A cheesy reflection.

I was driving home from dropping my Sis off at the airport in the wee hours of this cold morning and it occurred to me, how easy this life has been made to be for me.

My daughter and I were warm, safe and comfortable in our beat-up Honda.  Driving home towards our heated apartment, where I am free to use my computer to write a blog, turn on the oven to bake some banana bread, choose something warm to clothe myself in.  My struggles, which at times can feel overwhelming, seem trivial and surmountable.  How fortunate I am to cradle this child in my arms today.  

I don't have much to say otherwise.  I recently had my wisdom teeth and a molar removed.  It went well and I'm nearly back to my solid food eating self.  Our big girl weighs nearly 20lbs and is in the 88th percentile for weight.  Our doctor is pleased with her development.  We are planning our family trip to Trinidad in April, to visit my Mum and StepDad.  Anson and I are both investigating exciting new prospects, I realize that's horribly vague but I will say more when decisions have been made.  Everything is looking up!  

My tried-and-true advice for anyone who is interested: Things don't just turn out okay.  You have to work hard to make them okay.  With hard work and perseverance, you can accomplish pretty much anything.       

Ramblings from Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, North America, Earth, the Galaxy, the Universe

I often glance in the mirror when I'm washing my hands, or brushing my teeth or blow drying my hair and think of the ancestry that is in my blood, my body, my face.  Somewhere along the line, my ancestors were French, Polish, English, Scottish, Ottawa Valley Native, and Irish.  


In two hundred years, my descendants will be at least partly Canadian.  Will they have my Polish nose, my squinty smile?  For that matter, whose Polish nose and squinty smile am I walking around with?  I look like my Mum - do we look like our Great-Great-Great Grandmother?  

With Mum in Trinidad

My mother carried me in her womb, birthed me, raised me and let me go - just as I am doing for Audrey, and she will do for her children, and her children will eventually do.  Some cultures worship their ancestors.  Ours almost does the opposite of that.  I have very little knowledge of my family past my Grandparents', and even that knowledge is fairly limited.  What a shame.  I'm feeling a pull to create something - to be immortalized in art, literature, music, or through contribution to my fellow people - because I was here.  Until my dying day I will love my daughter, and some day her children, and their children. Thirty isn't too young to consider one's mortality right?  How 2012 of me.


Oddly enough the most pressing matter at hand, is that someone in this room pooped, and I'm pretty sure it was Audrey.  Doody duty calls.
Until next time....


HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Audrey is nine weeks old = neck deep in baby

Thanks Lauren, for your encouragement to write this.

Audrey slept through the night again last night, for the 8th or 9th night in a row.  When I say sleeping through the night, I mean she's going to sleep at night anytime between 7:00 and Midnight (7:00 is the goal!), waking up only for sleepy feedings and quick diaper changes.  During which she is awake for less than an hour, and we wake up anytime between 7:00 and 11:30.  
Our baby loves her sleep!

I've started her on a bedtime "routine" of bath, rocking/singing, and then nursing her off to sleep.  I start doing that around 7.  Sometimes the sleep part works, sometimes it doesn't and she's up until midnight.  It's working for now, until we learn a new way of doing it, and I want to work a story in to the equation.

Today I gave her the bath at 2:00pm because the seedy sweet potato gravy poo made it's way up and out of her diaper into her bellybutton.  She loves the bath and I've taken to using a blow dryer on her afterwards (on the lowest coolest setting of course) and she loves that too!    


I'm happy to report that the cloth diapers are an incredible success.  She never has any diaper rash or irritation from them. We love her big fluffy bum. We joke that this is the closest she's going to get to having junk in the trunk, as Anson and I both suffer from "long back syndrome" aka "pancake arse" aka "inverted bum", so we are living vicariously through our baby's big bum.

She's laying on my lap right now, having a nap on the nursing pillow.  She smells like sweet angel babies.  Since I blogged last she's been smiling, the giggle is right around the corner.  The smile more than makes up for the difficult times.  I can hardly believe how much of a joy she is.  She's alert and has a new awareness of her surroundings now.  It's so much fun showing her things for the first time. She follows the kitties with her eyes and watches faces with curiosity.  This past week she weighed in at 11lbs 6oz at the doctor's office.  She took her needles like a champ thanks to my left breast (She only pulled off to wail for less than 5 seconds with each needle).  Dr Longfingernailman had never heard of nursing a baby while doing the needles but I plan on doing it as long as possible!  

Anson has a way with her, he can calm her in the way no one else can.  I've fallen in love with him all over again these last few weeks, watching him turn into an amazing and caring father.

#1 Dad

Baby's next milestone is her christening, Mum is coming from Trinidad, Auntie Adria is coming from Ottawa.  Family is coming from New Brunswick, including Audrey's namesake - Auntie Audrey.  I'm excited to have so much family around!  The baptism should be beautiful at the Cathedral.  

It seems like I'm awfully short on witty anecdotes for this entry.  Hopefully pictures and video will compensate this time!  

Motherhood changes you.

Since the birth of my daughter (four weeks ago today... wow), I've noticed the following:


I have more patience than I used to.  To anyone who has never breastfed: pinch your nipple.  Pull it about a centimeter away from your body.  Repeat for two hours.  Now picture a tiny sweet baby on your breast, make it three in the morning, you haven't slept yet, you're thirsty, you have to pee, and you smell like the bottom of a diaper pail.  Baby fusses and tries to pull off, in the process attempting to take your nipple away with her.  You cry out in pain.  Baby looks up at you, she's concentrating, she's confused, you coo at her in the high pitched Mummie voice and tell her how sweet and precious she is as you break her latch and burp her.  She fusses and you put her back to your sore and tired breast.  Night after night.

I am this fierce lioness now.  If you cut me off or drive like a hot dog, there are children in these cars and you will hear about it!  My doctor has these long fingernails, and although Audrey seems to love him for some reason, if he scratched her with those talons, I'd be up on the table scratching his eyeballs.  

I have this very accepting, Mother Theresa-esque aspect to my personality now.  I'm not sure if that's the best way to describe it but I'm always thinking of the unfortunate/mentally ill/addicted/hard-done-by person as being someone's daughter, someone's son.  Someone loves and worries about them, or I hope that someone does.  I want to give motherly hugs, some carrot sticks, a warm blanket, a shoulder to cry on, and tell them that everything will be okay.  But there is such a very fine line between the lioness and the Mother Theresa.  

At the same time, I'm overtired, overjoyed, irritable, unshowered, hungry, and still a bit sore.  I've lost 40lbs.  Breastfeeding is not as painful as it was the first week.  Thank God for small miracles.

I've heard that you forget the pain of childbirth but I'm not there yet.  I'm so glad that I wrote my story down while it was still somewhat fresh.  I probably left a few anecdotes out because I waited so long to write it.  I'm going to get Anson to tell me his version of what happened and put it up on here, because he remembers it differently.  But that's for another day.... 

Greetings

Good day, readers!
I've started this blog to tell stories: past and present (dare I say future?), talk about ideas and generally get things off my chest.  It's my first attempt at a real grown up (ha!) blog.  If you are easily unsettled by graphic tales of womanhood, by all means read on and follow my adventures in blogging, because you should probably grow a pair.


My journal will have gaps and inaccuracies but that's part of the beauty of the thing, in theory.  As I write this I am sitting on four sets of stitches - every few seconds sneaking a guilty glance at my 6 day old daughter, who is laying quietly in the ("chair of neglect") baby swing to the simulated sound of a mother's heartbeat.  How I got to be at this place in time is another story, for another blog. 


For now I'd best go scoop up the pretty bird and get on with some mothering.
Until next time....

(pictured as pregnant and swollen faced) 
- Kelly