A friend is coming to visit, just a short world wind tour of the city I now live in. I feel embarrassed that I have lived here for over a year and hardly know it. Why do I feel embarrassed? Because it shows I don’t get out much to know? Why is that a problem? Because I am not enjoying what the city has to offer. Why is that a problem? The whole purpose of living in a city is to take advantage of it’s resources, so I feel like I have not been fully living here in a full expression. Plus we live in the suburbs, away from the action of the city itself. I don’t like living in the suburbs aside from other mums and bubs that I get to spend time with who also have a little baby and a new family. I am not much of a shopper and when it comes to artistic creations in the suburbs its usually a bit dry for my taste, if there even is such a thing. Regardless the issue is that I don’t know the city I am living in well enough to be a tour guide for someone. I don’t know it even first hand enough to actually share it and that makes me feel a bit stressed and embarrassed. Let go? Yes. Let Go. Let Go. Let go.

I don’t understand this fascination with the culture that I grew up. It is all over the mainstream media. Living a life with a parent or two parents that are heavily into drugs and partying rather than being parents is such a challenge. Having different brothers and sisters from various parents and steps gets confusing, are they still your brother after my dad and their mom divorce?

People are complicated. I feel like it’s glorifying this lifestyle, or perhaps its just trying to shed light into it, I’m not sure. All I know is that it’s very weird to me seeing that I could easily be one of those characters watched on the tube.

Prior to Baby A, I had no idea what a NICU was. Now I have full experience with the NeoNatal Intensive Care Unit which is for premature babies or babies who need special care.

He was 8 weeks early. 2 months. Born at 32 weeks of gestation. He was sent directly to the NICU within 15 minutes of being “born”. I use born in quotations because he was “born” through an emergency cesarian section after his heartbeat dropped. It was all so scary. Leading up to it was scary too. I had been in hospital on and off for 3 weeks. We had just gotten back to the city and the very next day I was in hospital.

These are things you don’t plan. They just happen. We planned on having Baby A and with full intention we created him on our wedding day. The plan was to have a water birth in the countryside in the regional hospital with a midwife that I had already been seeing. Then things went pear shaped.

It’s still hard for me to talk about but I know I need to. I still shed a tear hear or there when I hear about birth stories, or if someone really asks about mine. It’s brought up regularly since Baby A is developmentally 2 months younger than his actual physical age. Thankfully he has filled out quite a bit so he doesn’t have that skinny premie look anymore.

Baby A ended up staying in the NICU for 5 weeks after he was born. My husband and I had to leave the hospital without him. We returned to the hospital at least twice a day for those 5 weeks. I expressed milk so he would have breast milk to be tubed into his stomach instead of the formula. We could only get one cuddle a day in the beginning, when he was in the humidicrib, which looks like some space alien contraption with two holes to put your arms in. He needed help breathing even though I took the steroid shots before he was born to help with his lung development. He had cords and wires and tubes all hooked up to him, it was disheartening, disorienting and very surreal to see my baby like that.

 

Being a mum is beyond

having a baby of my own

a little person

a new being in this world

who smiles even alone

and sees everything for the first time

who has no prejudice

no preconceived notions

he’s completely and totally open

he gets grumpy

he cries

he owns his emotions completely

he is so beautiful in his way of who he is

so pure and so natural

 

 

 

 

Youtube is a rich source of great information. I use it for so many reasons including exercise. Now that I’m pregnant I’ve come to find the niche of Pregnancy Yoga and Pregnancy Pilates. These are like godsends. Short and compact exercise routines that I can just pop on and follow along to. I’ve practiced enough of both Yoga and Pilates to feel confident in my poses and in how I am supposed to hold my body and my breath, so following along with some beautiful pregnant woman is great.

I did get a little cocky and thought that since I handled those butterfly stretches so well, that I’d be able to easily handle painting my own toe nails this evening. Shaking my head. This must be where some things translate and convert easily and then others are drastically different and it’s just not going to be the same, like when you try to freeze cheese and it comes out clumpy but you can freeze soup and it’s all good. Horrible example, but I’m on the cheese end.

Although I did manage to paint my own toenails, I also enticed a ridiculous amount of heartburn because I was bending so much to be accurate with my polish. Was it worth it? I’m not exactly sure at this moment because I’m sitting here typing with terrible heartburn that feels like it is corroding my entire throat even after a big swig of antacid. Yay!

I am glad though that I am flexible enough to still be able to do it, if it weren’t for the heartburn I would have a much better outlook onto this. Thankfully my years of paying attention to my body have paid off in some ways.

Thankfully my husband was kind enough to finish off the second coat of my toenail polish. He’s definitely my one.

Yes, this entire post is dedicated to heartburn.

I understand from researching it that heartburn is something that effects some 2/3rds of pregnant women. I also understand it’s from a surge of hormones coupled with a continuing diminishing of space inside of my body to make room for the baby and it’s growth. Okay, fine.

What I don’t understand is the reason why we get heartburn anyway. I already know I can only eat small meals through out the day. I already know that my organs are making way because it’s harder for me to be move around and bend. I already know how this is, so what is the biological signal this is flagging?

When pain is triggered it is a flag to stop doing whatever you’re doing. I get this, it makes sense. But heartburn? Really?

I read ways to try to minimize it which included not to lay down, bend, and not eat much. Okay. Okay. As for remedies milk doesn’t seem to help for too long, I am not usually an over the counter medicine person but now I’m hitting the antacid liquid like it’s my job, I don’t even really mind the thickness nor the strong licorice taste now because I know it brings some relief and I find comfort in that.

They say that before you give birth there is this nesting phase that occurs. It may be hitting us a smidgen early, at least in the kitchen department. In the past two weeks we have now added a food processor, a slow cooker with three different dish sizes, an electric grater & slicer, a new glass toaster, and a some new knives. It’s like every gadget that is available and useful to make all things kitchen easier have now been added into our lives.

Learning how to use all of these it’s it’s own process and today I’m learning via experience on how to use the slow cooker. My first meal should be ready within the next couple of hours and is Mexican inspired. I love Mexican food and am grateful that it has finally become trendy enough here in Australia that I can get a lot (but not all) things that remind me of the goodness of the California Mexican cuisine I grew up with. I don’t always like to buy the premade versions of things though because I just never really know what some of those ingredients are, and of course I know that if I did actually make it myself I could create a huge savings, which brings a strange sense of satisfaction like I’m one upping the premade guys.

I love the idea of doing something once, turning it on, knowing that it’s all going to be okay and not burn, and then have a meal ready at dinner time. This is very exciting to me. I know that once the baby comes along we will need to truly maximize our time efficiently and this seems like a sure fire way to get into gear to cut down on time in the kitchen. Honestly I don’t really like to spend much time in the kitchen anyway. I do have a strong penchant for healthy, tasty, fresh, and wholesome foods, so by that very nature I am wind up in the kitchen more than I would like just so I can eat well. It’s also super important to me to be able to provide healthy meals to my husband. Obviously this is naturally extending to the family we are growing as well.

Another kitchen gadget that I’ve gone on a test run with today is the food processor with the skinny grating option. WHOA! Can I just say that I finely shredded 500 grams of cheese in less than a minute and it’s lovely, light, and smells divine! We’ve been buying shredded cheese in packets at the supermarket lately to save on time, but it’s always a little weird. I know they add some kind of anti-caking substance to it, so I assume that’s why, but there was no way that I was going to really grate by hand all that cheese, it just wasn’t going to happen. So the freshly grated cheese with the Mexican inspired slow cooked meal should be a winner tonight on this winter evening.

All of this is just practice and conscious habit forming to prepare us, to prepare me for the very near future. I embrace it. I certainly would never have guessed that I’d be so excited about kitchen gadgets as I am. Interestingly it kinda goes with every other thing in my life right now that I would not have predicted ten years ago. So wild how it changes, but I love it.

like slowly edging into a hot bath

getting close to the flame

where the light shines the brightest