Sunday Sillies...

Since you all enjoyed the last video of The Baby licking the window, I thought that I would share some other funnies. (The quality of my phone camera isn't great and we keep planning to get a proper camcorder, but you know buying a house is ££££!) 
Top video is of The Baby getting into my thickers collection - I kept finding random letters on his foot, elbow and forehead for the rest of the day!
Below he is enjoying some deconstructed tacos. In fact most things he eats get deconstructed by him...

A sleeping shot, just because, it's so cute...

He has started taking some steps. Very quickly. Between sofas and boxes. He always looks very pleased with himself. 

Lastly I have been introduced to the silliness of snapchat - are you on it? I didn't get the point of it before, but now I enjoy adding doodles to my photos and sending them to my friend and sister. How many of your husband's have spent the last fortnight like this?

Lastly it is my little sister's brithday today and so I made a collage of her and The Baby. She has always been his number one fan and its really cute.

Me on a Monday

Its been a window licking, present making, pop can stacking, sister visiting, pizza eating, football marathon watching, father's day celebrating, friends gathering, dessert assembling, some box packing, baby smooching, solicitor hating, paper work never ending, bath soaking kind of a week(end).

How was yours?

One Photo & Twenty Words: Push it

Apparently tensions run high during 

the World Cup? Have they ever been to our

families' Easter egg hunt?

______________________________

Linking up with the lovely Abi over at Creating Paper Dreams

  

Me on Monday...

It was a box packing avoiding, IKEA crowd dodging, meatball munching, clothes vacuum packing, conference listening, baby wrestling, face pulling for snapchatting, macaroni slow cooking, Breaking Bad completing, craft stuff missing, blog redesigning (was on a whim & I'm not convinced but I always wanted a name change), Pointless app playing (or cheating according to the sisters), Eton Mess indulging, rain hating kind of a weekend.

And yours?

Musings on Motherhood: My baby is ten months old!

Well another whirlwind month.
I guess with this particular brand of baby 'whirlwind' will always be the operative word.

So this month:

• he has been obsessed with shoes and especially eating them (gross!)
• he enjoys perching on the window sill and looking at the cars and people walking by
• and licking the window or pressing his face up against it - very amusing!
• he loves sweet things and has had a little taste of white chocolate buttons, brownie and a donut and he loved it all
• he loves sausages and meatballs - quite the carnivore it seems
• he likes munching on breadsticks and supping on apple juice

• he is FINALLY sleeping through till five or six and with a small bottle can stretch it out till 7 most days
• his cruising is reaching new heights and he is growing in confidence and whizzing around and along things
• he can stand for up to ten seconds on his own
• first night in a hotel as a little family - it was quite fun
• first carousel ride

• he's proved he's very resilient as my childminder had a few days off for a family bereavement and he had to go to two different emergency childminders - was an anxious few days for me, but every time I picked him up he was smiling away and enjoying himself. Well done baby boy!
• he had a nasty chest and eye infection and has been on antibiotics which tasted like banana and so he would get a banana milkshake at bedtime

• putting sounds together to form 'words' like 'mama' and 'dada'
• he's been enjoying climbing in and on top of the boxes we're trying to pack
• he loves crawling round on the floor after other kids and we've had lots of play dates this month
• we've switched to the big car seat and he looks so tiny in it, but loves the view
• loves to climb everything from stairs to the sofas to the bed but he is very skilled at getting back down safely

An explorer, a charmer and a wriggler.

A blessing to all who come in contact with him.

Tiring but so worth it!

The One with the Birth story

So this post had been a long time in the making - mostly its been in my thought process for the last ten months. But I feel like I'd like to share it and that some of you may relate to my experience.

Before we begin there are some things you need to understand about me. I may, or may not have, done some (or all) of the following:

a) Fainted during sex education in Year 6. Most of the other kids in the class thought I had either died or had a heart attack.

b) Passed out in my history classroom following the BCG injection, thus hitting my head on the radiator and making an embarrassing noise that was hard to live down for the rest of Year Nine.

c) Been sick at the side of the road in Harrogate on route to the hospital to have my blood test for the pregnancy. Harrogate is very posh and I got some funny looks at 8:30 a.m right next to the bus stop. I may have muttered, "I'm not drunk I'm pregnant!" That old chesnut!

So there is some background to my fear of needles and anything medical. My birth story may not be the perfect "Lazy Daisy", giving birth in the birth pool, you-can-do-it-drug-free type of story. I avoided going to any ante-natal classes as I was in denial, I avoided reading up on it and refused to join The Belgian in watching One Born Every Minute. I didn't want a birth plan as I knew how disappointed friends had been when things hadn't gone according to plan and I didn't want to put that pressure on myself. After all no-one can prepare you for it and you don't know how you will feel.

So July 10th was my due date. It was a sweltering heat wave of a week and to make matters worse our agency decided to get the painters in. So the Chuckle Brothers turn up every morning at the crack of dawn and laugh and joke loudly outside my window pretending to paint. Then, just as we buy outside furniture for the garden, they infiltrate this too and spend about three weeks painting the doors and window frames bottle green. Just what I needed when I wanted to relax.
Due date came and went without a twinge, the picture above shows how I spent my time preparing the nursery and all the toys. We were team yellow so I had kept it all a neutral yellow and grey with a zoo animal theme.

At my last midwife appointment there was still no sign and so she booked me in for an induction. I wasn't keen on this so asked if I could meet with a doctor at the hospital instead and have a consultation to discuss the different options. 

However another stifling, hot weekend passed by and when you feel the size of a whale you have a desire to clothe it all in layers and chunky knits, but there is no hiding from your bulge in the summer and I was running out of cool and airy maternity wear. In fact I was resenting having to wear clothes at all. 


But most of all I was running out of patience. So we phoned the hospital, on the Saturday, and they suggested that we come in for a 'sweep'. I wasn't thrilled about this, but wanted to feel as though we were doing something.

Four frustrating hours in what had to be the hottest room in the hospital and no sweep as I wasn't ready yet. Head wasn't engaged. This baby did not want to come out.

So back to the hospital on Monday, but this time I just wanted to be induced, it wasn't a decision that I came to lightly and my old housemate the Doctor and I had a long text conversation at midnight debating the pros and cons of induction. She made me aware that there was a higher chance of a difficult, more painful birth and/or c-section but that waiting another week increased my chances of a stillborn. I was not willing to risk this.

So Monday morning we roll up to the hospital and I am thinking I will just have this procedure and then go home and wait it out. I have the pessary and am very impressed that I don't cry and/or faint. They hook me up to the monitor and a few hours later I enquire when I can go home. The midwife gives me a bewildered look, "that's it you're here till the baby comes now." 
Oh well thank-you for telling me. I think. I did have my hospital bag in the car, just in case, but I hadn't double checked it all and may have been lacking some of my creature comforts. 
So we were stuck. Stranded in the waiting bay. We passed the time by playing Uno, Million Pound Drop on the Nexus and chatting to other expectant mothers. Also The Belgian tried to feel my pain...

Hmm...

Next day same again and still no change. My parents arrived laden with gossip mags and the hugest punnet of strawberries I have ever seen. We sat in the hospital gardens and chatted. If I hadn't been, y'know twelve days overdue and all, it would have been a very pleasant visit. The Belgian in-laws had been waiting in the wings at the local Marriot since the previous Friday and their ferry back was Wednesday 24th so the pressure was really mounting.

So Wednesday arrived, no miracles had happened overnight so they booked me in to have my waters broken at 2 p.m. To say that this was not a pleasant experience is somewhat an understatement. They clamped on the gas mask reassuring me that it would just feel like I've had a few glasses of wine. Not very reassuring when I am a teetotaler and as expected the gas and air did make me feel light hearted and dizzy. Not in a good way. I was hooked up to a hormone drip and so the journey began.

A journey that involved a further 14 hours of strong contractions. I was very proud that until about 11 p.m I was just using the gas and air. It soon became my friend and something to focus on with the counting. I also found pushing my feet against The Belgian's hands during contractions and wriggling round on the bed/chair a good way to distract myself.

I was hooked up to all sorts and it made me laugh thinking of all of the propogranda of active births. Fat chance with all of these drips. I was also being really sick and wishing I had forgone lunch.

There was a funny episode where I wanted my hair to be tied up out of my face. Well The Belgian really struggled to capture all my hair into the bobble and I was getting quite annoyed. The midwife offered to help but she had short, grey hair and confessed she was no expert at hairstyles. So between the two of them they just about managed a messy top knot and if you scroll down you will see the results of their 'styling.'

So because the fake contractions were coming on strong and very quickly i decided that i was probably going to need some pain relief. I asked the midwives to go through all of the options with me and so she explained the pros and cons of each one. I decided that the only one i wanted was one make me not feel contractions anymore and so i opted to have an epidural. Can you imagine? Me opting to have a huge needle injected in my back? Things must have been bad.

The anithatist arrived and I had to sit up very straight. I also had to sign a disclaimer with some pretty scary conditions and risks. I recall my signature was a random scribble. The Belgian helped me sit up straight and just as the needle was about to go in I had a big contraction. Scary. 

I remember overhearing an American lady on OBEM describing the epidural as the 'cadaillac' of childbirth and I am inclined to agree. I told the midwife in a concerned tone, 'I'm not getting contractions anymore. They've stopped.' But apparently this was a good thing as it had kicked in! 

So the next few hours were a blur. The room was blisteringly hot and I remember The Belgian stood at the window snaffling grapes in an attempt to cool down. (My grapes might I add - but I was too sick to eat.) He told me afterwards that they brought him a chair and told him to sleep, but he was too busy pacing the floor.

A few more hours shuffled on and every time they took me off the drip the contractions would stop. This was not going well. The Doctor kept on going through the next step, but it would always end with "and then we'll have to do a section." Like 'da, da, daaaa' when the baddie comes on at the panto, I half expected the nurses and midwives to start booing and hissing. It was definitely presented as the last resort and this scared me.

Tests were done to see if the baby was struggling which involved a needle scratching his poor little head and then testing his blood. Again take a moment to appreciate how brave I was considering I hate needles. Shudder. But you go into autopilot and you just have to allow them to do what they can to get the baby out safely. The second test came back that he was struggling and so at about 4 a.m they called it. Da, da, daa a section it was to be.

The midwife went through it all in step-by-step detail with us right down to where The Belgian would be standing and what he would be wearing. I got ANOTHER injection so that I would be awake, but wouldn't feel the pain. They described the sensation as if someone was doing the dishes in my belly. Because of course that is a sensation I am familiar with. I was trembling and convinced I would be sick again so was wheeled into theatre clutching a metal dish under my chin. It must have been a combination of adrenalin and nerves. 

I remember thinking that the theatre lights were really bright and it reminded me of a Grey's Anatomy episode. We made small talk with them about possible names and decided that I wanted them to hold the baby over the screen to show me the sex when 'it' was born, rather than telling me. It was really quite quick, once they started, I barely felt anything but was aware that something was going on. 

The Baby was out and there was no sound for what seemed like ages and I was freaking out thinking it had all been for nothing and then I heard a distant little mewing and let out a huge sigh of relief. He was hung over me and I saw his vitals and exclaimed, "its a boy!" Ever one for pointing out the obvious.

In retrospect I don't feel angry or bitter about the way things happened. I don't feel robbed of the chance to give birth naturally. He was the most perfect little baby I had ever seen with no scratches or mishaped head or signs of a 'struggle.' His skin was clean and soft. He had these big eyes that just stared at me. I was probably still quite 'out of it' and it did take me a while to recover and to really appreciate what had happened, rather than focus on what was happening to my body and how painful it all was. 

I love my birth story and will always consider those midwives to be angels.

This is not my most flattering picture, but it reflects the experience I'd just been through and shows my perfect little baby.

Anyone have a similar experience to me?

Link me up to your birth stories as I love reading them.

And well done if you reached the end of this mammoth post!

Our bank holiday looked like this...

Carousel riding, garden centre visiting, tablet browsing, scone baking, mummy visiting, poorly boy snuggling, sister styling, project lifing, ice-cream licking, pram pushing, soft play tumbling, baby waving, daddy napping, sun lounging, football supporting, Chinese scoffing, traffic dodging, (hopefully.)

 

___________________________

Thanks for the format Sian

Friday Finds: Things I am Loving...

So here are some of the things I have been enjoying reading/watching/pinning lately...

1) This article on ten things that moms of boys must do. Some of them are already apparent (such as loving bath time, making messes and so, so, so much laundry) and some I still have to look forward to (such as 'the grab')! Check it out here. My sister shared it with me on Facebook - perhaps gloating that she has a girl.

 2) In line with my previous post I loved this blog post all about appreciating the little things and seeing the world through a baby's eyes.

3) I have been a bit obsessed with pineapples lately and so when I saw these bad boys on pinterest (thanks Kayleigh!) I was drooling. Plus they are healthy (or maybe healthier) and in the run up to summer that can only be a good thing.

4) We had a date night at the movies last night and this advert came up in the previews and we gave each other the knowing look that only parents of a baby could.

5) And lastly ladies aren't we glad that things have progressed slightly since this.

 Happy bank holiday fellow Brits &

 

                        enjoy your weekend the rest of you!

To my grown up son...

A few events have happened recently to make me appreciate what I have got.
In life it is so easy to moan and I have been feeling burdened recently with my return to work, all the silly business and admin and phone calls involved in buying a house, trying to maintain a household on little time and little energy, the little man is still not sleeping through the night and we have had some very tricky, long and exhausting nights too. Let's hope its teeth! 
Plus all these bad things are happening to people who I care about and being back in the teaching climate of moaning, stress and constant fear (thanks to Mr Gove) doesn't help when you're already feeling drained.

But I have a gorgeous little boy.

In fact as I left the house the other morning, feeling very sorry for myself after a fractious night which involved the baby being awake and crying from two a.m till five a.m, an old lady fell in step with me and was admiring his smile. I wished she hadn't picked this day to converse with me as I really wasn't in the mood for small talk. She asked how old he was and what his name was. I muttered my responses hoping that my tone was off putting enough that she would stop chatting to me. 
Then she said, "I wish I could have had babies. I couldn't and my husband wouldn't consider adoption otherwise I would have had a few. You're so lucky to have him." 
Wow! It was just the wake up call I needed to stop sweating the small things and to appreciate what I have.

A few months ago I had to speak at my friends' baby blessings. They have two gorgeous twin girls who were born three months early and have spent the majority of their eight months in this world in hospital fighting for survival. My mom sent this poem for me to read out and it's so poignant and a real tear jerker.

"To My Grown-Up Son" 

by Alice E. Chase

My hands were busy through the day, 

I didn't have much time to play 

The little games you asked me to,

 I didn't have much time for you. 

I'd wash your clothes; I'd sew and cook, 

But when you'd bring your picture book 

And ask me, please, to share your fun, 

I'd say, "A little later, son." 

 I'd tuck you in all safe at night, 

And hear your prayers, 

turn out the light, 

Then tiptoe softly to the door, 

I wish I'd stayed a minute more. 

 For life is short, and years rush past, 

A little boy grows up so fast, 

No longer is he at your side, 

His precious secrets to confide. 

The picture books are put away, 

There are no children's games to play, 

No goodnight kiss, 

No prayers to hear, 

That all belongs to yesteryear. 

 My hands once busy, now lie still, 

The days are long and hard to fill, 

I wish I might go back and do, 

The little things you asked me to. 

________________________________

I still can't get through this poem without crying.

It is so true.

That's why I have a messy house.

But its not always because I am playing with The Baby.

Often I am sofa surfing whilst he plays on the floor.

So this poem reminds me to make every second count.

Let's all hug our babies (big or small) a little tighter today.

A Day in the Life...

I joined in with the inspiring Ali Edward's blog challenge of 'A day in the life...' and was pleased that it worked out to be my day off as they are far more exciting than a working day. I like to pack in as much fun as possible to make it all worthwhile. I also dusted off the 'big' camera and so some of these photos are better quality too!

So it went like this...

 Favourite breakfast of the moment - Lemon Marmalade on toast

 A quick clean of the kitchen whilst The Baby munches on his toast

Special delivery from freeprintapp.com I highly recommend getting this app as you can get 50 free prints a month and they are really good quality and you can even get instagrams and just trim the border (don't opt for the pricier square option)

Catching up with Jill Sprott's latest adventures over at Two Peas - I love all her layouts and her videos. I feel a connection with her as she is an English teacher too and I love all her journalling and the little details on her layouts.

A bit of Project Life whilst watching the video as I always multitask. The Baby is having his morning nap. I am recording his first passport photo - it was a cute one!

Put my face on as I have a certain amount of make-up I have to wear every day to feel presentable. Basically some cover-up to paint away the sleep deprivation and some bronzer to put some colour in my cheeks.

The Baby wanted to do some hoovering but we had to run to my opticians appointment.

But first the ever tricky task of finding a matching pair of socks. Where do baby socks go? Really!

In the lift heading to Boots

In one of those dodgy little lifts in Boots where you have to hold onto the button till you have reached your floor. Don't you hate those ones?

Waiting for much longer than anticipated. Had to take him out of the pram as he was getting impatient and so he had a crawl around. He made a new friend who was saying to everyone, "this is Ellis. He is really curious and loves to crawl. Have you met him?" It was very sweet - I love it when anyone makes a fuss over my baby!

A quick snooze in the car for baby. We are doing well with naps today - that means he will sleep well tonight. Result!

Met these lovely ladies at Salts Mill (well I didn't just happen to meet them - it was arranged)

We shared the yummiest goats cheese, beetroot and chutney pizza

The tastiest chocolate and banana milkshakes - mine was chocolate (I say was as it didn't last long)

I had some newborn baby cuddles - my Baby didn't get jealous as he was too busy nosying at everyone else!

New mum looking great on a few hours sleep

Afterwards some fun in the kids book section

First taste of a raspberry - turns out he's not a fan!

They managed to get the cupboard open and Nancy managed to get in it at one point

Discussing world literature around the table

Hi blue eyes!

The rest of the evening saw me watching Sister Act and crafting.

I am still loving Project Life and have lots of layouts to share. It really is therapy for my as I love pretty paper, stamping, photos and the stories behind them and I love just capturing and documenting our everyday life.

What do you like to do on your days off?