Thursday, October 31, 2013

New Life

Wow so it's been a while since I last posted, thought I'd better get another post in before the end of the month ;)

Firstly, happy Pagan New Year to all my Northern Hemispherean friends who are today celebrating Samhain, and to my fellow Southern Hemisphereans, Blessed Beltane!  Can't believe we're back here again!

And speaking of being back here again, we have some special news - Michael and I are expecting our second child in May 2014!  It's a little sooner than we originally anticipated - we were planning on trying for our second late next year, when Lily was about to hit her 2-year mark, but this one decided s/he must exist now (!) so I'm currently 11 weeks in, making me due on the 18th May 2014.

I can't lie - I'm SUPER anxious about this pregnancy.  I think because of all the stuff we went through when I was pregnant with Lily (read here and here), I am frightened that the same thing will happen again, even though rationally I know that every pregnancy is completely different.  I've had awful dreams that I've lost the baby, that we went for a scan and couldn't find a heartbeat, and all these scary thoughts even though I've had no reason to believe anything is wrong - and all was confirmed as just fine when we went for a scan today; little heart flickering on the screen, and growing well.  It was so reassuring to see that little heartbeat, and to see little bubba wriggling around - I nearly cried out of relief.

I know what I went through with Lily is the least of it - and that others have been through much, much worse - but it was a scary time for me and with nothing worse to compare it to, those moments were some of the most frightening I've ever experienced in my entire life.  I spent nearly 3 weeks of last year not knowing if Lily was going to be born premature, or if she'd even make it at all. 

And I know that every thing turned out perfectly in the end, and we now have a super healthy 11-month old who is growing and developing in leaps and bounds (started walking in the last week!), but I think between scans, until I can feel baby moving, that fear is always going to be there.  You can't shake it when you've been through difficult times in similar circumstances before - it's human.

That being said, we're SUPER excited to be adding another little kiddo to our household - our little ones will be 18 months apart almost exactly - and I think that's a great age gap to have.  They'll hopefully grow up really loving each other and getting along well and sharing their fun moments (not without arguments of course, but that's part of being a brother or sister!).

Thursday, September 12, 2013

Update - September 2012

I completely forgot about this blog - sorry!

We've been on an interesting journey the past couple of months.  I returned to work in June, only to be laid off as a redundancy 4 working days later.  I was pretty disappointed after giving my employer 3.5 years of my dedication and loyalty, but now we're just cutting our losses and I'm continuing to look for part-time work elsewhere (and I've been applying for -everything- *sigh*.

Lily is now 9.5 months old, has 2-and-a-half teeth, is almost standing (with guidance, not support!), and I have no doubt that she'll be walking by the end of September.  We're still having issues overnight with her waking numerous times a night, but nothing we can't deal with I guess.  She's got curls coming through which, let's be honest, she was destined for anyway!  

Here's the munchkin and I at her Poppy John's birthday celebrations:


Monday, June 3, 2013

How Time Flies

Lily is now 6 months old (today she's exactly 27 weeks), and growing like an absolute weed.  I weighed and measured her this morning - she's over 10.5kg and is 75cm tall.

We today went shopping for more outfits for the monkey, since she's growing so fast - she was in 00s early, and is now almost fully grown out of them.  The poor thing has been wearing pants too short for her legs lol.
So her Nanny (my mum) and I took her out shopping to Target and she was spoilt rotten with a whole new wardrobe full of 0s and 1s - a lot of items to mix-n-match and create new outfits for the winter months.

Meanwhile I've been slowly packing away the stuff that no longer fits properly into boxes under her cot - we'll keep them in case the next one (no, not yet!) happens to be a girl - if it's not, then I'll donate them because I'm definitely not going to have more than two!

In other news, there is definitely a tooth on its way through - Lily's cutting her first tooth in the front on the bottom lefthand side.  I was so excited for her when I first saw it, and it's becoming more and more prominent all the time.  Can't wait till it finally actually pops through and we can take awfully cute photos of Mr. Toothie.

I think that's about all for now.  I'll edit this post if I think of anything else, or add another one.

Saturday, March 23, 2013

Woah

Time flies when you're having fun, eh?  Lily is now nearly 17 weeks old!

She's grown so much - 6cm in 8 weeks, and put on nearly a whole kilogram.  Her fine motor skills are tuning up and she's babbling more than ever.  She's been on one bottle of formula each day because I'm supposed to be going back to work fulltime next month and we want her to be used to a bottle and formula.  I'm still intending on breastfeeding in the mornings, around lunchtime (as I will have an hour lunch break) and in the afternoon/evenings. 

We had our checkup with the CHN on Tuesday, and she suggested breastfeeding her as often as possible, particularly since she was having a 'Wonder Week' and waking 2-3 times overnight rather than her usual one, to keep my supply up.  She said if she didn't settle back to once per night to consider starting her on solids - being pureed meat and veg.   Apparently rice cereal is 'old fashioned'.   I found that quite surprising, and it kind of goes against everything else I've read and heard, so I don't think I'm going to start with meat and veg and I will start with rice cereal.  But since then she's settled back down into her once-a-night pattern, so I'm going to delay solids for a little longer if we can, since she's not even 4 months yet.   I think I'd rather just go with my instinct when it comes to feeding my child!

Anyway, gotta head off to our nephew's birthday party shortly, so I'll try to post again soon!

Sunday, February 10, 2013

11 Weeks Old

Our beautiful Miss Lily is 11 weeks old tomorrow.  The time has just flown, I can't get over it.

Yesterday Lily attended her first wedding ceremony, that of a good friend of ours.  The photo is a bit blurry but she wore a beautiful navy dress with flowers, a little pink cardigan (not in this photo as it was too hot) and her Mary Jane socks :)



Lily's big thing this week has been giggling, particularly at her daddy - today she even squealed with delight when she saw him and gave a big smile.  I wish I had the video camera at the time because it was so beautiful!  But we caught the end of this particular smile on camera:


We have our 12 week check next Tuesday (19th Feb) so I'll update with her measurements and such then!

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

First Smile

This was our first 'proper' smile - i.e. in reaction to something, rather than wind :P

Friday, January 4, 2013

Lily's First Christmas

So they say a baby's first Christmas should be memorable, and ours sure was.  I was hit with gastro on Christmas Eve (along with half of Michael's side of the family too), so my Christmas Day was spent either in bed or on the loo - wonderful.

Michael was so great that day, though - he didn't get ill, so he looked after Lily almost entirely for the whole day (bar feeding, which was the only contact I wanted to have with her because I didn't want her to get sick as well).  By Boxing Day I was feeling a little better, but by the 27th December I felt almost 100%.

My sister Alisha and her fiancé Jernej were down from Melbourne for Christmas - which sucked in a way because we didn't get to see much of them, being that I was ill - but we managed to get some time together on the 27th and 28th before they headed back home.


So since we missed out on a big, exciting Christmas Day, I decided that I wouldn't let the cute outfit I'd bought for Lily go to waste - so I dressed her up and took some "official" photos, on January 3rd :P

So effin' cute.