a qualified naturopath. Yumbums uses only the highest quality natural ingredients with nothing toxic or irritating added such as petrochemicals, parabens, sulphates, synthetic fragrances or colours. YUCK!

 

I found the yumbums definitely did what it says it does- keeps your baby’s bum hydrated etc. Whenever I used it on him his skin was still really moist by the time he was ready for another nappy change.

I tend to put nappy rash cream on Lior when I see even a hint of redness. Better safe than sorry I think! So at the beginning of the week when I saw a bit of redness in his leg rolls (Chubba bubba!!) near his crotch I used the yumbums. The nappy rash never eventuated- thanks Yumbums!

Be warned, this stuff doesn’t SMELL the greatest (it doesn’t stink though), but this is minor compared to the knowledge that what you’re putting onto your baby is totally natural, which is a major bonus in our books! I’m yet to try the yumbums on actual nappy rash or anything like that. I guess it’s one of those things- you can’t MAKE your kid have nappy rash just for a product review! I’m also really keen for Luke to try it on his eczema to see if it will help clear that up, so even though this is my ‘official’ review, I plan to give you an update once Luke’s tried it on his eczma for a few weeks!

Since my research on breastfeeding I’ve come to the conclusion that, even though I REALLY don’t want to, I have to give the dairy free thing a try. I eat dairy at every meal, particularly breakfast where I have a banana shake. So I had to think of something a bit different for breakfast (the gluten free thing makes toast a bit difficult/yuk).

I’ve made this breakfast risotto dairy free, but if you substituted the coconut milk for regular milk or cream, you’d have a dairy version!

Ingredients for BASIC breakfast risotto:

1 serve of aborio rice (approx 1/4 cup)
Water
Coconut milk
1 heaped tbs of dextrose

Put your aborio rice into a pan with a bit of water. Put on a medium heat and once the water has been soaked into the rice stir and add more.
Continue this process until the rice is softened, but still has a bit too much bite to eat like that.
Add a good slug of coconut milk and continue cooking till the rice is al dante.

VARIATIONS:

For this citrus version, add a few pieces or lemon and orange rind, and a couple of cloves to the water at the beginning. Take them out once the risotto is finished and top with grated orange zest.

For this banana version I mashed a banana into my plate, then mixed into the plain risotto.

It hasn’t, and after only getting sleep at 3am with Lior laying on top of me, my mum coming to stay Sunday night to help, and another horrible bout of wind last night I thought it was time to try something new. Insanity, they say, is doing something over and over again and hoping for different results. So I thought I’d do some more research to get to the bottom of the whole food and breastfeeding thing, as well as baby wind in general.

Some research:

In the rare instance that food is causing gassiness and fussiness, it’s most likely a problem with dairy protein. Symptoms of a food allergy or intolerance might include diarrhea, rash, fussiness, gas, runny nose, cough, or congestion. You might try cutting out all dairy products (milk, cheese, yogurt, butter) for a couple of weeks to see if there’s an improvement.

http://www.babycenter.com/0_breast-milk-interactions-chart_8788.bc

…there are so many variables involved, including how often you nurse, the type of food you eat, and your individual body chemistry and metabolism. An average (and this is only an average) is about 4-6 hours, but it can reach your milk as soon as one hour or take as long as twenty-four hours.

 

During the first six months of life, the lining of the baby’s is immature, so allergens that appear in the milk can get into the bloodstream and trigger allergic responses in some extremely sensitive babies. The lining of the intestines is also more sensitive during the early months, and is more easily irritated than it would be later on by the same substances.

 

After six months, the lining of the intestines matures so that allergens can’t get through as easily and
your baby will be much less sensitive to foods in your diet. That’s one of the reasons that babies should be exclusively breastfed for the first six months of life. If solids are introduced before that time, then the baby is more likely to have an allergic reaction to something that might not affect him later on.

http://www.breastfeedingbasics.com/qa/what-i-eat-to-get-into-my-breastmilk

This is confusing because it’s contrary to recent research I shared on our FB page, saying that there are benefits to introducing solids at 4 months…

All babies have days when they are gassy, fussy, or spit up more than usual, and chances are that it has nothing to do with your diet. Nursing mothers rarely have to make any dietary modifications.

http://www.breastfeedingbasics.com/qa/what-i-eat-to-get-into-my-breastmilk

What IS the cause of gassiness etc then??

How do substances enter human milk? When someone takes medication or eats food, the substance is usually broken down by the digestive tract and then molecule-sized components of the substance are absorbed into the blood. When these molecules get to the capillaries near the breast tissue, they move through the cells that line the alveoli and into the milk, a process known as diffusion.

 

The process of diffusion allows good things, such as antibodies, to easily enter colostrum and mature milk. Antibodies are a kind of protein found in blood that help the body fight infection.

 

This is one of the great advantages of breastfeeding. All women transfer antibodies to their babies during pregnancy and birth, but breastfeeding prolongs the time in which the mother’s body helps protect the baby from illness.

 

However, other substances also enter the breast by diffusion. One fairly common belief about breastfeeding is that if mothers eat foods that make her gassy, such as broccoli or cabbage, the baby will be gassy. Is this true? No. Gas from a mother’s intestinal tract cannot pass into her blood and deposit itself into the breast for her baby to drink. However, when food is digested, some of the proteins do enter the blood and may then pass into a mother’s milk. Some babies may be sensitive to a particular protein and react with gas and fussiness. If a baby has an obvious reaction every time a mother eats a certain food, she can eliminate that food from her diet, but it is important to remem-ber that, for most fussy and gassy babies, the problem stems from some source other than mother’s milk.

This is important to understand.

 

Mothers sometimes think that after they drink a glass of wine the alcohol stays in their milk until that milk is removed from the breast. As a result, they may hesitate to breastfeed their baby and decide to pump the milk out instead. In reality, the level of alcohol in the milk drops as a mother’s blood levels drop. It takes two to three hours for a 120-pound woman to eliminate from her body the amount of alcohol found in a single glass of wine or beer. When the alcohol is eliminated from her blood, it is also gone from her milk.

Anatomy of a Working Breast By Anna Edgar

Sebring FL USA From: NEW BEGINNINGS, Vol. 22 No. 2, March-April 2005, pp. 44-50

Gas is produced in the digestive tract from the moment baby has his or her first drink of breast milk or formula. Newborn gas is a natural by-product of digesting lactose, proteins and other nutrients.

 http://www.coliccalm.com/baby_infant_newborn_articles/gas_problems_treatment.htm

Recently Talia shared about Lior’s teething issues. Quite a number of people recommended amber teething necklaces. With a little scepticism, but eager for a solution, I decided to do a bit of research. I wanted to share what I found.

Amber teething necklaces are scientifically unfounded, and mildly dangerous for babies.

Based on my research, they’re no different to the Power Balance bracelet scam.

To tell you why would only be to recap what other people have already written, so instead, here are a few links that I found useful:

On the science:
http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/QAA400886/Are-Amber-Teething-Necklaces-Worthwhile.html
http://scepticon.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/amber-teething-beads-a-few-points-to-consider/

On the danger:
http://www.fairtrading.qld.gov.au/amber-teething-necklace.htm
http://www.lisabarger.com/does-it-work/amber-teething-necklaces.html

As some commenters pointed out, there are other natural solutions for helping babies with teething besides amber. What are some that have worked for you?

Hopefully we’ll get some nice family photos taken one day, but the other day I got a bit sick of waiting. Lior is growing up SO fast, and I want to get some nice pictures of us at these different ages. So on ANZAC day, while Luke was home from work, I set the camera up on a chair, got out the remote, and we took some lovely photos!

The comments like “The first six weeks are hard, it’ll get better after that” gave me hope, until he was past that milestone, and still suffering major bouts of pain (though at this point not as bad as we’d started the infacol). Then people told me that he would grow out his wind by 3 months. I was a bit more sceptical about this, and a few weeks after his 3 month birthday we’re still dealing with wind, but as the title suggests- we can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel!

We’ve had Lior on infacol from 4 weeks old, and it’s helped a lot. In fact, we’ve tried HEAPS of things, and I think each has helped. I can see the difference in him when we stop doing one of them.

Despite how adament the nurses and doctors I spoke to were that I didn’t have to change what I was eating (they would say “We don’t tell mothers that they can’t eat certain things while breastfeeding anymore. He’ll grow out of it…”), I followed my gut, and searched the internet for a list of foods that, when consumed through a mother’s breast millk, would give a baby gas. I found a list on a forum given to someone from their naturopath, and started following that- modifying it depending on what I could see set Lior off, and what he was okay with. Oh, and a bit of research into my favourite question- WHY.

I’m still researching the whole “WHY” of breastfeeding and gas, but sometimes I find you need to do things without knowing the exactly WHY, and find out later. For our sanity’s sake!

At the recommendation of our own nautropath, who I talk with via email, we started Lior on some Inner Health Plus for kids. I also started on Inner Health Plus, so that Lior could get some it through my milk as well. Along with this we also started taking Lior to the chiropractor, which helped with lots of things, including his back alignment to reduce wind. One of the advantages of the chiropractor was Lior sleeping much better, which enabled me to experiment with the food I was eating a bit more, because if he had a bad night of wind, I was well-slept enough to deal with it.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been slowly adding foods back into my diet, which has been reasonably positive. I’ve started with some of the more common fruits and vegies that were on the list, as well as herbs. He hasn’t reacted, thank goodness, so once he’s sitting up, and getting closer to crawling, we’ll bring the full range of foods back on the menu.

A few weeks ago, on Lior’s 3 month birthday (people repeatedly tell me that they grow out of the wind by three months- as if this somehow makes life easier to bare while we’re WAITING for three months…?!), I gave him a feed without the infacol. It did NOT go well, so we were back on to it for the rest of the day, and for the rest of the week after that.

Just a week and a half ago though, we began to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I misplaced the infacol bottle, so gave him his first feed of the day without it. He was fine, so I gave him his second feed without it, and continued without it for the day. I was sure we’d pay for it that night, but he was fine! Three whole days he was off the infacol, and by the night of the third day things were getting a bit rough again. I was out of the habit by this stage though, and probably left it a bit late to give it to him again, so we’ve had a few rough days with the wind again. BUT it I’m still clinging to that hope! He’s really only having the infacol for his feeds after noon now, which is such a huge step forward!

A day of sleeping on mummy last week when the wind was really bad.

Lior’s teeth must have started moving a few weeks ago, because he started munching down really hard on almost anything he could get into his mouth. Mostly our fingers.

But because Lior is still learning how to put things into his mouth with his hands, and he hates his dummy, it’s difficult for him give him relief. He is getting heaps better at just putting a few fingers in his mouth instead of his whole hand though.

Things have amped up a bit in the last few days, and he is doing this screeching thing until something is put in his mouth. Oh, and he’s muched down on my boob once or twice while eating. Not fun. For once am glad no teeth are present yet! On occasion, when it gets REALLY bad, we’ve started giving him some bonjela-like stuf (can’t remember the name of the exact one we’re using), and that seems to help for a time, which is good.

I hope to God that he gets like 2 or even three at once, so we don’t have to go through the whinging for every single tooth!

Anyone know of any natural remedies for teething to ease (both our) pain?

It took the prompting of a few friends from playgroup for me to take Lior to the chiropractor. I had read about how important baby Chiropractics was prior to giving birth, but it was one of the things I forgot once Lior was born. I had read how particularly important Chiropractics was for babies whose births were interfered with, which Lior’s certainly was.

From when I first spoke to my friends, to when I actually ended up taking Lior was well over a month. In fact, Lior didn’t have his first session until the last day of March. Money was an issue, but once the baby bonus kicked in, I could take him. I definitely think that’s the kind of stuff the baby bonus is for!

I’m not a doctor, or a fortune teller. I can’t tell you what the last three weeks or so would look like if we hadn’t have gone to the chiropractor, but I can take a pretty good guess. Anyway, I’m not here to tell you that chiropractics works for every baby, I’m just here to tell you that it worked for Lior.

Prior to Lior’s first visit to the chiropractor he had had all this really, really, really awful wind, and basically liked to sleep for a few hours at a time. He had only just started to take 3-4 hours breaks between feeds (& therefore sleep for those lengths at nights as well) about two weeks before.

Our first visit was a consultation where I had to answer lots of questions about Lior’s birth, and remember heaps of stuff that I’d already forgotten. The chiropractor discovered the following things after her consultation with Lior:
He had a tight left hip
His head was a bit misshapen
He would favour facing one way, and hardly ever face the other way
His top vertebrae was out
Some vertebrae in his mid back were out

So we have started on our mission to fix all these things. This week was our third session, and things are coming along really well!

After our first visit to the chiropractor this is what I noticed:
DRAMATIC improvement in his head rotation. When I lay him on the mat or bed now he looks straight up and not the the side!
Sleep! He went from waking 3 times in the night to waking once!

so after three visits we’re seeing similar improvements including slightly more regular bowel movements (he certainly always goes that day after the chiropractor has giving him a good clearing tummy massage!), a continuation of the improvements above, and also less pain when he’s been given alterations.

So yes, he’s had some really good results so far! Like I say, I’m not saying you should definitely kale your kid to the chiropractor, but it might be worth a checkup to see how their back is doing. Did you know that babies bones are a lot easier to put into place then adult bones? They has a bit more ‘give’ in them, and they aren’t in super strong habits yet!

You’re three months old now! Your third month has definitely been my favourite so far- I feel like we’re getting to know each other a little better, and we have lots of happy time chatting and playing. I’m looking forward to watching you grow, but I’m also a little sad that you’re not that tiny baby any more! Those days were a bit of a blur, so I’m glad I’ve got photos to remember them by!

As I mentioned above, we have little chats now. At the beginning of your third month you had just started making talking noises, but now at the end of the month you’re a bit of a chatterbox! Not all the time, but enough to make us fall in love with you all over again every time you do it! Another thing you started doing more of at the beginning of the month, and do all the time now, at the end of the month, is smiling! You weren’t very generous with your smiles before, and would only give them for an hour, first thing in the morning. Now, whenever you wake up from a good nap, or even just when you feel like it, you shower us with smiles! It really makes my day!

Visiting Daddy at Work

You are growing up so much, and have a really strong head. We don’t need to hold your head up when we’re holding you, just your lower back so you don’t fling yourself off! You don’t like tummy time though, and I’ve been a bit slack is making you do it, because you dislike it so much. This last week I’ve been doing it every day though, so hopefully you’ll start enjoying it soon! Speaking of things you don’t like, you’ve decided that the car is the pits, and you cry so much whenever you’re in it. If we’re driving for more than half an hour we usually have to pull over and give you a break, because you’re so worked up you’ve got tears streaming down your face! And you only get tears when you’re REALLY upset.

We took you to the chiropractor on the 30th of March, and she did some adjustments. Things were still a bit tough for you since your rough arrival into the world, and we wanted to make sure there weren’t any reprocusions from your birth that were hurting you. I’m also giving you lots of TLC to make up for it! But the chiropractor did wonderful things to you, even if you did cry lots. She is fixing your neck so you can look both ways easily, loosening your left hip, and working on your back and tummy to help with your wind and bowel movements. I’m glad I was so insistent about taking you. Even though it costs money, it’s worth it to see you get better!

After our first visit to the chiropractor you changed to really long stretches of sleep at night. Well, long compared the the 2 hours you use to wake, and the 3-4 hours the few weeks before. Now at night you usually sleep for 5-6 hours, and then 3-5 hours again after that. One night you even slept for 9 hours straight! Mummy was SUPER worried when she woke up in the morning, and rushed to check you were okay! You were fine, just a bit annoyed that I had woken you up! During the day you feed every 3-4 hours. Like all people, you sometimes have off days and nights where you need more food/comfort and wake often. That’s okay. You sleep in your sleeping bag at night, and for naps in the day, it’s the best invention ever! It’s all part of our sleeping routine, which I’m glad we’ve got.

We took you to the beach the other day when Daddy had a learn to surf day for work. It was at Cotton Tree, and you got sunburnt. We pretty much felt like the worst parents in the entire world. You healed up well though, and we learnt our lesson- ALWAYS put the baby sunscreen on, even on overcast days when you’re not in the sun long!

You had your first Passover this month, which was really special. Your daddy LOVES Passover, and he was so, so excited to share it with you!

And so that’s your third month! You’re so handsome Lior. I love you so much, and think you are the best thing we ever did.

I love you.

xo, Mum

I know people offer advice/opinions etc. with good intent, but sometimes it’s hard to listen to, especially when people think you should do things a certain way no matter what, and aren’t willing to listen to how things are different in your circumstances.

Naomi wrote this post over the weekend, which got me thinking about this all over again. She says this:

… YOU ARE THE EXPERT when it comes to raising your child/children…
… It takes confidence to be able to take a stand and go against what a popular author or professional might be saying, even to go against what your friends may be doing…

… One of my roles as a mother is to follow my instincts. To be confident enough to trust in myself and to believe and know that I KNOW what is best for us. I am a work in progress in this area but I am enjoying the challenge…

How perfectly encouraging. If you’re a parent, go over and read the whole post by Naomi (she has lots of other wise words on motherhood as well!), it’s worth your time!

I guess for me, I also take into consideration that I am the one praying for Lior every day. I make it my routine that (most nights) when I am giving him a cuddle and a feed in the rocking chair before bed, that I spend that time looking at him, loving on him, and praying to God about him. It’s usually a beautifully peaceful time for me/us, and I am sure to pray for wisdom in raising him, and ask God questions about what I’m meant to do in specific circumstances.

Being an indiviual now is tougher than any other stage of life. When you’re a single, or a newlywed, it’s okay to be an indiviudal. It’s okay to do what you want, make your own life choices. But when it comes to a baby, everyone has an opinion! I guess the biggest lesson I can learn from all of this is to not give other people ‘advice’ on what they should do, and let them be indivuals themselves.

Maybe a good guide would be that for every minute that you talk to someone else about parenting, listen for two minutes. Then we can see their circumstances properly, and see clearly that their situation is not like ours!

Note: I’m not saying that I don’t want people’s advice. On the contrary, I really appreciate when people take the time to share what’s worked, or hasn’t worked for them. My gripe is when people TELL YOU that you should be doing something a certain way, and won’t accept that this won’t work for you and your baby. This doesn’t happen often, it’s just been something that’s weighed me down a bit lately, and I need to get it out there!

For interest’s sake: I’ve tried both coconut oil & copha, but I’ve found neither set as hard as I’d like.
So yes, the cocoa butter is expensive, but worth it, particularly because you probably won’t eat tons of this.

I’ve also tried liquid glucose as the sweetener but the chocolate gets too fudge-like.

This recipe I’ve got below works, but I’ll still try & refine it, and experiment with some other sweeteners.

200g cocoa butter
1/2 cup milk powder
1/2 cup dextros
1/4 cup cocoa

Melt cocoa butter in a small saucepan over low heat. Once it’s melted add everything else and keep on the heat for just a bit longer so the milk powder can melt down a bit.

Put it into a container lines with grease proof paper, and refrigerate.

Please let me know if you try this recipe & it does/doesn’t work!

Twinkle twinkle little Boeing
How I wonder where you’re going
In the distance, flashing lights
Flying to the highest heights
Twinkle twinkle little Boeing
How I wonder where you’re going

We started tracking, and after doing so for four days, this is what I found most interesting: How much SUGAR we’re actually eating. It appears we’ve fallen off the sugar-free bandwagon without even realising!! This app we got (My Fitness Pal) lets you put in the correct brand of food (you can scan the barcode if you can’t find it searching!), and then tracks all the nutritional information for the amount you’ve eaten. I was shocked & appauled with how much sugar I was eating. Sometimes more than twice the recommended intake (which is more than I would care to eat anyway!!). How did this HAPPEN?! Did I become uncaring, addicted, lazy? Probably all of the above really…

So if anything the app has been fantastic for that. I mean, it’s a GUIDE… And it’s a wake-up call.

Of course, calorie counting is not without cons. Most prominently is its disregard to how your body digests food (what foods are better for you, which are worse), and real food vs. processed ‘pretend’ foods. I can drink a 600mL bottle of diet coke for only TWO calories, but a glass of milk is SIXTY-SOMETHING. Really, we all know what is better for us to drink…

I keep coming back to ‘real’ food, because that’s what makes the most sense to me. But it’s so hard to actually do sometimes. I know it’s best for me, but on days when I feel lathargic and frazzled, is better to eat some take-away from the bakery, or heaven forbid- McDonalds, or to possibly just go without. I guess Ideally it’s best to just be prepared. Have boiled eggs in the fridge, have some nuts roasted and ready to much on etc…

I had a look at this Real Food Challenge the other day. A ten day pledge might be manageable, and eye opening? What do you think?

*******

I wrote the first half of this a few days ago, and since then have decided to really step up the no sugar thing. Headaches have happened, but it’s been suprisingly much better than last time! The biggest thing I’ve noticed four days into being REALLY strict again, is the appetite thing. Remember how I said at the beginning of the post that I’d be screwed without the extra calories you’re allowed for breastfeeding? Yeah, well now I’m struggling to even make a normal person amount of calories! It’s a much better way round I think!

This week my diet seems to be SUPER limited. It’s Passover, so we’ve removed all the yeast, and also lots of grains etc. Not much different to normal, I just can’t really ‘slip up’, so it’s been really good!

Anyway, these are my ramblings on food… what do you guys think abut calorie counting? What about real food vs. processed food? Is it something you’ve considered before, or is it all a bit too much?

Most Christians already know that Easter is a pagan holiday, or at least has pagan roots. Christians who read their bible should also know that God gave us His feasts – and Jesus and Paul both asked us to observe Passover (not Easter!) in remembrance of Christ at this time of year. Why then do Christians ignore this commandment, and celebrate Easter instead?

Some common answers might be:
1. The Passover is a Jewish Holiday
2. The New Testament believers didn’t keep Passover
3. Passover has been “fulfilled” so we don’t have to keep it anymore

Actually, all three of these reasons simply aren’t true. Here’s why:

Firstly, Exodus 12:11 (and elsewhere) says very clearly “for it is the LORD’s Passover”. The Passover belongs to the Lord, not to the Jews.

Secondly, 1 Corinthians 5:8 says “Therefore let us KEEP THE FEAST, not with old leaven or with the leaven of malice and wickedness but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth”. This is Paul – after the death and resurrection of Jesus – commanding the believers in Corinth to keep the Passover. Also see Acts 18:20-21, and Acts 20:16 for scriptures about Paul honouring the feasts of the Lord.

Finally, Jesus kept Passover! When He was doing that for the last time before His death, He said “Do this in remembrance of me”. Why? Because for so long they had been doing it in remembrance of Egypt – but Jesus came and changed things. Instead of the traditional Passover prayer of “Blessed are you oh Lord our God King of the Universe who brings forth the bread of the earth”, Jesus proclaimed “Blessed are you oh Lord our God King of the Universe I AM the bread of the Earth and I am going to break my bread for you”! He IS the Passover. The blood of the Passover lamb has set us free! Jesus changed Passover because he wanted us to remember Him.

So where did Easter come from? When did we stop celebrating Passover and start celebrating Easter?

Polycrates of Ephesus in 196 CE (nine generations after Christ) wrote that all the disciples were celebrating the Passover – not Easter – according to the Gospel. But by 325 CE the Council of Nicea decided that it would be “convenient” to move the festival of Passover to a new day (the same day that the Romans kept the festival of Easter), to separate the observance by the Christians from that of the Jews. That’s how a Christianised Easter was born.

If you are a Christian and you keep Easter – please let me know if this has challenged you. I pray that God will bring you into the revelation and blessings of his Feasts! Also, if you disagree with anything I’ve said or you have any further questions, ask away in the comments!

Of course, the age difference between the kids is a big consideration (though no the be all and end all). I’m curious to know what age gaps other people have experienced and whether they think it’s good or bad.

For example, the age gap between my first brother and I is 20 months. I have always thought this was a good gap because we’re two years apart in school, I never remember NOT having siblings, and we could entertain each other and play games- we weren’t too far apart that we were interested in different things.

So what age differences have you experienced? Either between yourself and a sibling, between your own children, or another way. Also, if you are sharing your own children’s age gaps, did you choose that gap on purpose? If so, why? Are you happy with the gap, or do you wish they were closer together/further apart?

Lior quite loves staring at mobiles. I’m going to make one for above his cot now that he’s happy to wake up & just lie there in the mornings!

And yes, you read correctly- he wakes up & lies there…!! He’s done it four mornings in a row now- ever since we went to the chiropractor (& that’s a story for another day…)

The post is photos of Lior’s birth. They’re not particularly rude, or revelaing (I blurred out all the ‘rudie nudie’ bits, they’re just… personal. We don’t necessarily want everyone on the interwebs to see them. But we DO want our friends to see them, and people who are legitimately interested in the beauty of childbirth!

If you’d like to see them, please leave a comment below (make sure you email address is filled in, in the right box), and I’ll send it to you.

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I made this banana bread a few weeks ago, and then this morning I made it into mini muffins with cream cheese icing to take to playgroup.
It’s a pretty versatile recipe considering it was originally a banana cake recipe! It also works just as well with regular flour, and regular sugar- all the quantities are the same, just different varieties of the ingredient!

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups SR Flour (gluten free flour makes it more dense, and is good to use if you want this to be banana bread)
2 mashed bananas (for cake, 3 for bread)
Pinch of salt
1 egg
3/4 cup dextrose
1 small teaspoon bi-carb soda
1/2 cup milk
Vanilla

Process:
Mix it all together, put into prepared tin. Cook for appropriate time in moderate oven:
Cake: 20 mins
Bread: 20 mins
Muffins: 10-15 mins
Mini Muffins: 7-10 mins

Notes:
This works really well with some chic chips in it, and tastes even better with the cream cheese icing on top (cream cheese, dextrose, butter, vanilla)!

I prefer to weigh up the pros and cons of a big decision. Think of how it fits in with the big picture. Think out the repercussions (like moving your Queen in a game of chess) and let other people weigh in with their thoughts.

I’ve recently had to make a big decision – and no matter how much I thought about it, I couldn’t shake my gut feeling. So I decided to go with what ‘feels’ right and ignore my natural instinct of examination.

Do you go with your gut? Why or why not? Do you think your ‘gut’ could be God? If so, can you back it up with scripture?

P.S. It’s the strangest thing – I’ve been getting a real rush out of installing WordPress lately! Yesterday I had to migrate an old version of WordPress (2.2.3!) and then upgrade it by sub-version increments… and it was such a thrill! Is that weird?

Photo by Melissa

Woah, I am a bit slow going with ALL the posts I’ve planned to write lately, so bare with me as I do a bit of catch up!

A few weeks ago I entered a competition over at Seven Cherubs to win a ticket to a Motherhood conference. Lior was only a few weeks old then, and being the naive new mother I was, I didn’t even THINK about the fact that the conference was in a few short weeks, and that I would be taking an 8 week old with. So I entered, and lo and behold, I won! I was so excited, cause I really, really wanted to go, but like a lot of people, we’re a bit strapped for cash at the moment.

So on the 10th of March I popped Lior in the car, prayed he’d be good, and off we went to the Gold Coast. The Power of Moms conference was located in the most beautiful house I think I’ve possibly ever been in. It was one of those places where you have to keep reminding yourself this is a home and not a resort! Lovely!

The conference was great, and just what I needed to transition from a ‘OMG I’m a new mum, I have no idea what I’m doing’ head space to a ‘I’m a mum now, this is my career. For life. And I’m going to give it all I’ve got’ head space.

Because I only attended on the Saturday I missed out on the Friday which talked about how mums are people etc. etc. For better or worse I’ve been pretty freaking awesome at finding time to do what I like doing (hello scrapbooking!), and for Luke & I to hang out and just be ‘us’. I imagine things will change as Lior gets older and needs more time, but on his good days, when he is a sleeping machine (usually extrememly tired from the really crappy sleep we all had the previous few nights :-/) I definitely find time for me.

Saturday was all about Family systems. It started with some parenting partnerships, and then moved into family law, family economy & family culture. Family culture was what I was most looking forward to, and it proved to be my favourite. Family law & economy weren’t super relevant to me as I only have one child, and he’s only 10 (on Friday- Wah!!!) weeks old, BUT Luke and I have talked about all the notes, and it’s giving us HEAPS of time to really mull over it all and work out what we’d like to try in our family when the time comes.

So yes, as I mentioned, Luke and I have gone through all the notes together, and now we’re slowly going through them again, and this time we’re answering the questions together, and disecting different parts and working out what we want to learn more about etc. I was thinking I would share here what we’re talking about as we do it, so that I can summarise it, and therefore remember it.

The event was really well put together, and the food was amazing. For morning tea there were these yummy nut balls, and I loved them so much I didn’t take a picture before I gobbled them up. I regret this now, as I’ve been trying replicate them at home, and I can’t quite work out what went in them! At least my version is pretty darn good.

The other excellent thing about a motherhood conference is that the people there like babies, and so I had a few helping hands for when Lior wouldn’t sleep, and took up my note taking hands! Naomi was a God-send. She took Lior twice- the first time he went to sleep straight away, and the second time she just looked after him while he kicked, and then she put him to sleep later as well! How awesome are generous, lovely blogging friends. The internet is so wonderful to allow us to meet people like this!

If anyone’s feeling generous, we would appreciate you moving your mouse over to their facebook page, and voting for our entry. Our entry is “Hanging Old Newspapers On The Wall”. All you have to do is ‘like’ our entry!

https://www.facebook.com/CommandBrand?sk=app_262100443840702

You are two months old now! We started your second month with that nurse appointment at the child health clinic, and we were referred to a breastfeeding day to see if we could make you finish a whole boob before wanting to switch! The nurse thought that might help your wind. When we went to the breasfeeding day, she said you were fine, and that your wind is just… wind. You should grow out of it by 3 months. I was super hopeful of this time frame until I was talking to your grandma and she said that I never grew out of my colick at three months, I was still fussy on my first birthday! Lets hope your pain passes really quickly- we hate to see you in pain!

Mum’s been trying a few different things to help your wind, and they *seem* to be working. Here’s what we do to help your wind at 2 months old:

• Limit what food mum eats. You seem to react particuarly badly to tomato!
• Mum takes 3 inner health plus a day (recommended by the naturopath)- this has helped a LOT.
• You take a ‘nipple full’ of inner health plus for kids a few times a day. Mum isn’t so dilligent with giving this to you, but it cost a lot of mum, so she really should!!
• Mum takes fennel seed tea (1 tsp of fennel seeds to 1 cup boiling water- steep for 30 mins).
• You take about a teaspoon of fennel seed tea once a day.

We keep going out a lot, sometimes maybe too much at night. Nights are the hardest for you, whilst mornings are the best. You see your Great Nana every week when mum goes to craft, and then Grandma & Pa after that. You usually see Uncle Hayden on Tuesday as well. Uncle Amon has started staying with us on Monday nights, and so he gets some cuddles as well!

Your Gramps came up this weekend, and you met him for the first time. You were having a bit of a bad day, which was a shame, but hopefully he’ll come up again in a month or so and you’ll be able to see him again. Imagine how big you’ll be then!

You have had a few birthday parties this month. You went to your friend Peach’s first birthday, at the park, which was great! It was daddy’s 25th birthday as well, and you were with him when he blew out the cake! It was Grandma’s birthday as well, and you, her and I hung out at Kawana on her birthday. I think Lior cuddles was the best present you could give her!

You are smiling a lot more lately, though not super often. Probably every 3rd day you give me a smile. Sometimes you need to be ‘encouraged’ to smile, with mum wiggling the sides of your mouth. Once she does that, you’re FULL of smiles! I’m yet to catch many on camera- too elusive!

You’ve had a growth spurt, and grown out of a bunch of clothes. Some you didn’t even wear once! Mummy didn’t realise you would grow SO fast. You’re in the 75th percentile, so you’re feeding well! Speaking of feeding, you do that every 2 hours, almost on the dot. Every few days you’ll have a 3 or even 4 hour sleep, but they are rare. Even in the night you insist on 2 hour feeds. Mummy hopes your third month brings some longer breaks between meals.

You still like going to the shops, and being around people to sleep during the day. It’s interesting how you can sleep with NO people around at night, but really like to have some noise during the day. You must know the difference! Speaking of sleep, you have been in your cot in your own room since the 8th of March. Nearly a week! The first night you only slept there half the night, and daddy slept in the spare bed so he could keep an eye on you! But nowadays you’re there all by yourself! You had been sleeping in your cot for day sleeps for about a week before that, and sometimes mummy would put you down while you were only half asleep, and instead of crying you would put yourself back to sleep! Unfortunately this doesn’t always happen, but I do think we’re pretty lucky that you seem pretty good at self soothing. You just need a bit more practice & you’ll be a pro!

Despite the set back I was determined to make the 7:22 train, so I raced to the station on foot, locked up my bike, and made it just in time…

…Only to realise I left my wallet at home. So I got Talia to drive to the station to bring it to me.And of course she arrived just as the next train was pulling away. Now I’ll be late for work.

I must try to appreciate the good things in my life when nothing seems to be going right. I have lots of people around me who love and appreciate me, I love my job, and although sometimes it feels like we’re flat broke I am much so more well of than most.

Remind me to buy Pepper some healthier dog food…

Lior didn’t go to sleep in the car, and after driving through lots of windy estates (his favourites) I gave up. I took him home. He was wide awake looking at me when I took his capsule out of the car. But when I looked at him again as I was opening the door to go inside, he was nodding off the sleep! Crazy that all my driving didn’t put him to sleep, but my rough and tumble carrying him worked! Hence the blog post now- he’s still sleeping nicely!

“A Peek At Our Week” (I’m playing along with Zoey) is meant to be a selection of photos from the previous week, but I’m adding a few from the week before as well, because there are some nice ones in there.

Some of the highlights of the week:

• I got my hair cut. I’ve now got a pretty rad (If I do say so myself) fringe)
• Lior started doing lots more smiles, though never while I was facetiming Luke, so he still hasn’t really seen many!
• I did some ‘gardening’, and by gardening I mean I planted some snow pea seeds, and conducted an experiment with the amount of water the olive herb needed.
• We went to Peach’s first birthday party. Tish made an AMAZING Peter Rabbit cake (top row, second from the right).
• We got our car serviced and got told we have just less than $500 worth of fixes that need to be done pretty quick. Mostly to the brakes. :-/
• Hung out with Luke’s mum. I feel like a bit of a bad daughter in law. We have been so caught up in looking after Lior, that we haven’t seen his Marzy for 3 weeks!! Yikes! I said to Luke that we need to be far more dilligent in making sure we see her more often!
• It was my brother, Amon,’s first time staying with us. He’s started Uni in the city, and uprise suprise, we’re half way between the city & home, so we’re a good place to stay the night when he has to go back the next morning!
• I got Luke’s birthday presents sorted, including something special from Lior. Just need to wrap them today!

I decided on infacol, because the gripe water lots of people recommended has sugar in it- something I REALLY don’t want to be feeding myself, let alone my 1 month old baby.

It has been the BEST thing. We saw changes pretty quickly- though it did take a few days for him to really get better. He’s been on it for two weeks now, and has totally changed. He has awake time when he is actually just happy, and content to just look at you, or the world around him!

When he & I went to the breastfeeding support day on Monday the nurse suggested we cut back the dosage (he was having it with every feed, except for in the middle of the night). The nurse suggested just one morning feed, one afternoon, and one evening, but I thought that was a pretty big cutback, and decided to just do every second feed.

WELL, that Monday night was HELL. We were straight back to the screaming and incosolable crying of the first four weeks! It wasn’t as bad as in the beginning, but it was still 3 hours of fairly constant painful crying. Lior was getting tired, I was getting tired (crying babies just seem to drain your energy!), but the pains kept coming, so he couldn’t sleep. Eventually they stopped, as they always do, but we had a really rough sleep that night. As soon as the pains started at about 6pm, I put him straight back on the infacol, & kept it going through the night, so by the morning he was still tired, but able to function pretty well. So Tuesday he & I slept, and then my mum came & took him while I got a haircut. It was PERFECT to be looked after a bit after such a shock the night before!

Today you can tell he is back to himself. He still gets the wind, obviously, but not the huge pains associated with the build up he was getting at night. So we’re back to regular old newborn fussy hour when Daddy gets home, and that’s it. MUCH easier to handle, because it involves general sobbing (Lior has THE cutest pout when he’s got his sad face on!), which either mum OR dad can comfort, not just mum!

Of course, to top off our sad Monday night, my brother was staying with us (he’s just started Uni in Brisbane, and is staying with us one night so he doesn’t have to go all the way home). I felt terrible that we weren’t able to spend much time with him at all, and that dinner was served so late! Alas, next week will be much better I’m sure!

So there you go- This week I am reminded of how grateful I am for Infacol!

Oh, and just so you know, we don’t medicate our baby willy-nilly. We’re pretty cautious of medications, particularly for such small, developing bodies like his, but we thought that the pain he was suffering justified the medication!

This recipe is modified from Taste.com.au

We’re renting through a real estate, and it sucks. Before, when we were renting from my parents, and lived in the shed, they didn’t care that I hung stuff on the walls with hooks and nails. Now we are meant to be all careful not to put holes in the walls, so I’ve been using heaps of those removable hooks.

The other day I was sent some of these new fandangled 3M Command™ Picture Hanging Strips that grip to each other. They kind of scare me a bit, because I wonder how things stay up on the wall!

Anyway, ages ago Luke’s Nanna had sent us these old newspapers from back in the day, that we wanted to hang on the wall. We grabbed some of these neat plastic picture frames from IKEA to hang them in- so they would be quite light- and I got stuck into putting it all together. I used the picture hanging strips to see if they would work.

Check out our little video of how we put it all together- just for kicks.

A hacked blog is never a fun thing – if you ever find yourself in the same boat, let me know and I’d be happy to help out.

Also, please let us know if your anti-virus is still telling you we have a problem!

I found this little animation over at Brain Pickings and thought I would share it with you- it’s a cool animation sharing (VERY briefly) what the book is about.

I think one of the important things to remember when reading these books, is that they’re American, and therefore all the information isn’t completely relevant to us here in Australia. That being said, it’s still really interesting information, and the general principles of eating real food, etc., are definitely sound advice.

Four weeks is quite a while, and while looking after a tiny baby is as good an excuse as any for not writing for so long, the real reason I suppose is that it’s taken me this long to get over the process, and be at a stage where I can talk about it and not cry *sigh*.

There’s a suprising amount that I don’t remember about the process, and so I asked Luke to write it down from his perspective first. Luke’s version is in blue.

I’ve been hesitant to share this story, because it’s not a very ‘good’ birth story, and I don’t think people should read lots of horrid birth stories when they’re pregnant. The power of positive thinking is so important! So if you read this, I want you to know that I DID IT. I got through all of this, and it wasn’t the end of the world. When I think about what I did now, I am PROUD, because I did all this amazing stuff, and our bodies are incredible things. So know that if I can do it, you can too!

ALSO, I’m not sure if this is too much information or not. It’s VERY long (though not as long a the long version!!), so if you don’t want to know all the details, don’t read on!

****** ****** ***** ***** *****

The story starts on the 10th of January. I met up with some friends for dinner and we talked about babies almost the entire night (there are four of us, and two of us were pregnant). I said, as I had many times in the last week, that things were looking good for an earlier than due date delivery, and that the midwives and my doula had said to have my bag packed. Lior was head down, and engaged (he had been for a while), so it was just a waiting game. On the way home Luke and I were talking and I said something along the lines of “You know what? I’m sick of wondering when this baby will come. I’m sick of waking up each morning and wondering if today is the day. Lets just forget that I’m even pregnant (HA!) and just cary on with like as normal. This baby isn’t coming till 42 weeks, so there’s no point thinking about it now!!!”.

That night I had really awful sleep. I had quite a lot of pain for the previous few days in my right hip, and the pain that night was atrocious. It was bad enought that after being awake for 1/2 hour or so I thought I could justify a panadol. So I got up and went to the kitchen to get the panadol and some water. Well, I opened the fridge door, and just like that, my waters broke. I could feel a wetness, and then a trickel down my leg. I knew it was my waters breaking because they say that if it trickles down your leg, then it’s your waters! I looked at the floor, and realised that I was not going to be able to clean this up myself! I called to Luke quite a few times and he finally woke up.

I cleaned up the floor with a few paper towels and then called the hospital. They spoke to me, and then Talia (who was sitting on the toilet), and told us to go back to bed, but come in once we’ve had breakfast in the morning.

Of course, there was no way I could possibly sleep (Talia did try to for a few minutes, but that didn’t last long), so instead I got together a few last minute preparations, and took our final belly photo outside by the fence.

We called Tess, our Doula, who was excited, and told us to sit tight until the contractions started. 10 mintues later she called back asking if I still had the period like pain I had described to her in an email a day or two before. Yes, I did. Did it come in waves? I had to think about it, but yes, it did. They’re contractions, she said, and she was on her way down.

I couldn’t feel any contractions, even when Tess arrived and she could feel when my belly contracted, I still couldn’t feel any difference. Eventually that changed, but I never, not the entire labour, felt contractions like you read about. I had back contractions instead. Remember how I said I had that awful pain in my right hip? Well that didn’t go away. That was there, as a constant the entire time. I knew I was having a contraction when the pain increased in that area and then moved across my back/bum and stayed on the other side of my hip, then went back to the right side.

Pepper was acting really interestingly during this phase of the labour. Normally, Pepper would sit in her room most of the day – sleeping and looking out the window. But while Talia was in labour Pepper would stay around us, and come up to Talia to make sure she was okay. At one stage Pepper came up to check on Talia whole I was helping her through a contraction, and Tess snapped a photo at just the right time to show her head between ours. Our family of three was about to become four, and I think she knew it.

We laboured all day. It was an interesting process. I tried a heap of different positions. The fit ball worked well, as did our tounge shaped bean bag (it has dips in it- perfect to fit big bellies into!). We played music, and eventually at about 6pm we had quite a few that were only about 2-3 minutes apart. Because we’re abut an hour or so from the hospital, we didn’t wait for them to continue, we hoped in the car and took Pepper to my parents. By the time we were at the hospital my contractions had stopped (actually, quite a while before- I really only had about 1/2 dozen in the car). I was meant to go in to get checked anyway (because my waters had broken earlier in the day), so they monitered my contractions (or complete lack thereof) and baby’s heart beat, which was fantastic. We handed in all our paperwork, including copies of our birth plan, and suprisingly, the midwife came back and said what a great birth plan it was! We were suprised because, while our birth plan was quite reasonable and detailed (we had tried to cover as many different options and circumstances as possible), it was obvious that we were very pro a natural, and intervention-free labour and delivery.

Becuase I had no contractions, we went home. I had the option of staying overnight in the maternity ward, but I said no. Initially it was because I was so frustrated & heartbroken that I didn’t have a baby yet, and the idea of being somewhere with a whole heap of new mums was a bit too much to bare. After a talk with Tess, she said there would be a higher chance they’d want to induce me if I stayed overnight. I wanted my own bed anyway, so we went all the way home, and got there at about 1am.

I slept awfully that night, with some really painful contractions (about 6 or 7) until about 4:30am when it was too much, and the sun was starting to come up anyway. I was in a bit of a funk. I was sad, and I had serious thoughts that I would never meet my baby (ridiculous, I know). I cried a lot that morning. I was so frustrated (and tired). Luke decided we needed to take action, and told me that we’d both had enough, and it was time to get the baby out. This sounded quite good to me, & I had the brainwave of sitting in the baby’s room. Maybe being around his things would put me in a good mindset and that would help things. It certainly did help. Luke sat in the rocking chair with my body pillor foled over on his lap. I sat on the fit ball inbetween his legs, and pressed into him, laying my head on the pillow. We stayed like this for hours, and timed contractions.

When Tess arrived in the afternoon Luke went and had a nap (he was quite exhausted, but also too protective to leave me on my own). This really spun me out a bit, and I kept asking Tess if we could please bring him back in. My contracts changed from ‘strong’ and frequent, to really mild, and hardly at all. After an hour I went and got him and things started up again. I took some drops of a natural remedy to help labour along (from the naturopath), and that helped also. In the afternoon we went outside to walk around the lawn (it was FINALLY cool enough). This was the magic ticket. The contractions while I was standing and walking were almost more than I could bare and Luke had to walk beside me because I would be totally helpless to keep standing when they happened. They were getting close together, but we waited longer this time, knowing that the car would really slow them down. We really couldn’t stand it if they stopped again!! It was about 5pm when we decided to go to the hospital.

They quickly found us a room at the hospital. Talia and I had a shower to relieve the terrible back pain she was experiencing, while Tess set up the iPod speakers. I thought the baby would arrive any minute.

Our midwife’s name was Katie, and she was pregnant herself. We had met her previously on a tour of the maternity ward and birth suite. She was amazing. She helped us to remain calm and focused throughout the birth, and respected the birth plan we had given her, she even complimented us for it. I had changed into my board shorts for the shower, and at some point we joked about how many men don’t ever think of that, and that a midwife had walked into the shower to help a woman and found her husband in there, naked with her!

 As we were getting out of the shower, I was startled by a man in a polo and jeans walking in the room. I pulled the shower curtain closed and told Talia to stay hidden because some guy was in our room. I thought I must have been another husband.

After the shower we dried off, and put some music on. The man I saw enter the room earlier came back in and introduced himself as our doctor! Talia stayed naked for the rest of the birth, except for the hot towels and blankets she was wrapped in.

When I was pregnant I was fairly adamant that I did NOT want to labout naked. Tess convinvced me (it wasn’t hard) in one of our first meetings that I did need to be naked at the end if I wanted the skin to skin contact with the baby just as soon as he was born. I did want this, as I’d done a lot of research into the benefits of skin to skin contact. It turned out that once I was out of the shower, the thought of having to put clothes on what all too much. I didn’t care even remotely about what I looked like, or who was there. I didn’t care about some man in a polo shirt, I was overwhelmed with how exhausting this process was, and how overwhelming my emotions and hormones were. I felt like a different person.

Talia spent a little bit of time on the fit ball in the early stages at the hospital, but mostly she stayed on all fours on the bed, occasionally switching positions to give her knees a break. At one point we found a position were I was sitting up in the bed and Talia was on her hands and knees resting on me. We even set up mirror so that I could see the birth from this position. The contractions were staying at a fairly regular interval so we tried burning oils, drinking some special herb, and listening to particular music to speed them up again.

The contractions slowly gained momentum. Over the cause of a few hours Talia’s controlled breathing turned into moans, then onto loader ‘Aaah’s. Soon the time in between contractions had reduced to just a few seconds of relief. We watched the clock and hoped that we could have a 12th of January birth! But unfortunately around 10pm the contractions eased again, and we had trouble getting them going again. Talia and I jumped in the shower again to try and encourage the contractions to return.

As Talia got in the shower, she tried to sit down on a peanut shaped for ball, as she had done earlier. Only this time she couldn’t manage it because she could feel the baby’s was inside her when she sat down. She managed on her knees for a while, but the shower really didn’t help much.

I had no sense of time while I was in labour. Ever so often I would look at the clock and be suprised at how much time had passed. We had missed out on the 11th, but the 12th was the date I was hoping for. When the contractions stopped again, I was dissapointed, I wanted to cry (again!).

The doctor came back into the room at this point. He explained that we might want to consider the oxytocin to get the contractions started, the risks of doing so, and the risks of not doing so. He had read our birth plan, and knew we wanted a natural birth, so he really didn’t push that on us at this stage. He also mentioned that because the labour had progressed longer than 14 hours since the waters broke, there was a higher chance of infection, so he wanted to put Talia on antibiotics. After some discussion about the pros and cons, we declined, because we didn’t want Talia to be on a drip.

At this point, around 12am, we decided that the labour had gone on long enough and we decided to make a concerted effort to get the baby out. After a few hours we had made no progress, and we were feeling, desperate, defeated, and exhausted. Talia and Tess discussed using oxytocin to kickstart the contractions. I was so ready for it to be over at this point that I didn’t even wait for their answer, I just walked out of the room and told Katie that we were ready for the oxytocin. This meant Talia had to lie on her back in the bed (very uncomfortably) with a drip in her arm, an sensors on her tummy to monitor the baby & contractions.

During this time I started pushing a bit, just because I wanted to get the baby out. I didn’t have any ‘urge’ like they talk about. I never did the entire time. I slept a lot at this point. If I wasn’t having a contraction then I was in deep, deep sleep. I felt like I was constantly jolting awake when I realised I was asleep. At some time during this as well I’d been told that I’d used up all the ice chips in the birth suite, and so I couldn’t have any more. This was quite dissapointing for me, as I got SO parched while in labour. I almost didn’t believe whoever told me, and was going to make them get me some anyway, but I was too exhausted.

Once the drip had been put in, the sensors hooked up to the machine, and the Katie conducted a vaginal examination, we were left alone for a little while. During the VE we discovered that the baby was malpresented, his head was rotated to the side which was why it was so difficult for him to come out. Also, the doctor came in and asked again if we wanted the antibiotics he had recommended earlier. We had said no because we didn’t want a drip, but now that Talia was on a drip it could be added easily, so we agreed this time.

This was my first VE, and I am SO glad that I had opted for none previous. This hurt more than any contraction, and felt waves of panic spread through my body as I tried to keep calm and relax. In this particular case it was necessary, but I seriously have no idea why women choose to do this just to know how far dialated they are, it hurt like hell and for me was the start of the traumatic part of the birth (If you’re wondering, we chose to use external indicators to know when I was fully dialated).

Laying my back hurt like hell, and I couldn’t squat my legs up at all, which helped. I decided to just go back to all fours anyway, even though it meant that the monitors needed to be held by someone for them to measure Lior’s heartbeat. I *knew* there was nothing wrong with him, and wasn’t worried.

We were told to expect a birth in the next half hour or so, but after an hour we still didn’t have the baby in our arms. The doctor came into the room, and said that because the baby’s head had been so close to coming out for so long, we were going to have to take some external measures to get the baby out, otherwise there could be long term pelvic floor problems for Talia. I panicked. I thought he was going to tell us we needed a cesarean section. So when he told us that we needed to have the baby suctioned out I was so relieved that I agreed to it immediately. I think Talia felt the same way.

Knowing that we wanted a natural birth Katie came in and encouraged Talia to push it out. There was still a bit of time before the doctor was ready to suction the baby out. At first she was hesitant to tell Talia how and when to push (we had specified no pushing coaching in our birth plan), but at this point we were so desperate that we told Katie to forget about that part of the plan and tell her when to push!

The next day I spoke to Katie when she came to see me in the maternity ward. She said that in that time when I pushed and pushed and pushed, even with no ‘urge’ to push, that I rotated Lior’s head around enough that they could indeed do the vacuum. If his ear was still coming down first, then they wouldn’t have been able to continue. I am left to think that the only option after that was a C-section, and this, for me, is definitely not something I want.

It had been explained to me earlier by the doctor that because the baby was being suctioned out, we may not be able to have a delayed cord clamping, if the baby comes out not breathing or not crying. So as the hospital staff entered for the suction, I found the one responsible for cord clamping and told her that the delayed clamp was very important to us and not to do it without getting my okay first.

When they’d said about not having the delayed cord clamping I gave this desperate prayer to God that Lior would be okay, and he WOULD be breathing and crying when he was born.

As he was setting up (and putting Talia’s legs up on stirrups so that they were spread wide apart), the doctor told me you could see the head during the contractions. I had a look, but I couldn’t see anything. He did another vaginal examination at this point, but he was much rougher than the midwife had been, and it hurt Talia considerably more. At one point Talia told the doctor to stop, but he didn’t. Then she yelled at him ‘Just wait!’. It took him by surprise, and he said ‘Fair enough’, and took a short break.

The doctor got the vacuum ready, and even our doula said she would get the gas ready for pain relief. I thought this was strange, and exhaustedly said no. The doctor attached the vacuum, which made me actually cry. Again, the waves of panic, and I just kept thinking how I REALLY didn’t want to do this. The doctor didn’t understand that I didn’t know when I was having contractions, and this was really frustrating for me because he wanted me to tell him when I was going to push, so he could pull. The frustration I felt at not being able to explain this properly to him, and having to be in charge of something (when we would push/pull) that I didn’t have any idea about was probably the most frustrating part of the entire process. Even though I said I can talk about this birth without crying now, apparently I can’t talk about this part without crying!! I just bullshitted my way though it and made up random times when I pushed, and he pulled. I had Tess on one side and Luke on the other holding my hands, and I held on so tight. Tess whispered to me that when she said so, I should stop pushing (even though I was meant to) as this would reduce the tearing. I did what she said.

I was on Talia’s right, Tess was on her left, and an assortment of doctors and nurses where hovering around the business end while the doctor pulled and Talia pushed. After about 10 minutes the suction cap (which was a fair bit wider and harder than the top of the baby’s head) was pulled out, still attached, and Talia let out an almighty scream. She sprang up in bed yelling ‘STOP!’ and Tess and I had to hold her down again. This was by far the most painful part of the birth, and it caused a tear which needed stitches later.

The scream I gave was the most involuntary thing I did the entire labour. I really had felt so in control of the pain the entire time, and this just happened and it was worse than any natural pain, because it was happening to me. Someone else was doing this to me, and I couldn’t stop them. The pain my body created itself was easy to manage. I knew it was part of the process, and I was thankful for it because it meant things were happening. The vacuum though… *shudder*.

The doctor called me over after that and I watched as with the next contraction the head came out. The rest would come out in the next contraction but in the meantime I got told hold the head to support it. The suction cap was removed, and when the next contraction came, the doctor and I delivered the baby together. I was in total shock, fighting back tears of joy and disbelief.

He came out purple, crying and active, which was a good sign because it gave us a few extra minutes before another doctor would want to cut the cord.

I heard his cry before I saw him and I remember this feeling of huge relief. I thought “Thankyou God for this!”.

He went straight on to Talia’s chest and one of the first things I remember her saying was “it’s a boy”.  Everything else happening around us blurred while we stated at him in awe. We touched his tiny hands and felt the umbilical cord (we were waiting for it to stop pulsing and turn white before we cut it).

And that’s that. Lior had been a real trooper, having a perfect heart rate the entire time, which was the reason they let us go on for so long. I had not held up so well though, and a flurry of doctors and nurses came in and did all sorts of things to me. I just looked at Lior, laying on my chest and told him that this was all for him, so he better be thankful one day!! After everything was fixed up I fed Lior. He latched on really well, and we only needed a bit of guidance from the nurse and then he was all good. Luke took his shirt off after a little while to have some skin to skin time. Ideally we would have like this in the first hour, but because of my complications it wasn’t possible.

Katie (the midwife we’d had the entire time)’s shift had ended about 1/2 hour before Lior was born, but she stayed on with us till the very end, which we appreciated. Gayle was our new midwife, and she was equally as lovely.

We spent time with the baby while Gayle commenced a bit of a tidy up. Talia breast fed for the first time and I got my first hold (I took off my shirt for some skin to skin time). We also got our first visitor – Esther Bentley from Goodlife who worked in the birth suite. She told us that all the hospital staff were really impressed with Talia’s birth and were all talking about how well she had done without any pain medication.

And so that’s the story of how Lior entered the world. After 2 days + 4 hours of broken waters, 10 hours first stage labour and 6 hours 2nd stage labour he was born on 13th January at 7:40am. He shares a birthday with my brother, Rhys. He was 3775g (8 pound, 5 ounces), and 54cm long. When the visitor doors opened at 11am he was greeted when many many family members all totally in love with him.

By 11am when people saw him his crazy vacuum head had totally de-swelled, and a few days later there was no bruise at all.

You are now one month old. To say this is suprising is an understatment. It feels like there’s no way 4 whole weeks have passed since your birth! To celebrate this milestone, we had your birthday party/dedication on the weekend weekend where we declared our intentions to raise you the way God wants, and with a knowledge of him. You had lots of family and people who love you turn up, which is pretty fitting with how your first month has been- surrounded by lots of people!

You see, your first month has been quite social. You go out somewhere nearly every day, and that’s not including the train station when we take daddy to work, and pick him up again. From gate-crashing your Great Aunty Kris’s 60th birthday party the day you came out of the hospital, to visiting the shops every other day (just for the air-con, not to buy stuff!), to mothers group, and to the Sunshine Coat and back nearly every weekend means you are one busy boy!

You are a fairly good sleeper, but you have a lot of wind, so that has caused you a lot of pain. You usually sleep for about 2 hours at a time, and have granted us some lovely 3-4 hour sleeps at night. One night we even got 5 hours! It was quite blissful! You like to sleep a lot in the day, but in the afternoon/evening and night it takes a lot to get you to go down because your wind has built up during the day and you’re in a LOT of pain. The last few days we’ve started using a medication with you- infacol, to try and ease your pain a bit, and it is making your life a bit easier (and ours).

You love to eat, and would do it all day if I let you. I have to say, I am quite proud of how well you attached, right from the beginning, and how few problems we’ve had!

As far as milestones go, you are so strong, and can quite easily lift your head and move it around. You a wriggly little thing and can spin yourself around on the bed when you really want to. You’ve started to grab onto things. It’s quite lovely when you reach out a bit and accidentally grip onto our shirt or something. Your Dad and your Pa have both reported you following them with their eyes for a few seconds on the weekend. It was pretty exciting.

Yesterday you gave us your first real smile, and made us so excited!

We all love you so much.

Love, Mum

So, I need some suggestions on where I should set these photos. I really want some consistency (like how the belly photos were always in front of the fence), so I need to pick a place now where I want them all to be. Here are a few suggestions below- I would appreciate your thoughts on which one you think would work, OR a new suggestions if you have one!

• In front of the fence (like the belly photos)- either sitting on something so he’s by himself or me holding him (I will still be able to hold him in front of me when he’s 1).
• Laying on one of our quilts
• Laying on a plain coloured sheet (black or white maybe? Would need to buy sheet…!)
• On the couch

I mean, people had warned me and stuff, and I’ve read that it was all sleep deprevation and what not, but I thought it was meant to be all staring at your baby lovingly all day as well? I’m going to be totally honest with you and say there HAVE been a few moments when I have wondered where you would take a child in order to ‘give it back’, because the constant crying (Lior suffers from a bit of wind and reflux, which you can tell really hurts his poor insides) is a bit too much to handle!

I’m learning some things about myself- like how much I absolutely adore sleeping, but how I suck at doing so in the day time. About how having a baby totally changes you, and how they’re so precious to stare at. I love his little hands and his little feet. I love his face when he just lays there QUITELY, I even love his pout when he’s about to burst into tears.

Three weeks on and I’ve been haphazardly documenting his life in little notes all over my laptop, iPhone and the iPad. They’re not really organised, or ever very well date stamped. There are things I’ve forgotten to write down. Dates I can will never remember now. But I guess that’s part of life…

I haven’t blogged because I’ve been strangely protective of my little baby’s life. What do I want to share with the internet, and what do I want to keep private??? I have no idea!

I have no quarms with showing photos, and instagram seems to be the only blogging I do lately. I never thought I would be very bothered with the ‘privacy’ issue of blogging about kids, but now it seems to be something that matters… who knew?!

Every day I find myself day dreaming about one of the places Talia and I have visited, and Now that I’m grounded for a little while with Lior, I thought I would share some of those destinations with you, instead of planning our next big adventure.

So it’s with much trepidation that I am going to tell you all about Dahab. Trepidation – because this place is a hidden gem that is probably best kept as a bit of a secret. Dahab because that’s the place I miss most on this particular day of the week.

Dahab is a diamond in the rough. Found on Egypt’s Sinai Peninsular, it’s surrounded by Egypt proper, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan – none of which are very nice places for the solo travelers.

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Located on the Red Sea, Dahab is just beautiful. The juxtaposition of the clear calm sea on one side and the desert mountains on the other is just breathtaking. Aside from welcoming locals and day trip options (Petra or Mt. Sinai), there are three things that make Dahab a must see destination.

A spectacular view from the roof of our hotel.

Not least of which is the price. We paid EGP $80 (about AUD $12.50) for a double private ensuit room per night,  including breakfast. It was a nice big room with a great view – the only catch being that most places in Dahab only have salt water showers.

Dahab also has long streets filled with market stalls selling Egyptian jewellery, shishas, clothing, scarves and henna. With a little haggling you’re sure to strike a bargain.

Eating out was just as cheap – we ate out at restaurants every night we were there for next to nothing.

Some beautiful scarves sold on the street side.

Another market stall selling sheeshas.

Which brings me to reason #2 – the restaurants. All along coast line are restaurant after restaurant. Most places have you sit in a circle of mats on the ground with a low table to eat at, or a fire of you’re just there for drinks or a shisha. If you have a seat by the water, you can literally reach through the makeshift window and touch the water. We heard stories from owners about drunken patrons falling through the walls into the sea.

But it’s not just the cheaper-than-groceries price, the remember-your-name-the-next-day style service, or the Arab-beach-bohemian atmosphere. The food is also amazing. Most places offer fresh seafood, and everywhere we ate was of a quality as good as, if not surpassing most Australian restaurants. It wasn’t the ritz, but it’ll beat the take away Thai place down the road hands down.

Right by the water!

It wasn't very busy when we were there.

Finally, you can’t go to Dahab without going diving. Voted the third best diving location in the world, swimming in the red sea was an unforgettable experience.

Talia and I hired a wetsuit, flippers and snorkelling equipment for the day at about AUD $10 for the both of us. You can also go scuba diving for even better views. Because of the price and the dive quality, Dahab has got to be one of the best places in the world to get your scuba licence.

About to step in to a whole other world.

For us, it was the perfect rest stop between two high tension destinations on our trip. If you’re in the area (or even if you’re not) plan to visit Dahab – my favourite place to relax in the world.

Relaxing with some new friends!

Today (below) we ventured to the hairdressers after a relatively sleepless night (someone thought it was morning at 2:30am, which I guess technically it was MORNING, but not late enough to wake up!!). He was a bit grizzly at the beginning of the appointment, so I held him, and then fed him while we waited for the highlights to develop. He was super good though and slept through my eyebrow wax, hair wash and cut! He was grizzly again at the end (hungry again), so we had another cuddle, and a feed when we got into the car.

I was NERVOUS about going to the hair dressers. It’s a scary thing to do with a 2 1/2 week old- he’s so volitle at this age- sleep, eating etc. Because of his irratic sleep last night I really didnt know if he would stay in the (very loose) routine he’d put himself into over the weekend. But when you got a sweet hair voucher for Christmas ($29 for 10 highlights, eyebrow wax, haircut etc!), that needs to be used before it expires, you’ve just got to do what you’ve got to do! And you know what? We did. We survived, and we weren’t a complete nuisance to the staff and customers in the shop!

So I thought I would share some photos, and if I ever find some time we might even start posting somewhat regularly again!

Lior, 1 day old.

Lior and I, 1 day old.

Luke & Lior- a few hours old.

Lior & Marzy (Luke’s mum)- a few hours old.

Lior & grandma (Talia’s mum)- a few hours old.

Lior & Pa (Talia’s dad)- a few hours old.

Lior & Nana (Talia’s nana)- a few hours old (Lior was birthed via vacuum- hence the big bruise on his head!).

Lior & Nonna (6 days old).

Lior & Pa (6 Days old)

Well, as you know from Luke’s post, our baby has been born! He is beautiful, and it’s hard to believe that he’s a week old today!

39 weeks is my last baby update, because he was born on the 13th, which was 39 weeks exactly. This week will basically just be an update on how the week went, and then I’ll share his birth story in a later post- I’m still working out how I want to share it.

We went to birth classes on the Saturday, which was really quite informative. We learnt quite a bit about the actual process of giving birth, and got to ask all our ‘stupid’ questions! We left early so I could make it to my friend Krystal’s baby shower, and that was a lovely afternoon!

On Tuesday I was driving around the coast after craft group, lamenting the fact that we no longer lived close enough to just go to Mooloolaba any time we wanted, and also how bloody hot it was, and I thought to myself “I should just go for a swim at the beach!”. So I did, and it was bliss. Seriously, no one told me how fantastic swiming would be when you’re pregnant. All that awful backache and pain just dulling for a while. It was great to be in the ocean as well, rolling with the waves.

That Tuesday night I had a Uni night with the girls, and we talked baby (my friend Katie is pregnant as well) all night. I have been looking forward so much to this baby, and expecting it early, but that evening Luke and I were driving home, and we just decided to forget about the baby. “You know what?” I said, “This baby isn’t going to come till 42 weeks, so lets just get on with our lives for these next few weeks and stop second guessing our decisions to go places because he (it at that stage) might arrive any day. Because in reality, he might NOT arrive any day. And that’s more probable anyway considering he’s a first baby”.

So yes, that’s what we decided and then about 5 hours later my waters broke. Haha!

It’s worth mentioning (for the record) that this week I’d had a lot of period like pain that was fairly constant, and a bit stronger then it had been in previous weeks. The pain in the right side of my lower back was getting worse as well as baby decended. Luckily I had mentioned this to Tess (our Doula) earlier in the week via email when she’d asked how I was going, and this was really helpful as she could diagnose that as the very beginnings of my labour.

So week ’39′ ends at 38 weeks and 5 days, because I was in either in pre-labour, 1st or 2nd stage labour for the rest of the week. Of course, I went out to take the photo above

Stay tuned for my erratic thoughts on Lior’s birth in a later post!

After an exhausting 52 hours of labour, Talia gave birth to beautiful 3.8kg (8″3′) baby boy.

You can read more about Lior at http://baby.carbis.com.au.

I definitely love being pregnant. For the most part it’s been breezy, and I adore my big belly. Sure, there are not so nice things- being slow, tired etc. But they’re nothing in comparison to the joy it is carrying around this big belly, and feeling this baby scoosh around inside me. I honestly feel a but if sadness at this phase coming to an end.

On our date last night I wore my jeans. I’ve missed them over summer. It just happened to be a cool(er) night.

We attended antenatal classes today, and got to ask lots of questions. Now I’m looking forward to the big day!

Writing up our birth ‘plan’- thinking through all the possibilities and options. Deciding what our first choice, second choice etc is for everything…

Of course, that’s floating around at the same time as me anticipating, wishing, waiting, wanting to hold my little babe. To see its face!! Joy! To have it feed from me and hold my finger. To hear its little noises!! I can’t wipe the huge smile off my face just thinking about this person we’ve made. God made. That he’s entrusted is to look after!

This week in the pregnancy we reached my personal “you can come anytime now” date- New Years. I’ve been paranoid for a few months now that bubs might make a super early arrival like its second cousin, Deegan, and come just after Christmas, instead of at the end of January. But now I can relax, because as far as I’m concerned, going into a brand new month/year is enough of a mental block to stop the whole christmas/new years combination presents thing.

Bubs has been a lot less wriggly this week, and I’ve had a couple of random one-off contraction things. When we met with Tess (our Doula) on Tuesday she said these were good signs. On Wednesday/Thursday my morning sickness returned, thought thankfully not as bad as at the beginning (which actually wasn’t bad at all, so this is like nothing really).

Today (Friday) my mumsie came to visit me and help me sort out my… everything. Haha. I feel like my brain is just mush and cloudy, and I can’t really push through any decent thoughts if they have to do with organisation. I can only really do the day-to-day things! It seems that the nesting thing has yet to happen to me, and the most I have done is collect furniture and wash clothes. So she helped me with a bit of cleaning, washing, and folding all of bub’s things. We also reshuffled the baby’s room to make it a bit more useable, which is good, because Luke and I really have no idea what is a smart layout, and what isn’t.

Luke and I finally bought a hospital bag last weekend, and today Mum and I also started packing it. We’ve packed all of baby’s things into it, and so all I have to do when I’m in labour is get together my things- toiletries etc. Clothes I will put in over the next few days as they are washed etc.

We’re off to birth classes tomorrow, as well as (hopefully) a friend’s baby shower!

A few weeks ago I listened to a podcast in which Toni Powell spoke about gratitude. She shared her story, and what she learnt from her daughter, Hailey’s, Gratitude 365 project. It was pretty inspiring to say the least, and I actually ended up listening to it twice because I shared it with Luke one day in the car.

Around the time I listened to the podcast I had been going through a bit of a rough patch. I won’t go into the details, but it was just a bit of a bombardment of life being a bitch, and me feeling sorry for myself whilst being extremely selfish. I thought that maybe this podcast had come at the perfect time, because for some reason it just really resounded with me. I couldn’t particuarly relate to Toni‘s story, but I could empathize, and see how it a similar approach could benefit me.

So for the last few weeks I’ve been grateful. Every day. And it really is amazing how that shift in perspective can really help, well, put things in perspective.

I’ve been writing a bit of a journal. I try to do it every day. Sometimes I do, sometimes I backdate, and somedays I just miss. Being the geek that I am, I’ve often thought of making a little side blog to share my gratitude on, but I like the idea of having something personal.

My cousin, Suzie, just shared the One Little Word that she’s living by this year, and it made me think that gratitude would be the perfect word for me this year, seeing as I will have a particularly special thing to be grateful for. I also acknowledge that a baby’s first year is not always easy for a brand new mum, so there might be moments when stopping to the grateful will help me put things in perspective, and carry on.

I think it ties in well with the family goals Luke and I have set for (duh) our family this year. Some words/ideas/beliefs we want to live by, and things we want to do/see/achieve as well.

Do you have a word for 2012, or are you doing goals/resolutions? I have a few craft related goals that I’ve shared on my craft blog. So it’s all a bit of a conglomerate of words and goals and idea for me, with the underlying theme of flexibility, because you never know what’s around the corner!

On Wednesday I had a midwife appointment, and got some blood tests. Luke came with me, and it was nice to experience that with him again. Since he’s been working in the city he really hasn’t been able to come to any appointment, including ultrasounds, so this was nice for him to see what I do every fortnight. Baby has been head down for quite a few weeks now, and this week the midwife checked on the little portable ultrasound scanner that it was indeed a head, and that it was indeed engaged. Which it was- yay! Luke got to have a little peek, and hear the heartbeat. The heartbeat is always my favourite part of the midwife appointment, and it was his favourite part too.

The midwife proceeded to finish off my paperwork, so that if I give birth any time now my book will be complete and they won’t have to follow it up afterwards. The widwife had a flick through my folder and said “Oh, you were born here too!” which was kinda cool. I had a look and you could see some records from my actual birth, and details about my mum and stuff like that. It’s kinda cute to have the same folder now, giving birth to my child, as I had when I was born. I’m a sucker for sentimental things like that.

This week has involved Christmas, and my 2nd cousin, Deegan’s 1st birthday party. Most of which happened at my Aunty & Uncle’s place. Their neighbour has a pool which we were allowed to use while they were away, and it was so very nice to relax in the water. A little bit weightless, and so nice to cool down. Makes me think I really should have started to going to our local community pool a while ago!

On Wednesday we also went for a tour of the birth suite. Luke found it very reassuring, which is good. Apparently the big bath isn’t very popular, which is a good sign, because I certainly plan on using it! To be honest, I was a bit put off by the hospital. Something about it just made me think I didn’t want to be there. But I try not to concern myself with those thoughts! The only really dissapointing thing we both found was that husbands can’t stay in the ward at all. So if I gave birth at say 8pm, and we spent 1-2 hours in the birth suite, Luke would have to go *home* and I would stay at the hospital overnight, because visiting hours are only until 9. Seems a little odd, but I do understand- I don’t necessarily want other people’s husbands wandering around my shared room.

Of course, we have the dilemma of living so far away. I’m sure he’d be more then welcome to stay at either his mum’s, or my parents place if he needs to. But again, no use worry or even thinking about that sort of thing till we know for sure what’s happening, and what time bubs will get here!

This is just a repost of something I read on tumblr, (to be honest I don’t even know if it’s true- but that’s beside the point) that really made me reflect on my own ‘rush’ ‘rush’ lifestyle. So I’m making a bit more of an effort this week to stop and see the things around me for what they are. It’s pretty good timing, seeing as I’m in the last few weeks of this pregnancy, and I don’t want to forget these moments, or brush past them unnecessarily!

Washington, DC Metro Station on a cold January morning in 2007. The man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time approximately. 2 thousand people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. After 3 minutes a middle aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried to meet his schedule.

4 minutes later:
The violinist received his first dollar: a woman threw the money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk.

6 minutes:

A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.

10 minutes:

A 3-year old boy stopped but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. Every parent, without exception, forced their children to move on quickly.

45 minutes:

The musician played continuously. Only 6 people stopped and listened for a short while. About 20 gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace. The man collected a total of $32.

1 hour:

He finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before Joshua Bell sold out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100.

This is a true story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people’s priorities.

The questions raised:

*In a common place environment at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty?

*Do we stop to appreciate it?

*Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context?

One possible conclusion reached from this experiment could be this:

If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world, playing some of the finest music ever written, with one of the most beautiful instruments ever made…

How many other things are we missing?

• I ate breakfast, AND lunch AND dinner.
• I ate gluten free.
• I ate sugar free.
• I took my supplements.
• I ate lots of fat.
• I was AWARE of how I felt, and what I felt like eating, and chose to either ignore, or indulge, based on what it was I felt like (for example, I felt like something sweet and ignored, and I also felt like I needed lots of milk- so I indulged).

And tonight I feel better then I have in weeks. I feel like my body is breathing this huge sigh of relief, and that it’s overjoyed at the prospect of not having to try and digest and work through all the crap I have been feeding it, without all the things that help.

So here’s to new beginnings. Who care’s that it’s the 29th of December. Screw New Years Resolutions- lets just do this thing now! I’ll tell you what though; at morning tea time, when I had a killer headache, I thought to myself “What the hell, lets just start this thing on January 1st”. And in the afternoon, when I really wanted some dried apricots, I thought the same things again. But tonight, at the end of it all I’m glad I didn’t wait. Because listening to my body, and feeling a connection with myself is a pretty awesome feeling, and tonight I got a taste of that coming back to me.

So today I had a conversation that went kinda, slightly, a little bit like this:

Aunty: “So if you’re not doing anything on the 15th, you can come round for lunch”

Me: “Ooh, I wonder if I’ll have a baby to bring by then!”

Everyone: “Oooh!”

Me: *silently freaks out*

Of course, always with the whole “It might not come till February” thing in the back of my mind.Either way I can count down the weeks on one hand, and that sends me into a state of both utter excitement, and utter terror, because as much as I feel prepared, I also feel like nothing can really prepare me for this unique experience.

Like I say, week 36 was a bit of a non-event baby wise. I am desperately trying to not think too much along the ‘any day now’ line, and more on ‘still a few weeks to go’ line. It seems a bit foolish to anticipate it so much, because I can see myself getting tired of it all. Though I have to admit, I am giddy with excitment about meeting this baby, and finding out if it’s a little boy or a little girl.

This week we had a few Christmas events to go to, as well as the start of Hanukkah. To celebrate Hanukkah we had a bunch of different people round each night. This was great, but definitely kept me really occupied and busy. Not much time to think about baby things!

I’ve had a lot of lower back pain, almost in my hips… a bit like really dull period ‘pain’ (not really painful, just uncomfortable), but not the cramping type. Anyway from what I can work out it’s all very normal discomfort.

Probably the MOST eventful thing that happened this week was getting a letter organising our birth classes for the 7th. It’s an incredibly inconvenient date, as it’s my friend Krystal’s crafty baby shower, so we’re just going to see how we go. If we get to lunch time, and it’s not really our thing, then we might just give the afternoon a miss, and I’ll pop into the shower. Now that we have a doula we’re much less concerned about birth classes. We know Tess will walk us through what we need to know in the next few weeks!

And that’s about it for this week!

Today I’m grateful that I stumbled upon this video.

It made me think that we should do more things like this. That we should laugh more. So I did.

Person: “How far along are you?”

Me: “35 weeks”

Person: “Woah, so it could come any time now!”

Me: “Yeah, or it might not come till February…”

And that’s where it is at. It’s that fine line between being ready now, and not being SO ready that I get frustrated when January comes and goes and I’m still pregnant. Because this is my first pregnancy, chance are, even though this baby is a bit big, I will go over my due date (which, as we all found out the other week, is just an estimate anyway!).

But anyway, here’s what the 35th week looked like:

Sleep: Very minimal at nights, and strangely prolific during the day. One day I lay on the bed to give Pepper a hug, and the next thing I knew it was 3pm and I’d been asleep since midday. Why is it so much easier to sleep in the day, and in ‘awkward’ positions (read: sprawled out around the dog, sometimes in a “U” shape etc).

Food: I have hated eating this week. For some reason I have found it incredibly uninspiring, and have had to force myself to really eat at lunch and dinner. Some days I have failed, which I know isn’t good.

Body: I don’t feel like I’m much bigger this week, just sort of sitting at a nice comfortable pregnancy size. I’ve had a lot more braxton hicks, and general cramping, as well as some pretty awful back pain. Heat packs have been great, and I’ve been trying out a few breathing techniques, vizualisation, and labour positions to get me ready for the big day. I figure if my body wants to practice contractions in preparation, then it really is beneficial for me to practice pain relief! Not that I’m really in ‘pain’ (except for the back ache, that is a bit hard to handle), but it’s a good reminder to be practicing everything I need to!

Feelings: This week I’ve just been getting really excited. It’s funny, 1 week out till Christmas and I am usually getting so excited about that, this year I’m just excited to meet my baby in a few weeks time!

I think Luke is feeling the same, except for when I mentioned that it was only 5 weeks to go, and then he went a bit pale, and we both just lay there thinking “Oh. My. Goodness. This is REALLY happening”. And that was a bit overwhelming, but we distracted ourselves with some TV time and it was all good again! With something like this, it doesn’t matter how much you prepare, sometimes you’re just hit with the realisation that this is like a big Tsunami wave coming towards you that will change your life forever, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.

Baby: Bubs has been SO active lately. I can definitely tell that it is running out of room, because I can feel such small movements, and can see all these squiggles on my belly. In that respect, this has probably been my favourite stage of pregnancy. To see the baby move so often in the day, and to not be in control of my body like that anymore is quite liberating and exciting. I’ve been trying to identify where bubs is sitting at different times, and I think I’m getting better at it. Bubs is always head down, and loves to sit on the right side of my body. I can feel its bum up in my chest when I’m sitting down. I don’t seem to suffer from much shortness of breath due to baby’s position (I do suffer some shortness of breath for other reasons before I was pregnant- this hasn’t been exasperated at all), which is good.

Summary: All is good. Bring on the baby.

Here are the process shots:

Here are my tips for building a gingerbread house:

1. Be patient. This gingerbread house was a three day event.

Day 1 I baked the gingerbread (I used a cookie cutter set that has all the walls/roof/doors/windows etc. It also has a chimney I didn’t use).

Day 2 (in the evening because it is coolest then) I made the royal icing and assembled the walls. They then dried overnight.

Day 3 I decorated the sides and attached the roof.

You could definitely have decorated the sides first and then put them together after. Either way it is my firm belief that with such a heavily laden, rather large gingerbread house it is necessary to wait until the walls are completely rock solid together before you even consider putting on the roof.

2. Make a pattern with the lollies. My favourite side is the rainbow of M&Ms. I think it is so cute! On some of the other sides I’ve done the alternate top and bottom sour worms and musk sticks. Patterns work really well.

3. Be aware of how quickly the icing dries. I made a particularly good icing for my house this time which sets VERY VERY hard. So it was important that I was aware of this when I was attaching the lollies (as in: work quickly!!).

For the m&m wall I slathered the wall in parts with icing, and then attached rows of lollies. For other walls, where I had less of a concrete plan, I put the icing straight onto the lollies, one by one, and attached them to the wall like that.

4. Neaten up the edges. Around my door I put musk sticks (I used the glue onto lolly method). But I then went around the inside of the door with my knife to get rid of any excess icing.

It is also very important that you neaten up the edges on the roof. Because the roof is not already on the house, it’s easy to slightly misjudge the size of a lolly and put it too high, which then means the roof won’t sit properly on the walls. Make sure you take you knife (while your glue is still wet) and just run it along the edge so that you know the roof will be able to sit flat against the top of the wall.

I think that’s all the tips I’ve got. As far as recipes go, I used THIS recipe from The Red Deer.

2 egg whites
4 cups icing sugar, approximately
1/2 tsp lemon juice

1. Beat egg whites in small bowl until just frothy.
2. Gradually beat in enough sifted sugar for mixture to form very stiff peaks.
3. Stir in juice.

I first up wanted to say a big thankyou to Rachel, who organised a really beautiful baby shower for Lor and I last weekend. It was really quite perfect! And also thankyou to Carmen and Mum for all YOUR help as well, these events don’t happen by themselves!

As I mentioned in last week’s belly post, we received heaps of great things that Lor will need once s/he decided to leave the safety of mum’s belly, and make its appearance in the big wide world. We are totally thankful for everone’s generosity. Now I just have to clean out bub’s room so I can wash it all and start storing it!

Instead of bombarding you with lots of words, I’ll just share lots of picture. Also, I’m not sure who minds having their photos on the internet, so I’ll just put the ones up of people who I know don’t mind!

Oh, I also wanted to mention that this lovely shower was held under none other than THE climbing tree. The one this blog is named after. So for those wanting a peek at this famous (yeah, not really famous, but whatever!…) tree, here it is.

Well, the 34th week of pregnancy has gone pretty well I think. I had one day where I felt like absolute crap, but mostly I’ve felt good and been enjoying it.

Last weekend Rachel organised a baby shower for Lor and I. It was a REALLY lovely day, and I am so thankful to everyone who attended for making it such a special day. In particular friends who came all the way from Brisbane, it really means a lot. I’ve got a post coming up to share all the photos with you, so stay tuned. We were really blessed with lots of things that Lor needs, and now I can start getting stuck into buying all the last few things that we know people aren’t going to buy for us.

This has helped me start feeling really on top of things. I’ve started cleaning out Lor’s room, and put the basinette in our room (part of the clean-up). I’ve just bought the foam for the basinette matress as well, so I can start cutting that and making a cover for it next week.

We also spoke to a Doula yesterday, who we will be hiring to be with us at the birth. Tess is really nice, and shares a lot of our beliefs about birth etc. and will help support us, and enforce our wishes for the birth, and treatment of both me & Lor.

Lor has been really quite active this week, pushing out and rolling around. My bellybutton hurts for some reason, and there’s like a line to the left of it that hurts. Weird pregnancy pains I guess. I’ve had dull cramping kinda like period pain every other day as well. It’s not so much painful, just always there which is frustrating. I’ve also been needing to throw up a bit (but haven’t actually managed to), so I’ve been trying to nap a bit in the afternoons to feel better. It could quite possibly be a bit of an OD from sugar, as we’ve really fallen off the bandwagon, and have failed to resit the temptation of lollies, chocolates and corintians!

I’m really starting to get excited about meeting my very own son / daughter! So I did what I always do when I’m excited about something: I made a website.

Check it out: baby.carbis.com.au. It currently includes a countdown, some photos, a link to our baby registry, and a place for comments. Why don’t you leave us one? Or maybe leave one for the baby!

That’s all for now – let me know what you think.

I written and re-written this post quite a few times now. I’m not sure what the point of it is exactly except to have a bit of a whine and complain. It’s taken me SO long to post it that I’ve had to change the time frame mentioned below MULTIPLE times, so I’m just going to post it how it is now.

As I look at the fridge I realise that there are only two items left on the menu plan…. which inevitably means I need to do the grocery shop. Which also means that it’s been about 3 weeks since I started this post, and never finished it because I was just so darn frustrated!

So let me start again. This version will be written in a (hopefully) far less whingy tone!

I use to love grocery shopping. I love food, and I love cooking, so grocery shopping was just another aspect of that. A chance to get all these lovely ingredients, and let my imagination run a little wild with the things I could create.

But this post isn’t about how awesome grocery shopping is, it’s about how awesome it isn’t when you have a heap of stuff you can’t eat (I can hear the whiny tone already…). Food intolerance and grocery shopping really just don’t mix. Particularly if you like the idea of making things from scratch and not eating overly processed foods.

Last The other week I spent at least 2 hours grocery shopping (not including fruit, vegies and meat, which I get elsewhere). I had to read the back of basically every packet I picked up, and tick off the following.

1. Is it gluten-free?
2. Is it sugar-free, or at least within the bounds of sugar free?
3. Is it full of preservatives/colours/flavours?
4. Is it in my list of allowable foods based on a) pregnancy b) freaking blood type diet?

So yeah, this took a long time. It made my grocery shop expensive in terms of time, and it made it expensive in terms of money. Life was simpler when I could make a big pasta bake and we’d be good to go. Now I can still make pasta bake, but I’ve either had to make it myself with gluten-free flour (not really the same taste, texture or cost), or with ready-made gluten-free pasta (again, not really the same tast or texture).

Grocery shopping with food intolerences sucks. Big time.

The. End.

Welcome to Recipe Friday (or there abouts)! The ‘glutenous’ part of moussaka is usually the white sauce (I usually make a roux with butter and flour, then slowly add milk), but you can easily make your white sauce with cornflour instead, and this tasty little hack gives it the flavour it needs to be ALMOST on par with the classic white sauce.

Gluten-Free White Sauce

• 1 cup milk
• 2 tbs cornflour
• Extra milk
• 2 tbs butter
• Nutmeg
• A small handful of cheddar or mozzarella cheese

Put your milk and butter into a small saucepan, and put on medium heat. While that’s coming to the boil, put the cornflour into mug, and cover with the extra milk. Mix this together so it forms a paste. When the milk is basically at boiling point, add the cornflour paste. Stir continuously (I recommend with a whisk) until the milk thickens. Add the grated nutmeg to taste.

Add some cheese if you want to make a cheese sauce (this is perfect for mousakka or pasta bakes).

Mousakka

For my mousakka I sliced 2 eggplants, and then grilled them on a gridle pan (you could do them in the oven if that was easier). In a frying pan fry up about 500g of lamb mince.

Layer up the eggplant, mince, and white sauce (I like my mousakka with quite a bit of white sauce, so I make about 3 times the recipe above, and then make a pasta bake for Luke’s lunch with the leftover white sauce).

Add some cheese to the top, bake it in the oven till it’s crispy, and you’re done!

Variations:

I’ve used beef mince as well at times, and it’s not quite the ‘authentic’ mousakka flavour, but definitely does the job.

I’ve also made this with no mince at all, and that’s fine as well. You might like to add some layers of sliced, boiled potatoes.

So, this week I got to see baby again, AND I got a picture! Yay!! Thankyou God for answering my prayers!

The funny thing was, this lady wasn’t strange about giving me a copy at all. She even hunted to get my good pictures! When all she could get of the face was this half photo (baby was half facing into my hip, which she obviously can’t get too), she tried to find feet photos for me (bubs feet were right up into my chest, so she couldn’t get those either!). I think I must have just had a very nasty ultrasound man last time!! To think it’s caused me so much heartache and pain and I’ve been so dissillusioned with QLD health, all for one man’s bad attitude. If only I’d known!

I was getting this follow-up ultrasound because bub’s kidneys were a little too high last scan. But they’re all in the right position now, and while s/he’s big, s/he’s also fine.

Some people found it difficult to identify the face, so I’ve done up an explanation below:

Other then this very exciting thing to happen, everything else has been smooth sailing. Bubs has been very, very active, which is nice. I’ve been getting what I can only assume is braxton hicks. They’re not particularly painful, just a bit incovenient, particularly when you’re meant to be teaching a class…

Speaking of teaching, I taught the two last days of school for the year. So that’s officially it for me until… well, I have no idea when I’ll go back to relief teaching really. I think I coped through the days fairly well, because it was the last two days of school we watching a fair bit of DVDs, which meant I could sit down. For this I am VERY thankful, because I did a LOT of standing up and walking as well. Teaching really is an ‘on your feet job’. It didn’t hit me how hard the walks and standing up was for my body until I work up this morning with my mucsels basically frozen together. Oh the pain! If it wasn’t the end of school anyway I think I would have been declining any more offers for work this year.

And that’s about it for week 33. Into week 34 now, and constantly shaking my head at how quickly all this has happened!

This week I’ve been experiencing a heap more Braxton Hicks. It’s actually really exciting, and really just blows my mind. That my body is practicing and getting ready for this momunmental task of awesomness it’s going to achieve. I’m excited that my body is able to stretch and grow, and then push out another human being. Seriously, it blows my mind.

I might possibly be a freak, but I spend a LOT of time imagining what giving birth will be like. This week in particular. I’ve imagined and drawn out so many different scenarios. I guess it’s just my way of preparing for something that, lets face it, I can’t REALLY prepare myself for. I have no idea how my body or my emotions, or my mind will react in the situation of being in labour and giving birth. I can only use the videos I’ve seen, the things I’ve read, and the stories I’ve heard as guides as to what this might be like. Even if I HAD given birth before, I still wouldn’t know what this impending birth would be like.

I’ve watched a lot of really scary, off-putting births (I blame One Born Every Minute), and so have been trying to counter-act that with births that inspire me. Births that reflect how I would like this birth to go. Births that show the great strength of women, and births that show the relationship between mother and baby in the birth process.

Do you want me to get off my soap box now?!

Other then all this visualisation etc. I’ve mostly just been dying from the heat. I have the fan on, and I don’t know how long I’ll last until the air con goes on as well. If I had togs that fit me I would seriously get a pool membership, and laze around there all day.

I’m blaming pregnancy hormones (and probably thyroid hormones. BLAH) on my erratic emotions lately. I’ve been so far down, and then back up again. It’s pretty hectic, not something I particularly want to talk about or remember, and it’s been really confusing. Darn you crazy emotions!

My next docs appointment is on Tuesday. Hopefully my last ultrasound before bubs arrives. I am secretly (not so secretly apparently…) praying that I get a really nice ultrasound person who lets me have a copy of even just ONE photo. I am so desperate for it, but just can’t justify or afford to go pay for a 3D one (I hate those 3D ones anyway- kinda weird). If I wanted to get this last ultrasound done privately, then I would have to pay for a doctor’s appointment, and then the excess after Medicare, and that’s money we don’t really have. So poo to that.

Lor is SUPER active lately. Well, maybe it’s just me feeling it more. Apparently things are pretty tight in there now, so that’s why I can feel even all the little movements. That combined with the braxton hicks makes things very distracting! I’m not complaining though, I love it, and I think I’ll miss it when it’s gone…

I found this recipe for gluten-free (grain-free also) macaroons, and adapted it to be sugar-free as well. The original recipe is from “Gluten Free Grain Free- Food We Love” by Tania Hubbard.

These were really quite nice- as is to be expected from almost anything made with almond meal!! I give them a good 4/5!

Ingredients:

1 cup almond meal
1 cup desiccated coconut
1 cup dextrose

3 egg whites

Method:

This recipe uses a ‘add dry ingredients, then add wet ingredients’ method.

Just make sure you pre-heat your oven to 180ºC before you start.

Once everything’s mixed, make walnut sized balls (like teaspoon sized balls for those of us not overly familiary with walnuts…), make them all perfectly round by rolling them in your hands, put them on a tray, and flatten the tops!

The cooking time is up to you- 15 minutes minimum for soft macaroons, and 20-25 minutes (depends on your oven) for crispy ones. Use your eye and judge their readiness based on their colour. Light brown is soft, darkish brown is crisp!

Notes:

If you don’t care about sugar free, then I would add 3/4 cup sugar, taste it, and then add more if you need.

This week I’m getting all into some extra pills to support my body. I actually take four fish oil ones as well now, so each morning is quite a concocution! Here are some details from week 31…

How far along: 31 Weeks

Sleep: Sleep this last week has been similar to previous weeks- not so good! I get up on average 4 times a night. Sometimes I go to the toilet, sometimes I just sit up (which is actually quite painful as my muscels are tight at night), and other times I just go get a drink. I guess it’s no wonder naps during the day have become pretty important!

Maternity Clothes: I bought some plain singlets from Supre (Shock, horror!) for $5 each, and they are VERY stretchy, so they fit my belly quite well.

Best moment of the week: We went to my cousin’s engagments party on Saturday and it was nice to have people comment on how ‘big’ my belly was. I’m not feeling fat, so comments on my ‘big’ belly are quite welcome at the moment!

Food cravings: None related to pregnancy- just the regular cravings you have when you start a new diet- all the things you can’t have!

Food aversions: Well, if I didn’t have to, I wouldn’t be avoiding it, but as I’ve mentioned before, gluten and sugar are off the menu. So are a bunch of other foods according to my blood type, but I haven’t got serious about that yet.

Symptoms: Fatigue is the main one.

Movement: Oh Lor DEFINITELY likes to move! It’s been fun to see my belly shake and wobble and look all lop-sided as s/he moves around!

What I’m looking forward to: My next ultrasound at 32 weeks! Not next Tuesday, but the Tuesday after! Not looking forward to not getting photos though.

What I miss: Being able to walk around the shops for more then an hour and not have to sit down!

Next appt: I had my midwife appointment this Tuesday, and my next appointments are for an ultrasound, and to see the obstetrician on the 29th.

This week I’ve been feeling a bit… unorganised. Or at least I was last week, and I’ve spent a decent amount of time this week writing lists, and sorting through all the things we have for baby in an attempt to get more organised! We have been very blessed with heaps of hand-me-downs and things that haven’t been used, all given to us by lovely friends and family (the latest addition is a lovely self-rocking chair thingy from Amy!) I had some sort of idea of what we had, but then people would ask me ‘do you have XYZ’ I would be like, “Jeepers, I didn’t even think of XYZ! I wonder what else I don’t have…”.

So last weekend I sat down with mum and we found some lists online and basically wrote down everything that I don’t have, that I need. I added a bunch of them to our baby wishlist in case people want to buy ‘practical’ things for bubs! I like this online wishlist because it’s easy for me to access when I’m out and about, and it’s easy for people who want to buy Lor a gift to see what s/he still needs.

In my pregnancy book for the hospital they have a list of what to bring to the hospital when you go into labour- things for me and things for baby, and so I wrote them down on a list too, and have started adding things my fortnightly shop to stretch out the cost a bit. So this week I went through all the things we already have, and crossed them off both those lists. Turns out there’s still HEAPS to get!

Mum and I went clothes shopping last weekend as well, and she bought me a few nice tops (thanks Mum!). We were looking at just larger sizes, as the maternity ranges in the major shops (Big Dub, Tar-get etc) seem to be quite sparce/dull/boring. Turns out that while they might fit around me round the belly now, there’s really no room to grow, and the tops are always too big for my arms etc. So we ended up settling on a plain black maternity top (not really ideal for summer, but oh well), and a plus-size cammi top (so it doesn’t matter that it’s a bit big around the top) that I’m modding a bit so my belly can expand.

I’m glad I’m feeling more organised, though there are still a few things that I haven’t done. I did want to do a video of Luke and I at about 20 weeks, talking to the baby. Something we could show it when it’s old enough to comprehend, but I obviously missed that deadline! Perhaps we’ll aim to do something over Christmas, or on Jan 1st for it…

-LET US BEGIN-

I think the first questions I need to ask myself is, “What’s the purpose of a blogroll?”.

I have always thought that a blogroll is your way of saying ‘thankyou’ to the bloggers you read most. These are blogs you enjoy, blogs that you keep coming back to read even when you have no time. I like this concept- it gives readers a new sense of who YOU are as a blogger, because these are the people influencing you. In the early days, and even now really, this was one of the main ways I found new blogs to read.

Lets just get distracted for a minute by that thought “these are the people that INFLUENCE you”. INFLUENCE. Well, lots of things on the internet influcence me/us, as do lots of things OFF the internet. So should blog rolls be limited to other blogs (kinda like the name suggests), or can that be websites in general? Should it be specific articles or blog posts that have made you think, or that you really like? Can it include ‘offline’ links- books/magazines etc.

One thought I need to keep in the back of my mind with all this is “How does this relate to the purpose of our blog?”. For us, the purpose is to document our life as a family, and the things we’re learning. It’s a place that our children will eventual contribute to, when they’re old enough, and it’s a place that is communal. A shared place.

This effects the blogroll idea in this way: If this is a family blog, then the blog roll needs to reflect our family values- not just the likes of just one or two people (unless each person had a seperate blog roll).

-HOLD THAT THOUGHT-

How can we think differently about blog rolls? Are we limited to a list of links down the side, or the same thing, just on a page? Is there another, more meaningful way to share the inter-web love? Maybe something more along the line of the blog mystery tour Naomi does every now and again? Maybe sharing research papers, and things that are influencing how our family works, kinda like I did with the pregnancy and birth research links on last week’s pregnancy update. Maybe just a typical blog roll type thing, but in a blog post that’s relevant for the week, instead of just an overarching thing that needs to be updated.

The ‘needs to be updated’ thing leads me to some of the problems that I see with blogrolls. I’ve noticed with my old blogs that blogrolls can get out of date pretty quickly, so you have to be willing to check it and update it periodically.

Also, the recpricol friendship thing. Oh you put me on your blog roll? I guess I should put you on mine. Or worse- putting someone on your blog roll and realising that you’re not on theirs… I know it shouldn’t matter (and it might not to some people), but I can’t help but be dissapointed when I’m not included.

Also, then sometimes (not in all cases- this is just personal experience) you can then get into the cycle of blogging for other people- for their approval. You can do this all you want, but if they’re just not watching you, they’ll never see you. Then we get dissapointed and don’t blog for a while, because… what’s the point? When really, that’s not why you STARTED blogging, is it?

-TIME TO BREATH-

-BACK TO WHEN WE ‘HELD’-

Back to the context of ‘our blog purpose’. Our blog’s purpose is to document what we’ve been learning as individuals and as a family, documenting our life. This means we need to consider if blogrolls will hinder this, or help this. Maybe the ‘mentality’ of blog rolls will hinder this, but I don’t think sharing things we’ve found online will. In fact, I think that’s a pretty important part of the learning process! Also, I think it’s an important lesson to learn to ‘give’ without the expectation to recieve. We give an particular blog post/article etc. some link love because it’s been helpful to us, or we enjoyed it, not because we want to have that link love reciprocated.

So, for us as a family blog. I think, at this stage at least, a traditional blogroll (either on the sidebar or on a page) won’t work. I like the idea of a post that shares articles / research / blog posts / fun internet memes / tutorials etc. that currently take the author’s interest. I know people do these posts all the time, and they’re not called blogrolls (we probably won’t call them blogrolls either…), so this isn’t a new thing, but it’s still something that will work for us.For example, when Lor is old enough to colour in s/he might share with you some of his/her favourite websites for getting colouring in pages, or an app s/he uses for drawing etc. Similarly, when Luke and I have to make a ‘big’ parenting decision, we might share links, or quotes from books that have helped us come to the decision we have, similar to the birth/labour links.

-BRAIN DUMP COMPLETE-

With all that being said, I would love to know what you think about blogrolls. Do you agree/disagree with my definiton at the beginning? Do you have one on your own blgo? What’s your general philsophy with link lovin’ on the internet?

Over and Out,

T

Another week… *twiddles thumbs*

And there’s not much more to say then that!

Here are some links to some bits I’ve been reading about pregnancy and birth:

When Are Your Due?- this has been really eye opening re: due dates. I still like the weekly count…up, but when people ask when I’m due I just say end of January now, not the EDD.

Maternal Infant Bonding- this is quite interesting. I’m a brain geek, so I love that this site explains the actual beain chemistry that happens during the oh so important bonding time.

The Bradley Method- This was just an overview page, and I need to read more on this.

Active Birth- recommended by my mother, and a book that now has many things underlined in it!

Lessons From My Birth- I definitely recommend watching this woman’s birth, and this particular blog post has been quite reassuring in my thoughts that birth is as individual as the two people involved- me and Lor!

Pain In Labour- Your Hormones Are Your Helpers- this is really insightful about what an important role our hormones play in childbirth, and how we have everything we need to give birth successfuly!

Epidural Risks and Concerns for Mother and Baby- At the beginning I was anti epidurals because of my needle phobia, then when started to research it (this is one of the many sources of information I used) I realised I was totally against for other reasons as well!

Penny Simkin on Delayed Cord Clamping- Why you should wait to cut the baby’s umblical cord.

There are a lot more sites I could share, but these are just a few I’ve been reading in the last few weeks.

After my last post about my thyroid, a lovely friend on facebook said that she would chat to her naturopath about my situation. She lives up in North Queensland, so I am not able to go and visit this naturopath, but she has gladly helped me via email. She’s a lovely Christian naturopath, which is exactly what I wanted.

I sent her up all my information, and a copy of my food diary, and she sent me back her recommendations. The changes are… drastic (!!). She has recommended two new diets for me to follow simultaneously. The first is by my blood group, and the second is gluten-free.

The gluten-free will be the main difference to my current diet, which, basically consists of weet-bix for breakfast, some sort of bread for lunch, and baked goods as snacks. Even dinner is wheat based half the time! I know I can get gluten-free flour, so not all my recipes are flying out the window, and there are still quite a lot of ‘filling’ foods you can eat on gluten-free, so I imagine I’ll lean towards those in the beginning.

I feel like with the last naturopath I went to I made the mistake of just accepting what she was saying with an further research. And while I don’t have any reason to think that this naturopath doesn’t know what she’s talking about, I know more about MYself now, and know that I need to have that knowledge base if I’m going to commit to something successfully.

I still have to read the book on eating for your blood type, and do the research on how it will benefit my thyroid, but I’m willing to give it a try for now, unreasearched, until I finish the thyroid book I’m reading.

So, for your reference and mine, he is what I discovered about the connection between thyroid and celiac disease, or gluten intolerance.

What the vast majority of hypothyroidism patients need to understand is that they don’t have a problem with their thyroid, they have a problem with their immune system attacking the thyroid. This is crucial to understand, because when the immune system is out of control, it’s not only the thyroid that will be affected.

Source: http://chriskresser.com/the-most-important-thing-you-may-not-know-about-hypothyroidism

The molecular structure of gliadin, the protein portion of gluten, closely resembles that of the thyroid gland. When gliadin breaches the protective barrier of the gut, and enters the bloodstream, the immune system tags it for destruction. These antibodies to gliadin also cause the body to attack thyroid tissue. This means if you have AITD and you eat foods containing gluten, your immune system will attack your thyroid.

The short version: foods that contain gluten (both whole grains and flours) contain substances that inhibit nutrient absorption, damage our intestinal lining, and – as I’ve described in this article – activate a potentially destructive autoimmune response. What’s more, there are no nutrients in gluten-containing foods that you can’t get more easily and efficiently from foods that don’t contain gluten.

The good news is that if you have AITD and are gluten intolerant removing gluten completely from your diet will dramatically improve your health. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it.

Source: http://chriskresser.com/the-gluten-thyroid-connection

When it comes to addressing hypothyroidism and Hashimoto’s, certain nutritional and herbal compounds are invaluable. All the supplements in the world, however, will fall short if you fail to make the necessary dietary changes to support your condition.

When immune antibodies tag gluten for removal from the bloodstream, where it landed thanks to a leaky gut, this stimulates production of antibodies against the thyroid gland as well. In other words, every time you eat gluten, your immune system launches an attack not only against gluten but also against the thyroid gland. This immune response to gluten can last up to six months each time it’s ingested. It’s just not worth it. Also, as I continue my research and practice in neurology, I never cease to be amazed at how profoundly one’s brain health, a concern for all those struggling with hypothyroidism, can be impacted by removing gluten from the diet.

Technically a person can develop an intolerance to any food, especially one that is eaten repeatedly when a leaky gut is an issue.

Source: http://drknews.com/changing-your-diet-is-the-first-step-in-addressing-hashimotos/

More and more doctors are looking toward diet as a contributing factor in thyroid diseases.  A new study sheds light on the fact that selenium deficiency can be caused by gluten induced malabsorption.  The researchers go on to say that Selenium deficiency can cause thyroid diseases and can lead to unregulated inflammatory damage…

Source: http://www.glutenfreesociety.org/gluten-free-society-blog/hypothyroid-disease-can-be-caused-by-gluten-and-nutritional-deficiencies/

Also, it’s worth mentioning that I’ve been assured that going gluten-free won’t adversley affect the baby. In the thyroid book I’ve been reading I’ve learnt alot about how thyroid diseases can affect unborn babies (when their mothers have it), and this has been a bit of a catalyst for us to definitely get on board with the gluten-free thing.

So a few weeks ago I introduced a housework chart. I wasn’t sure how it would go. I mean, I needed to structure- I knew this, but charts and schedules have never really worked for me in the past, so I was hopeful, but not expecting too much.

Well, it turns out this housework chart has been a saviour! As I vaguely mentioned the other day, this has given me a bit of stability and routine for each day, and helped me to feel like I am doing my part at home.

As with any new plan/schedule like this, things change, but I’m happy to report that the general format of the spreadsheet is working well. I am using the days down the side (with the tasks listed) as my list for the day, and even check off next to them when they’re done. I am generally aware of what needs to be done every week, and what is only done some weeks, and just look up which week I’m up to when I get to something that’s done less frequent.

As far as spreading out of tasks is concerned, I’ve found that Mondays are my most productive day, so I have added more things to that day, and less to the others. Also, I’ve started going to a mothers group on Wednesday morning, so I’ve had to adjust the schedule to accomodate that time away as well. I’m still working out how Wednesdays look, but I adjust it every week, and I think I’m nearly there!

As I’ve gone through the last few weeks I’ve realised that there are a few things I’ve left off the list, so those have been added where necessary.

Generally, I would say that this is the best housework schedule I’ve ever made for myself (by golly there’s been quite a few!). Perhaps it’s the time of my life as well, that makes it work so well? I have a lot of personal projects I need/want to work on. Things like scrapbooking, making some baby things etc. and this housework chart lets me justify spending time on those things. It’s nice to finish all my ‘jobs’ for the day and then not feel bad about sitting down to scrapbook our holidays etc.

I have also given myself a ‘day off’- Tuesdays. Really it wasn’t feisable for me to actually do many chores that day, I leave to go to craft group pretty well straight after Luke leaves for work, and then don’t get home until about 3. That leaves about 2 1/2 hours till Luke gets home, in which time I just have to do the chores that are done every day like any washing up, get dinner on, say hello to Pepper, check emails etc. It’s not that there’s no time to do other chores, it’s just that that late in the afternoon, I’m really lacking the motivation to start anything big!

So yes, things are working well. If you wanted to see more clearly what I’ve done, send me an email with your google docs email address and I will add you to the spreadsheet.

Breakfast: Weetbix with milk (and sometimes fruit)

Morning Tea: Fruit- mango (Luke usually doesn’t have fruit unless it’s easy to pack- something like a banana like you can see in the afternoon picture)

Lunch: Leftovers for Luke (beef curry), turkey sandwiches for Talia

The beef curry I made was with the Sharwoods tika curry paste, one of the few I’ve found with no sugar in the them. The turkey sandwichs today were a little bit of an indulgence- white bread is usually something we try to avoid.

Afternoon Tea: Sweet snack (homemade)- Shortbread and raspberry friands

Dinner: Salmon skewers with asian salad

The salmon skewers were marinated in lemon juice, olive oil, grated garlic and ginger. The salad dressing was just those same things again, plus fish sauce, soy sauce, tomato puree, and a bit of dextrose. The actual salad was just wombok cabbage, capsicum, snow peas and cucumber ribbons.

I just wanted to note that with the photos it looks like we eat a LOT of fruit. The photos are from both Luke and I, and not all from the same day. I usually try to limit myself to 2-3 serves of fruit a day, which is still quite a lot of sweet.

*takes deep breath* the weeks go SO quickly. 28 weeks already. I feel like I’m spluttering “But, but, but…. I was only 27 weeks the other day!!”

Well, this week has been pretty quiet. I’ve been feeling baby move and kick quite a lot, and it makes me all clucky whenever I can feel it kicking me. I just sort of sit there in awe when I can feel it move across my belly. A few times it feels like perhaps its head is out towards my belly, and it moves from one side to the other. Could just be a foot or something I guess, but it’s a bit a shocking, awe inspiring moment. Not to mention a bit uncomfortable.

Speaking of being uncomfotable, this has been the theme this week. Interestingly enough I had a convo with Luke about it this last Sunday night (technically week 29, but who cares), and he is seems to be getting frustrated as well with my slow movements! Waddling around, and just generally being a bit slower seems to be the way things are now.

I’ve also noticed that when I push myself too far (stay up too late, walk around all day etc) that’s when I suffer the most. Back pain has been more prominent this week, but nothing I can’t handle, and really nothing worse then bad back days before I was pregnant. Heat is a lovely relaxer!

This week I FINALLY called up my current hospital to discuss my options re: changing hospitals, and they were a bit too complicated to discuss on the phone. I will need to talk to the docs next time I’m in to see what they recommend.

Because I’m seeing a regular doctor about my thyroid, as well as a regular doctor about my thyroid, things are a bit more complicated. After breifly discussing a couple of options, here’s what I’m thinking my ideal situation is: Continue to do all appointment at current hospital, and just do birth classes and actually give birth, at the new hospital. The IDEAL ideal is that I would do everything at my current hospital, but I’m thinking driving an hour to the hospital might be too far? People tell me car rides are the WORST when you’re in labour. This would bascially all be on the highway, but still. I would definitely appreciate some words from people who have travelled over 40 mins to get to the hospital before.

So that’s week 27 down, only 12 more to go!

So, 27 weeks pregnant. The start of the third trimester. I am a bit of a milestone junkie, so this is a big deal for me.

Being 2/3 of the way through makes it all a bit real, particularly with so much other stuff to take up my time in the coming months (okay, mostly just Christmas, but that’s a LOT of time taken up- I LOVE Christmas!), it’s going to go pretty quick! Trimester two also marks half way for amost everyone else, so that’s a pretty nice milestone as well.

As far as names are concerned, turns out Luke and I have different ideas on how middle names should go. We have been focussing on boy names, as these seem to role a bit easier, andto be honest, we have absolutely ZERO idea for girls. Neither of us are opposed to the middle names the other person likes, and really, we could do all of them, but is a first name, surname and then three middle names too much? I think so, though they all sound quite good together.

I’ve given up (for now) on the idea of having my maiden name as a middle name, because it really doesn’t fit, and my brother (who has my mother’s maiden name) is adament that it’s not a good idea. :-/

We have tentatively given bubs a nickname- Lor. It is appropriate for both our boy, and girl, name. And will hopefully keep my Nana happy as she doesn’t like just calling it baby! We (mostly me) have been testing it out this week, and Lor seems to work. We have a heap of nick names that we prefer, but they’re quite specific to either name- Lor is the only nickname that could go either way. You can probably guess the names now, but please don’t.

I had a bit of a hiatus from doctor and midwife appointments for a while, because I missed one, and then it took me forever to get my act together and call them back. But I’ve been to see the doc about my thyroid last week (all is well, just need to get blood tests once a month now to monitor it- or until they think it’s fine), and the midwife this week. Everything is on track.

Do you know what is funny/weird when you see people at the antenatal clinic who you know haven’t announced they’re pregnant yet..

After a chat at mothers group this week (remind me to write a post about that) it has come to my attention that it’s my responsibility to ask someone to host a baby shower for me. Rachel has already offered, so I will most likely take her up on it. We had been tossing up the idea of having a ‘birthday party’ instead of a baby shower, where Luke and our male friends can join in, but I think I need to brainstorm what I want a bit more. Either way, I need to get my act together. If we do something before, like normal people, then we’ll probably need to do it soon before everyone gets into the Christmas/holiday party season, and no one can come!

I think that’s enough rambling for this week…!

Pink hair, just after it's died (and dried)

So, it turns out that last week I got bored. Well, I was in a bit of a funk to be honest. As much as I enjoyed scrapbooking most days of the week, I was totally out of my routine (who knew I even had one?!) and therefore going a bit cra-zy.

It happened that on Thursday afternoon, after doing practically nothing all day, I remember the sweet pink bits of hair I had at our wedding, and the inspiring coloured tips SOMEONE posted on their blog (and I have now searched and searched and can not remember who posted that picture of themselves!), and thought “Hell, I need a change, and I’m bored. Lets do this thing”. So I did.

If you are a ‘beauty’ person, best not read this next part, cause you’ll probably be pretty shocked/horrified/appauled and have a million reasons why this is super-bad for me. Meh.

I found the old pink hair die I had in the cupboard (the same one I used on my wedding hair, bought at least four years ago), did a quick rinse, and just basically lathered the pink stuff onto the ends. It wasn’t very technical, or exact, but it worked in its one goal: curing boredom!

After one wash, I am liking it a lot better (see below). Before it was QUITE bright. But obviously not bright enough for Luke to notice until the next morning when I practically waved my head in front of him. To his credit, date night (that Thursday night) was in a cinema, and it was dark, and it was just the tips, which are usually dangled down my back and not something you look at terribly often.

Hair again, after one wash.

So now I’m pretty keen to know, am I the only one who’s done something a bit crazy like this is the heat of boredom?!

Also, the post updates for last week and this week will be posted over the weekend!

Video of the scrapbook below!

Wow, okay. So I am quite a bit behind with the ol’ baby updates! Sorry about that folks! I’ll back-date this post.

This week I’ve been getting hot flushes, and at times the heat is almost unbearable. Particularly at night, I am sweating and just generally uncomfortable. Luke has been a regular temperature of course, and for the first half of the week was insistent that we DIDN’T need the fan. Until I put it on facebook… then everyone was all “No way! Pregnant woman need fan!”. So the fan I have gotten.

I’ve also forgotten to write that a few weeks ago we decided on both our boy and girl name! Both start with L, and I think we’ll leave it at that for now… While we both love these names, you never know what will happen in 14 weeks, so we’re still flexible! Though now we’re onto the middle name conundrum. I am a bit of a sentimental fool and like to use family names as middle names. Also, it’s way easier. What creative thinking I have in arts and crafts, I seriously lack in creative thinking for middle names.

My only other ‘big’ news is that I got a body pillow. Yay! It is seriously so amazing, and I am so so thankful to Luke that he got it for me. Before pregnancy (and even up to just a few weeks ago) I was a big tummy sleeper. There are two deterants now for sleeping on my belly- 1) it’s uncomfortable with the big tum, and 2) if I stay there for long bubs starts kicking me like crazy (assume it’s kinda cramped when I lie like that) and then I REALLY can’t get to sleep.

So the body pillow has been great, cause I can lie on my side, and over the pillow a bit- reminisent of my tummy sleeping days!

As far as bubs is concerned, it’s started to open its eyes, and it’s got some brain-wave activity happening, so it can respond to different sounds etc.

Being pregnant is somehow synonymous with being hungry. This type of hunger strikes me at the most inconvenient times, like when I’m out, usually driving past McDonalds. Anyway, I end up buying something too sugary, fatty and with little nutrients for it to be remotely good for me. So when I heard about the product talk for Uncle Toby’s ‘Simply’ fruit bars, I though, “What the hay, I’ll give it a go!”. It has to be better then maccas, right?

Well, yeah, I think these are better then munching down a quarter-pounder! But because we’re a no-sugar family, they actually gave me a bit of a headache when I ate them. There’s nothing in these bars but sultanas, dried apricots, oats, dried dates, sunflower oil, poppy seeds, orange oil, and a preservative (suphur dioxide). This, for me, is a plus, and probably the thing I like most about them. After reading Michale Pollan’s “In Defense of Food” we’ve really been limiting the processed foods that we eat, specifically those with a bunch of ingredients we can’t pronounce! So to see a product with only one preservative I had to google, is a good thing!

FYI: the Suphur dioxide is a preservative used in a lot of wine as well. It’s basically there to stop the fruit rotting.

I guess with something like this, it comes down the question- would I recommend this product? And to be honest, that’s a hard question. If you’d asked me a year ago, I would have said “Yes, definitely!”, but now we’re sugar free, I really can’t. I didn’t realise that a fruit bar would be 39.3% sugar… (and yes, we can be all ‘but it’s natural sugar, blah, blah, blah’, but sugar is sugar), and there aint much fibre left in dried fruit, to help our bodies process it all.

If I wasn’t concerned about my sugar intake, and my thyroid problem (I can’t have vegetable oils like sunflower oil – reference), and I was just looking at natural ‘real’ ingredients, and limiting preservatives etc., then I would definitely be stashing these babies in my hand bag, or perhaps even put an extra the glove box for those times when I’m out and about, it’s morning or afternoon tea time, and I start craving a snack!

I am really pleased to see such a big company like Uncle Tobys really making an effort to eleminate added sugars, and get back to basic, real, foods.

Part of what we miss about living in Brisbane now, is the beach lifestyle of the Sunshine Coast.

We’re not traditionally ‘beachy’ people. We rarely actually go ONTO the beach, and even more rarely do we swim, but we like hanging out at coffee shops, staring at the ocean, and wearing our togs all Summer (okay, maybe that’s just me). When we go to a coffee shop now, it’s in a shopping centre, or at a cafe. Either way it’s surrounded by buildings or things that just aren’t the beach…

So on Sunday when we were getting a bit peckish, and bit too lazy to make anything for lunch, and Pepper was getting a bit stir-crazy, we decided to head on over to Sandgate and see if this could be our new Mooloolaba.

Sandgate isn’t Mooloolaba. In some ways this is good, and in some ways, not so good. It was quite a busy day (it was a BEAUTIFUL day too), and yet we still easily found a park (+1 Sandgate). We could take Pepper for a walk down the path, and there was little worry of her a) getting run over and b) there being anti-dog people there (+1 Sandgate). There was a reasonably priced fish & chip shop (+1 Sandgate) but no ‘coffee shops’ that we saw, and certainly no Starbucks (+1 Mooloolaba). Sandgate is also in a bay, so there aren’t really any waves, and when it’s low tide (like it was when we were there) there is a few hundred of metres of sand people walk on!

Here are some photos from our little outing to Sandgate. I think we’ll definitely be going back.

I just wanted to say first up a huge thankyou to everyone who either commented, emailed me, or spoke to me in person about last week’s post. I’m really glad that I let me feelings be heard, and that I am not alone in being excited to realise the potential of my body, and do what it’s been created for!

I’m going to have a go at this template I modifited from The Art of Making A Baby and see if I like it. It could be a nice little way of recording the same category of things each week.

How far along: 25 Weeks

Sleep: I’m sleeping for at least a few hours before I have to wake up and go the toilet, or turn over. I’m finding that I’m REALLY achy when I have to get out of bed in the night, and in the morning. Just sore muscels. I’m putting this down to the way they’re having to move to accomodate baby/belly.

Maternity Clothes: Still haven’t bought any! I am loving leggings though. Will definitely have to get some shorter ones (like to the knees instead of to the ankle) as the weather gets hotter.

Best moment of the week: Sitting in the car with Luke, thinking and talking out what sort of values we want this kid to have, and what’s important to us as a family. It was funny timing, because we’d just been out with Luke’s Aunty and Uncle (& cousin, and mum and sister) and Carol had asked if baby would do the no-sugar thing. So Luke and my discussion wasn’t so much on things like that, but it made me realise that we need to have a bit of a plan with all those things, as well as traditions that we might like to have in our family.

Also, adding bits and pieces to our baby registry has been fun!

Food cravings: My food cravings all seem to be cooking cravings. Once it’s cooked I really have little interest in actually eating it. My biggest cooking cravings have been ice-cream (inspired by Jr Masterchef!), and suprisingly chocolate (I was not much of a chocolate girl before). I managed to resist the temptation TWICE this week to have regular chocolate. Once at San Churros with extended family (man I love San Churro’s hot chocolates!!), and the second this weekend (technically week 26) at Max Brenners at South Bank. Now that coffee doesn’t make me want to gag, coffee frappachinos (or their non-starries equvialent) are my go-to drink when we’re out.

I had been cravinging Indian for a while, so it was nice to have that for our anniversary dinner!

Food aversions: There’s nothing I’m really put off by, not like in the beginning.

Symptoms: Just the achy muscels mentioned before in ‘sleep’. I find that my belly fluctuates in size quite a bit. Some days I feel huge, other days I think I hardly look pregnant at all. I guess it has a bit to do with the clothes I wear.

Movement: Bubba has been a real wriggler this week. Kicks etc. are getting stronger, which is nice and ressuring.

What I’m looking forward to: Getting to the third trimester. Two weeks to go!

What I miss: Probably just being able to eat/drink whatever I want, whenever I want.

Next appt: No idea. I have to book it, because I missed my last one (had written the wrong date in my phone).

Lamintons have three parts- sponge, chocolate icing, and coconut. None of these are optional

How to make the Sponge:

(Modified from “Complete Perfect Recipes”)

• 6 eggs
• 3/4 cup dextrose
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup plain flour
• 1/2 cup SR flour
• 75g melted butter

Preheat oven to 180 C. Spray a lamington tin with spray oil, baking paper as well.

Combine the eggs, dextrose and vanilla in a heatproof bowl. Microwave on 50% (for about 30 seconds) to disolve the dextrose. Beat in a mixer until pale, thick and doubled in size.

Gently fold in the sifted flours, and the cooled melted butter. Mix until just combined and there is no flour.

Spread the mix into the tin. Cook for 25-30 minutes or until firm to touch. With lamington sponge, it’s best to cook until it’s firmer then a normal sponge. Leave it to cool.

How to make the Icing:

(Modified from David Gillespe’s The Sweet Poison Quit Plan)

• 3/4 cup dextrose
• 2 tbs water
• 2 egg whites
• 80-100g butter
• 2 1/2 tbs cocoa

Heat the dextrose and water in a pan (you could also use a saucepan) until it enters ‘soft ball’ stage.

Beat the egg whites to soft peaks. Trickle the dextrose mixtrure into the egg whites while still beating, until combined.

Beat the butter in a seperate bowl so it’s light and thoroughly mixed. Mix the two together in a bowl with the cocoa.

How to make the coconut:

Buy decicated coconut.

Putting together your lamingtons:

This hardly needs an explanation, but in case you live somewhere else in the world, and you’ve been deprived on lamingtons your whole life, here’s a quick explanation.

1. Cut up the sponge cake into squares or rectangles.
2. Coat the mini sponges with the icing.
3. Cover with coconut. Don’t over-handle, or the icing will come through.
4. Refrigerate them so they set.

Four years ago today, we got married. Best. Decision. Ever.

This week I feel like I’m ready to get into a routine, it is Spring time now after all! For the last month my days have revolved around getting things down quickly, tidy up mess, unpacking, and then tidy up the mess that makes, and doing other larger tasks. Now that all that is basically done (just have to put the books away as soon as the bookshelf is finished (this should be very, very soon), I feel like I can set up a bit of a routine for my days.

I’ve never been particularly good at routines. Organised I’m quite good at (particularly events/menus/dinner parties etc), but routines… not so much. So let this be the disclaimer at the beginning that this might not even last the day, let alone the week…

Anyway, I’ve done a housework schedule up in Google Docs. I’ll walk you through it now.

Down the left hand side is each room (grey), and the various room-specific things that need to be done in them. General things (like vacuming) that I would do the whole house at the same time, have been put at the end.

The next four colums each represent a week. There are things that need to be done every week, and then there are things that I might do just once a fortnight or once a month. Anything that would be done less often then once a month will just have to be slotted in when they’re needed.

Lets look at the various activities, and when they’ll be done.

If we look across the ‘make bed’ row we can see that each week, this needs to be done daily (duh).

If we look across the ‘general tidy up’ row we can see that this is done every Monday, every week (because it says Monday in each week colum).

If we skip down to the ‘change sheets’ row we can see that it’s blacked out for the first three weeks, and only needs to be done on the fourth week, on the Monday.

As you can see, it goes through in the same fashion for every room, and chore in the house. Some chores that belong to Luke aren’t listed, because he has his own times when he does them, and I don’t need them clogging up my list.

To the right is another two colums. These have all the same information, just broken down in a different way. At first I put it together like this so I could see how evenly I had spaced the chores, but I think it gives me a good summary of what I can expect to do on each day. Lets have a closer look:

Underneath the name of the week, it lists all the chores that need to be done that day. Some chores are put in the colum to the left. This is because they’re ‘infrequent’ chores, meaning they’re not done every Monday- maybe every second, third, or fourth Monday.

Things to note:

1. Some chores are highlighted in a really, really light grey. They’re like this beacuase they’ve been flagged as ‘if all else fails in the day, just do these things’. If they’re done every day, it’s only going to take about 1/2 hour max to do all of them. These are things that make Luke and I feel good about our home. For example, clean floors make both of us feel happy to be at home, even if there are still clothes strewn around the bedroom. Clothes don’t bother us, floors do. It’s funny how we actually have the same things that make us feel good about the house. I wonder if these are similar for everyone?

2. I’ve basically given myself the weekend off. All I’ve got to do is menu plan, and this can be done one evening during the week if need be. You might give yourself the weekend off for lots of reasons, mine are these: Saturdays are Shabbat, so we rest this day, and don’t do any work- just help out, spend time with God, and with each other. Sundays we spend on the coast, so we’re not really home until dinner time, sometimes later. If I planned things for this day, I would just get frustrated that I wasn’t meeting the expectations.

3. Some days are very minimal (like Tuesday). This is because I have other commitments. Tuesdays I have craft group, back on the coast, and sometimes hospital appointments. Usually I end up having lunch with Nana, or at M&Ds, and pop in a see the boys on the way home as well. Last week I didn’t get home till 3pm, which is why I’ve just assigned the ‘daily’ chores (which, remember, won’t take up much time cause they’re done daily), and a few chores in the craft room. If don’t get the craft room chores, it’s not the end of the world- as in, I can close the door and Luke won’t have to see it.

So yes, this is how I’m PLANNING to get into a cleaning routine. I’ll give you a bit on an update next week on how it goes, and if I can stick to it for a whole week!

If anyone would like a copy of this google doc, just leave your google stuff email in the comments and I’ll add you as a viewer. Also, if you have any tips for me on how to a) stick with this plan or b) improve it, please let me know! I’m such a noob when it comes to all this, so I’ll keen for some help!!

Did you know this week baby is the size of an eggplant?! Baby is forming all its capiliaries under the skin, so it’s changing from see-through (OMG, so cute!!), to pink! It’s also spending some time working on its lungs. So that they’re all ready for the big day.

Baby’s nostrils are starting to open up this week, so that it can start ‘practicing’ breathing. Gee, all this cute little baby development stuff makes me so clucky and gushy!

This week has entailed some of the best highs, and worst lows of this pregnancy so far.

I really want to focus on the positives, so here goes:

1. This week Luke has felt some more definite baby movements. I’m finding that feeling the baby move together really unites us, and is a truely wonderful moment to share together!

2. I’ve been having those “I’m so in love” moments. When I can feel baby moving, and I start imaging what it’ll look like, and what our life when it arrives will look like. I get so excited, and just fall head over heals in love.

3. I’ve also been getting really excited about meeting him/her, and sharing myself. I am really looking forward to breast feeding, and giving baby that energy and nutrients it needs to survive. Actually, Amy just mentioned in her post today about loving Guy’s morning feeds, cause it’s one on one time with him. So that’s got me excited all over again.

4. Bigger belly means ‘feeling’ more pregnant, and realising that this baby is getting closer and closer to being in our arms! Again, just so excited!!

But yeah, the week hasn’t been without a few negatives…

1. Freaking heartburn. Hearburn deserves a much nastier word the ‘freaking’, but yeah, this is a family blog, so we’ll keep it PG. I thought heartburn sucked when I got it in Korea, but I HAD NO IDEA. That was NOTHING compared to the pain I’ve had this week.

2. The heartburn has lead to sleepless nights as well, which is also really frustrating.

3. General discomfort. People don’t really tell you about the general discomfort associated with being pregnant. Mild cramping, random mucsel pain, difficulty breathing. None of these things are very strong, or common enough to cause worry, but they’ve all made an apprearance this week, and it’s just another reminder of the crazy changes my body is going through!

4. People’s negativity. As soon as you say something like I have in the ‘positives’ list, like how I’m looking forward to breastfeeding, you can be sure that there will be an onslaught of ‘witty’, sometimes sarcastic remarks about how a) things don’t go to plan b) I should enjoy things while they last c) everything I’m good at/like/enjoy now will go to crap once the baby’s born.

I know people mean it as a positive thing (I don’t really know that, I just hope that!), but it’s really draining. Why can’t people just be happy with you?

<rant>

I am so scared to write about how I’m actually be excited about the amazing opportunity to give birth, because people will be all “IT’S THE MOST GOD-AWFUL PAIN YOU’LL EVER EXPERIENCE” “JUST WAIT TILL YOU’RE IN LABOUR, THEN YOU WON’T BE SO HAPPY ABOUT IT! HAHAHAHA”. Yes, I know it’ll hurt, Yes, I know I have no idea how much. The pain is not what I’m looking forward to! It’s a whole heap of other amazing things I don’t want to block up this week’s baby update with!!

</rant>

*deep breaths*

So yes, that’s this week’s pregnancy wrap-up. I am loving feeling baby wriggle around almost all the time now, and I can sort of identify times when it’s awake, and when it’s asleep, which is making me feel all mothery.

The main colour is an aqua/teal-y colour (SO many variations on those colours!!).

If it’s a boy, I’ll accent it with the yellow, and if it’s a girl, I’ll accent it with the peach.

I’m also going to do a bit of a ‘hot air balloon theme. I like it because it’s a bit whimsical (perfect for a girl), but also is a mode of transportation (cliche for a boy).

Below is a colour scheme treasury I’ve created in etsy, and below that is a hot air balloon treasury. These aren’t products I’ll necessarily buy (most are not baby related), but they should give you a good idea of the colours/theme!

Hot Air Balloons:

I am on the never-ending road of discovery. The things I’ve been learning lately have a lot to do with thyroid, and I thought I’d share just a few snippets of interesting information.

1) In Sarah Wilson’s interview with Andrea Beaman, Andrea mentioned something really interesting- thyroid inflamation. I have been aware that my thyroid is sometimes big, and sometimes small, but it never really occured to me that this could be caused by something I have eaten, or done (I’m kinda stupid, I know…).

So I’ve started keeping a record of what I eat, and do. And how my thyroid is at different points in the day. Basically I’ve started ‘listening’ to my thyroid.

2) Exercise was also spoken about in that interview. Both ladies mention yoga, and other really easy forms of exercise as ways to stay fit, but not strain your thyroid. One things I hadn’t considered before, was the strain that regualr, full on exercise puts on your thyroid, and adrenal glands. Both of which I know, for me, don’t function well to begin with.

Of course, exercise IS important. It has all sorts of good effects on our bodies, including helping us to use the thyroid hormone more efficiently. Which is why finding that balance and the right ‘type’ of exercise is important.

(Reference 2)

Side Note: You know how people say they feel like they have so much more energy after a good workout? Yeah, I never feel like that. When I was trying to be a ‘runner’, I would jog for an hour (with only little runs in between), and then go have a nap for while, because I was so buggered. I was often then pretty useless for the rest of the day. ‘Regular’ things I did (like cooking, washing up, vaccuming) became really energy draining. Obviously I didn’t keep it up.

When I did pilates though, if I focused on the stretches, I felt really awesome (who doesn’t like stretches?!).

(Reference 1)

3) Be an individual. This is just one of those things I’ve picked up from nearly all the views I’ve heard on thyroid. And it is that everyone is an individual, so you need to adapt your eating habits and lifestyle to suit your own body. Even friends who have had parts of their thyroid removed still need to get blood tests regularly to monitor how they’re reacting to medication, and adjust it. It’s not a ‘one size fits all’ thing.

So there you go- something things I’ve been learning about thyroid!

                                Image Source

Well, the most exciting news this week is that last night Luke got his first feel of baby’s movements! It was a bit contrived, in that I had to lay there shining a torch at my belly, and Luke was pressing in with both hands reasonably hard, but it worked! He felt it! It was fun for me to feel it move and then look up and see the big smile on Luke’s face, cause he felt it also. Bliss!

This week I’ve also started getting these twitches in my belly. Like muscel spasms. It’s funny to watch my skin go crazy wobbling. It’s quite different to when the baby moves or kicks, so I know it’s not that. And I feel it in weird places, like around my sides etc. I’ve googled it, and it appears to be something that happens occasionally because your muscels are stretching. So I’m not too worried- it’s just getting a bit annoying!

We’ve got even more bargins from friends this week. Dani is moving, so we keep taking things from her that she’s not taking with her.

We got some cute bits and pieces from family members as well that weren’t needed/wanted anymore, so we’re really on track from most things. As I was folding all our nappies, and washing baby’s clothes I had this moment of being overwhelmed. As in, I have NO idea what I’m doing with this stuff. I don’t even how these cloth nappies work…

Speaking of cloth nappies, when I posted the photo of all our nappies on twitter/instagram/facebook people were asking if I was going full time cloth nappies. To be honest, ever since I got pregnant, I hadn’t really considered not using them. I did do quite a lot of research into them ages ago (probably at the beginning of 2010), and had come to the general conclusion thta cloth nappies were right up my alley. I have vague memories of Amon being in nappies, when I was like 6, and there being SO MANY on the line, so maybe because of that I have a bit of a predisposition to them. Lots of people are a bit shocked that I’m going full time cloth (will have disposables as a backup for outings/emergencies etc), which suprises me to be honest. I really wouldn’t have thought people would be so opinionated about it! But alas, they are.

On a completely different note, this week I’ve had a few cravings. Choc Chop Cookies (which I made, and were a bit of a fail), and pizza. I never got the pizza.

And I think that’s about it. Baby is just… growing now. No major developments other then the skin being all saggy cause it’s fat doesn’t ‘grow’ at the same rate! I imagine it like a cute baby elephant (but NOWHERE near as big!!).

As Luke mentioned yesterday- we have a new poll on the sidebar where you can vote on the gender, size, and date of birth of the baby. Also, there’s a fun little question in the end about who baby will look most like. Everyone so far thinks Luke. Of course, this is the sensible choice- he has ALL the dominate genes (dark hair, skin, eyes), and mine are all ressessive (blue eyes, light hair, fiar skin). I just hope I have at least ONE kid that looks like me, and has blue eyes!

This week we’re officially 5 months pregnant. Hard to belive it’s just one more month and I’ll be in the third trimester! Time is FLYING by!

This week baby is learning about light and dark, and while it’s mostly dark inside my uterus, s/he should react to a torch being shone at it.Haven’t tried this yet- but might do it soon!

This week we have been SO blessed by some amazing friends who have given us heaps of baby things. I have cloth nappies from Zoe & Dani coming out of my ears! Just over 50 in total. Plus we’ve got a baby monitor, blankets, wraps, etc. etc. Feeling the love!

Our main things we still need to lay our hands on are a change table of some description (possibly from Zoe?), chest of draws (maybe?), car seat (possibly just renting this- must look into it more) and a pram. I’m thinking that because we’ve basically been given everything else, that I might like to splurge a little on the pram and get something really awesome. Will all depend on $$ though!

Can you think of any other things we need? I’m sure I have no idea of the little things. Like a bin- I need a bin for the wipes and stuff, yeah?! Help!

I’ve been at my new job now for three or so weeks, and I’m really loving it. Not getting to do as much programming as I would like (that’s the stuff I’m really passionate about), but I think it’s good to mix it up a bit anyway.

There’s a part of me that enjoys routine, and another part of my that enjoys having no short-term plans at all. The part of me that enjoys routine has been really enjoying the last few weeks, while the other part of me is secretly planning our next holiday (and reminiscing over our previous ones… Aaah, Dahab…)

I’d be interested to know: Do you have a routine? Or do you play it by ear, day by day?

A colleague drew this portrait of me. I have a black eye and broken glasses because people keep kicking and throwing the balloon around the office.

So while Talia is busy at home being the best housewife ever, my day goes something like this:

1. Get up, shower, iron, housework chores etc.
2. Write a riddle and read the bible on the way into work
3. Walk into work – get coffee, start work
4. End work, read kindle / learn Rubik’s cube on the way back home on the train
5. Get home, relax, have dinner
6. Do some additional freelance work

I can feel myself getting a little worn out – it can feel a little like non-stop work sometimes. But I take the shabbat as a rest, and try to sleep in on the weekend, so hopefully that sustains me!

Meanwhile, I’m getting super excited about becoming a Dad! I can’t feel it kick yet, but I suspect it won’t be long. Have you seen the voting panel on the sidebar? Take a guess at the date, gender, weight etc.!

Am I a workaholic?

Here’s where I’m at:

I’m a relief teacher who works like one day a fortnight (so yeah, not much). And…

I’m really keen to do more work. Except…

I’ve just moved. So I have to put name down at all new schools. Which I’ve done. But…

It’s school holidays at the moment, and then there’s only one term left. This…

wouldn’t be such a problem, except that I really can’t work next year. Because…

in January (hopefully not February!!) I’ll be giving birth to a beautiful little babe I won’t want to ever leave. This…

means I’m not really as employable as people who will be available indefinitely. And…

I kinda need to eat and stuff, so money would be handy for that. So…

what’s a girl to do?

(also, to clarify- pregnancy makes me an unlickly candidate for ANY job. I’m not just limiting myself to teaching!)

Also, for your teacher-related enjoyment- here’s a bit of a funny. I do hope that things aren’t even like this in my classroom!

Image Source

In hindsight, this is a long and boring blog post for anyone not interested in thyroid. The summary is- my thyroid is crap, has been for ages, I’ve tried some stuff to fix it, now I’m trying again.

The Beginning

In October 2007 Luke and I came back from our honeymoon and my MIL (mother in law) noticed a lump on my throat. She urged me to check it out at the doctors, as my SIL (sister in law) had had problems with her thyroid. I went to the doctors but he suggested that it would run it’s course. He did give me scripts for a blood test and ultrasound, but I (foolishly) didn’t see the point because the doctors was extremely uninterested in my thyroid (read the relevant blog post here). In hindsight, having this medical record from so far back would have been very handy at this stage.

No one thought it was weird that I had I had a bump on my throat. To be honest, I didn’t think about it much either. The bump- well most of the time it wasn’t noticable, and just sometimes it showed up. I’m not a ‘doctor person’ (in our family we very rarely ever went to the doctors), so I left it at that.

Now that I’m thinking back, it did mention a lot of my other symptoms to the doctors I spoke with. I had no idea they were thyroid related (I had never really heard of thyroid problems before), so I could never pursue asking about that. Also, in those three years my doctors tended to leave the clinic, so I had three or four doctors that I saw (for a variety of things- prescriptions for the pill, asthma medication, general checkups, colds etc).

It was really 3 years till I did anything else. In that time, I see now, my symptoms slowly got worse, to the point where life was kinda… crappy.

The Naturopath

In August 2010 I heard a local naturopath talking on the radio about thyroid health (relevant blog post here). She talked about the symptoms of hypothyroidism. These symptoms included being tired all the time, loosing hair, trouble loosing weight, enlarged thyroid, dry skin, weakness, mensutral irregularity, course hair, dry hair, depression (I’ve bolded the ones I suffered from). I thought that if I suffered all these things, maybe I had something wrong with my thyroid (she talked about both hypo and hyper thyroidism), so I went along to the seminar. It was very informative, and I scheduled an appointment.

So I started going to the naturopath to fix my thyroid. It was at this stage that Luke and I had been planning to start trying for a baby in the next month or so. She said three months with her, and then my thyroid should be in a better place to handle pregnancy. Apparently the thyroid can be a bit unpredicatable in how it reacts to pregnancy. Yes, your body will produce more of the thyroid hormones, but this could be a good thing, or it could work your thyroid harder, and burn it out even more. So we waited.

The naturopath asked me to get a blood test. Which I didn’t get done straight away (that same needle phobia that stopped me getting the blood tests at the very beginning), so I was on a generic eating and supplement plan that was based off the live blood test she did in her office, and a general understanding of my symptoms and lifestyle (read about what I learnt after the first three months here).

While I was at the naturopath I went on a no carbs diet (which included no sugar, but I really had no idea about hiddens sugars back then). As I reflect back, I could see the focus of our meetings change from my thyroid, to my weight. I guess that was a bit of an easier thing to diagnose and fix.

The Cancer Scare

After five months at the naturopath, and a holiday in Europe (where I obviously didn’t/couldn’t follow the eating rules) I went and got the blood test, and a neck ultrasound. The blood results came back within the normal range, but only JUST. The naturopath wasn’t happy with this, and she updated the treatment to reflect these changes. The ultrasound showed a goiter on my thyroid, which meant that my GP wanted me to get a biopsy, just to check it wasn’t cancerous.

I had a biopsy of my goiter (the enlargment on my thyroid), which (apart from being incredible traumatic for me) showed up nothing (this is a VERY good thing- they were checking for cancer). I was scheduled for another biospy in 6 months time, because while they were fairly sure there was no cancerous cells (or the kind that turn into cancer), the results weren’t 100%. So I continued along with the diet. I wasn’t really loosing much weight at all, and as a bread lover, I really struggled a lot to stick to the diet, so that didn’t help. I was getting more and more disillussioned.

The Let Down

At the very end of 2010 I spoke to the naturopath about where we were up to with things. How was I progressing. Basically I had been getting more and more frustrated that I wasn’t seeing results, and therefore wasn’t any closer to her giving us the green light to have a baby.

She was quite honest with me, and let me know that her expectations had changed from completley healing my thyroid to stopping it from getting worse. I remember this being a pretty awful thing to hear. I continued on with the diet, but by the beginning of 2011 Luke and decided that we would start trying for a baby anyway. This was what we wanted, we had waited long enough, and we were throwing caution to the wind. Besides, if my thyroid was going to affect my fertility, then we needed to the ball rolling trying sooner rather then later.

Basically I never went back to the naturopath in 2011, and I stopped taking the supplements etc. in about February (read the summary of my time at the naturopath here). As you can read from the link, I did see some changes, and felt a lot better. It was more dissillusionment that stopped me from continuing. Perhaps I was being foolish again?

The Now

Obviously it didn’t affect my fertility, because three months later I was pregnant. It was just after we started following David Gillespe’s sugar quit plan, which became my new way of combatting my thyroid problems (read about the start of the sugar free journey here).

And now here we are- September 2011. 5 months pregnant, 6 months sugar free (as long as you’re not counting the slip ups!), thyroid hormone production better then it has been for the last few years (thankyou for pregnancy, and thankyou body for reacting in the right way!).

Obviously when I got pregnant I was nervous about the thyroid thing. Because of this I have been seeing the hospital for all my appointments, and not going to my GP at all for pregnancy stuff. The hospital has been really good in taking my concerns seriously (most of the time), and I’ve had multiple blood tests and neck ultrasounds now. I was due for another biopsy, but because of the pregnancy all that was cancelled. There’s nothing they can do while I’m pregnant apparently.

The latest ultrasound shows the goiter on my thyroid has grown, which some doctors seem concerned about, and other don’t. The last doctor I spoke to thinks my thyroid should be taken out completley. I tell you, if I wasn’t pregnant (and couldn’t actually have the surgery), then I probably would have just said yes to that. I’m sick of all these problems. But you know? I’m glad I am pregnant, beause I’ve come to my senses (again), and I’m trying more natural alternatives.

Front row L-R: Ben, Amy, Dani, Zoe, Hayley, Sheri

Middle row L-R: Deb, Kate, Olivia, Danielle, Lisa, Amy, Suger

Back row L-R: Lisa, Me

Photographer: Luke

This post’s by Talia.

I really didn’t know what to wear to the bloggers meet. It wasn’t a ‘what will look good’ problem, it was a ‘what will fit me’ problem. But I ended up being pretty happy wearing jeans, a black top (thank goodness this still fits well), and my Sportsgirl bargain jacket.

It took us hardly any time to drive into the Valley, and we got THE. BEST. CARPARK. It was free, and it was about basically right outside the place we were going. We found the right door to get into Garuva Hidden Tranquility Restaurant & Bar via Google Maps. Handy little thing. As you can no doubt tell from the name, Garuva is a hidden gem. You basically walk in these random doors, down a little path of water and rainforest to the reception. Then go through some big doors, and maze around through curtained, private eating booths, to the back where the cocktail bar is. It’s a really amazing place. One of the great things it has going for it (and there are a number of great things) is the atmosphere- it has it in spades!

Because we arrived early, we were there for pre-dinner drinks & socialising. Later we all wandered back through the maze to our booth. There were 16 of us in all, and Luke and I ended up sitting with a bunch of ladies (and Ben!) who we didn’t know (apart from Lisa, who we’d met at a previous blog meet). So it was great to chat and get to know them!

Of course, the ‘regulars’ were there. And while I didn’t get to chat to everyone, it was nice to see people again!

The food at Garuva was really nice. There was some marinated beef, which was fantastic, and I loved the tempura vegies. I’d definitely recommend it! For the $25 we paid each, I think we were very well fed! Their $3 softdrinks were a bit of a bonus as well, as that and water are all I’m really drinking when I’m out these days.

I would definitely recommend Garuva for a bunch of friends wanting a nice night out, or for couples wanting a nice private place to eat out!

Deb & Danielle acting all causal…

Olivia getting excited about cocktails!
Me…
Chatting with Dani.

Suger, Kate & I (plus Dani‘s photo bomb)

Dani & I

Everyone chatting after we were kicked out!

Well, this week I am no longer fitting my clothes *sad face*. When I went shopping with Rachel on the weekend I tried on a top, and it looked so strange on me because it was way too high at the top- trying to get over my growing bump. When we’ve seen a few different people this week they’ve said “Oh, you look pregnant now!”. So I guess it’s good that it’s a bit obvious!

I made a quick run to the op shop the other day, and actually found a really nice (big) dress I can wear! Why are there not more dedicated maternity stores? Surely there are pregnant women all year round… Also, just because I’m pregnant doesn’t mean I’ve lost all fashion sense. I still like nice things! Lace, frills, PATTERNS on fabric. Big blocks of colour aren’t the only fabric you can use for maternity clothes eh hem… Target…

Baby has been quite active this week, but I’ve changed my mind on how long I think it’ll be till Luke can feel it. Instead of like one week, I’m estimating more like 3? He’s so hanging out to feel the little kicks though!

Now that we’ve moved into our new place, we’ve set up baby’s room a bit. I had a “WOW, we’re actually having a baby” moment we put up the basinette. Luke’s Pa brought this basinette all the way up from Melbourne for us. It was the family bassinette- the same one Luke’s dad was in when he was a baby! So it’s pretty special. My Nana had given us a loan of my family basinette as well, but we really don’t need two, so if anyone gets offended we’ll just alternate the use between children!

Here are a few sneak peaks of Baby’s room. Keeping in mind that we haven’t done an ‘decorating’ or actually got any baby furniture (like a change table etc) yet! It’s just unpacking baby’s box of stuff really.

Image Source: College Girl Cooking

One of the things that I’ve been wishing I could eat none stop is Nutella. Oh how I love that chocolatey, hazelnutty paste! However, Nutella is pretty much the devil when it comes to sugar consumption (but not as bad as Milo), so I set out to make a fructose free version.

I found College Girl Cooking’s homemade nutella recipe (via foodgawker), and started my modifications from that.

Homemade Nutella

• A few drops of vegetable oil

It’s pretty easy! I realise that if you don’t have any fructose free chocolate, then this is not an easy recipe to follow, so I will try to post that in the next few days for you!

Our first night in our new place made me homesick. Not in a ‘I miss my old house’ kind of way, more in a ‘I miss my mum’ kind of way. It was kinda irrational, and didn’t last long, but it was there. I think it was the realisation that we’re far away.

But you know what? When we were out on Sunday, and driving back from the coast, I wanted to go home- to our new home. To the place where our stuff is, where Pepper and Luke are. So maybe I got comfortable in our new place quicker then I anticipated.

Today’s my first day by myself in our new home. We’re settling in, and keeping busy. The huge list of things to unpack, register for, pick up, buy, certainly makes things easier.

**This post is by Talia** It’s also backdated to Friday, but with the move I didn’t have time to press ‘publish’!

Ah, 20 weeks. Half way!

Well, my test results have all come back fine and dandy. In fact, my thyroid test have come back BETTER then ever before. So hopfully this baby has kick-started a better thyroid for me!

I am super aweomse at not looking pregnant, but I can certainly see the difference myself. That little photo up the top had to be taken on a funny angle for it to look as nice and big and round as it is. Generally it’s just a bit ‘fat’ looking! We’re moving today, so it will be good to have a room for baby in our new house!

One thing that is befuzzling me is the weekly corrolation to months. Is every 4 weeks a new month? If so, aren’t I pregnant for 10 months?

1-4 (1)
5-8 (2)
9-12 (3)
13-16 (4)
17-20 (5)
21-24 (6)
25-28 (7)
29-32 (8)
33-36 (9)
37-40 (10)

Or am I missing something? I’m off to google that now folks…

Okay, I’m back. Here’s the answer:

Huzzah! I suppose you actually want to know something about the BABY. Fine.

Baby has been kicking a LOT this week. I often feel s/he swirling around in there, and am slowly getting use to it. In the last few days I’ve felt the movements getting quite strong, so I’m hopeful that Luke will soon be able to feel it!

Baby is the size of a banana this week (from crown to rump), which is pretty awesome. S/he’s getting so big!

This post is late cause my iPhone ate my pictures, and I didn’t do a backup. So I had to get them off instagram! But here we are… last week’s week in photos!!

About a week out from any big decision I start to get quite nervous. Am I making the right decision? What will life look like on the other side of this decision?
The current big decision we’ve made is a move to another area. Half way through my pregnancy, Luke and I are moving 45 minutes to an hour away from our family, and friends. Are we crazy? Obviously we don’t think so, or didn’t think so when we made the decision a few months ago. Luke has a new job in the city, and moving half way between ‘home’ and ‘ work’ makes more sense then the outrageous public transport fees and time costs associated with staying.

I’m excited for our new adventure. A new phase of life. But I’m also nervous. Scared of the unknown I guess. I know, when I think but it logically, that moving is the best thing. We need a bigger, more baby friendly house, and we can’t get that where we are now. But what will life be like on the other side of this weekend?

I’m nervous about not knowing anyone in our new area. I’m nervous about being alone, and being lonely. I’m nervous about regretting the move. Having to plan to see friends and family instead of just popping around. How will Pepper cope in a new house? 25 acres to run around in down to a few square metres. Plus she’s losing her best friend/attacker- Misty (my parent’s dog). Oh, and what will she do without the second breakfast her Pa always gives her?

Also, we don’t know how long we’ll be there for. Our lease is six months. But will we continue at the same place, find another house in the area, move closer to Brisbane, further back to the Sunshine Coast? Will be buy then, will we love our new life, or hate it? Life is so… uncertain at the moment.

Anyway, that’s my little guts spilling for now. I know I’m overthinking things, and I just need to embrace the newness, and the exciting changes!

Last night Luke wanted ice-cream. For him, ice-cream has been the hardest thing to give up with the whole ‘no sugar’ thing. Yes, we bought an ice-cream maker, and no, I haven’t been able to find the perfect recipe so that the ice-cream doesn’t go rock hard in our freezer.

So when Luke said “Talia, I feel like ice-cream. No, I REALLY feel like ice-cream. Talk me out of it”. I couldn’t. Instead I thought “What the hell” we may as well just HAVE some and induldge ourselves. I had, after all, been craving milo on ice-cream for several weeks now.

We went to the shop, bought Luke’s favourite flavour, plus some milo, and went home to stuff ourselves silly. The plates of ice-cream were HUGE. Perhaps this was our downfall. I tell you the truth- I regret it. The ice-cream wasn’t worth the crapiness I felt straight afterwards, and today.

Since we’ve been off sugar, I’ve been able to happily eat just about anything with no food guilt. Knowing that if I listen to my body, it will tell me what I need. Having been practicing listening to my body for several months now, I can tell you that after the ice-cream I was quite confused as to what I wanted, and how I felt like eating. I had the munchies for hours afterwards, and really just ate WAY too much. I felt awful. That awful ‘too full’ feeling, but still wanting to find more to eat.

I often think about the health benefits of not eating so much sugar. I think about what fructose does to our body, and how it is so so much stuff we don’t even realise. But I don’t often think about the whole ‘over eating’ aspect of eating sugar. This has been a good wake-up call that being sugar free has more benefits then just not increasing your diabeties, or cancer chances.

So that’s it. I’ve learnt my lesson. I’ve repented, and I’m back on the sugar-free bandwagon full time, and seriously. Because not being in control on my body is not really worth it at all.

Baby’s the size of a small rockmellon now. Crazy!

Well this week I went for my ultrasound. Yay! It was pretty crazy to see baby rollling around in there. The guy who was doing the ultrasound kept asking me to make it stop moving, cause he was trying to measure the size of its head. Needless to say, it wouldn’t stop. It was quite surreal to see it moving so much and not be able to feel it. But I did have a few moments when I saw it do something and felt some little bubbles at the same time, so I joined the dots and figured those bits I THOUGHT were the baby last week, definitely were.

Speaking of feeling the baby, I feel it quite a few times a day now. I didn’t really like it that much at the start- so involuntary! But now I’m getting use to it, and I am ‘connecting’ with baby a bit more.

I asked the ultrasound man for copies of the ultrasound, but he said it was the property of the hospital/government, so I couldn’t have it. This seems weird to me, as everyone else I know who’s pregnant has copies of their ultrasounds. I called the hospital later in the week and they told me the same thing (I thought it might have just been that guy…). Anyway, when I have my appointment on Tuesday I will let them know that I want copies, and if they don’t give them to me I will request a referral to get an ultrasound outside the hospital (where I know I can get the copies- I always do).

We took baby to a Regurgitator concert last weekend. Didn’t feel much movements so not sure if s/he liked it or not! Feel like I’m doing my job because I’m a) getting it ready for loudish noises b) exposes it to decent music (as in, not the wiggles and stuff).

This week I also went to my first baby shower! My friend Tanya is having a baby boy, and it was lovely to see how a baby shower works, and stuff like that! I guess it’s all very similar to a kitchen tea or bridal shower for your wedding. Just baby orientated!

Not much else has been happening in baby land. I’ve been finding lots of cool websites for maternity clothes, and baby clothes. LOTS of cute dress patterns! I think I’ll do some mood boards for “Baby Girl Carbis” and “Baby Boy Carbis”. I have no boy ideas, and it dawned on me the other day that it’s not just guaranteed to be a girl, just cause all the stuff is cuter.

One more week till me move (we move next Friday- exactly on 20 weeks!), and I’m very thankful I have no intrusive belly or tiredness to stop me packing!

Week 18 has been about the hospital, tests and check-ups. For the last four years I’ve had problems with my thyroid. The doctor last week seemed a bit concerned, so this week I’ve been off to get an ultrasound and check the size etc. It’s grown a bit since my last ultrasound at the end of last year, and I had to go into the hospital on Tuesday to discuss it with a medical doctor (as opposed to the baby doc). There’s nothing they’re going to do about it except keep monitoring it. The doc asked me how I was feeling, as I looked a little pale, and I said I felt a bit weak. I explained that it happens every now and again (not just now I’m pregnant), that I get a bit weak if I haven’t eaten in a while. He said to get me tested for gestational diabetes, as it sounded like I was in the beginning stages of regular diabetes, and pregnancy could trigger it a bit. After my appointments, I was talking to the receptionist, booking in next week’s appointments, when I nearly fainted. So I had to sit down, and the nurses gave me something to eat and tested my blood sugar. My blood sugar was normal, which I knew it would be, because after the biccie I felt fine really quickly.

So on Thursday it was back the hospital again for some blood tests. I had to fast since Wednesday night for the two hour glucose test, and basically had to lie on a bed in the pathology department for a few hours as my blood got sucked every hour on the hour. It was fun. Not. People who have known my for a while know that I have a phobia of needles. There was a time when I seriously considered never having children, because I didn’t want to get all the blood tests (okay, so people who know me well also know that I could never have been serious about that for very long…).

All this time in the hospital has meant that I got my embroidery finished! You can check it out at Wild Olive later in the week.

I *think* I can feel baby move, but who knows. It’s all a bit of a mystery as to what consitutes movement, and what’s just my body… doing body stuff!

People are still just finding out that I’m pregnant, which is kinda fun. It’s nice to get random congratulations still. It will be funnier still if after we’ve HAD the baby people still don’t know, and then we’re like… “Yeah, we have a baby now!”. Haha. I can just imagine it…

I don’t like cleaning. I like it when my house is CLEAN, but I don’t like CLEANING. I think it’s the fact that it takes so long to do, and no time at all to undo. And yes, it’s usually ‘undone’.

Today, as I was cleaning, I had a bit of a revelation. There are particular rooms that put me in a ‘funk’ more then others. When these rooms are clean, I feel more on top of things, and more likely to do MORE cleaning.

For me, it’s three main areas. When they’re clean, I feel much more happy about cleaning the other things.

The Bathroom

If the shampoos and things are all neatly on the side of the bath, if there is nothing on the basin accept for the toothpaste, handsoap and a cup, and the sink is clean I’m happy. The floor mopped, and the toilet cleaned out (EUGH) are not necessary for me to get the feeling, but yes, necessary to have a clean bathroom!

The Dining Room Table

This seems to be the ‘go to’ place for all random papers, shopping etc. I imagine it’s the same in most houses. It therefore ends up cluttered almost all of the time. If I find a home for everything on the table, and give it a quick wipe down, I’m in a much better mood.

The Floors Vacummed

I’m not talking nooks and crannies, lift up the furniture vaccumming. I’m talking spending 10 minutes running over the major areas of the house (our house is tiny, hence it only taking 10 mins). This just gets rid of the bits of papers that dropped, the dog hair, and any ‘yuck’ feeling on the foor.

So what about you, do you have a room/spot of the house that you feel better once it’s clean? Perhaps the bedroom, or the lounge area? Let me know!

So, apart from throwing up a lot… not a lot is happening! Throwing is more due to motion sickness, weird food etc, and not ‘morning’ sickness, but as illustrated in my last post, I definitnely think pregnancy has ‘started something’!!

Everything I think of to write here about pregnancy I stop and think, “Well, that could just be cause of the travel…” For example, crappy sleep- perhaps it is the different bed? Feeling sick- perhaps it’s the weird food? etc. etc.

We’re moving in three weeks, so I’m trying to focus on that now that we’re back form Korea, and THEN I can focus on making baby things, and some maternity clothes. SO looking forward to this!!

Baby is about 14cm crown to rump (no legs)… and weighs practically nothing. Had a bit of a ‘moment’ this week when I realised how big baby is compared to the corn kernal it was when we first found out it existed. Now it’s the size of a SWEET POTATO! Wowzers.

Baby’s size when we first found out:

Image source.

The last 24 years: Body thinks “I feel sick? Well lets just deal with it and stop feeling sick”.

Body then gets better and sick feeling goes away within a matter of hours. It is worth mentioning that I have in fact had mild food poisoning in this time and NOT thrown up.

Pregnant Body: Body thinks “WTF is that smell???!!! I’m going to feel really sick for AGES.

…

…

Now I might throw up, but I might not”.

Body then throws up if it’s something really awful, but 98% of the time doesn’t.

Pregnant & Travelling Body: Body thinks “Huh, this is something slightly different to at ho..”

*throws up repeatedly and unexpectedly*

Today was a travel day. We took it easy in the morning, went for a walk to get coffee (don’t want the headaches to start again). Talia couldn’t resist burger king while we were out and about.

Back at Jun and Graces’s apartment, Grace bought us more burger king for lunch. We watched CSI on TV until it was time to leave for Dongdeagu station in a hotted up taxi.

We waved goodbye to Grace as we left on the KTX. We switched trains at Seoul Station to the airport line, and checked in our bags as soon as we arrived at Incheon. We browsed around the shops, went to our gate via the train, and then grabbed something to eat.

We flew Cathay Pacific home, and apart the trip was pretty easy Seoul to Hong Kong. Only an hour stop-over in HK (just enough time to get to the next gate really), and then it was a 9 hour flight home. Appart from the awful screaming children in the row next to us, it was pretty good!

We woke up in Gyoungjoo. Luke still had his headache.
Jun had had a busy night dealing with some family stuff, so we let him sleep in a bit and went for a walk up the street with Grace. We saw some cherry blossom trees (not in flower) and learnt about the school soccer games that were being played around is area.

After a walk we watched a bit of TV while Jun got ready, and then we headed out. We visited the village of Jun’s clan. It’s not a UNESCO heritage listed site, so it has become a bit of a tourist attraction. We visited the house of his ancestors.

Grace and Jun bought us a traditional Korean rice drink. It’s quite sweet, nd you can eat the rice that sits in the bottom. On the way home we stopped to get sushi. It’s about 2000 won for one roll (approx $2). Korean sushi is very different to Sushi in Australia or Japan. Korean sushi is FULL of fillings. The variations we had include a main protein (tuna, beef, cheese), and then the standard fillings: ham, pickled? Yellow radish, and carrot. Talia had a bit of a throwing up episode (as you do), but recovered quickly.

We got back to Daegu, and Jun had to leave to sort out the family thing in Seoul. We had a rest, used the wifi to catch up on things, and then went for a walk. Talia asked the lady at the corner store (who spoke no English) where an ATM was, and throw hand gestures she got there. Later we both went out to find a pharmacy, as Luke STILL had his awful headache, and we had run out of the first batch.

We didn’t find a pharmacy, but we did find a coffee shop and through that was an adequate way to relax that afternoon. One sip of a latte and Luke’s headache was basically gone. When the cup was empty he could move his head, jump up and down and do practically anything without that annoying brain banging around inside your head pain. Addict…

When we returned to Grace and Jun’s we had some chicken for dinner, and then headed out to the shops. We hadn’t really done any shopping at all this trip, and apparent from a couple of random souvenirs, we’d only spent money of entry tickets (very minimal) food and drink, and accommodation!

We didn’t get far until we saw a glasses shop (as in, prescription glasses), and Luke asked Grace is they were cheap. Cheap and quick! She said, so we went inside to get an eye test, and pick some out! We had to go back to the apartment to get Luke’s current glasses, so they could compare the prescription, but an hour and a half later he had been teased, picked out new ones, and bought and paid $50 for them! Needless to say, we didn’t get to the shopping centre.

Well, we’re now 16 weeks, and in Korea ! Baby didn’t seemed phased by the long flights (not that I can really feel s/he yet), so hoping this means they’re a good a traveller!

My body is feel the toll of being pregnant as we spend our days walking around sight seeing, eating strange foods (or not eating at all), and late nights. My belly isn’t obviously pregnant, so I must look like a bit of a woose always needing to sit down, and like a weirdo when I randomly throw up!

Lately pregnancy has been sending me on an emotional roller coaster. I have a love/hate relationship with travel at the best of times, and this makes it ten times worse.

This last week I had a doctor’s appointment at the hospital about my thyroid. She’s the first doctor who’s taken my thyroid problem seriously (on a ‘me’ level) let alone how it might be made worse due to pregnancy.

As soon as I get back from Korea I’m booked in for a neck ultrasound, baby ultrasound, appointment with doc, appointment with midwife and appointment with another (non-baby) doc to talk about thyroid. The hospital is basically my second home!

At my doctor’s appointment she tried to listen to the baby ‘s heartbeat through a machine, but couldn’t find it, so I got to have a mini ultrasound! She just found the heart beat and that’s it- didn’t get to see anything exciting except its spine. Baby was facing my back, so its head was just a blob on the screen…

Tuesday 9th.

Today we went to the capital city of the Sila dynasty – blablabla, just outside of Deagu. Talia was feeling fine, but Luke was feeling a bit better, but still had a nagging headache for most of the day.

We started off in the morning with a look at the museum – this ancient city  was filled with artefacts that have been excavated over the years. The museum was a treasure trove of 1500 year old crowns, jewellery, and weapons.

There were even some items found from the Neolithic and Stone ages, along with bronze and iron age artefacts. Talia and Grace spent lots of time looking at the finely crafted gold earrings and jade ‘comma’ necklaces. Jun and I admired the archaic weaponry.

We also saw a fantastic miniature of the main palace of the Sila dynasty – more on that later.

Afterwards, we went to a traditional market – Jun said we were probably the first foreigners that the old women stall holders had seen in the markets. We browsed traditional Korean foods for special occasions, tens of different seaweeds, dried fish, fresh seafood (including whole octopuses!) and eventually found ourselves in a small stall eating lunch.

Grace and Talia had thick hot noodles, while Jun and I had the cool noodles (it was a really hot day – cool noodles went down a treat!).

Next we checked into the hotel we were staying at for the night, and had a bit of a rest. We were in desperate need of cash at this point – but our searches for an international ATM were in vain.

That afternoon we went to see a Buddhist temple. After a long scenic drive up a mountain, and a short stroll to the summit, we witnessed a beautiful view and an ancient stone carving of Buddha, surrounded by helpers and protectors.

This evenings dinner was perhaps my favourite of the trip. A traditional style Korean BBQ, recommended as the best around by Jun’s brother who works in the area. The waiter bought us coals to cook the food, and our table was filled with side dishes, dips, sauces and cutlery. The meat (we had beef ribs) is bought out raw, and we cooked it and cut it up with kitchen scissors to share.

Finally we visited the Sila dynasty palace. Most of the buildings have been levelled over centuries of war, but a few are still standing and the artificial lake remains. It was quite a pleasant night work through the gardens around the lake, imagining what life might have been like in 5th century Korea.

Today we had a bit of a sleep in, then tried to catch a taxi to Seoul station. Luke woke up a bit sick, with a fever, achey body and major dehydration. It was also raining, so that combination made us catch the taxi. It was a bit of a confusion, but with the help of an interpreter we were able to get the message across to the hotel that we wanted a taxi etc.

We got into Seoul station. Had some lunch, a coffee and then got on our train. Luke was still quite sick, so I bought him some Panafon before we left. It was quite nice to see the scenery of rural Korea, as we caught the train to Daegu to see our friends Grace & Jun. When we got to Daegu station we tried to find the bakery (Paris Baguette) that Grace had said to meet at, but it was nowhere to be seen! We asked at a tourist information place, and took turns going for long, long walks trying to find it. We didn’t, but did eventually get some wifi. We got on Facebook, and apparently we were at the wrong station! They thought we were catching the KTX, but we had got on a regular (slow) train. Woops. They eventually got to us, and we were on our way to their place.

They showed us around, and we were sufficiently amused with the novelty of a Korean apartment. A room for entering, a room for your shoes, shoes in the bathroom so your feet don’t get wet, and sleeping on the floor.

Grace prepared us a home-style Korean BBQ, which was really delicious. We had lettuce leaves, which you filled with some rice (they had three types- plain white, black bean, and bean mix), then put your meat on top. You wrap it up, like a tortilla wrap, and eat it like that. Very delicious.

After this we went to the shopping centre to be in the air conditioning, as it’s quite hot and humid, even at night. It was like a Woolworths and Big W all in one. There were some funny things in the grocery isles, including TV screens (in case you get bored?!), and shelves and shelves of different soy sauces!!

In the electronics section we saw a washing machine and dryer ‘all–in-one’ as well as an automatic clothes dryer, odor remover and ironer (all-in-one of course!)
We stopped for ice-cream at about 9. There were so many families out at the shops together. Grace and Jun explained that a man can expect to work till about 9pm on a regular basis (still starting at 8 or 9am), so after that is family time. Children don’t go to bed until quite late.

Luke was getting worse and worse, sick wise. Major fever (he was absolutely freezing cold- goose bumps and all, despite the 28′ weather), and very bad headache as well. We went straight to bed at about 9:30. Like was all wrapped up in blankets due to his sickness, which was really quite absurd.

Right now we’re sitting on the subway in Korea, heading to Hapjeong Station for a tour of the Demilitarised Zone. It’s a little way, so I’m going to attempt to recount for you (and posterity) the many things we enjoyed yesterday. And some of the things we didn’t.

7th August 2011:

First up, we attempted to get directions to the closest subway from our much obliging, Korean speaking hotel concierge. Then we attempted to navigate said directions. After a few wrong turns we eventually made our way to Suyu Station.

Thankfully the station maps have English characters, so we were able to fairly easily discover our destination. We arrived and headed for Jeongmyo.

Along the way we were distracted by a side street market place, selling shoes and hats, toiletries, but more appealingly, local fruit and produce. There were some huge hash browns being fried up, which we assumed was a local treat. We bought two white peaches for ₩5,000.

Next up was Jeongmyo. This was our first experience with Korean architecture. By the end of the day we would be extremely familiar. Jeongmyo is a 6th century complex which houses spirit tablets of the Joseon dynasty.

After this, we took a side street shortcut to our next destination – the Changdeokgung Palace. Along the way a man lying on the ground suddenly jerked his arm up and loudly smashed a bottle on the ground. Glass shattered everywhere. Or gave us quote a fright.

The Chandeokgung palace is amazing. It’s where the king lived and worked and also where the last Korea council sat before the Japanese annexation.

Lunch next, and it sure was interesting. Toast. Shaped like fish. With rather odd toppings. The sweet pumpkin and sweet potato toppings, we discovered, were deserts. Very sweet. They sell them with ice cream.

Perhaps more odd was the way that the owner reacted when he saw us taking photos/videos of the fish toast making process. He started berating his wife to make sure she did it properly. Watching over her scooping topping on to bread. And then he made sure we included the logo of his shop in the video. You know, in case we’re famous on YouTube or something. He invited us behind the counter for a photo too.

Afterwards was the secret garden behind Changdeokgung palace. It was stunningly beautiful. See for yourself:

Here the king would discuss nation building strategies with scholars, play chess, and relax by the traditional Korean ponds.

The style of all these palaces is dignified and restrained. They’re not golden monstrosities like some of the temples and churches we saw in the middle east, rather, in touch with nature and integrated in with the surrounding mountains.

We left next for our final stop – Gyeongbokgung palace. In my opinion, the most beautiful we visited. Along the way we got caught in a sudden (although not unexpected – it had been extremely humid all day with dark grey clouds) and extremely heavy downpour. We stopped in a very funky cafe to dry our socks and newly purchased umbrellas.

In Korea, cafes and tea houses sell tea and coffee only. Hardly any food at all. Much to our disappointment.

We decided to head back to our hotel before heading out again but we were distracted once again by markets along Insadonggil. There were loads of unique hand made crafts and funky gift stores. Talia bought an awesome hand made brooch featuring a dinosaur toy, a Korean keyboard key, and other bits and bobs.

Eventually we were a bit lost and in search of something to eat. We went into a restaurant (which we thought was Korean BBQ) which turned out to be something like a steam boat. The only soup we could have with it was a spicy soup, which was very spicy indeed.

At first we were contemplating leaving without eating, because it was too hot, but we slowly became adjusted to the mouth burning sensation and enjoyed our boiled noodles, mushrooms, bean sprouts, beef and more as best we could.

A little more walking and shopping down narrow, neon lit, karaoke and night club lines streets, and it was getting late. After a stop at Starbucks, we made the 30 minute journey back to our hotel.

Today was mostly a travel day. We were ready early so our taxi driver from yesterday came and got us about 3/4 hour early. The traffic here is totally insane. He drove like a mad man, some times up to 150 km/h, but usually sitting at 130 km/h.

We checked in straight away, and as there was no line we dropped off our bags. The girl wanted us to have a return ticket from Korea (which we didn’t), but stamped our tickets anyway. We were meant to go but tickets out of Korea, then come back and show her. We didn’t.
The Aussie guy (living in China) next to us was having a really hard time for the same reason. We caught up with him later though and he got through okay.

We went to Starbucks for a coffee and free wifi. We couldn’t book tickets because if ANZ’s bloody Visa verification not working. We’re going to be making major complaints when we get home. We have to get Luke’s Nonna to get my American Express out of my handbag at her place, and email it to us. Certainly not ideal!!!

Anyway, the flight was… Boring. Air Asia X is cheap, and you get what you pay for. We’ve kinda learnt our lesson- perhaps a few years ago that would have been okay, but pregnant women need lots of regular food, and if you don’t have cash you can’t buy any food on Air Asia.
We got our vegetarian meal we’d pre-booked about 3/4 hour into the flight, which was only a few hours after we’d had lunch.
The meal was so awful I only are the rice, and we shared a snickers (all our leftover cash). I paid for it when we got off the plane. In the line at immigration I nearly fainted and had to sit down. I looked all ghostly apparently. The up- side is we got to skip the line and go through the disabled section.

I’m writing this in our taxi driving to our hotel. The taxi driver is polite, drives the speed limit, has an awesome nest car with rad GPS and follows the road rules. Much better!

The taxi ride wasn’t completely incident free. I threw up (caught it in my hands), then three up again (outside) as the car stopped. All I’d had to eat was some strawberry yoghurt and potato child at the airport, and that’s what it tastes like.
My body is funny that way- not enough food and it throws it all up anyway!

We found our hotel and explored all the crazy little packets of stuff they give you, then off to bed. It’s SO hot here.

Our first impressions of Korea is that it’s friendly, but not particularly English-language friendly, and ‘our’ kind of Asian country.

Talia at Batu Caves

Well, today is our first real ‘day’ in Kuala Lumpur, and our last. We’re off to Seoul tomorrow!

Caught a taxi to the KLCC (Kuala Lumpur City Centre- twin towers)
Walked around the empty shops that don’t open till 10
Tried to buy tickets to go to the observation deck, but they were sold out
Googled things to do and decided to go see the Batu Caves
Nearly got ripped off by Indian taxi drivers, but found a nice Chinese driver by the name of Steven who took us there, waited for us, and then took us home for 100 Ringets
Visited Batu caves where we:

*Climbed 272 steps to the top
*Took photos of all the monkeys
*Felt the limestone
*Walked back down in the humidity
*Got scared of the papa monkeys, who were quite fierce
*Cried a lot because of fear of the monkies
*Got the bottom of the steps
*Drank from a coconut

Driver offered to take us on a city tour for 150 Ringets. We accepted.
VERY friendly driver.
Visited the King’s Palace
Visited a great big Buddhist temple
Visited the old railway station
Visited a giant big mosque during prayers
Visited Independence square

Driver took us home via a batik fabric shop.
Learnt how they make batik fabric, bought some bits and pieces
Came back to the hotel to watch a bit of a movie

Headed out to the KL Tower to visit the observation deck
Ate dinner

Luke at the Buddhist Temple

Drinking from a coconut

Scary monkey at the Batu Caves

Us at the KL CC Twin Towers

I want to try and describe the place we’re sitting at right now.

The air is thick and humid. There’s small enclave stretching down the side of a back street. There’s a small ‘restaurant’ (for lack of a better word – maybe stall or kitchen) inside and there’s people hand washing dishes, preparing rice, coming and going like family.

We’re just outside, waiting for some food. Sitting around us are a few locals. Some eating with their hands. One on a phone. One drag queen. There’s live music in a restaurant down the road that’s loud enough to hear clearly. They’re playing the classics my parents listened to, like Elvis. There’s also the sounds of foreign chatter, car horns, and of large dusty fans going at full speed to try and blow away the heat.

You can smell the food. Flavours of chile and curry. The smell of rubbish and shisha combine into something oddly sweet. The back street we’re sitting by isn’t very busy, cars and scooters drive down 3 or 4 a minute, with the occasional red and White taxi. All the cars are filthy. The street is lined with scooters and tables. Tourists and locals share the busy sidewalk with the palm trees – it seems to be getting busier as the night gets later.

The building across the road is the back of several apartment blocks, 5 or 6 stories high. The dilapidated walls are punctuated by dirty water pipes and rusting air conditioning units, some look as though they could fall from their perch at any moment. The walls are full of grime and dust, there are holes and pealing paint. Some lights on a few stories up indicates that the units aren’t abandoned. Poorly spelled fading signs are hung out a few windows.

Just around the corner is a bustling main street, with lights and music, 24 hours shopping centres, restaurants, bars, hawkers (“You want massage?”) and heavy traffic.

Everyone’s smiling.

We’re having a great time so far. We’ll keep you updated as we go!

**This post is by Talia**

Just a quick post to A) check I can upload photos on the WordPress app, B) Waste some time while our flight’s delayed and C) Let you know we’re on our way to Malaysia!

For one of my Uni assignments I have to take an enourmous amout of photos in one day, then cull it down to 20 for part A of the assignment, and then cull it down to 12-15 for part B.

Then we have to do this:

Annotate / provide emotive captions for your final selection of images in your pin-up wall (no more than 100 words per image with the exception of the opening frame that may contain a longer introduction to help establish context for the series to unfold)

Reorganise your pictures in the order in which they should appear to the viewer so that they communicate an engaging narrative, pictorially and textually.

Here’s my first 20 photos, in some sort of order. Feel free to let me know which ones to get rid of, and if you think of anything inspired to add as captions, please let me know! Also, if a photo is kinda unclear as to what it’s about, let me know that too.

Zero:

One:

Two:

Three:

Four:

Five:

Six:

Seven:

Eight:

Nine:

Ten:

Eleven:

Twelve:

Thirteen:

Fourteen:

Fifteen:

Sixteen:

Seventeen:

Eighteen:

Nineteen:

Twenty:

Today I’m 15 weeks pregnant, which means I’m starting week 16. I tell you, the weeks are confusing me. Mostly because some websites mark their pages as ‘week 15′ and others as ’15 weeks’. So you have to look carefully to be sure it’s saying 15 WEEKS, or week 16.

This is baby, or at least a picture of A baby the same size as our baby. It’s about the size of an avocado. Pretty exciting stuff. As far as we can tell, baby is doing fine. Just chilling out and growing. Getting ready for it’s big growth spurt it’ll go through in the next few weeks. I can definitely feel that there is a growth spurt on its way, cause I am famished by the afternoon! The last few days I’ve been hungry after dinner as well, but I don’t want to turn into a fatty, so I just munch on some nuts and things like that.

Luke and I can certainly tell when we press on my belly, that it’s growing. It’s quite hard now, and if there wasn’t so much fat around, I’m sure it would be sticking out a little way!

We’re taking baby on a impromtu trip to Korea for its 16th and 17th weeks. I tell you, this baby is WELL travelled. Melbourne, The Great Ocean Road, Adelaide, Melbourne again, Newcastle, and now Korea! If I hadn’t been the one taking it all these places, I’d be a little jealous! No doubt we’ll fit in another trip in before s/he’s born (maybe somewhere closer?)! My only worry with the trip is that my summer clothes might not fit. I guess I’ve got the next two days to try them on, and buy some more if they don’t (Oh, and do all my assignments/lectures that are due while we’re away, and clean the house and things like that…).

I’ve been getting a lot of heart burn lately, which I know is normal in pregnany. Doesn’t make it any less painful or sucky though! Luke isn’t very sympathetic. I wouldn’t be either if I didn’t know how it felt! Trying some gavison to relieve the pain, which I will take with me on the trip.

With the whole s/he thing, This week we officially decided not to find out baby’s gender until it’s born. So we’ll just stick to the whole ‘s/he’ name, and ‘baby’ as a sudo name until it’s born.

And I think that’s about it for 15 weeks!

**This post it by Luke**

One of the things I’ve always wanted to do is pack up my bags and head overseas on a whim…

Back in January we planned a trip to South Korea to see our good friends – Grace and Jun. We even bought tickets! Since then, we found out that there’s a new family member on the way, and I got a new job, working full time.

Our Korea trip was post-poned. Sad face.

Then I had this crazy idea.

I might just be able to swing it with work to put in some extra long hours this week so we can head overseas for a week! It’s all very last minute and nothing is certain just yet, but that’s all part of the fun and excitement!

A last minute overseas trip would also mean we miss out on two important birthdays. A Clash song comes to mind.

What would you do in our position?

A few months ago (back in April) Luke and I gave up sugar. I’m not going to lie, it was hard. But to be honest, it’s not the withdrawals, or the tempatation that’s hard. It’s the convenience. If you’re out and about and you want to buy something, there is sugar is nearly all of it. Feel like a muffin? Well your only option is to make it yourself. For a lover of cooking like me, this isn’t a huge problem, but it’s just… inconvenient when you’re at a coffee shop and that’s what you feel like!

We do break the rules sometimes. Yesterday I really needed a coffee. I’m not a coffee drinker at all, so just having one straight isn’t an option (Coffee shops in Europe were quite hellish because of this- no one’s ever heard of a mocha!!), so I had a mocha instead. Yes, heaps of sugar. But realistically, since April this is only my second mocha. I think I’m doing pretty good!!

**If you’re not familiar with our sugar free journey, then it’s worth me mentioning that we’re not off ALL types of sugar. We don’t eat processed fructose (fructose from from fruit/vegies). We still eat fruit etc. in it’s WHOLE form, but no juices, or ‘table sugar’ that you get in the supermarket. We do eat glucose, maltose, lactose etc. If you’re interested in this sort of thing then we HIGHLY recommend David Gillespe’s book Sweet Poison**

There are a few things that, despite trying. A lot. I just can’t seem to make the same as the bought stuff. One thing I HAVE learnt how to make, that is remarkably similar to the bought stuff though, is condensed milk! It’s such a simple thing to make!

This is based off this recipe at Down To Earth, and then modified to be fructose free.

2/3 Cup Liquid glucose
1/3 Cup boiling water
1 Cup Powdered milk (make sure you read the packet and get a brand that doesn’t ADD sugar to it)
3 tbs Butter

Put the liquid glucose and boiling water in a bowl, and mix. The glucose is usually VERY sticky, so this softens it a bit. Add the powdered milk and butter. Mix it around till it’s all combined!

The original instructions over at Down to Earth recommended mixing them in a blender or something, but I found that if I added the butter quick enough, it melted, and everything else just mixed together well! If your butter has’t melted properly though, just put some hot water in your sink, and rest your bowl in there. That will heat up the mix a bit, and help it to melt.

Photos to put it onto context!
(Sorry for the dodgy photos- only had my iPhone on hand!)

It was a bit of a whim, and we were a little nervous. We are, after all, half way through packing the house. But, we just put all the boxes to one side, and I don’t think anyone was too shocked by the disaray!

Here are some photos of the evening. Thanks to Jared and Lei, and Aaron and Rachel for coming round and making it such a great night!

Apparently I’m not as awesome at recording all the week by week details of baby here as people think I am. We’re officially in week 14, and so here is how week 13 went!

14 weeks pregnant. It’s a nervous period of pregnancy. You can’t tell I’m pregnant by looking at me, and I have no morning sickness anymore. So I’m in limbo. I basically feel like a ‘normal’ person, and this is kind of scary. All these doubts keep going through my mind. If I can’t feel anything, is baby okay? Has something happened and I don’t know?

Irrational thoughts, I know, because if something had happened I WOULD know about it. I’m quite relieved that apparently it’s a completely normal feeling at this stage of pregnancy. It’s even mentioned this week in the app I use, and is mentioned in nearly all the week by week pregnancy things I read online. Also, chatting with Hayley on twitter the other day helped as well because she experienced the same sort of fears. Perfectly normal!

This last week Baby was the size of a lemon now. Holy smokes! S/he has all its internal organs, bones, muscels etc, and is just growing up now. How crazy is that!

Mum wise, all is well. I have no cravings, just a real lack of self control. It is still mostly food AVERSIONS that affect me, as opposed to wanting to eat things. I worked on Thursday and Friday (year 2), and was pleasently suprised that my energy levels stayed up the whole day. By home time though I was so tired I did need to pop into Woolies for (another) snack, and it was quite an early night for me on Thursday.

Sometimes I feel like God is trying to tell me something. He doesn’t tell me with some big voice, or in any audiable way (which, lets face it, would make things a LOT easier). But he does put different people, conversations, and experiences into my life in such a way that it becomes apparent that there is something very important to learn from this. The particular lesson I’m learning at the moment, is about living in the moment. I guess it hit home hardest when I realised I wishing away this time of my life. This just ‘Luke and I’ time, this exciting first few months of prengnacy time, this social freedom time.

Luke and I time. Just the two of us + Pepper.

In six months time we’ll have another little person in our family, and I don’t want to look back on the ‘just us two’ time of our life and regret that I didn’t live in the moment, and appreciate that time for what it was- special.

‘Living in the moment’ is a term lots of people use, and lots of people use it differently. I guess my version of ‘living in the moment’ can be likened to a ‘slow down’ life view as well. So to clarify what I’m saying, here’s ‘Living in the moment’ through my Christian filter. This may also be my new little ‘manifesto’ if you will.

Living In The Moment is…

Standing still (in a busy place) and looking around

Not being too busy to say “I love you”, and give Luke and kiss and a hug

Not wishing this season of life would go away, but appreciating it for what it is

Not always being in a rush

Saying ‘yes’ to things that are a bit outside my comfort zone, or to things I’m not sure that I’ll like

Seeing the postive things in the situation instead of complaining

Stopping to sincerely thank God for all the little things he provides us, that we usually take for granted

Smiling & laughing

Doing things I love- not putting them off for another day (which inevitably becomes another month)

Putting Luke before myself, and doing the things he likes

So here’s some news, in case you didn’t know: I’ve been offered a job…
… In Brisbane.

I am a web developer. I love it. I code all day, it stretches my brain, always problem solving, it’s just my dream job. And I’d like to think that I’m pretty good at it, too.

So when a company, let’s call them ‘WM’ asked me if I’d like to come work for them, I have to admit, it was flattering. Someone out there thinks I’m good enough to work with them.

There are a few reasons that we decided to accept the offer. Firstly (and most importantly), with a baby on the way, it would be nice to have a little more security than the freelance work I’m doing at the moment. Secondly, it’s a great opportunity to work in a dynamic, creative team. Thirdly, there’s some big name brands that will look really nice in my portfolio.

Unfortunately, it means moving away from family and friends on the Sunshine Coast, to go live in Brisbane. We’ll only be 45 minutes away though (northside), and we promise to visit regularly!

We don’t move for a while yet – not till the 2nd of September. Our house is already full of packing boxes (Talia does a great job while I’m at work), and we’re looking forward to the ‘change holiday’.

What are your tips for us, for changing jobs, houses, and leaving apart from family?

Luke and I aren’t huge Harry Potter fans, but a few months ago we got on the band wagon, and watched all 7 movies in anticipation for part 2. Of course, the premiere of Part 2 was midnight Wednesday morning.

My brother, Hayden is a big potter-head, and him and his friends had obsessively bought tickets to the midnight screening AS SOON as they were available. Two of their friends couldn’t go, and so we bought their tickets. This is how we happened to be in cinema 1. The first cinema. The important thing to ‘click’ here, is that this is the first cinema available. These are the people who lovely Harry Potter so much they would have camped out for days to buy tickets if they weren’t available online.

We arrived at the cinema at about 11 to meet up with some of our friends who were also going. They were lucky enough to only buy tickets last week, and so didn’t have to see it in 3D. We chatted and watched in awe as the costume-clad teens filled the otherwise empty Sunshine Plaza. Some of the costumes, might I say, were a bit risque. I mean, this might be Queensland, but it’s still WINTER. Way too many midrifts for my liking.

Anyway, as I say, this was a unique experience, mostly because of the sheer fanatisism of the crowd we were in. It was incredible, and a night I will mostly like not forget easily. The real fun started in our cinema. Every time the lights changed, or something came up on the screen there were screams all round. Oh, except for when they played the twightlight preview, and I swear these people booed louder then Queensland booed for New South Wales at the State of Origin!

One of the most interesting experiences of being with all these people, was how the cinema reacted so perfectly to the movie. When you were meant to cry, they cried, when you were meant to laugh, they laughed. They were gasping, cheering, angry… all in unison, and all at the right times. A fantastic night.

Lets not leave out the movie itself, which was really good. I thoroughly enjoyed it. The case with lots of books turned movies, is that they leave out important bits of information, but I didn’t feel like this was the case with Harry Potter (at least not in any obvious way, though I am informed that there were quite a few bits that were left out- as is to be expected). I knew what was happening the entire time, and when it finished I felt closure, and like there weren’t any unanswered questions.

So there you go. The Harry Potter premiere from a 20-something, no-fanatical fan’s perspective!

I don’t like packing, or looking for places, or finding boxes, or changing my address, or the expense of it all.

The only thing I do like is unpacking everything, and things been nice and new and perfectly in place.

We have to move at the moment for two main reasons. The first, and most pressing is Luke’s new job. It’s in the city, and neither of us fancy him having to comute for 3-4 hours each day. Not fun. The second reason is baby. S/he doesn’t need a new home just yet, but it would be nice to be settled somewhere when s/he arrives.

We’ve applied for another place, but we’ll just have to wait and see if we get accepted, or if there are a bazillion other people who apply as well *sigh*.

Hello everyone, welcome to our new family blog! This was our take on telling people we had a tiny little person growing inside me. People seems to really enjoy a cute family photo, pointing out that there was a little baby growing in my belly!

Pepper (our Labradore X Shar-pei pup) doesn’t look so impressed, but trust me, she will be just as in love with baby as we are. I’m looking forward to seeing how she reacts to my growing belly, particularly because we spend lots of time cuddling in the evenings.

Taking this photo was fairly simple- just cut out a few arrows from card (we chose green as it’s a generic colour), and wrote everyone’s ‘titles’ on them. The camera was on a tripod, and with the timer we got the photo taken about a dozen different ways! This was the best one. It would have been nice to have a bit better light, but this was a bit last minute, and we had to wait till Luke finished work, so we couldn’t arrange that!

I would love to know how other people have told their family and friends they’re having a baby. Did you just blurt it out, or put something like this together?

This week we’ve really started to feel my body change, and my belly protude. Not in a hugely visible way, but certainly for Luke and I, when we press on it, we can feel the difference (man oh man was it wobbly before- not so much now!).

I’ve lost about 5kgs since I got pregnant. Perhaps it’s from the baby using more energy, but more likely from the fact that I feel like throwing up at the thought of eating. Of course, if I DON’T eat, then I do throw up. So I usually manage to down something, just not very much.

I’m launching two new blogs on Friday (tomorrow), to concide with the announcement of baby. We thought it was a good time to start a more ‘personal’ family blog to document baby’s journey, and professionalise my craft blog.

I’m getting stuck into packing, but baby seems to make me a bit dizzy, so it’s a slow process.

I don’t think I could be happier with how this pregnancy is going. I am particularly happy with how Luke is responding. I mentioned last night that we only seem to ever talk about baby (not entirely true), and that if this annoyed him, we could tone it down a bit. But he was very quick to say that he loved talking about baby! How happy am I to have such an excited husband! I make snide comments about his inability to keep baby a secret, but in reality, I am over the moon he is super excited about this.

I am into my biggest pants, and will have to start using the pants extender soon. Also, you’ve never met a man so happy that his wife is getting to big for her clothes! Luke is often prompting me to go buy some new ones- particularly pyjamas, as they are quite uncomfortable to wear now. I’m trying to put it off as long as possible. 1, because I’m too small for maternity clothes, and 2, because I hate clothes shopping. Any clothes I hate- not just for me. I like browsing them, but I can not every justify the price tag, not even for Luke or baby. Clothes seem so overpriced, boring, and yes, they never look as good on me as other people.

Baby has already been spoilt with lots of things. Rachel particularly like buying s/he soft toys, and I particularly like buying s/he books. Luke seems to have a fascination with novelty/geeky onsies, so with all those three things, baby’s moving box is looking quite full!

On my app it says 28 weeks to go. That doesn’t seem like long! Hopefully I can take time each day/week to really connect with baby and enjoy each week of pregnancy!

The midwife was quite friendly, though she did send me off to get a blood test, and make me pee in a cup. Two of my not-so-favourite things. I have to go back in a month to check how things are progressing.

9 weeks, 4 days today. Only two and a bit more weeks till we can make it public, and I will start to ‘show’. Exciting times. It’s a bit scary to think that by that stage I will have been pregnant for 3 months though!

Everything seems to be going quite well, apart from the tiredness. It’s getting quite annoying, as I have lots of things I want/need to do (particularly with moving soon), and absolutely no energy to do it with. Luke seems to be getting more and more stressed about work, which isn’t good. I am trying my best to be a good wife, and have things nice at home, but as I look around I realise I am totally failing at that. For now I am just holding out until the move. In the new house things will HOPEFULLY be more organised.
With moving, and buying a heap of new furniture we promised ourselves, and baby furniture and things to buy on the horizon (as well as our holiday to Korea in 5 or so weeks), money is quite tight. Not that you would know from our bloated bank account- but we’re just feeling blessed that God has provided this extra money in the lead up to these expenses, all with me only working casual relief teaching at GCCC.

In other news, I finally told Rhys (via email of course, he’s in Germany at the moment) that I’m pregnant, and he was super excited (as far as I can tell). That boy worries me, but that’s another story.
Yesterday I also told Nana. She seemed excited, though not overwhelmingly so. I was so nervous telling her, as I have been with everyone that I’ve had to tell. I tell you what, nerves are an awful thing- making you feel so sick and feel like your heart’s going to jump out your mouth! I guess I will leave it up to mum and dad to tell the extended family (their siblings) once we hit week 12, even though all Luke’s extended family already knows.
I was thinking yesterday that there’s actually not many people we need to tell when we get to week 12. The uni kids, school once I have regular hospital appointments, craft group, Goodlife friends, twitter friends and that’s about it. Must write it on Facebook and blog also.

I called Luke over, and he could feel the difference as well. So exciting!

Any signs of traditional morning sickness seem to have gone. Now it’s just strange smells that make FEEL like vomiting. The one and only time I’ve actually vomited though was on the 4th, at the #SCTUB meet. Still feel a bit ‘yuk’ opening the fridge, but have worked out some tricky ways to manage the smell, so I can carry on with life!

The ultrasound. This was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever experienced. Apparently it wasn’t as amazing for Luke, which probably has something to do with the fact that it wasn’t IN him. But for me, it was incredible. To see a little heart up on that screen beating away blew my mind. That is IN me. I have a PERSON growing inside me. It’s pretty awesome.
We couldn’t so much see any baby- it was just a black bean shape in a mass of grey, but we knew it was there. So special!

As far as sickness goes, things are much better. I’m finding sometimes I dry reach, and other time I can feel that uncontrollable vomit action inside you. Like your stomach just condensed to a quarter of its size and threw itself up to your mouth and tried to get out ASAP. Had that second feeling today (though didn’t actually spew) when I opened the fridge. I really don’t think it smells that bad?! But for some reason I react really badly to it!

We told my family last night. Told mum and dad when mum asked me how my thyroid was (not well, in case you were wondering- was nearly underachieve before all this, and now it’s very overactive). She was excited, perhaps surprised? Dad was kind of non-reactionary, though gave me a hug later.

Hayden’s was the best reaction. He was lying in front of the fire, and I knelt down next to him and said “Guess what? I’m pregnant” and his eyes went super wide and he shot up from the ground and lept onto me. He hugged me for ages and nearly cried?! SUPER excited, and definitely the best reaction. Luke told Amon (I should get him to write down what happened), and later Amon came up gave me a hugged and gave me a ‘knowing’ wink and arm punch.

Tonight we’re telling Luke’s mum and possibly his siblings? So we’ll see how that goes. Then we might tell all the grands and extended family once we hit the magic 12 week mark (or maybe 11? I can barely hold it in!).

This makes me both extremely happy, and extremely scared. Has something happened to the baby, or am I over all this yucky pregnancy sickness- constant crappy feeling?
Lets hope it’s the later. Not sure how I would react/cope if baby was gone.

Taking advantage of the good feeling though and making Luke some dinner. Lots of dinner, for all the possible future nights in the next fortnight when I won’t feel like cooking.

I don’t feel very sick, have any cravings, or anything like that. Fingers crossed it stays like that! We’re also realizing that being pregnant will be a big shift in our lifestyle. Almost nothing to drink while we’re out (no alcohol, sugar or coffee!) is a bit hard to take, plus mummy is fussy with her chai tea lattes, so it’s been quite a few glasses of water for me while dad enjoys his latte!

We already love you, how crazy is that?! I think I loved you even before this. Last night daddy spoke to you while he was resting on my belly. I was happy.

Love you,
Mum