Category: baby

Jumping back in

/ Renae / Leave a comment

Hubs and I invested a lot of time and money in to setting up our cloth nappy collection for Chanbe, and I loved using them. I really did. The extra washing very quickly became a part of life, and it wasn’t that much extra effort. When I broke my foot a year ago, we decided (I decided) to give myself (mum) a break from the “extra work” and vowed to go back to them soon.

Then when we moved back to Wang, I started using them again but found it to be the straw that was destined to break my back (or spirit, as it were.) And that was that. I never went back to them.

Until now.

It has taken me a few weeks of adjustment with Quinn, but I realised a few weeks ago that I was excited by the prospect of using them with Quinn, and even starting to use them again with Chance, to try and see if that will make him more interested in using the toilet. (Making him uncomfortable in the nappy 😉 )

So today was day one, and don’t she just look a treat?

Next step? Nappies for Chance. That may take a bit more convincing on his part, but as I said, I’m excited!

Call the Waaaambulance

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The last year, as I have documented frequently on this blog, has been tough for me. This time last year I broke my foot, and that pretty much set the tone for the following 12 months. Well, I let it set the tone. I have been quite caught up in how hard my life is, except that it’s not. Not really. I think when your (well-meaning) family and friends (and strangers!) tell you how hard it must be to move around so much, especially when 36 weeks pregnant; to start again in a new town; for Hubs to be starting a new job etc etc etc, it’s hard not to accept the sympathy and empathy and get caught up in the drama of it all.

Hubs and I make choices, and sometimes those choices come with extra challenges, but the pay-off is worth it. We have had such wonderful experiences with each move we have made, and I can quite confidently predict that the same will be said of this move. We have already made some friends through the hospital, and  have plans for more social events coming up.

I don’t want to make light of feeling overwhelmed with a new baby, but if I really think about it, I can feel those feelings and work through them and come out the other side much quicker than in the last year. I will accept help when it is offered, and I will let myself feel whatever I’m feeling, but I am also committing to focusing on the positives; to taking each day (and sometimes each hour) as it comes, and to know that, when it has taken me an hour and a half of trying to get Chanbe to go to sleep during the day, and he is still awake, that it’s okay if he skips a sleep that day, and that “this too shall pass.” I’m committing to less “whining” and more “beering” and “spiriting”.

Onwards and upwards.

This is the story, of a lovely lady

/ Renae / 6 Comments

Quinn’s birth story. (G Rated. Mostly 🙂 )
It all started Friday lunch time, when I wasn’t feeling so great, so I took myself off to the hospital to get checked out. Before I knew it, they were telling me I was having the baby that night. They wanted to induce me asap because of suspect blood results (that turned out to be probably nothing!) It was 2pm by this stage, and everything was happening very quickly. Frith, who was due to finish work that day around 4pm, came over to the birth suite and we realised that this was “it”. Funnily enough, even though I was over 40 weeks, I didn’t feel prepared! 
The doctors tried to break my waters, and even though they weren’t entirely successful, it was enough to get me started. I was having contractions without the syntocinon drip (the fake hormone stuff they give you to induce labour) but it wasn’t good enough for the doctors to be happy, so once Frith arrived after 4, they started the drip. Because I was induced with Chance as well, I knew what was coming, so by 5pm I asked for the eipdural and the anaesthetist arrived around 6pm. At 6:30pm, with Colin Hay’s song “Overkill” playing in the background, the epidural was put in and relief was on the way. Or so I thought. Although it took away a lot of the pain, it wasn’t a full block, and I still felt every contraction in a certain spot, so I just kept sucking on the gas. Man that’s good stuff! 🙂
I laboured this way for another couple of hours, and when they examined me around 9pm, I was told I was fully dilated and it was time to push. I had topped up my own epidural a couple of times, so I was quite numb, but very happy to push! About 20 minutes and 7 pushes later, our little baby girl sprung into the world. She was completely perfect and fed within 45 minutes of being born. And she hasn’t stopped since!!
I was immediately in love. Because we had picked out the name “Quinn Maria” (this was the inspiration for her first name, and this for her middle name) for Chance if he was a girl, I have had the last 2 years to get used to the name and have looked forward to the possibility that one day I might have a daughter named Quinn. 
I have had “the weepies” a bit more than expected, but my hormones and moods are starting to balance out a bit now, except of course at 5am when my newborn is fast asleep and my toddler is wanting “bekfest”. But as I said, we’re getting there. 

Week 1

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I have spent a longer-than-usual time in tears in the last week, but if you asked me how things are going with our new baby, I would tell you things are great! Because they are. The tears were due to a combination of hormones – the 4 day blues were quite brutal and lasted a few days – extreme pain from my milk coming in, and exhaustion from dealing with Chanbe’s response to Quinn’s arrival.

Now, not much can be done about the hormones, so I just went with it and let myself bawl my eyes out for hours on end if I needed it. It was therapeutic. I wasn’t crying over anything in particular, and I wasn’t actually particularly sad, but I was in pain.

When my milk comes in, my milk. comes. in. (You don’t mind me talking about this, do you? Good. 🙂 ) I had the same problem with feeding Chanbe. My milk came in and it had nowhere to go. It was painful for a couple of days and I got some excellent help and advice from the lactation clinic in Wang, and all was well very quickly. Not so much this time around. My milk came in Sunday night, and it wasn’t until yesterday that things started to regulate. By Tuesday night I was fully engorged (yes, that’s as bad as it sounds) with a rack that would rival Pamela Anderson. I can’t remember the last time I was in that much pain, and I had just given birth a few days before!! That was until Wednesday, which was even worse. All I could do was take pain killers, lie on the couch with ice packs and cry. It was truly painful. The thing is, it’s a blessing to have such a great milk supply, so it’s not a bad problem to have, except for in those first few days. But with some help from lactation consultants up here, (and the pain killers) I’m feeling much more human now.

And then there’s Chanbe. My beautiful boy whose world has been turned upside-down. Not only is he dealing with another house move, moving into his “big boy bed”, and being introduced (very very slowly) to the “big boy toilet”, he now has to share his Mama and Dadda, as well as his Gran, Grumpy, Ouma and Poppy with this tiny little squirmy baby that can’t even play with him. 90% of the time, he is brilliant with her. He loves to give her cuddles, he knows not to touch her when she is feeding, and he knows to be gentle with her. Then there’s the rest of the time. The time that all the textbooks warned me of. This, combined with him not wanting to go to sleep without me in his bedroom has made for a tough week.

We have a few strategies in place for when he gets a little, um, shall we say “over excited” with Quinn, but we don’t yet have a plan to get his going to sleep habits back in check. But we’ve done it before, and we’ll do it again. In the mean time, we’ll be enjoying a lot of this:

And this:
And definitely this:

It’s a girl

/ Renae / 6 Comments
Quinn Maria was welcomed into the family Friday 1st February at 9:21pm weighing 4.05 kg (8lb15) and 52.5 cm long. She is absolutely gorgeous – she looks very much like Chance did when he was born!
She’s feeding really well and Chance is already completely in love with his little sister. Thank you for your thoughts and wishes.

Come fly with me

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There is so much I want to tell you about Chanbe’s “big boy bed”, but first of all, let me show you:

Oooooooh yeeeaaaahhhhhhh. When Hubs and Uncle Ben told me they wanted to make Chanbe a “big boy bed” 3 days after we arrived in Towsnville, I was skeptically supportive, wondering when it might be finished, and how much of a “big boy” he would be once he actually got in to it. Well, I was proven wonderfully wrong. Just over a week ago, the bed was flown in from the work area, and it has been an absolute hit. Chanbe has slept in it almost every night and day, with a few exceptions, but we are very proud of this milestone.

There are dozens of “in progress” photos that I hope to one day share with you, or better yet, let Hubs (finally) do a guest post about!!

And hopefully we’ll have some baby news for you soon. I’m officially 40 weeks now (well, depending on who you ask) so, literally, any day now!

Our 10 hour trip, 8 hours in the ED, and threefold guilt PART II

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Did I mention that Chance had a rash? No? It started 2 weeks ago as little pimply patches on his shoulders and was diagnosed as “post viral”. When you go to the doctor and you get a diagnosis, you believe them, right? I had heard that there had been a case of school sores reported at his childcare centre, but the doctor ensured me it wasn’t that. So I went on my merry way with my not-so-well little boy and had a fitful night sleep on Tuesday. On Wednesday morning, the rash had gotten worse and it had spread. 

But I had been told it was post-viral, and that it should get better within a week. My instincts were telling me otherwise, but I was trying not to overreact. Plus, Chanbe was fine. No fever, no fuss, so we went about our day. Though, I avoided contact with kids in case his “virus” was still contagious, as per the doctors orders. By Wednesday night, I was starting to wonder, and after another sleepless night, and a worsened rash on Thursday morning, I booked him back in to the doctor.

The look on her face when she saw him made me so upset and angry. Definitely school sores. The rash was all over his shoulders and arms, and covered his legs and butt, and it was no longer pimply, but red and angry. I was given the antibiotics script and assured that we would be okay to fly to Brisbane the next day. When I got into the car, I burst into tears. I knew there was more to it, and had the doctor said at the first visit “if it gets worse, bring him back” I would have been back on Wednesday. I felt so guilty and horrible. Just thinking about it now makes me feel ill.

So Friday we set off for Brisbane on our 10 hour trip, and on Saturday morning, I was overcome with “the rash should be getting better. Why isn’t it getting better???” There were going to be other kids at the party and I was paranoid about them getting sick too, and after a couple of outsiders looked in, I insisted we take Chanbe to the Emergency Department at the Hospital. It was 10:45am when we got there. For the next hour or two, I was either crying or about to cry. We got in to see at doctor at 12:15pm, but he was called away 5 minutes later and never came back so we had to wait some more. At 1:15pm we saw another doctor who stuck around, looked at the rash and scratched her head. “Not a typical case of school sores. I’d like to run some tests and call my boss to have a look.”

The party had already started, and I was told to go along as there was no point in all of us missing out. I felt SO guilty for leaving Hubs there, especially since he was pretty sure it was going to be the same diagnosis as before, but he insisted. So after arriving at the party, having a cry with Mum, and getting hugs from my gorgeous family, I settled down somewhat. This was the third lot of guilt I felt – for not having Mum’s only grandchild at her 60th birthday party. Of course she understood, but I felt awful.

At one stage I got a text from Hubs to say that the big Dr was thinking it might be chicken pox, infected with staph. More tears. I left the party around 5pm when it was wrapping up and went to see my boys. They were doing great, under the circumstances. I kept apologising to Hubs and he kept telling me it was okay. Chanbe was an absolute trooper, playing with a balloon I had left him, and watching YouTube on Dadda’s phone. The Paediatrician came in around 6pm and said it was not a typical case of anything, and the best they could determine was that it was school sores, but they weren’t responding to the treatment. They changed his antibiotics and sent us home just before 7pm.

We took our little Chanbe home and he was fast asleep in no time. The rash started clearing up over the next couple of days, but it is still there, 2 weeks later. So now I feel like I don’t want to send him back to ChildCare in case he gets sick again. An irrational fear, yes, but one that I have to get over in my own time. The lesson I learned is to trust my gut. Even if I get told the same thing, I won’t be left wondering.

TGIF

/ Renae / 2 Comments

This week has been a nightmare a shocker challenging on many levels.

Level 1 – Chanbe has been waking up at 5:30am. Shocker. Hubs and I are NOT morning people, and an early morning for us is 7am. 5:30? Not cool. I am hoping it’s just a phase, though, with daylight savings starting this weekend, and us going to Queensland for a week from next Friday, I feel there will be a few weeks of disrupted sleep. Oh, and the whole moving interstate thing in 6 weeks time – yeah, that’s going to be completely hassle-free!

Level 2 – Even though Chanbe is still 7 weeks away from his 2nd birthday, I feel he has already turned a corner into the “terrible twos”. I really hate that expression though, because you’re just really setting yourself for disaster. I prefer to use our friend’s expression, the “terrific twos”. I like the positivity that implies, and even though some days may be terrible, I like to think there is more terrific involved in this age group. Plus I think Chanbe is pretty darn terrific 🙂

Level 3 – Hormones hormones hormones. I have been super emotional and a bit of a mess for a few days now, and the tears have flowed on more than one occasion. Not only this, but with all the relaxin floating around my body, my muscles have been particularly achy lately, and I’ve had sciatica pain and pregnancy-related tennis elbow. Have you ever had tennis elbow? It is not a pleasant experience, especially when you can’t take anti-inflammatories for it.

So all in all, these things have made for a very cranky Wifey. Thankfully, I have a very awesome Hubsband who has been taking extra special care of me this week. I cannot tell you how much he has saved me these last few days, and it just makes me feel so grateful that I have found a partner who will always do whatever he can to make my life happier. And today, I am happier. Which is good, since I’ll be solo parenting again tomorrow. Wish me luck!

Spring time bubbles

/ Renae / 2 Comments

We are currently spending as much time outside, when the weather permits. It’s finally nice enough to pick flowers:

And do a spot of (much needed) mowing:
And get into some serious bubble blowing:
I love love love spring 🙂