Belated baby news

I'm typing this left handed at the moment as my ten week old baby snoozes in my right arm - hopefully for long enough to write this post! Yes, ten whole weeks already.  He was born on the 11th August at1.57pm weighing 3.17kgs and 50cm long.  He was induced 3 weeks early because he had stopped growing so he wasn't the big fat baby I was expecting but he's certainly making up for it now.   He was 5.8kg and 59cm at his 8 week check up and going on how quickly clothes are being moved to the 'doesn't fit' pile, he's more than 6kg now.

We named him Dominic Theo and MR and I are loving being parents.  We're very lucky, he's a very good baby - doesn't cry much, self soothes at bed time, usually gives us at least one block of 4-5 hours of sleep at night. I'm slowly starting to feel like I've got the hang of this (most days) and MR is a bit of a natural.

I'm sure I'll be back to tell you more another time in the hopefully not too far distant future but for now its feeding time again so I'll leave you with some photos.

On his due date

P.S. I knitted that blanket he's lying on in that last photo!

 

Today

Today has been one of those beautiful Winter days we get here in WA.  It's been cold - it didn't quite reach 14 degrees - but there hasn't been any wind or clouds so it is just glorious outside in the sun.

:: Self sown pumpkins creeping across my pavers :: The Meow soaking up the warmth :: 

:: Early jonquils starting to flower ::  Lemons ready for picking :: 

:: New towels and linens for the baby washed and on the line :: My favourite gum tree in flower ::

On normality

I've been wanting to write this post for a while now but I've been too busy. Busy being normal.

From about Week 18 of my pregnancy, once the morning sickness finished and I could eat enough to get some energy and my blood pressure came up enough that I didn't feel like passing out after 10 steps, life has been resoundingly normal. And it is fucking awesome. 

I had forgotten what normal was like. Normal is going to work and not coming home exhausted. 

Normal is not needing two rest days to get through the week. 

Normal is being able to go out both days on the weekend and not feel shattered. 

Normal is feeling happy pretty much every day, instead of just when I've had enough rest. 

Normal is amazing. 

Being off my leukaemia drugs because they're unsafe to the baby has shown me just how much I've had to change my lifestyle and that what I thought of as normal really truly isn't. The 'new normal' is often talked about amongst the dealing with CML or liver transplant circles and it's taken this medication break to realise just how true that is. You feel pretty shit when you first start the medication. Lots of side effects and thing to make you feel awful. Then when that wears off after a month or half a year or however long it takes you start to think you're getting back to almost, but not quite, normal. It's amazing how quickly the brain can adjust to the new energy levels and while you know you used to be able to do more with your days you just accept it as a change. 

I've embraced every minute of normality while it's returned to me. It's so precious. I know MR enjoys having the true old me back as well. I joke about staying pregnant forever. Just second trimester though. 

Normal is beginning to come to end. A few weeks ago my feet started to swell, then my ankles and calves. Then my fingers and hands. And while I'm still enjoying the energy, I'm starting to get a bit more tired and a lot more uncomfortable, mainly in my feet and hands. My blood pressure is fine so that's good but I'm on close monitoring now due to the higher risk of pre eclampsia in someone who's had a liver transplant. Close monitoring involves lots of trips to Perth and back which are starting to get wearying and it's likely I'll have to stay down there soon, even though I'm only 31 weeks. 

My leukaemia cell levels have started to rise too, which of course is expected when I'm not on the medication. I've never actually reached 0, only getting down to about 0.027 (which is nothing you say but while there's a trace its risky to go off the meds) and it's now back up to 0.8. It needs to stay under 1 while off meds to keep the risk of it getting serious as low as possible. So I'll be back on the medication sooner rather than later. 

I've started to grieve a little bit in advance of losing myself again, it's been so nice to be back to normal. There's always that lingering hope for the miracle that it might just disappear. 

I'm also a bit worried about how I'll cope with recovering physically from birth, dealing with the sleep deprivation of having a newborn and having to go through all the side effects of the meds again and the fatigue it causes. It's not that I didn't know I'd have to go back on it after giving birth, it was that I'd forgotten what it was like to have regular energy levels. 

Regular energy levels are amazing people. Never take them for granted. 

And just so you're not feeling depressed by my post, here's a photo of my big fat baby at 29 weeks who is measuring on the 90th percentile and looking very healthy. It's all worth it. 

Quiet Days

I'm really savouring my quiet days at the moment, knowing they are finally limited and quickly coming to an end.  

Every other Thursday I don't work so an hour of my morning is spent at pregnancy yoga which I find just leaves me feeling so calm and centred for the rest of the day.  So the TV is left off, the washing machine too if I can get away with it, and I spent the day in quiet pursuits.

 

There's usually a bit of knitting happening and the cooler weather means the meow might hang out on my lap for half an hour or so if I'm lucky.  Today I also made some soy candles for my yoga instructor.  I'm still the only one in town doing it, although apparently next week (on the week I can't make it of course) a few of the other pregnant ladies in town are planning on attending.  And because I'm the only one she hasn't accepted any money, saying I'm her guinea pig.  Lucky me! So I thought I'd make her some candles in thanks.

I don't have a book on the go at the moment which is sometimes a good thing because it means I get a lot more done.  If I have a good book it doesn't last very long but on the days I'm reading it a whole lot of not much else happens!

I spent a bit of time out in the veggie garden, giving it a good watering and enjoying the sunshine until the flies were beginning to ruin my calm and I headed back inside.  Hopefully I'll head out in half an hour or so once the flies have left for the evening and before the mozzies come out to spend a bit of time doing some light weeding.  It's a bit of a juggling act to do gardening in between bugs out here.  

Our mulberry tree is having a little spate of out of season mulberries as well.  We had a couple of weeks with a lot of glorious rain and now some lovely low to mid 20's sunny days means that I'm getting a small handful off the tree every few days.

I think knowing these sorts of days will be very much ended for a while in approximately 18 weeks is making them all the more sweet but I am really feeling so recharged after a day of quietness.

The Last Day of the School Holidays

The last official day of the school holidays and I had planned to go into school to continue on from all the work I left strewn out as I tidied and rearranged the furniture yesterday.  But instead I decided to spent it at home, just pottering about.

History says that the last day of school holidays is generally a good day for getting stuff done around the house because I am procrastinating from all the school work I should have done over the break.  Once again it proved true, which was handy because the poor house has been a bit neglected of late.  Yes, one of those items on the to do list is unpack more boxes, because I still haven't finished unpacking everything.  Feeling so sick with morning sickness as I moved out to the country and having problems with dizziness and low blood pressure meant not a lot got done.

Note the school work still isn't done...

I did manage to sneak in a short amount of time doing a bit more knitting though.  This is the beginnings of a baby beanie with ear flaps for my best friend who is due in June.  The pattern is from Patons booklet 8000 and looks very sweet in the picture but I have decided I'm never doing moss stitch in 4ply again, it seems to be taking forever and growing at a very slow rate.  Fingers crossed it actually fits! I'm making it in the 3 month old size so it should do.

I'll head into school tomorrow to finish getting ready for Monday while MR is at work.  It's seeding time out here which means everyone needs/wants tyres changed on their farm equipment and of course, his tyre fitter has just quit.  

No relaxing pottering weekend for him.

I made some things

I can't claim all the credit for this but I am very pleased to share that I'm making this little human inside me right now.  20 weeks on Monday! 

 

So of course, I have been getting knitting.  With stash yarn no less! 

And I've also made us a little veggie garden.  Peas, celery, capsicum, parsley and cherry tomatoes so far.  This is only taking up about a quarter of our veggie garden patch so there plenty of room for more veggies to go in.  Mum came up to help me get this put in, she has a bit of a magic touch with gardening so I'm hoping it will rub off onto my veggies.

In other news, I'm no longer living in Perth.  I moved back out to the wheatbelt town MR lives in at the beginning of the year and it is so good to be spending more time with him on a very regular basis.  It's going really well so far.  A lady in town is doing pregnancy yoga classes so I'm not missing out on keeping my strength up and while I've only done two classes so far (she just had a baby at the beginning of the year also so has only just started them up again) I'm feeling so good afterwards.  And, even better, there's a Monday night craft group too.  Every week! 

Hopefully I'll be back on a bit more of a regular basis from now on but for now, what news have I missed out on from you? I've been keeping up with my regular blogs sporadically but I'm sure I'm a bit behind on the news.