9 months later

In 2008, my ex husband & I separated (I'm very glad about that now). 

11 months later I met Theo, when he moved in next door. 

8 months later, we got married. 

6 months later, we got pregnant. 

5 months later, Theodore was stillborn. 

4 months later we got pregnant again. 

1 month later, we lost that baby. 

1 month later, we got pregnant again. 

9 months later, Sydney was born. 

9 months later, she is 9 months old. 

This month, she has started crawling, clapping, waving, signing 'outside', playing peekaboo and gained two teeth. 

We love her to bits :).

Theodore Caspian

I haven’t been able to post on this blog for a very long time because we lost our baby in February & it was too hard to write about him, and I couldn’t write about anything else.

We found out he was possibly ill early in my second trimester & then in January that he was in fact critically ill and not likely to survive. We had to go to Melbourne a number of times for tests & specialised ultrasounds, with further ultrasounds and obstetrician appointments every week, until the first week of February when he died. I was induced and gave birth to him on February 5^th. He was buried in the local cemetery following a graveside service with a few close family and friends.

He had hydrops (fluid buildup) as a complication of Down’s Syndrome.

Here’s a picture of a bootie I started making him early on & finished in time for him to be buried with it (it was too big for him to wear). I finished a matching one to keep with the things we have to remember him. 

Christmas, gardens

Our cactus flowered, I was quite amazed :). 

The zucchini was the only vegetable we got into the ground this year. I was preoccupied with lying on the couch. Also because of this, they rarely get cooked & instead grow to gigantic proportions on the bush. Here is Theo demonstrating umm I don't know what.

Had a nice Christmas Eve service at our church, it was great, haven't had one of those for years (the past few years they've had a Christmas morning service).

Some nice Chrissie pics. 

And Christmas day. Even the dog gets a present :).

And the rest of the day was at Theo's parents house :). 

And then we had Boxing Day/ my sister Mim's bday/ Christmas with her. 

I made a present for someone, but I didn't get time to do another one before Christmas, so she got the 'practice' one lol ;). 

Now for a shot of my favourite nasturtium. 

And I was craving plain apple pie, so Theo made me one, complete with love hearts :). 

It's still all a blur

The past few months have been a bit of a blur. More blurry than usual ;). Combine that with less blogging than usual & everything has sort of vanished into that place where people's names & random events go to be forgotten. 

What miscellaneous events can I dredge up to help fill in the blanks? And let's just hope that I haven't actually blogged about it already & just forgotten that too ;). 

The chook Dotty turned into a rooster that attacked the duck Daisy, until she bled everywhere. Dotty has gone on a long trip. Bye bye. 

The loungeroom carpet reeked so much I couldn't stand to touch it (it just got worse in the warmer weather). A previous resident obviously had pets indoors, to say the least. We ripped it up & discovered nice varnished floorboards underneath. They need re-doing, but that's not a priority. Here's a photo of the mould and gunk stuck to them before we cleaned them ;). All those little black dots had to be gently scrubbed off, they're not just marks lol. Appetizing.

We had a mini family reunion in November, whatever cousins & aunts & uncles could make it did so, that was nice. (My mum's side of the family).

In October, Theo's Oma (his Dad's mum) died at the ripe old age of 90. She'd been sick for a long time. Less than a week later, his Pop died (his Mum's dad). He was also very ill. Both big family events. Theo's family was obviously a bit knocked around to say the least. I felt like an attention seeker because I was a real flake & had to leave both services early & sit outside on the ground, eating crackers & apples. 

Oh, we had the anniversary of when Theo & I met ;). We don't know what day exactly. 

Can't remember anything else right now :). 

Baby stuff & The Winged Gift

Well, it’s been a while. Until a couple of weeks before Christmas, I got so sick (just nausea, dizziness, tiredness that also made me nauseated lol), that I could only leave the house in short bursts when Theo drove me :). Pretty pathetic. A lot of the time I just laid on the couch wanting to throw up. My mum came and did some housework for me twice a week (we did actually pay her ;)).

Good news: I can actually drive somewhere by myself now, and be gone for hours! I can do a lot of my own housework! (the rest just doesn’t get done ;)). I have added salad rolls, Subway and icecream to my diet! Yay for small blessings! Lol. And I actually got my Christmas shopping done before Christmas. Just ;) But I am wondering when I will ever be able to cook an actual meal again. (Scalloped potatoes don’t count). I did make vegie lasagne a few weeks ago (although Theo did help ;)). Can’t stand the thought of it now ;).

We got a galah a few weeks ago. He’s only a baby and we think he blew out of a tree in a paddock nearby in some strong winds, and no parents came to claim him. (I always wanted a galah, I was very happy. He was like a gift from the sky ;)). He couldn’t fly. A week later he flew enough that he escaped and we lost him (here I am, devastated again). Then the next day my stepdad found him wandering around in the carpark next door and returned him (happy again!). Poor thing was so hungry. He’s my current little baby ;). 

We had our next blood test & 12 week ultrasound & both of the tests by themselves suggested we should go have an amnio. We decided not to, it certainly wouldn’t make a difference to how we proceeded with anything. We’re just being positive & seeing what happens.

Finally had our first antenatal appointment at the hospital! We were meant to have it at the start of December, but when we turned up for that one, there was some mixup and we did everything they told us to do, including sit in the wrong spot, and the place was packed full of very old people, so we missed the appointment and had to reschedule for three weeks later. It was just really really dumb, especially as Theo took the day off work for it lol. So, had our first/second one, turns out the doctor’s office lost our original blood tests & the hospital didn’t have them & so I had to do that again ;). And more peeing in a cup.

I’ve been drinking half strength Gatorade in an effort to stop this dehydration thing I’ve got going on. For some reason I am finding it harder to drink water than I did when I felt even worse lol. I’ve been getting a lot of headaches and I think that’s just because I’m dehydrated. When I drink more, they go away anyway ;).

I really really really want Subway now. I don’t want to drive 20 minutes for it though. Dang. If Theo was home, he’d be very nicely asked if he wanted to go for a drive….

Ooh! And I’m not just feeling fat now, I actually have a bit of a baby bump :). Yay!!!

p.s. for any visitors from the baby site, sorry that this is basically a repeat of what i posted there ;) 

Walking the Dogs

It started off alright. We set off for a trip around the lake. Bobby was all nicely groomed even. Then there was a disturbing encounter with bogans and an empty shopping trolley. They appeared to be of all ages. They left the trolley in the shrubbery.

Then we had a skirmish with a friend's kids and their Labrador. It ended after one kid ended up lying in the mud, Theo yelling at him to get his dog, me telling the other one to help do something with your dog while Theo literally hung our dogs in the air from their leashes, where they dangled, looking like skinned rabbits.
 
I think Billy started it, because the lab came running over off its leash. She seemed to be hanging off the lab's eye or ear or something. We threw them in the lake to wash the blood off them (they and our pants had blood everywhere). We could do without walks like that in future ;)

A little bit camping

We’ve been camping this week. We’ve been planning it for ages. We left on Sunday afternoon & came back not today or yesterday as planned, but on Tuesday night. Well, we thought that might happen ;)
All the things that I normally find fun, I didn’t. All the things that are normally just a bit inconvenient were sending my stress levels through the roof, and peeing twenty times a day in a portaloo is not much fun either. So, nothing was fun, everything was bad, I felt like crap when I didn’t just feel like sleeping, so we came home.
After I cried about it, I was relieved & Theo was very nice about it all & if he minded he didn’t say so.

Here's some nice camping photos I did end up taking :).

We also went out to a friend’s for tea last night and in between dinner and dessert the bachelor of the house made up a bed for me on the lounge room floor so I could have a lie down, instead of just doing that at the table. I felt like a 2 year old LOL. Funnily enough, yesterday was probably the best I’d felt all day in a while. Until teatime ;).

4 Tests Later....

On Tuesday I woke up feeling sad because I'd had this very vivid dream about this perfect baby I had had, and when I woke up it wasn’t true, and I had no baby. Mind you, Theo & I are trying NOT to have babies right now, and that was a very mutual decision ;)

This dream, however, left me feeling very weird to say the least. My period was actually late too but that was nothing unusual. I’d had cramps for the last week and a half, so I was expecting it any moment. At some point that morning I think I realised that my cramps were just hanging around not getting any worse, and that nothing was happening.

I think I went to the bathroom next, feeling silly, peed on a stick, and as I sat there watching the first line appear, I thought, right, that’s that silliness out of my head. I got up to leave. And then I saw this really faint second line appear. Started thinking I was hallucinating. Realised I wasn’t and ran straight to the bathroom cupboard to get another test from the box. Repeated the process.

They were both quite faint lines, so I think at this point I thought about my cramps and wondered what was really going on. I think here I ran to the computer and googled ‘cramps in early pregnancy’ and lo and behold, that appeared to be fairly normal. Why hadn’t I heard about this before?! (The sequence of events is all muddled up in my head and its possible I did all this before the first test. Makes less sense, but who knows! ;))

The morning was getting on by now, Theo was on earlies & due home at 1. I raced to the chemist and got a third test (eyeing off the door the whole time in case anyone I knew came in), and surprise surprise it was positive too. I made a doctors appointment for that afternoon (a miracle they could fit me in at all, really). I texted Theo twice because he was late getting home, and broke the news to him:

Me: “I had this weird vivid dream last night about a baby I had, and I was really sad when I woke up and it wasn’t true”  

Theo: “Are you pregnant?”

(I shove the test stick at him, which I had been hiding in the piano keyboard. He is most surprised. But very happy, I must add ;) ).

To cut a long story short, we go to the doctors, I pee in a cup, give them lots of blood. We drive half an hour to the nearest big chemist just to get the most expensive pregnancy test we can find, and I surreptitiously use it in Theo’s parents’ bathroom, where we surprise them with the news :). 

I’m only just now getting used to the idea :)

The Oven Is On Fire

And it was, but it all turned out OK (Mum hadn't used her grill in a very long time). Big flames. The fritatta had bits of ash in it. Smoke billowed. Tom ran around yelling 'the oven's on fire, the oven's on fire', much to the alarm of the blokes at the BBQ. In all that, I don't believe the smoke detector actually went off. I think they might need to check their batteries?

All part of the fun & games at Theo & Neville's birthday brunch. It was a brunch because it was Grand Final Day (AFL) and people were off to parties (not me).

Here we have two Collingwood supporter sisters:

Much food included pancakes (with lemon, sugar, cheese, maple syrup, warm berries in syrup, cream, strawberries and there would have been melted chocolate but someone forgot to get it out of the microwave), bacon, toast, crumpets (nobody got around to eating them), hash browns, little Italian spicy sausages, fritatta (with ash), and probably more things but I forgot already. Oh, cake, of course.

The cake was a 'Torta di Ciocolatta Angela' from my 'The Commonsense Italian Cookery Book', which didn't turn out quite how I thought it would, but still very rich & chocolatey & everyone loved. There was only one cake so the gentlemen involved thought they'd pose as a married couple and cut the cake. Quite ridiculous.

And here's Bobby. Just because.

Babies of all descriptions

New seeds to grow into little baby herbs (note the cat prints all over them- they are now covered with bird (cat?) mesh).

Baby rhubarbs that something else has incidentally been eating

Family gathers in Ballarat to see the new nephew/grandson

 

 And it's goodbye to the old girl... 

And hello to the new baby :)