New pics of the kids

Chef/washer woman/cleaning lady/crawling lady

So sally's mom is here for the week, big bonus. The lady cooks, cleans and does the washing, pity she is only here for the week. Any way Rachel and Grandma were out on the green in front of our house. ( British idea of a green is smaller than our old front lawn in SA, but it pushes the property prices up by 30% here to say fronts onto a green) any way Rachel had here grandma crawling around on the ground in front of 15 odd houses, bet all the people were laughing there heads off.

Rain, I lied.

So i lied , there is sun on the odd day, riveting stuff hey!!

Ballet girl

I took these a while ago and promised to share them and then forgot. So here are the photos of Rachel in her ballet clothes. ( Note how huge the 2 yr old tights are on her) She loves ballet and has such a good time. I must remember to take some photos when she is in the class. ( moms are not allowed to stay and watch as it distractes them but there is a watching day so i will try remember the camera that day)

Washing

Well does this look familiar; another load of washing, another rainy day. Surprised!

Local Park

Well Rachel and I (Gavin) went off to the local park. We started off by flying Rachel's little kite on the athletics field next to the park, but it was all a bit of a challenge. The kite fly's on it's own and there was enough wind, but the challenge was getting Rachel to keep hold of the kite string and not let go the whole time. So as per usual the quote 'my enough” came out and we packed up the kite, then off to the park.

We started on the baby slide which is about 2m long and spent the better part of 30 minutes on it. Then the ice cream truck came along so we got an ice cream each because, believe it or not the sun was out and the weather was hot. (Hence the photo is proof of the sun).

Now that is where the fun started to end. Rachel decided after eating her ice cream that she wanted to go on the zip line. We did this a couple of times (which we have been on loads before) while we (Rachel) kept exclaiming ''again again’’ and then the expected happens, flat on our back and wailing as if there is no tomorrow. So we get over the tears and exclaim we want to go on the 360 degree swing. We start out fine and then again, wham, flat on our back again and more tears. So again we are in tears from shock and our biggest concern is that our shoes are dirty. (I.e. no bones had broken luckily, just more shock).

All in all, a good day.

Still it is hard to remember that face plants and bruises are part of life, seems like 30 million years ago that all I was was a bruise and stitches with some skin. (Let’s hope Rachel never gets into playing with matches).

Scooter bike

This is Rachel's 'Like a Bike' it is a bike without pedals that teaches kids how to balance as if they were on a real bike and is supposed to be better than a bike with training wheels - who knows I can't ride so i trust the experts.

She loves it and can scoot along balancing for quite a good distance. I also finally got out the house today - and not just to see a doctor. Felt so much better.

Bad weekend

These are the antibiotics I finally managed to get. But i am starting at the end, so rewind a few day. Friday night I started to get abdominal pain, it was not like the post birth pain, it was not severe at this point but it was more pain than i had been having over the past few days, i had up to that point been feeling really well. Saturday came and it became increasingly difficult to move and my abdomen really hurt. It felt like bad menstrual cramp only 100x worse, but i did not have a fever or any other symptoms that would indicate an infection so i just kept hoping it would go away. Gavin kept saying you need to phone someone and i kept saying no i am okay, lets just wait and see. Murphy's law - or Sally stubborn law, 10pm the pain is unbearable and i decide we do need to call someone, so we phone the Hospital postnatal ward which is the out of hours contact number we have, the midwife there says that i must come in.

Dilemma: what to do with Rachel, they say we can't bring her with us, so I phone my sister. She was in a movie but her and Mike left half way because of me and rushed home, Gavin drover to London to collect them and they stayed at the house with Rachel who gratefully slept through the whole thing.

We get to the hospital at about midnight, get accessed by the nurse and have to wait for a Dr, we waited a LONG time. Finally a young ( fortunately female) Dr comes to see us. She feels my tummy but does not say to tell her if it hurts, so i think she is just feeling if my uterus is contracted etc and i bite my tongue through the pain. Then she says well there is obviously little abdominal discomfort! I say ' no actually that was really sore'. She say she will do a swab - fun. And then says she thinks it is just muscular pain and prescribes codeine.

WHAT???? How do you get muscular pain from doing nothing at home 8 days after having had a baby! AND codeine???????? lovely cover up the symptoms with a very constipating medication. Thank goodness i know that as a nurse but she does not mention once that it is constipating or that i should take a laxative with it. Well that was if i had taken it at all, which i did not. I knew it was not muscular and was not going to take something that masked the symptoms AND constipated me until i knew what the heck was potting.

She said the results from the swab would be back by Tuesday but she doubt that it is anything as i have no fever. The drive home was excruciating. I was crying out in pain - i felt worse than i had in labour. After a bad night, in which feeding and looking after Caleb was difficult, I phoned Dad and chatted to him about what to do. He said that with such sever abdominal tenderness even without a fever it was clearly an infection and that I should go back and ask to be treated for an infection. I knew he was right but so dreaded going back to the hospital and not being taken seriously again.

Gavin was about to drag me kicking and screaming to the hospital when i thought maybe i should contact the community midwives team and see if i could get some advice from them. I spoke to such a lovely midwife who agreed with Dad and said that even with no fever it sounded like an infection and to come to their weekend drop in clinic and she would organise some antibiotics from the on call GPs.

What a relief not to have to go back to the hospital and the added bonus was that the clinic was in St Albans and not Watford where the hospital was. The midwife took one look at me hobbling down the passage and went off and get the prescription for the antibiotics from the GP's. By this stage i was starting to feel a little nauseous and not that great.

We got the antibiotic on the way home, Jenni and Mike had been wonderful and not only had they looked after Rachel that night but they had stayed over and looked after her while we went to the clinic - again I am so lucky to have Jenni so close by.

Well the fever they wanted hit, 39C shivering and shacking and all. I spend the rest of Sunday and most of Monday in bed. If i took regular Paracetamol and I did not shiver all the time and by Monday night i could feel the antibiotics had started to do their thing.

Today i feel like a different person.

In the garden

Daddy

Gavin got home Sunday night, it was lovely to see him. He has been great with both kids. We finally decided the baby's name will be Caleb

Leetcho

So as many of you know Rachel decided while i was pregnant the baby's name should be Leetcho and that it was a girl baby. Eventually after tell her repeatedly that the baby in Mommy's tummy was a boy she decided she that in that case she better have her own girl baby Leetcho in her tummy.

I bought a soft cloth doll and wrapped it for her and it was a gift after the birth, when she opened it i said it was Leetcho. She looked a liitle confused that Leetcho came wrapped up, but was none the less happy to accept this was Leetcho ( she still occasionally says that there is a baby in her tummy- but less than before)

First Bath

Family Bath

Rachel wanted to buy the baby a 'Henry the Octumpus' towel from her as a present so this is him in his towel after the bath.

Sunday

My friend Sandra came to visit on Sunday and took some lovely pictures

Our new arrival

So our boy has made his arrival. He ( no name yet) was born at 12.47 our time so 1.47 South African time yesterday. He weighs 3.48kg, has lots of dark hair. Birth went well and the midwives only managed to arrive after he was out they check us both out. I had a small skin nick but nothing that needs stitches. My sister looked after Rachel during labour but she came to watch him being born and jumped in the pool straight after.

Short version of story, had strong regular but not painful contractions from 2am, went back to bed at 4amish and woke up at 5 with water breaking. No contraction then until 8 or 9 and even then they were totally managable with movement, started filling pool at about 10, got in at 11:30 the water was lovely, contractions got quite intense quickly and before i knew it the head was right there, Dimity then came and sat with me during transision and when the pushing started.,we called Rachel and Jenni as the head crowed, head was then born and next contraction the body. Rachel then lept into the pool.

Rachel helping fill the pool

Mommy and her new boy

meeting the new brother

He IS a boy

Sisterly Love

Good lungs

With Aunty Jenni

Kites

Gavin left yesterday to go back to the rig for 2 weeks, still no sign of baby. I think it was quite hard for him to go. And Rachel is missing him so much, they did lots of things together, he was great and took her out a lot to give me a break. Before he left we went to the park on Tuesday afternoon to fly kites, it was good fun.


This is the box in my lounge with everything ( well i hope everything) ready in it for the big day.

No signs of baby yet. Not that i really thought he would be early, given that his sister only arrived at 40+2 but i guess part of me just hoped that Gavin would be here. With no signs of anything happening and Gavin leaving again on Wednesday morning 4am, I am beginning to think we are running out of time. I suppose it is better to wait until baby is good and ready, even if mommy is fed up.