#2628 My little big helper

I definitely feel better when I have something to look forward to, someone to see, somewhere to go. Sleep or no sleep (obviously sleep PREFERRED 🙌) it’s these things that keep me sane and moving on, keeping on.

I headed out with baby girl and baby boy today. Just to the Main Street, to check out some stuff, buy this, see that. It was a bit nerve-wracking at first, since baby boy cracked it as soon as we entered the shopping centre.

But I had my helper, my mini me with me. 🙏❤ She was there to help me out, push the pram, pass me this, hold that down, so on and so forth, so that baby boy eventually went down for a nap in the pram and we got our shopping done.

It was made more apparent to me how much I relied on her, and what great support she was to me, when at the start of our shopping trip we got into the lift with another mum and her toddler in a stroller. She heard baby boy crying, and said sympathetically “poor baby.”

I told her that we were still in the newborn stage, and she joked she didn’t miss thst time at all (who can blame her?) before telling me I was doing well to be out at all, that she’d be too scared to have done the same.

It was baby girl’s support. She made all the difference. ❤🙏

I don’t know what I’d do without her, where I’d be. 🙏 (Not at the shops with a 5 and a half week old, that’s for sure!)

#2616 Heaven sent

Or just family-sent, but in my case it feels same-same.

I had a really rough night the night before. 2 hours sleep type rough night. Chuck overall newborn sleep deprivation, confusion, hormones, conflicting advice, too much information and overwhelm into the mix, and you end up with a very sad and spent new newborn mama.

My parents and sister came over on the perfect day, the day which was actually the worst day, today.

They provided love, comfort, advice, positive words and validation, support, food and sleep (I napped while they watched baby boy).

I’m now going into the nights with cautious hope, some semblance of confidence, and the knowledge that bad days are part and parcel of this stage… but I am getting there slowly, just as all newborn mamas have gotten there before me.

Moment by moment. Hour by hour. Day by day.

Thank God for people like this. So grateful to my family. 🙏❤😘😘

#2597 Helping Hubbie no.4

He has been amazing.

Not only my support person, but a self-proclaimed ‘runner’ – running from one thing to another, doing drop-offs and pick-ups for school and after-school activities, doing the grocery shopping, making meals, doing dishes (and he HATES dishes) helping me soothe baby boy, and listening to me when I come to him with yet another concern.

The latter is the one that meant the most today. The baby blues have hit. I’m already dreading the day he goes back to work, and I am left to juggle all the things on my own.

It’s mentally quite hard at the moment. Even wanting this baby for so long – it’s still hard. Knowing what lies ahead isn’t a good thing, and all my memories of early days with baby girl have come flooding back to me.

As I start to miss his absence already, while he is still with me at home… I am also so, so grateful for all he has done, and all he is yet to do.

Which, is A LOT. 🙏❤

Hands entwined

Kiss my tears

Keep me close

Then I feel like it’ll be ok

#2587 Full moon, lightning and pancakes

It is a full moon tonight in Leo.

I AM a Leo.

And I am pregnant.

Plus, I discovered a name for the ailment I’ve had lately… lightning crotch. 😫

Insert super charged emotions.

And you have yourself a super sensitive Mama.

I have been so focused on all the good from this pregnancy, and that comes to reason since this IS a gratitude blog.

But there have been difficult parts, maybe none more so than in these last couple of weeks.

And it’s not getting any easier.

I’ve been having these lightning zaps down there, and they haven’t felt nice, let me tell you. I only discovered their name last night after my gazillionth Google search, and although attributing a name to the condition made me feel somewhat less crazy, it still hurts.

Today, moving around like a seal, very slowly and with great difficulty, I asked Hubbie to get me something while out getting the groceries.

I wanted cherry pie.

I had an insane craving for it, this cherry pie from a local cafe that I used to get every now and then. I haven’t had it in so long, and for this pregnancy I’ve had to be good, so I’ve tried to stay away from things like that that were super decadent.

But I actually could not wait anymore. I said to him, I need this, NOW, and sent him off.

That hasn’t been my only craving. My proper and first craving for a couple of weeks now has been Pancake Parlour pancakes. I am convinced if I eat these pancakes, it will prompt baby to come out sooner. It happened first time around, for baby girl. I had this most amazing stack of pancakes from there, layered with bananas and smothered all over with dripping chocolate, and I ate it the day before my waters broke.

I am convinced baby girl got wind of that in my belly and went “I’m not waiting anymore, the outside world is clearly GOOD.”

But, problem. Difficulty walking, remember? Movement like a seal. Lightning crotch. The closest Pancake Parlour is 40-45 minutes away, and I’m not doing any long drives, especially with all of my current mobility issues.

I can’t even Uber the pancakes… it would be too cold by the time it got here.

So I had to go for my second, equally satisfying craving, the cherry pie.

Hubbie and baby girl came back from shopping after an hour or so. There was NO cherry pie. Not anymore. 😲🤯Some absolute bullshit reason of, the whole pie is big and takes up room in the case, and then they need to sell all of it… well then present it so it sells! The rest of the treats on offer were all pre-packaged sweets sent in from some factory crap, and Hubbie knows I would rather open a block of chocolate at home than buy a display cake that can sit in its preservative-state like that for two weeks…

So they came back empty-handed.

I, was devastated. I wanted my craving satisfied… didn’t I deserve that much? House-bound, lightning crotch, having been so good for so long, I wanted my bloody treats and I couldn’t have them.

I was so, so upset, yet also still craving something majorly… so as I started to cry, I pulled up a stool to the stove (for the reason of preventing more lightning crotch) and started making crepes. Because only I know how to do them. 🤦‍♀️🙄

I sat there, and I made them, and I waited, and baby girl sat next to me, helping out, telling me it would be alright as tears literally rolled down my face. And Hubbie cut up the berries I wanted, and baby girl took out the Nutella, and then Hubbie made our coffees… so that by the time we sat down, I had this:

And I was crying no longer, but I had been very, very frustrated. I devoured two big crepes, loaded with Nutella and berries and I sipped my cappuccino, thinking “Fucking, only women get shit done.”

I was so grateful for my family for helping me out, yet insanely mad that the cafe didn’t make cherry pie anymore, and that there isn’t a Pancake Parlour within my vicinity.

THAT is the state of affairs at the moment guys. Tread around me super carefully… or just bring the Pancake Parlour chef to my house, please. (Or let me know if you find a proper home-made quality cherry pie from ANYWHERE).

And that my friends, is my very pregnant story of the full moon, lightning crotch and home-made pancakes. 🌕⚡🥞🤰

#2578 The stage she is at, 9.5

Life is going to change very quickly for us all soon, and it occurred to me that it was imperative to capture a very important stage of life, about a very important person.

Baby girl. 🥰💞

My sunshine, my light, my angel. The one who without I wouldn’t have made it as well through so, so many days. I am convinced that God gave her to us, knowing the hardships that would lie ahead, knowing that she would be my guiding light in those very tough times. 🙏

She has grown physically and emotionally over the past couple of months. She is tall. Everyone asks how tall her Dad is if they don’t know him, and I tell them that I too was tall at her age… the tallest in my class! She is tall and thin and does gymnastics, and her hand stands and cartwheels are actually very good. I never was good at any of that, so I marvel at her physicality. 🥰

She has my facial features, my height from that age, but she has Hubbie’s physique. She is strong, she is cheeky, and she is STUBBORN. But then again, so are Hubbie and I, so we have a good few battles around the house, let me tell you.

She knows EVERYTHING. 🤦‍♀️ She knows stuff that I’ve known for decades, and yet she has learnt in the last day or two about it and knows more… she was trying to teach me about tennis, until I had to point out she was wrong, and then she went “oh.” 🤦‍♀️

She is a fighter. I hope she fights for what is right, and fights for her opinion, as much as she fights me on issues she doesn’t know much about. 😂

She has the kindest heart. She will do things for you, help you, run to your aid. She has been amazing during my pregnancy. She helps me with grocery shopping and picks out the cucumbers, sweet potatoes, broccoli, even pushed the trolley.

When I’m upset, her mothering, already big-sister nurturing kicks in. She tells me it will be ok, in a soothing, calm voice. Whether I’m upset at the trivial, losing for the 5th time straight in Nintendo Mario Kart, or upset about something more serious in life, she is there to hug me, tell me “there there” and say it will be alright. 💞

She uses “mate” a lot lately, “mate, you gotta see how…” and “bruh.” I used to tease her, but now I just let it go. I find it cute, a part of her personality she is testing out, seeing how it feels.

She loves school. But she loves sleep. Let’s see how Monday goes. 😂 But I honestly do think she needs to be busy, do things, and have a purpose, so in school she thrives.

She has a reading program. Several times a day she will go in her room, close the door, and read a book out loud to her toys. After asking me for a new chapter book, I managed to fish out of an old box my Sweet Valley Twins books. She’s started reading one, and likes it! WOW. From one generation to the next.

She has the best laugh. When she cracks up, I can’t help but join in.

She is a thinker. She questions everything.

She has inherited our quality of being hard on ourselves, which I hate. I try to be easy, tell her it’s ok to make mistakes… I want to try to stop that self-bashing that we do so often, so unnecessarily.

She is the most loving big sister already. So gentle, so soft. She comes up to me and pats my belly, says “hi baby,” and looks up at me adoringly. OH MY GOD. 😍

She is 9, going on 19. Our current discussions are usually about:

“What are we doing today?”

“I want a Ford Ranger when I’m older so I can put my dogs in the back and take them with me everywhere.” (Awwww! 🥰)

“I want a YouTube account by 10, an iPhone by 12, and a TikTok account by 12.”

“Nature is my passion.”

She is the sweetest, funniest, most entertaining girl, and I hope she keeps nurturing her passions and herself, growing into the amazing young woman I know she will become. 🙏💞🥰😍

#2512 Give yourself permission to be totally wrong

Yesterday and today, I haven’t taken baby girl to school.

Or picked her up. My car is at the mechanic’s and it may be there a couple more days.

Hubbie instead, has left work both mornings to run home and drop her off.

Yesterday I asked baby girl’s friend’s mum to pick her up for me.

She more than happily obliged.

Even though she told me that she was able to pick her up again today… I was hesitant.

You see, I kinda realised something about myself.

I find it REALLY hard to ask for help.

It’s something I’m so used to doing, being, ever since we moved down here and made our sea change. We knew we had no one in this area to rely on, to help us out with child-minding duties, random help here and there, and although we were prepared, we weren’t really prepared.

But we have accepted it, it’s what we wanted, and it is the way it is.

Because we rely on ourselves so solely, I think this is part of the problem.

My problem.

Not only do I find it hard to ask for help… I hate to put people out. I felt sooo bad to ask the mum again if she could help out this afternoon, I was on the verge of tears. But my Mum had told me on the phone yesterday to ask again, to not feel bad about it, and Hubbie was much the same, saying one day, you’ll help her kids out too!

But there’s a little more to this story than meets the eye.

I was reluctant to ask for help, because this mum I’ve been feeling up and down about for a while now.

Without getting into the full history, we started off really good. Since prep. Lots of playdates, the girls had fun, and we always bump into each other at the same beach.

Sometime in the last year, I found out she had a playdate with another friend of theirs. Not just someone, but a girl from baby girl’s small friendship group. Essentially, out of the three girls, baby girl was left out.

This kinda enraged me, I will not lie. I never exclude her close friends from playdates, I include them all so no one is left out.

I didn’t know why baby girl was excluded.

I withdrew. Avoided her at the pick-up gate. Gave her a bit of the silent treatment.

Then to make matters worse, that friend of hers actually said some really mean things to baby girl. I got involved, told the teacher, there was intervention, etc, etc.

Things have been returning to some kind of prior normal, but I’m an elephant. I don’t forget.

I thought I had this mum all figured out. At first, she seemed to be the super friendly, easy-going, happy-go-lucky type, but clearly there was no loyalty. Clearly she wasn’t too involved in her daughter’s life, or else she would have stepped in to tell her not to say such hurtful things to a so-called friend.

I thought she had been my type, but I had clearly been way off the mark. I was keen for baby girl to move on, and being the end of the year I knew there was a chance they would be split up next year.

But then, a birthday party happened a couple of weeks ago. At that birthday party the mum told me that she was available if I needed her to watch baby girl, at any time now, leading up to baby’s arrival, what with all the increased appointments I have during the end months now, etc.

I was shocked, moved even. It was the furthest thing I was expecting after the year that had passed.

Which is why I had been so tentative yesterday to ask her to pick her up.

Which is why I was tearful today when I had to ask her again.

I felt guilty. Very, very guilty.

Clearly, I had gotten it all wrong. I had gotten her ALL WRONG.

Yeah, she was happy-go-lucky. She was casual. She probably didn’t look into things as much as I did. I’m a classic overthinker. She probably set her daughter up on play dates, not to exclude baby girl, but just to keep her daughter happy (now that I think, there have been plenty of times only her daughter and mine have caught up too).

She didn’t know about her daughter’s mean words, probably…? Which child tells their parent everything though? It’s a really tricky area, because her daughter is actually nice, but I think she is used to getting her own way, a bit like baby girl. So they clash. 🤦‍♀️ I often wonder what baby girl perhaps said or how she contributed to words being spoken between them. However, I see that their teacher did a wonderful job of helping to repair that friendship, because nothing has happened since.

I had gone grrr. All mama bear. Ultimate protector of my child. I went into defense mode, got judgmental, and decided that I didn’t want her in my life anymore. Hi, bye, that was fine.

But nothing else.

So when she offered help, and then again kept saying to me yesterday “just tell me if you need me to pick her up” insisting she was there for me…

I was quite honestly at a loss to explain her actions.

I was only left with one conclusion.

I had been completely wrong.

Or really, my first thoughts were correct. It was when things went askew that led me to have these other thoughts, and I guess, I’m human right? I should have trusted those first positive instincts, and if anything this experience has taught me a lot about myself, how I look at others, and that sometimes, I can be completely wrong.

It’s very easy to let your experiences and biases cloud your judgment. It happens on a daily basis for everyone! I want to try and not be so quick to assume, to judge, and only hope if I make a mistake somewhere, others give me the same benefit.

Her real person came through these last couple of days when we had no one else to help. She threw us a massive lifeline, and I know now who she is, where she stands, and what kind of person she really is.

There is enormous power in allowing yourself to be completely wrong, owning it, and then changing your thoughts, your ways. We have so much to learn in life, and by stubbornly holding onto views or opinions that serve us no more, we limit ourselves to a close-minded view of life where growth never happens, and learning is non-existent.

Allow yourself to be wrong. I was talking about this with Hubbie today, and there was something incredibly refreshing and liberating about saying to him, wow, I was sooo wrong.

(Even he admits, he was a little wrong too 🤭)

I won’t forget this. Remember, I’m an elephant. 🐘

#2482 Pregnancy help

They pass me the grocery items to scan at the checkout.

He picks up the heavy bags.

“Don’t let Mum bend over for that.”

He makes me tea (and brings me chocolate, shhhh).

When I sit on the couch and realise I’ve forgotten something, baby girl gladly gets up herself to get it.

At the moment, Hubbie and baby girl are a tremendous help.

All while my belly stretches, protrudes low, and baby beats a drum of their very own in there after every meal and sip of drink…

BOOM, BOOM, BOOM.

They put their hands there to feel the movement, and all of a sudden we are in sync, not yet having met, but nonetheless singing and hearing the same song. 🥰😍👶🤰

#2325 Helping nothing day

I haven’t gone to visit my parents just for no reason, in a long time… but I did it today.

There is always a reason. Whether it’s an occasion, to help, or take them to a medical ‘something,’ there is always something.

But it’s really nice too, when there is nothing.

So today was a nothing day, that ended up kinda being something… but that was OK. 😆 I helped my mum out with some shopping, and later on we all sat together and ate, and even my sister came over and we all had some good ol’ family bonding and time together.

But probably the best and funniest moment for me, came when we were doing grocery shopping. I was pushing the trolley, following Mum from aisle to aisle, when she went into the pet food aisle.

Disclaimer: Mum and Dad don’t have pets.

HOWEVER, she does have my sister’s cat, and dog next door, and they visit her REGULARLY, as well as a wild bird that flies down every day because she feeds it. 😆

And I was standing there behind her, giggling to myself, as she stood in the pet food aisle trying to work out what to buy for the pets she doesn’t own.

Awww. That’s love. 💖🥰

#2244 Things that help

On a day when my mind went round and round in rumination, I had little to give me a reprieve.

Or, so I thought.

I found little, oh-so-little things to help me out.

First, a good cry. 😢

Second was finding the will for a walk around the block. 🚶🏽‍♀️

Third, was pruning some weeds at the front of the house. On a day when I had motivation for NOTHING, when I started this therapeutic job, I actually couldn’t stop. 🍃

Fourth, music. 🎶

Fifth… a 10 second hug. 🥰 It’s apparently meant to last for at least that long for your body to let go of stress and realise its in the presence of love and support. 🤗

Nothing is magically better at the end of the day, of course, but somehow, all of these things lifted me, and will take me into tomorrow with a bit more hope.

🙏

#2232 Moving under the moon

Hard things are easy when you’re surrounded by good people, people you love.

We were back to help move furniture into place at my parents place this evening, and a late night pizza dash had me, baby girl and sis looking up into the sky.

Baby girl snapped this while waiting for some takeaway. The moon is big here in Melbourne for those who may not know, and its slowly approaching the full moon night. Which you wouldn’t know from the size of the thing, already being so huge. As it rose it was so large we joked it looked like a cheese, and was following us so it could jump onto our pizza. 🤦‍♀️😂

But hard things, really are easy when the right people are there with you, helping you. It’s not a job anymore…

It’s an adventure. 💞

What a beautiful thought. Surround yourself with the right people, and every day will be an adventure.

Now that’s a goal worth reaching out for.