Thursday, September 25, 2014

Three weeks today!  As usual, I'm constantly full of good intentions to write blog entries, but rarely remember to sit down and do it.

We are loving being a family of 4.    Our beautiful princess fits so perfectly into our family, it feels as though she has been here forever.  That's what I kept commenting on the first couple of weeks - the only "weird" thing was the fact that nothing was weird, life felt completely normal.    Ordinary even.

Ziva eats well and sleeps well.   She was born Thurs evening and on the Friday slept all day, and then decided at 7pm - right as I finished dinner and settled down to sleep - that she wanted to eat all night.  Which she did.   I was exhausted on Saturday!   Then Saturday night she slept beautifully.  Sunday she slept all day, and oops another busy night!  After that I learnt my lesson and started unwrapping her during the day (it was cold, I was instinctively keeping her swaddled!) and encouraging her to stay awake for short periods during the day for love and snuggles.   Since then she has slept beautifully at night, waking for just a feed and then straight back down.   Some nights she does 4 to 4.5 hour spacing between feeds which is lovely.   So feeling fairly well rested!     Unfortunately Elijah has been teething quite badly so we have had that in between waking us up.     Harder on Shane than on me though as he is the one getting up to Eli while I'm feeding Ziva!   Plus he has to get up for work the next day.  

We are still sleeping in a fair bit, except on the days that Shane and Eli get up and leave at 7:30 for work/daycare, sometimes I can't get back to sleep afterwards.   Shane gets Eli up and dresses him, but some mornings I wake up and help, particularly if Eli is already awake while Shane is trying to get himself ready.   I do enjoy the two days Eli is at daycare (Mon & Thurs) as it gives me more quality time with Ziva.  It's nice to just put my feet up and relax.    I did intend to do either drop off or pick-up (one end only) on some days as it's a long day for Shane, but haven't felt inclined to yet, particularly as it means walking to the train station carrying Ziva.  We get out and about a lot on the in between days, by the time Eli is at daycare I'm due to put my feet up and watch some TV!  

Mum is still here and doing all of the cooking, cleaning, laundry and everything else under the sun.  Quite full on but very generous of her!  

This entry is a bit disjointed as I have her next to me sorting out cupboards and asking me every few seconds whether I want to keep a particular item, or where it should go.     But hey, it's a start!  

Loving life, loving my beautiful family.    :-)

Sunday, September 14, 2014

Ziva - Part 1

For all our joking about this baby coming early, we didn't really believe it would happen.  As I kept telling people - babies in my family don't come early!

On the Saturday I had my lovely high tea pre-baby celebration with my friends, which was a great day out.   Sunday was a quiet day in with my boys.   Then on Monday I decided that I would take Eli to daycare and pop into the office for awhile.  Part of my reasoning for this is that I had a midwife appointment at 9am, and trying to juggle cars and children etc with Shane was too complicated any other way around.  

Eli and I went to the midwife, and our regular midwife Myra was off sick.  A lady named Fiona from the labour ward was covering for her.  She did my usual quick check up - weight, blood pressure, foetal heartbeat etc.   We made some quick small talk and off I went.   Did a few hours of work, joking to Mark that I mainly went in so I could have my favourite Mexican food for lunch, which had become a routine every work day during this pregnancy.  Mad Mex, naked burritto, rice, beans, chicken, tomato, medium salsa, sour cream, cheese, guacamole.   Mmmmm!   I got tired after lunch and decided to call it a day.   Instead I popped over to Westfield and had a massage and pedicure from some lovely Chinese ladies, before picking up Eli and heading home.

My pantry was very untidy, and I decided to ask Shane to pull everything out for me so I could do a clean out and restack it.  I joked that just our luck, as soon as everything was pulled out I would probably go into labour and leave the house chaos.   Hahahaha.  So Shane pulled everything out of the pantry and put it on the bench and floor.

That evening I took Eli to our bed to put him to sleep.  All of a sudden I started to feel period-like cramping.   It was painful - more so than any Braxton Hicks - and I thought that it was a good sign of things to come in the upcoming weeks.   But then awhile later the first contraction came.   It wasn't a huge one, and not too long, but  certainly took me by surprise.   I also felt a "show" and a subsequent trip to the toilet confirmed it.   I stayed snuggled in bed with Eli, and at one point a contraction came quite painfully to the point that I freaked out a tiny bit in my head.   At that moment Eli sleepily reached over and started stroking my cheek with his hand.   It was so adorable and I relaxed immediately.   Contractions continued intermittently.   I came out and said to Shane "I'm not ready yet! It's too soon I'm not ready!" and he reminded me that I don't have much choice in the matter.  

I was anxious about the state of the house because "what if we have to call somebody at 3am to watch Eli!"  so Shane stayed up late cleaning up.    I was up and down much of the night.

Tuesday I had intermittent contractions all day, same on Tuesday night and Wednesday.  At times they were very painful and close together, at other times I'd have a long break.    Typically at night they would increase and come 5-7 minutes apart for a few hours between 10pm and 2am, before finally giving me some respite to sleep.    Because of this I was quite tired by Wednesday night from two nights of poor sleep.    Although, the intense house cleaning I did on Wednesday probably didn't help much either!    Tuesday night we were so worried about how fast things might speed up that I called Reggio Emilio and asked if Eli could attend on Wednesday.   It was meant to be his first week dropping to two days only (previously three) but fortunately they had a kid off sick on the Wed so let him attend.  

However, it wasn't until Wednesday night that things finally sped up.   And sadly, not fast enough!  I had contractions every 5 minutes on average, and roughly 45 seconds in duration.   And fairly painful   By morning I was exhausted, I called the hospital and they suggested I come in.   We took Eli with us and I was surprised that they didn't object to him joining us in the triage room!   The midwife confirmed that I was 3cm dilated, and put me on the monitor to check contractions and foetal movement.   A med student came in and asked if he could ask us some questions, we agreed and it was quite diverting chatting to him as we went.  He was from a hospital that doesn't have a maternity ward so was taking the opportunity to learn!

We were shortly sent on our way, with the midwife confident we would have the baby within 24 hours.  I got Shane to drop me at home before he dropped Eli at Reggio and went to work.  I lasted about an hour at home before I called Shane to come home because I didn't want to be alone.   Spent the whole day in the living room contracting.    Sometimes they'd come 3 minutes, sometimes stretch out to 7 minutes.   In between I was always in constant pain, so it was literally a day of labouring and nothing else.    Shane joked at one point that this was the first time he and I had been home alone together since Eli was born!  Not the most quality time however.    We called Jeanie and arranged for her to collect Eli from daycare and bring him home around 5pm.    In the meantime I tossed up when to go back to the hospital - I didn't want to go too soon, but at the same time I was really stressed about Eli coming home and seeing me.  

To be continued....

Our big boy slept 12 hours in his own bed last night!  So proud of him.  Of course his own bed is back in our room, next to our bed, as it's been the past few weeks.  Still, he usually clambers out and finds his way into our bed before long.   Friday night he slept in our bed all night.    This past week I've been on the far side of the room next to our little princess, and it took him awhile to work that out.  So now he is bypassing Daddy and running all around the bed at night to get to my side, which is a problem when I'm busy feeding the little lady.   Shane is doing an amazing job of resettling him though.  Perhaps all this time the problem has been I respond too quickly to bring him in with us - too lazy to resettle!