The Wheels On The Car ...

Today was rather a dramatic day.  James has been away on a business trip since Monday and today (Wednesday) it happened to be a half day at school for the girls.  I was not overly enthusiastic about this since it meant more hours in which I would be trying to entertain the kidlets in my sleep deprived state.

I got Emily on the bus after giving all the kids a hearty breakfast of porridge.  Quite an exceptional feat I thought considering how tired I was.  I had gotten an email the night before from Emily’s teacher reminding me of a field trip she was supposed to take that day which I had failed to acknowledge with her fee.  I found the note about it in a stack of the kids art work which explained that a science museum was bringing the museum to the school and it would cost $8 for my child to participate in the experiments.  

Abigail's Birthday

My pregnancy with Abigail was the hardest one of all.  It was fraught with drama both physically and emotionally.  I was sure that the poor baby was going to come out somehow damaged by all the stress I was under during the 9 months of her residence.  Fortunately she emerged unscathed (so far as we can tell) and has been my most chilled out baby so far.

For the first 20 weeks of the pregnancy I had no medical care except for the initial visit to the doctor to confirm the pregnancy about a week before the hideous sickness fell.  For the third time I managed to weigh less right before delivery than I had at the beginning of the pregnancy.  But unlike the other two pregnancies I was packing up a house in the first few weeks.  Now the damage that Emily had done to my back and hip during her time in utero had not really gone away but to make it worse I wrenched my back badly trying to lift a heavy box.  

Kaitlyn's Birthday

Kaitlyn’s entrance into this world was a little less dramatic than Emily’s one.  I was even sicker than with Emily and for a longer time which was less than exciting given that I had a toddler to look after.  Fortunately we had moved to New Zealand by then and I had my mother just around the corner.  Emily spent a lot of time with my parents while I was in the stay horizontal phase of the pregnancy.

My doctor’s office was within walking distance from my house (and waddling distance later on) which was nice and the hospital was about 2 minutes drive away (or less if you needed to get there in a hurry!!).  The hospital was a tiny little maternity wing staffed by a lone midwife at night and two or three midwives during the day if you were lucky.  It was very old fashioned and had none of the fancy machines that the hospital in America had.  The biggest thing that struck me was that it didn’t offer any pain relief drugs except for one which I react very badly to.  That meant no epidurals, no spinal blocks, no nothing.

Emily's Birthday

There are a lot of people around me at the moment having babies.  All their baby having efforts are reminding me of my own baby having experiences.

I really don’t do pregnancy very well.  Which is really the biggest understatement I could make about this.  I get really really sick.  In fact it is pretty much impossible to do the whole ‘wait til you’re 12 weeks to tell’ thing. By about 6 or 7 weeks everyone who knows me is pretty suspicious and by 8 weeks they’re certain.  I have this kind of greenish glow to me and then I’m confined to a horizontal position until about half way through the ordeal.

It has gotten worse with each subsequent pregnancy.

It's Not Easy Getting Green - Part 2

You read about these immigration interviews and how they ask you all kinds of personal questions to try and trip you up and make you admit that you only married a US citizen to gain access to the country and that you really don’t love them or even live with them.

James and I discussed things like what our favourite colours are, just in case they asked.  We tried to remember what colour our toothbrushes were.  That one was a little confusing because I used to always get James orange toothbrushes (to match his hair) and me green ones (because that’s my favourite colour) but since giving birth to so many girls I had been trying to explore my pink side and so one time I bought myself a pink toothbrush and got James a blue one.  I realised one day quite a long time later that even though he had just come out of the bathroom with minty fresh breath his toothbrush was still dry.  I questioned him on this and he was adamant that he had used his toothbrush.  I asked him which one it was and he said “the pink one of course”.   After nearly throwing up I asked him why he thought I would buy him a pink toothbrush and he said “well, I thought it was a little bit odd but since I know you really don't like pink I figured you’d got it for me and the blue one was yours.”