Ingredients for bliss when you are 2+1/3:

- Polka Dot Pajamas

- Dirt

Moira discovered that you can take the Polar Zookeeper Duplo animal slide apart and turn it into.. shoes!  Those jammies totally kill me too.

Yodeler’s daughter: Fionnuala looks like she should be wearing knickers and a cow bell.

Man, nap time is boring.

Nap time with Daddy.  Heartbeats + warmth = baby bliss.

While Melanie is recovering, here is a brief post from the Mr. regarding the new addition to the family.

Name: Fionnuala Irene (pronounced Fin-oo-la)

Birth Weight: 7 lbs 1 oz (exactly the same as mom and older sister)

Born on: 8-something am on the 18th of August (18/8/10 – a date I can remember! 18-8=10).  Water broke Monday evening, attempted induced labour for 18+ hours, then off to an emergency c-section after everyone threw the towel in.  All in all, a looooooooong haul.  But it is over and Fionnuala/Mommy are healthy.

Breastfeeding: going like a trucker.  Gained 92 grams yesterday after hitting rock bottom weight of just over 10% loss (so the nurses got to freak out for a bit… lol… nurses…)

Things that make me happy:

Bonding

Happy mommy + baby

You must keep a sense of humour when someone is chomping on your body.

The girls getting aquainted.

The Gremlin ready to come home from the hospital.

Things that make me mad:

Complete with tons of sugar-like crap and food colouring.

Sugar, Corn Syrup Solids, Modified Milk Ingredients, Orange Flavour (including FD&C yellow #6)

Apparently this constitutes a “vegetable” serving at the hospital.

Beef, beef, beef, instant crap, frozen crap, food colouring.

I guess that they don’t want the mothers to recover or have nutrients to create breast milk with.  I saw plently of husbands lugging cafeteria food up (they had salads, wraps, sushi, sandwiches, etc.) so if you had someone there to support you and you had money, you could get something better.

I feel especially sorry for the low income or single mothers.  Or institutionalised hospital patients that get that crap every meal, every day.

The Nurses nurtrition/diet study shows that nurses are notoriously bad eaters and have worse dietary intakes than the average person, so I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that they don’t fight to get their patients better food…  or that they don’t understand the importance of healthy diet to recovery?  WTF?

While it is obviously not all the nurses’ fault, the apple doesn’t land far from the tree.

They also expected me to keep a lady who was in labour for 34 hours off of all food except… ice chips.

lol.

They would have a dessicated corpse on their hands if I actually did that.  I jammed food into her maw all evening whenever a nurse left the room.  Everything from sausage to salad – how else was she supposed to survive the ordeal?

I can’t lie – I’m really bloody tired these days. I didn’t feel like this at the end of my pregnancy with Moira because she never dropped (or turned over for that matter – she was breech and therefore delivered via cesarean). At my doctor’s appointment today she told me to make an appointment for next week but she suspects I will be having the baby before then and my prenatal will turn into a postnatal baby check-up.  Baby has been head down and in the right position for quite a while now. I think she is ready and I certainly feel done right now – and a little ill.

Bath belly at 35 weeks.

My Mum is here right now – she decided to come early too – and that has been an amazing help. I feel so huge I can barely move and I have constant braxton hicks contractions. I’ve been wanting to write a post about Moira for the last week – and about her last moments as an only child – but I just haven’t had the energy.

Here is a bath belly shot from the last pregnancy for comparison. My bathroom is much nicer (and mold free) this time around.

*********************

Edited to add: My water broke while writing this post. No wonder I’m feeling rough today. Perhaps I will see you on the other side?

Another plug for guest bloggers for my series: Bringing Home Baby (#2). I have a couple lined up but not nearly as many as I would like.

I’m looking for women to share their stories of bringing home the second baby. The interloper. The one who made you realize that the baby you gave 100% of yourself to is now no longer the baby. I want to hear about how #1 reacted to #2. I also want the good, the bad and the honest. I like honest. Having that first baby is such a mind-blowing, all-consuming experience for so many women that it is hard to imagine what having two children is going to be like.

This is what I am looking for:

• A post about your life adjusting to two children (as long or short as you want)
• A photo to go with the post if you feel comfortable with that (either of your family or just the kids – whatever you want really).
• A breif bio of yourself with a link to your blog.

I want to start collecting these stories now so I can have them ready to post in late August some time.

So if you are interested, or have friends who might be interested send an e-mail to meli.mello AT gmail DOT com. I know I have a number of readers who are in the thick of baby #1 right now but are thinking of having baby #2.

I suspect this will be a multiple part series.

Things I have gotten rid of today:

• 28 cassette tapes (all mixes except The Cure: Standing on a Beach the Singles which I have had since junior high). We don’t own a cassette player – haven’t for years.
• 41 theatre playbills, programs for choral concerts I participated in (dating back to the 80s) – for most of which I have no memory.
• Piles of random, painfully dated-looking, blank postcards. Many I had taped to my binder in elementary school including one of a goth-punk girl that says “Hi Dad” that I thought was so edgy at the time. (Anyone collect postcards, they are all blank and are being recycled at the end of the week if no one wants them.)
• An “I Love My Dalmatian” bumper sticker that I was sure I would put on my car when I was an adult even though the Dalmatian I did love died 18 years ago.
• A box of letters, too many to count. Mostly they were from penpals I made while at basic training for the Air Cadets. Some of those people turned into penpals for years – lasting much longer than my 1.5 years as an Air Cadet. Others were people I met at summer camp. That box was full of stuff, I didn’t even bother to count the number of letters in there. I miss letter writing but since I haven’t heard from any of those people since before I graduated from high school (maybe even junior high for some of them) I tossed them all.
• Birthday cards & Christmas cards! Dating back to my pre-teens – why do I still have these? Two were from my orthodontist for gawds sake! Some were full of names I have long forgotten and have little memory of but are signed with the obligatory “friends forever”.

Things I had forgotten/hilarious finds: ( Read more )