So proud of my hubby!!

Christmas Eve it was miserable weather, hosing down, and the outlook for Christmas day was not great... I had thought this might put a bit of a dampener (haha) on Tommy's Christmas but I have to say I was pleased to here himsay he finally got it... it's one thing to hear people say "but it's good for the tanks" when it's bucketing down with rain, it's another to be living it! So we had an awesome day despite the weather, friends around for the day and flushing the toilet with wild abandon because the tanks were full and overflowing!! ... and having the tank full at christmas time means you're pretty much set for summer around here!!

Big changes...

So... since the last real installment back in Aug 2012 there have been big changes for us. We made the decision to move to Great Barrier Island permanently. The older Terri got the more urgent it became for us.
We made a pact to either buy a home or start building a new home on Tom's section by the end of 2011 ... and then things eventually started falling into place for us. The 'perfect' property for us came along. We negotiated a private sale so there were no agents involved (therefore no comission and fees). The house is large, comfortable, water tight (mostly) and has an outstanding view out towards Kaitoke Beach on the east coast. Our closest beach is a 2 minute drive down to Blind Bay on the west coast. We found a few established fruit trees on the back of the section and an abandoned chook run.
We installed solar panels so that we didn't have to rely solely on generator for power then we moved out here at the end of October 2011.
It's been over a year now and we are slowly making our mark on the section. We got ourselves 3 chickens and are eagerly awaiting our first eggs. Slowly we are establishing food crops on a very small scale, mostly in pots and containers at the moment but bit by bit we are building up the soil to a point where we can have a few dedicated food plots. I have tomatoes growing in pots that would give any triffid a run for their money, a few herbs in, rhubbarb, black/boysen/raspberry bushes all in the ground, we've planted citrus trees and have just started eating Tom's first crop of spuds.
When I think about it we have acheived rather a lot :)
Terri is thriving out here. She attends the local playcentre and loves the beach, fishing, and outdoors in general. It's a great place to raise kids.
We are living the good life!!

Last post Aug 30 2010

Wow... it's been a while to say the least. I wasn't even sure whether I'd ever be back but over the years I've been an on and off 'journaller' so maybe that's how my blogging goes too...
...
lets see how long I last this time...

Bye-bye my baby... bye-bye!

In the last week or so I've come to the realisation I no longer have a baby in the house... we now have a little girl!
Terri is beautiful and every day I love her more.
She must have gone through a bit of a growth spurt in the last 10 days, she seems more grown up than ever before, getting much more substantial! Her personality is shining through and physically she is getting so much stronger and more able every day. Whilst she has been on the move for a while now, she is just starting to sit without support and it makes her seem so much more grown up.
She is a bit of a trickster... a couple of nights ago I was changing her nappy after a night feed when she let crack a real ripper of a fart... and despite being mellow and sleepy she cracked up laughing and before you knew it the two of us were giggling madly in the middle of the night.
Then on Sunday we were at the markets when I realised she seemed to be getting odd looks from other shoppers... when I looked into the pram... she was there chomping on the bunch of silverbeet I had put in my shopping basket, a big piece torn off in each hand and another hanging out of her mouth...with the cheekiest look on her face!
We are having so much fun together... every day is a new adventure.
....
... but even so I kind of miss the wee baby she was.

800 nappies...

…Give or take, that’s how many cloth nappy changes we’ve done here. I only know this because of the number of nappy liner rolls we’ve been through. 800 nappies changed, washed and folded. I never dreamt just how easy it would be!
I think some people thought I was a little nuts when I told them I was planning on using cloth nappies and to be honest I had concerns of my own about being able to keep up a cyclical routine of getting them washed ready for the next wearing. I had visions of soak buckets and nappies hanging from the curtain rails on rainy day. All based on my little girl memories of the nappies Mum used for my younger siblings… oh how nappies have changed since then… thank goodness!
Going cloth was a bit of a no-brainer for me. I just couldn’t bear the thought of using disposables full time. Don’t get me wrong… I’m not totally anti-disposable and we certainly use them on occasion. In fact the couple of months we spent on the Island back in March-May that is all we used… a couple hundred or so… I didn’t like it very much but we don’t have a washing machine over there and it just wasn’t practical to be down at the Laundromat every couple of days, queuing for a spot and waiting around. Spending half our time doing the washing would have completely negated us being over there! If I’m going away for a couple of days I’ll take disposables so I don’t have to cart the nappy bucket with us… I’ll admit it is very convenient… but while we’re at home … nah, it’s cloth for us!!
I wash every couple of days, whenever the bucket is full and have e enough nappies to go about 4 days before we run out but that never happens. There’s no soaking, I keep a dry bucket for all the used nappies and wash when it’s full. I peg them out on a small airing rack that is the perfect size for one load. This will dry indoors in about 24 hours under the heat pump if the weather is crap but as much as possible I dry them out in the fresh air… whipping the whole rack indoors if it starts raining. And I especially love taking all the fresh nappies in and getting them all folded ready for the next wearing…. Mmmmmm-mmm… the smell of clean nappies!!
I have never regretted the decision and would recommend them to anyone… for anyone that still thinks it’s too much work… here’s a pic of two days worth of nappies out drying….
... whoops... not there's not!! I can't seem to get a picture in here for some reason! Will add later if I can :)

Once again time has escaped me…

In a few days Terri will be 6 months old… How did that happen? It has gone so fast! My beautiful wee monkey…

I’m not going to carry on a blow by blow account of the rest of our hospital stay and adventures since then… I’m pleased to have the birth story down on paper and the rest all seems irrelevant now. Besides, if there is anyone out there reading this then it will all be old news anyway. So… onwards and upwards.
My maternity leave finished at the end of June so I’m back working again… gasp! Yeah, well with Tom’s work a bit thin on the ground (he’s self employed) it will be good to have a steady income. Luckily I’m able to work from home and can be flexible with when I get me hours in so can work around Terri’s feeds and play time, getting work done while she’s asleep during the day or evenings. I am sooooo lucky to be able to do this otherwise I know that I couldn't have left our wee one to be in the office…. I’d have been an emotional wreck!
The first couple of days were pretty good, they are easing me back in while my brain gets back up to speed! It’s a bit like riding a bicycle though and I’ve surprised myself a bit with how I’m slipping back into the groove. This week is a little different though because it is school holidays and we have Libby up for the first week. Tom has been great and has stayed home to help out with the girls so I can get back into work. He has a wee bit of work tomorrow morning though so we’ll see how that works out.
Anyway… I have some other entries up my sleeve so maybe I’ll get another one up over the next week or so. Don’t hold your breath though!! LOL!!

The birth story... finally!!

So remember my rant about drugs, pain relief and how women have been giving birth for centuries?
Well… perhaps I jinxed myself!
So… I should have known when they wanted to induce me into labour that the intervention was only just beginning.
It had been explained to me that as an “older mother” I should have baby by the due date. I was told that late in the pregnancy the placenta starts to struggle to supply all the necessaries to baby and being an older mum would only compound that… better that baby arrives in prime condition rather than going beyond the due date and losing condition because the placenta wasn’t delivering the goods. Made perfect sense to me… in theory.
So, on Thursday 7 January I toddled off to the hospital so they could get things up and running… we arrived late afternoon and it was about 10pm by the time they got me all monitored up and applied the gel… I felt a few twinges and settled in ready for baby to make it’s presence felt … not long now!! I was nervous but very excited!
I was in the area where all the arrivals were first investigated to see if they were really in labour (and then either shown to a delivery suite or sent away again). There were people coming and going constantly so between the nerves, excitement, twinges and disturbances it was well after 3 in the morning before I managed to get some broken sleep.
In the morning all the activity in my uterus had subsided… how disappointing! I was told more gel would be applied later in the morning but of course it didn’t happen until the afternoon, and we started again. By this stage I was starting to lose a bit of confidence in the hospital staff as they debated just when my due date was… WTF???!! But the twinges started again, the monitors recording all the contractions and this time around I asked for some sleeping pills to get some rest while all around other women were arriving in various stages of labour, many of them going on to have their babies.
When I woke on Saturday morning I didn’t need to look at the monitors to know that everything had ground to a halt again. When I got up to stretch my legs I discovered I’d been bleeding and so the midwives organised an internal exam which resulted with them breaking my waters…. Something was bound to happen now right?
I would walk.. or rather waddle… around the wards, down the stairs to the ground floor and out into the hospital grounds to try and get things moving… nothing seemed to work!
Finally in the early afternoon I was transferred to a delivery suite… some privacy … woohooo!! At 2pm they started the drip and the contractions intensified… but still weren’t happening fast enough for me to be officially in labour. The worst thing about this was that with all the monitors I was essentially confined to the bed… so much for all the yoga and dance and massage classes!! As often as I thought I could possibly get away with it I would ask to be unplugged so I could use the loo. I’d shuffle of into the toilet with my drip, lock the door behind me and sway and circle my way through the contractions for as long as I thought I could reasonably could. Oh the relief!! If I was really lucky there would be no-one there to hook me up to the monitors when I got out again so I could stay on my feet and move. The contractions got stronger and stronger but weren’t increasing in frequency so they tried to increase the drip dosage ever so slightly… oh cripes! Contraction after contraction with no rest in between, baby wasn’t getting any rest either so they would wind it back again and I’d be back to every few minutes.
The gas was hooked up at 6pm and I tried a few wee “sips” but didn’t find it particularly helpful until my midwife arrived and told me to use it every contraction, and to “keep breathing it in until you think you’re at the top of the contraction then take one more suck on it and ride back down the other side”….. yep, that helped! And still things weren’t progressing. Baby hadn’t moved any further down and I still wasn’t technically in labour.
Late in the evening I discussed with Tom the possibility of having an epidural. By this stage it looked like it was going to be another looong night. I was okay on the pain front, I felt as though I was handling it okay but it was exhausting me and was conscious that I needed to be okay for baby on the other side of the birth. We couldn’t get any indication from anyone how long things might yet take….I could be there for days at this rate!! By this point it had completely escaped me that my waters had been broken so there was a finite amount of time before more drastic intervention would happen.
At about 11pm my midwife told me that if I was considering an epidural I had make a decision fairly soon as there was a long line of emergency c-sections ready to roll and the anaesthetist would not be available again for quite a long time. We talked it over again briefly and by 11:20pm it was being administered. That certainly took the edge off and I even got a few naps!
I was getting really frustrated with the registrar who was happy to let me continue on as I was indefinitely despite it seeming as though they were not actually getting me into proper labour. It was a huge relief when the shift changed and after another internal I was told baby was posterior (and they only just noticed???!!) and wasn’t moving further down… Oh and my pelvis is rather shallow … maybe that’s why baby isn’t moving further!!?? Still at least we were getting some action. The epidural was starting to wear off so they got me pushing for about 45 minutes before re-examining and deciding that it wasn’t going to happen that way! They told me I could stop pushing… hell no! That is not something I could just turn off once I’d started so I had to keep going until they could top up the epidural. I would be going to surgery… baby would be coming out the sun-roof…
My midwife handed Tom some scrubs … “What are these for?” Sunshine you’re coming with me! Poor Tom, surgery had never really entered our sphere of possibilities and now after 3 nights and days of contractions we were going to theatre.
As we made our way to theatre we were almost jovial… baby’s arrival was finally almost a reality!!
Theatre was amazing… party time! Every one had different, brightly coloured headgear, 60’s and 70’s party music playing (I remember Suzie Q, Devil Gate Drive), not a single kiwi in the place (except myself!) and once they knew baby was a “surprise” they started laying bets on the gender. I half expected to be offered a glass of wine or chips and dip!!
They had asked Tom whether he wanted to watch and he blanched, I don’t blame him! So they told him they’d keep him informed and he could decide. So… off they went performing the operation… it’s hardly a gentle thing, despite the epidural I still knew I was being pulled and contorted… I felt like a sack of potatoes! Next thing they were telling Tom they could see the head and did he want to watch now… hesitantly he kinda started to stand… it was like he really didn’t want to but felt compelled to simply because they were telling him… anyway before he could get completely to his feet I felt an almighty heave… and a weird sucking sensation as if my lungs were being ripped out through my …. well … you know…. And the surgeon exclaimed “OH.MY.GOD!!!” following closely by everyone else in the room … Holy moly!!, sheesh!!, Crikey!! Tom leapt to his feet by now and was standing there with his chin hitting the floor. I was the only one there that had no idea what was going on!
“Tom! WHAT IS IT???!!!”
“A girl! We’ve got a girl!!”
“NO!! Why is everyone freaking out? WHAT IS IT?!”
“Oh babe … she’s enormous!!”

Phew!!! Is that all! At this point Tom was whisked off to watch her being weighed, cut the cord, get the first photos (or rather the nurses did – he was so shell-shocked).
Once all the formalities were over they brought her over… and she looked right at me…. I was smitten… our Terri was finally here!

5 months have gone by? What the ...???

Oh my!

Where has time gone?

And how could I have possibly left you in the lurch?

And what the hell have I been doing?

Oh dear... busy busy busy!! Thanks to those of you who have called by to my empty and echoing blog! How I've neglected you!!

I will try to get some stuff up, my birth story and what we've been up to since.

Our wee girl is gorgeous...

and I love, love, LOVE being a Mum!

I'm sure the other mothers out there will forgive me for neglecting my blog in order to wallow in motherhood!!

Back again as soon as I can!!