Reminiscing

A colleague of Paul's is about five months pregnant at the moment, and today went for her fetal anatomy scan where she learned the sex of her baby.

It got me thinking about the day we found out we were having a girl, and reminded me how wonderful my whole pregnancy was. Sometimes that gets a bit lost in the stress that came after Sophie was born, but I really loved being pregnant. From the first minute the test showed up positive to the very end, it was just one deliriously happy moment after another. I was just re-reading my pregnancy journal last week (which in the best tradition of me and diaries was filled in to about 13 weeks and then forgotten) and I wrote that every one of those moments was something you could never imagine until it happened.

Seeing the pregnancy test come up positive; seeing a tiny, pulsing heartbeat on the first ultrasound; seeing the little blob move all by itself like a wee jumping bean on the second ultrasound (at just 9 weeks); seeing every part of her perfectly formed on the detailed scan at 13 weeks- I'll never forget what those moments felt like. They still make me tear up whenever I think about them.

A side view of Sophie at 13 weeks:


See her four little fingers and her thumb as she waves to the sonographer?:


A 3D view of Sophie at 13 weeks- she's lying on her back looking up, and her head is at the top of the picture:


But I think finding out that we were having a girl actually topped all of those moments. When I first announced that I was pregnant, a lot of people surprised me with how adamant they felt against finding out the sex. But Paul and I were always on the same page- we always wanted to find out as soon as possible what we were having. I couldn't stand having to call my baby "it". I felt a very strong connection to her right from the start and I felt like I needed a pronoun to really know who I was talking to in there.

The ultrasound technician asked us right at the start of our 20 week scan if we wanted to know the sex, and of course we said yes. I assumed she'd look straight in the relevant place and tell us, but no. We sat through a good hour of the scan while she noted that all the legs and arms and livers and so on were in the right place, and then she basically wrapped it up and said we were done.

No mention whatsoever of the sex.

I figured we had a stubborn leg crosser and she hadn't been able to see, so I was feeling kind of disappointed. But right as we were ready to walk out the door, she asked us again if we wanted to know the sex. We still did. And she told us we were having a girl.

There were only two possible answers she could have given, and we'd thought equally hard about either possibility. We would have been equally happy with either outcome. But still, hearing that we were going to have a daughter was one of the most indescribably wonderful moments of my whole life. I didn't stop crying for about three hours, I was so happy (and hormonal, of course).

Sophie sucked her thumb for the *entire* 20 week scan (here she's lying on her back, head to the left, arm at the top):


From then on, she was Paul's "wee girl", and she's still called our "wee girl" a whole lot of the time. When Paul got home from work that night he went online and started looking up fairy princess castles and My Little Ponies. I was protesting that *my* daughter was going to be a tomboy whether she liked it or not, but he wouldn't hear it at all. She was his little princess right from the start, and she always will be.

Give and take

Sophie has a very cute but also unbelievably annoying favourite game at the moment- she likes to hand her toys to other people, one by one- all of them, no matter how many are around her- and the receiver then has to hand them back one by one. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. It frustrates her quite a bit when she hands her toys over to smaller babies, then expects them to hand them back over. She's pretty relentless.

It's hard to say no, though. She has the cutest face in the whole world.

Outside interests...

... are very important when you have a wee one who clings to you 24 hours a day like a tiny, cute leech. Very difficult to maintain sometimes, I've been finding. I'm making a major effort to keep up with my interests, though, and I've taken two big steps this week.

1. I've applied for a job. *Gulp*.

I love being at home with Sophie, mostly, but sometimes I really do feel like my brain has taken long-service leave and it's not planning on coming back. I knew it was the right choice to apply for this two-day a week position when I started viewing daycare centres for Sophie earlier in the week. Instead of feeling anxiety or sadness, I felt huge excitement. I couldn't stop thinking about how great it would be to travel to work in the morning with Paul, and to spend a couple of days a week thinking and doing.

2. I've started a new writing blog with three friends at All The World's Our Page.

Some of you know how much I love my writing, and a lot of you don't. But I really do love it, and I miss it so much when Sophie keeps me occupied to the point where no other activity is possible. Before Sophie arrived I was very close to finishing my first novel, and it's still there waiting for me to get back to it. The good news is I have a whole new perspective now I have Sophie.

The other good news is the friends I'm writing with at the new blog are at various different stages of the writing process, and I'm relying on them to drag me along behind them as they speed toward fame, fortune and success.

Anyway- go check out the new blog, and leave a comment. If you do, it'll put you in the running to win this week's book giveaway. There's another one every week for the next four weeks.

Speech and hearing

As you'll recall, we were told a couple of months ago that Sophie had a small delay in her speech skills. On the day of the assessment, she was quite quiet, but they also took into account that we reported she wasn't babbling or shouting for attention (both of which she started doing a week after the assessment).

We went to the speech therapist about a month ago, and were told that she was now up to scratch with her communication. I didn't realise we were going to get an official report, though- and when it did arrive a week or so ago, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Sophie has been assessed not only to be developing as expected in three areas, but actually ahead in two areas.

This is, as you can imagine, an enormous relief.

Her advanced areas are those of understanding what is said to her, and her play skills (no surprise). They were very impressed that when shown a doll, she picked it up and kissed it. She loves to play kiss the baby in the mirror, and she's lately developed a new game in which she piles all her stuffed toys onto her dad one by one and makes him give each one a kiss and a snuggle. She's a very affectionate little person, and very much geared towards helping other people feel as happy as she does in response to certain activities.

Another example of her incredible social skills in action, I think.

On the road

As mentioned, we had a fantastic trip over east, with a whole lot of first experiences for Sophie, who also brought home a host of newly mastered milestones.

Her experiences included:

Meeting numerous relatives for the first time, including her great-grandmother, great-great-uncle and aunts, and various other representatives of four generations of my family. Here she is getting a snuggle from my grandmother, who absolutely loved her (of course!)


Learning to play the piano (well, whack it, anyway- here she is taking lessons from her great-uncle)


Patting kangaroos and koalas:


Seeing the sights of Sydney, including the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House:



Meeting a variety of other animals at Taronga Zoo, including new baby elephant Luk Chai


Giraffes (not looking mighty impressed, is she?):

Monkeys (wait, that IS a monkey, isn't it?):


Or is it a Fennec Fox?


Travel on buses, ferries, trains and taxis (here she is preparing for a hard day of sight-seeing; on her favourite mode of transport- the open-topped double decker tourist bus)


Eating a huge variety of new foods, including Singapore noodles, Turkish pizzas, meatloaf, and everything in between. Sophie really had a food revelation on this trip, eating more than ever before, and has come home now happy to eat whatever we're eating for dinner instead of mashed up baby food.

Other things she came home with:

Tooth number five, which appeared sometime early in the holiday (it's on the top right, next to her giant bunny teeth)

The ability to clap properly- very cute indeed. She now likes to clap along whenever she hears music, be it from a toy, on Play School, or on the radio.

The ability to say "Mum-mum" (yay! Finally!)

The ability to dance by bopping up and down on all fours (and when standing up, too)

A renewed interest in her dummy- she likes to carry it around in her mouth like a dog (the dummy, her sippy cup, and pretty much anything else that fits in her mouth)

A love of role-playing games- she'll now brush hair (though we'll call her an apprentice hairdresser at this stage), brush teeth, feed people, kiss stuffed toys, and all manner of things

From one to ninety

September was another crazy busy month. I'll try to break it down into a couple of posts.

The big even of the month was a great trip to the other side of Australia to celebrate my grandmother's 90th birthday. It was quite an emotional trip, all considered- this has been the first chance for most members of my extended family to meet Sophie and see how fine she is with their own eyes.

Before we left I was a little worried about how Sophie would be on the plane. Not behaviour-wise- I knew she'd be fine with that, and she was- but rather oxygen-wise. After she was discharged from the intensive care unit back in December, Sophie and I flew home on a commercial plane with a nurse who was monitoring her oxygen saturation levels. In the hospital, anything under 94% oxygen saturation was a problem, and the fact that Sophie kept dropping below 90% was the reason she had to stay for three long weeks.

On the hour-long plane trip back home, her oxygen saturation levels went down to 80% and even below that. Not good. She would start nodding off and closing her eyes, and the nurse would give her a shake, and her oxygen saturation would go up again. It was scary as hell. He was trying to avoid giving her oxygen, because "failing" at a flight without needing O2 would mean she was banned from flying until she was 6 months old. She passed, just, but she ended up spending an extra 7 days in hospital needing supplemental oxygen because it took so much out of her.

So, I know her lungs are fine now, but still- I was a tiny bit nervous that there might still be a potential for a problem, especially since this trip included four flights of between one and five hours.

Anyway, it turns out there were no problems whatsoever with her oxygen levels on these flights- she was as perky as anything on all of them, even the midnight horror. She was just so excited by all the new things to see, and all the new people to meet (particularly the poor hapless folk in front of us and behind us, who had to put up with Sophie popping her head up at intervals to gawk at them). She is the most amazingly adaptable baby- nothing fazes her at all. Airports, different time zones, take-offs, landings and turbulence- all of those things were just fascinating to her.

Follow that up with daily gatherings of loads of extended family, with everyone wanting snuggles, smiles, waves and generally raving about how gorgeous she is- and she took it all in her stride. She's got better social skills than most *adults* I know. I've never seen a child who knows how to work a room the way she does. She's taken to doing a neat little trick at cafes and on public transport- if the people sitting at the next table all laugh at something they're discussing, she'll lean over and go, "HA HA HA HA!" like she's in on the conversation. It's somewhere between embarrassing and extremely cute.

Here she is having a crazy moment on the flight home:


And here she is buttering up the Virgin flight attendants about a minute later (who, me?):

When everyone goes home

I was talking recently with a friend of mine whose daughter had an identical start to Sophie. We both discovered that after a month or two, once it was clear that our kids were past the worst and doing well, there was a tendency for people to feel like we should just "get over it" all and act like nothing bad ever happened to our kids. After all, they're healthy now, right? Why would you still linger on those weeks of fear, worry and hurt, and the months of uncertainty? Why would the raw hurt of it still sit just under the surface, ready to bite now and again at unexpected moments?

I had one of those moments a couple of days ago- a little flashback window into the way we all felt a few months ago. I was waiting for Antiques Roadshow to start- because my life is just FULL of excitement at the moment- and I caught the tail end of a documentary about becoming a father. At the end, they showed a guy whose wife was having a baby.

The baby was born perfectly healthy and happy, and the expression on the dad's face made me burst into tears. He was amazed, and shocked, and excited and happy all at the same time. And just for a brief second, I felt this incredible heartache that Paul didn't get to have that moment. Once in a while I get that- a moment of massive sadness.

I didn't have a plan for the perfect birth- I don't believe there is any such thing. I didn't care if I had a thirty hour labour, interventions, a caesarian, anything. Really, the single only thing I wanted out of the whole birth was to see my healthy baby at the end of it all.

And that's the only thing I didn't get.

So, fast-forward nine and a half months. Sophie is sitting on the rug in the living room playing with her rubber ducky. Last night we had a great game where she and I each held a ducky and "swam" them at each other. They had a little ducky smooch, we did some quacking, and then we each had a chomp on our duck. Then she handed me her yellow duck, I handed her my green duck, and we did it all over again. It's unbelievable that a baby of her age can come up with a game like that. UNBELIEVABLE. I can't get my head around it. She amazes me every single day. She makes me so incredibly happy. Every night I fall asleep snuggled up to her, and I kiss her on the head and tell her how much I love her. She's just a star.

But despite all that, those sad moments still come up once in a while. They only last a few seconds, and then they're gone, because hey- it's all good now. But the thing is, those sad moments are *necessary* for good mental health. They help you move on. You feel the sadness, you acknowledge it, and then you remind yourself of all the great things in your life and you feel happy again.

I think every mother, regardless of how things start, has good days, bad days, happiness, sadness and a full range of emotions. How are you supposed to teach your own child about the ups and downs of life if you don't have down moments yourself? How else do you teach them that there's nothing wrong with being sad once in a while?

I guess that different people deal with things in different ways. Personally, I respect everyone's right to their own feelings. Feel sad about it once in a while; forget it ever happened. It's up to you how you deal with your own experience, and it's not for anyone else to judge.