23
Nov
2009
More top tips before having a baby including great things to buy
This is not me interviewing my mates.
OK, further to yesterday’s top tips from my mates, here is the second part of my scientific research project…
What did you wish you had done in the early days?
- Travelled more when he was small! We didn’t take any weekend breaks which are so much easier before the wee one starts to want to move around.
- Taken more holidays – they are much easier to travel with when they are small.
- Written down the dates of her key milestones (crawling, sitting, walking) etc. I’ve already forgotten a lot of them.
- Printed off photos and started an album straight away, kept a record of milestones and videoed the first seven months as only got the camera out at 8 months.
- Had baby Panadol in the house after the first immunisation. Big mistake!
- Not wished the time away. I look back and wonder where the various stages have gone.
- Relaxed and gone with the flow! They are only tiny for such a short time so I wish I had felt that I didn’t have to be doing something all the time.
- Got more stuff in the freezer for post-baby.
22
Nov
2009
Top Tips before you become a parent. How to not freak out. Maybe.
Before I had my first baby I was FREAKING OUT. I am the opposite of the laid back type – I have a level of obsessive, spreadsheeting, Boy Scout type of preparedness that makes people nervous. Put it this way – I have a document that shows what I have bought every extended family member for Christmas and birthday since 2004. I have bought and wrapped all my Christmas presents for this year. I have to hide them from visitors so they don’t back out of our house in fear. Anyway, as you can imagine, the thought of motherhood led to a whole other level of groundwork – I wanted to be ready for every possible issue and situation. Yes, I am well aware of the ridiculousness of that – I even knew it at the time but COULD NOT STOP. So I asked all my far more experienced and knowledgeable friends to answer a few questions for me. Some of them were helpful, some of them made me want to cry. If I was looking for the definitive list of answers to parenting, all the questions showed was that for as many mothers I knew, there were as many opinions. For better or worse, here is part 1 of the results. Part 2 and 3 later in the week and sometime in the near future I will post THE baby buying spreadsheet – hold on to your hats.
9
Nov
2009
Pregnancy massages – or why there is discrimination in the world’s leading expert field.
I consider myself a bit of an expert on pregnancy massages. Not one of the world’s leading experts or anything. Although I would be more than willing to throw my hat in the ring for the role. Except if it involved being pregnant again. Which it probably would. Surely that’s discrimination or something? I should email the people in charge of giving out these World’s Leading Expert roles and point out my skill set – surely someone could run it up a flagpole for discussion? I’m very good at thinking outside the box and being strategic. ANYWAY.
The best pregnancy massages I ever had were at Body Freedom in Melbourne. Just a smallish salon but my god, do they know their fat-bellied women. Seriously good stuff. None of this hole in a table business – beautiful body length pillows and crisp white sheets on a comfy futon. I don’t know if she’s still there, but Jacqui has magic fingers and makes you feel all floppy and sleepy – the sign of a good massage for me (even though those World’s Leading Experts people don’t know a good thing when it emails them).
19
Oct
2009
I was a pregnant chicken
OK so in London they have these ‘Baby on Board’ badges that they will send you in the mail if you are preggers. The idea being you can make it obvious to anyone who is looking that you are in fact up the duff, and have not merely had a couple of hundred extra cheeseburgers. Having spent some significant amount of time studying women’s stomachs while sitting down and trying to work out whether I was about to cause enormous offence – and then feeling humiliated while someone more astute (courageous?) than me jumped up to offer their seat, I always thought it sounded like quite a sensible idea. That is, until mine arrived in the mail. I put it in my handbag and there it remained for the whole nine months.
12
Sep
2009
We had a girl!
As of last week
Kate is a proud mother of two! The latest addition to the onedayyoullthankme gang is a lovely little girl. Kate reports from the new-born-baby frontline that things are going better than expected. Although her love of forward planning has backfired somewhat after assuming that second child would be similarly ginormous size as the first and buying large baby clothes for her. In fact the baby is on the petite side and consequently, according to Mum, she has passed her first few days looking “like a bald chicken in giant clothes”. Which, whilst wasn’t the fashion forward start Kate had hoped for, sounds very cute. Congratulations to Kate, Captain Sensible and Big Brother (who, in the lifelong tradition of big brothers will hopefully be hatching new ways to torture little sister as soon as possible)!
6
Aug
2009
Wall Stickers – Decorating the Nursery, Low Maintenance Style
I was eagerly awaiting the legendary nesting stage in the late stages of my pregnancy to see myself transformed into a fabulously feminine and motivated domestic goddess type person but instead of a full butterfly like transformation I experienced a small fluttering of domesticity by way of an urge to buy stuff. Which I am pretty sure was there before. But this time it was, at least, an urge to buy stuff for the transformation of the office like spare room into something more like a babies room. I say it was a nesting urge nonetheless. Yay. I am woman.
This urge to decorate the nursery resulted in trying out wall stickers. My perception of wall stickers before my personal venture into this entirely new world was that they were the kind of not very cool thing people who also knit “there´s no place like home” wall hangings and embroider doiles might use to “brighten up a room” by, say, creating borders and floral features on walls with stencils. Naturally the pervayers of these wall stickers would also be into lavender and purple in general. However, I have discovered wall stickers (or decals) are part of a whole world of very cool designs and interior decorating. For me it’s turned out to be one of those things that until you’d heard about them, well you hadn’t heard about them… and then when you start looking into it you wonder how you could have missed it. There are a LOT of sites where you can buy wall stickers (or decals) and the amount of choice online means you can find far more interesting designs than cheesy kids cartoons – which are the wall stickers you tend to see more of in your average home decorating store collection – if you can find one at all.
9
Jun
2009
Looking freaky with 10 days to go
Sometimes I wonder what all the staring is about. Then I get a side view and I understand.
Official date is June 19, although could be any time now. Says the doctor. Who actually, as far as I can tell, has greater chance of forecasting the weather than arrival date.
I am running out of clothes and as you can see these ones are barely cutting it. Top will not take slightest growth and the pants are yoga pants. There’s no place to go after stretch fabrics. Except maybe indoor confinement and giant mumu.
So I hope baby arrives sooner rather than later.
