Siblings

How strange to have 2 such different children, who are brother and sister. Daniel has always just been Daniel until now, and suddenly he is a brother. This seems like such a wonderful thing to be able to give him - a role he can take pride in when it suits him, and ignore when it doesn't. It is nice to think he isn't sort of alone in the world. And lucky Abi has arrived in the world already a sister as well as a daughter.

It is strange to imagine how the next few weeks and months will pan out as they exist on their parallel yet very different time schedules. Daniel has now long understood the significance of the 24 hour day and GMT. He sleeps 7 til 7, eats regular meals, goes to school and plays in the afternoon. Abi functions around a vague 4 hour sort of thing. She wakes up and has a look around. Then she likes to have a little snackeroo, but isn't usually awfully hungry at first. Sometimes she will look dozy for a while. Then she has what I think of as 'Abi chat time'. Every day she seems to open her eyes for a little longer, and has a little time where she is just quiet and thoughtful, looks at things and listens to me waffle on at her. Then she generally has a change, a bigger feed and eventually drifts back off again for a few hours. Of course it doesn't always go like that, sometimes she will sleep for an hour or two and just want a quick feed. Or just get up for a change and snackeroo before dozing off again.

Somehow these two beings co-exist and fit in around each other just about fine. I see some tough mornings ahead where Abi will have to sacrifice some snack and cuddle time to get her big brother to school. And other times where Dan might have to read himself a bedtime story occasionally if Abi is particularly unsettled. But how lovely to think that they will always, always have that special sibling bond.

Abi greets her Public

I really hope this works! Here is a film of Abi after a feed, waving her arms about, doing her guinea pig squeak impression, and being generally cute. She sounds a bit raspy - think its just wind, but am going to ask midwife about it tomorrow as she is quite a noisy breather sometimes, and I can't help worrying as she is so very ickle.

Dumpling

Here are some photos of Abigail Sarah Warton (there may yet be another middle name to let Ben get his say). She is very lovely. I don't know how well they capture her dumplingness.

Here she is soon after delivery.

And getting on with feeding while I had my lunch

And looking quite dumplingy, wondering where the milk went

And meeting her big brother:

A very nice afternoon

Wow today was hot hot hot! So we had Ben drop us in town on his way to work, and headed to the beach. Only a week or two ago I would have felt too ill to brave such an expedition, but today I really enjoyed being able to take my son out for what might be our last special mummy/daniel afternoon for a little while. It was really nice to stroll about town with my huge bump.

I did take Dan to the beach about a month ago, but could only really manage to just sit there. Today we went paddling, dug in the sand, made castles, buried bits of each other and had lots of chats about this, that and the other. Dan really enjoyed rubbing seaweed into my legs - he used to be a bit scared of seaweed and I think I was meant to find this very disgusting, but it was actually very nice on hot skin! I think you'd pay quite a lot for similar treatment at a health farm place.

In return Dan had me bury his hands and feet, and we lounged about chatting for ages. Dan insisted I take a picture of him in this position (where he looked ready to fall asleep!) and made me take it again when he realised I had left his feet out of the shot! They are nice feet.

And lastly, a picture of Dan scrambling over the breakwaters. Another thing he used to be quite scared of, but is suddenly happy to scale, and has to be reminded that once they get higher than, say 6 foot and are covered in slimy sea gunk they are actually quite dangerous! He was also planning on jumping off one about 5 foot into the sea! Very brave, but fortunately averted. I just can't believe how sunny all these pictures are. I had planned to give Dan a good old dip in the bath tonight but for some reason there wasn't enough hot water (our boiler is sometimes temperamental). So he went to bed rather sandy, but with that glorious smell of sunshine in his hair.

Easter

Easter took me by surprise this year. It is very confusing that is on a different date each time. Dan's birthday was once on good Friday, but this year we got a whole week inbetween. Here are some silly fairy cakes which didn't get iced until stupid 'o' clock the night before:They're meant to be rabbits in their burrows, but not sure how successful they were...also completely inedible for adults due to the excessive amount of icing.

We had a little easter egg hunt (which I of course forgot to take any pictures of) after a lovely brekker of boiled eggs and toasted soldiers. Ben helped cook the eggs, which might be why he looks a bit stressed, although I expect he was just enjoying pulling silly faces for camera:

Hope you had a nice Easter too.

A post about Baby

Some proof that there is a baby kicking about in there (not just food!):

Blogger is refusing to let me move photos about today. Those 2 at the top were meant to be inserted in the following text in the appropriate places but I can't be bothered to figure out whats going on there right now, so just use your common sense please.

I now get hooked up to a monitor twice a week for half an hour, and we listen to its heart going bompdybomp and watch the little waves coming out of the machine in a reassuring pattern. I thought I'd take some photos of the traces as they take all the notes away when the baby is born, and I think they're pretty interesting. The top photo is of the first trace taken last week.
That top line with little bumps is the baby's heart. The bottom line shows the very exciting braxton hicks I was also having that day. As each one started, Ben and I could bet on how high we thought they would go. Irritatingly, Ben was much better at this than me.

Next is today's trace. No braxton hicks today. We waited in a stuffy waiting room for 2 HOURS for this, but it was worth it.

And they took more blood, and said my results from last time were closer to normal range. On my (now rather thick) maternity notes is written 'overall = reassuring'. So there you are. Might find out the sex on Thursday!

7!

The night before...

Pressies and cards...

Cake...

And good pals to share it with...

Sometimes I think it must be so tough being a kid. And other times, not so much!