Jumping ship (or not) and money money money.

This is the view from our living room window at the moment:

Which drives me crazy for two reasons:

1) For sale signs are hideous and attention grabbing, not a good combination and not conducive to relaxing when you are sitting near the window.

2) Neither of them are ours!

I am stunned every time I drive through our tiny estate and see how many of the properties are for sale. Serious, there are like 60 houses and there are at least 8 for sale or to let. And again, none of them are ours!

Now don't get me wrong here, I love my house. My house is, however, a two-bed starter home designed for a couple. We fit, but it's snug.

In some ways it is a brilliant house for kids: we have a nicely sized, simple garden; we have a good sized second bedroom for the kids; we are literally 30 seconds walk from a good park; and we have a parking space right beside our house; we have a bath and we have a downstairs loo for potty training.

In other ways it is a very inconvenient house for kids: there is no where in the house we can put a high chair where it isn't on carpet; the front door opens right onto the road (literally- not even onto the pavement and then the road- there is no pavement); the parking space is not wide enough to get a child out of each side! I have to get Amelia out and put her in the house, then park, then get Ben out. Not great when they are both very young; the kitchen is teeny and wherever I put Ben to help me cook he can reach the hob and pull the rings off lol; the schools nearby aren't great.

Anyway, I could go on, but I don't want to give a false impression of how lucky I am. We are very blessed to even own a house in this country, especially since I'm not working anymore. If I hadn't got a job straight out of uni we wouldn't even have been able to afford to buy a flat, let alone a brand new house in a cul-de-sac in Cheltenham Spa! And I do love this house.

It's just... oh... it would be so nice to have a kitchen/diner, to have a garage, to have our car parked somewhere where Ben could stand safely while I get Amelia out, to have an airing cupboard....

With the way things are in our economy and housing market it's going to be a few years before we can afford to move. We bought our house right at the peak of housing prices, so even though we have made a lot of extra payments on our mortgage we think we are still in negative equity. Sigh. I know that being on the housing ladder is good and it's all relative, but there is something so miserable about having to curb your expectations of how much you can spend on a house. We are also quite fortunate in that we bought the house on a shared ownership scheme, meaning that we only bought half of the house and rent the other half from the housing association. It's all worked out as 50% of the house rather than the specific figure of money that we paid, so really we have only lost half as much money on the house as we would have done if we'd bought the whole thing. When we come to sell, the housing association will get back 50% of the price, not the £65,000 that they paid (and likewise for us).

We've decided that we're not going to move until we can afford the house that we will stay in, raise the children to adulthood and grow old in. Ah, so romantic! We don't want to have to move again as we both feel it's such a waste of money. If we were to move now we'd probably have to move again when the kids are older and need their own space, so it does make perfect sense to wait.

So where am I going with this? I don't know really. It sometimes drives me crazy that we are trapped in a house that was never intended as a place we'd raise two children. I'd always, in the back of my mind, thought that we'd move when I was pregnant with our second child, before Ben went to school. It's ok. It puts us in a good position financially living here, and we have more than enough money even without me working at all. I think I just need to count my blessings more!

In a recent Relief Society meeting someone quoted, "Happiness is having £100 and spending £99; misery is having £100 and spending £101". I don't know who that was by, but I really liked it. I am so grateful that D is excellent with money and very wise in the way he deals with our finances. I am so lazy about this, but I know that I can trust him to keep us safe financially. We've fallen naturally into different roles: he is fab at dealing with the money that we HAVE to spend, and my strength lies in not spending any money that we DON'T have to spend!

But one day we will move, and it will be amazing! I'm sure we'll look back at this house with fondness. The place to which we welcomed our children, the four walls in which we learned to be parents and where Amelia was born. And I'm sure we'll smile about the steamy bathroom with no window and the cosy kitchen, just like we do about the tiny flat we lived in when we first got married, which was so small we couldn't even fit a wardrobe or a chest of drawers!

Birthday!

It was my 29th birthday this week! I've been feeling a little sorry for myself since D couldn't get the day off work and we couldn't even go out in the evening with Amelia being so tiny. Plus D wasn't feeling very well. I won't lie, it was a rough day, but I really appreciated everything that D did to make it special for me.

I go out to a breastfeeding peer support group (BAPS! Breastfeeding advice and peer support) on a Tuesday, so Ben, Amelia and I went there as usual. Amelia had screamed literally all morning from the moment D left to the moment we went out, so I decided to take Ben in the little pushchair and Amelia in the mei tei. She doesn't usually like being in any sling or carrier for long, but she was so exhausted from crying for 3 hours that she just fell asleep. Poor kid. It worked though, and I felt better carrying her than chucking her in the double buggy when she was upset.

As I've only been going for 4 weeks or so, there aren't many people at BAPS that I know well yet, so it was a bit weird being all 'it's my birthday!!!' inside but no one knowing. Two of the ladies from church were there, and I couldn't resist telling one of them! Then I immediately regretted it because it obviously sounded like I was trying to get attention (which I was). Oh well, she loves me, she won't judge :)

BAPS is brilliant because they have so many toys and lots of space for Ben to run around, which he doesn't get at home unless it's dry enough for the garden. They have a soft play area too, and indoor slides, a giant doll's house, beautiful wooden kitchen equipment, an indoor sandpit.... Basically we walk in the door and I don't see Ben until the end of the two hours. It makes him happy and I get to enjoy Amelia and also chat to some grown ups for couple of hours a week: everybody wins. I had a good experience this week too, I was chatting to a lady who's having trouble breastfeeding her week-old baby and I think I helped her. She gave up breastfeeding after a couple of days with her first child but really wants to try to overcome the difficulties and succeed this time. They have proper breastfeeding counsellors present, so I was just chatting to her while she got settled and waited for someone to be available. I'd really like to be a breastfeeding counsellor when Amelia gets older- I had such a hard experience with Ben that I know I could be very understanding of the emotional mess you can get into when breastfeeding isn't going well. I would love to be able to help other mums and babies.

Afterwards we came home and had lunch, then nap time. Now I'm not going to lie- this is often a horrendous part of the day. It is so hard to get enough time without my attention on Amelia to get Ben settled enough to go to sleep. Eventually we managed it and after a while Amelia had a sleep too, so I got about 20 mins overlap to rest myself. Then when Ben got up we had some time alone together, which is always a lovely part of the day. D got home and we put the kids to bed, also a good part of the day.

Then hooray! It actually started to feel like my birthday! We had a lovely Indian takeaway, then I opened my presents! D got me some really beautiful jewellery with Swarovski crystals and mother of pearl, I'll have to get some pictures. I've started reading the Skulduggery Pleasant books and D got me the second one of those, and an exciting new board game. I got Lindor from Ben and some Hotel Chocolat from Amelia too. I'm so spoiled!

Next D turned down the lights and came through with my sneaky surprise birthday cake: a key lime pie! My favourite :) He put candles in it, very craftily using ones we had already and putting '30-1' lol. As if I need reminding!

It was a weird birthday and hard work, but thanks D for being so lovely! The little touches meant so much. However, I still demand that you take a day off in lieu of my birthday and wait on me hand and foot ALL day :D

One of the greatest days of my life

Me and my girl.

Oh silly me. I thought I'd be all clever and add the photos first then write around them but I've just realised that I've put them back to front! And it took ages. Never mind, this will just be a backwards post :)

This is the story of Amelia's birth. And it starts about 3 weeks before her birthday!

Amelia 2 days old, look how much she's changed already!

This little lady decided it would be fun to set things going a few weeks early and cause some major discomfort to mummy. I don't know whether she was just anxious to start her life, or whether the three weeks of Braxton Hicks were Heavenly Father being merciful and starting labour very gently so that things would go quickly when the time came, but those were three of the most miserable weeks of my life! Every single evening, and sometimes during the day too, I'd have contractions about 5 mins apart, lasting about a minute each. They hurt! I just felt like I never had any time to myself because as soon as Ben was in bed, the 3 or 4 hours of contractions would start. Plus every night I was thinking, 'Is this it? Will I be holding her tomorrow??'. I'd get all excited, then lie down and try to rest, then wake up the next morning! So frustrating. I guess I was worried about labouring through the night like last time and being exhausted, and that worry was probably slowing things down.

Amelia the day after she was born.

So, about 5 days after my due date I went for an acupuncture treatment. It was maybe my third time having acupuncture. The doctor is a good friend of Dave and his mum. He was so understanding and after taking my pulse and checking a few things he explained what was happening.

"Think of giving birth as climbing over a wall. It's a tall wall and you're going to have to climb to get over, but you have gone so close to the wall your nose is touching it, you can't climb it from there. What you need to do is take a couple of steps back, then you will be able to get over."

He said that he could either give me a treatment that would induce labour, or he could give me a treatment that would make me relaxed and smooth things along when I went into labour naturally. I asked him to do the latter, as I believe it is not good to interfere with the whens and hows of birth. It was horrible! Needles in my ears, knees, backs of my hands, ankles, toes, the sides of my feet: urghhh! But when I left, I wasn't bothered any more. I knew she'd come when she was ready. That was the Friday, and the Braxton Hicks contractions didn't stop, but I didn't mind so much.

Amelia and Mummy about 2 hours after the birth.

I woke up on the Monday morning at 4am in labour and instantly knew that this was it! I called Mum and she started the journey down, D called his mum and put her on alert. D's mum's car broke down on the way and she had to be rescued by the RAC! So Ben ended up going to our back-up plan, a couple who live just across the park.

I decided to call the midwife at about 7am, as I was starting to feel like I'd like to get the journey to hospital over and done with. Unfortunately she was with another lady who was in labour in Gloucester hospital, so she said she'd get her colleague to call me back. Just to explain this, I was in a programme for low-risk pregnancies where all your antenatal care is given by the same midwife in your home, and you only see a doctor if something worrying happens. Since it's all low-risk mothers, many choose home-births or use the midwife-led birthing centre in Cheltenham. You also, in theory, have the same midwife for your labour assistance and even if you are in the hospital they just stay with you until the baby comes, like in a home birth. They like to help you do as much labouring as possible at home before you go to the hospital (if you're going). I was uncomfortable, but it wasn't bothering me much and I wasn't afraid. The contractions felt more like energy rushing through me than pain really.

When Gemma, the other midwife, called me back I had almost finished running a bath and was desperate to get in it! I had a couple of contractions while we were on the phone but because I was so calm I guess she thought she had plenty of time! I told her I would be giving birth that morning, but I wasn't worried and wanted to get in my bath. We agreed that I'd call her again after my bath.

When I got out I called Gemma straight away and we agreed she'd come over and assess how far along I was (I suspect, again, she was thinking I was too calm to be as close as I actually was). It took her about 45 mins to get to the house in the rush hour traffic and she arrived about 9am. She felt my tummy during contractions and got a little more serious! I asked her to examine me to see how dilated I was- I just wanted to know vaguely how much longer it would be. Up we went, while D was in the shower, and lo and behold I was 8CM! 10cm is usually about when you start needing to push, but it can be anything from 6/7cm, so obviously this was shocking (but good) news! Gemma said that she was happy to head to the hospital but we might like to think about staying home, since transition (screaming and pushing!) could start literally any second! It had taken her 45 mins to get to our house from the hospital. D got a bit of a shock when he got out of the shower!

I asked what he thought about staying home. We'd talked about it before but decided to go to the hospital once we saw how lovely, relaxed, calm and welcoming it is. Just like home, but with more space! That was my main reason for not planning a home birth; we just have so little space here and I thought I'd want a birthing pool. As it happened, I didn't have time to want one lol. My other reason for going to the hospital was I didn't feel very happy about all the mess of giving birth being in my house, but the midwives were pretty tidy actually. D said it was up to me, and I just remember thinking, 'I can't give birth to this baby in the car'. I hated the idea that the poor kid might begin her life like that, and all the stress of it. So we decided to stay home. Later Mum, who was downstairs with the midwife, said that Gemma told her if we didn't make the decision soon, we weren't going to have a choice!!! lol.

Ben was whisked away and I decided to settle upstairs in our bedroom. I was still bouncing on my exercise ball between contractions, then going down to a kneeling position and leaning my head on the end of the bed during contractions. This was really nice because every time I leaned forwards Mum and Gemma started massaging my back :) Nice. D installed himself on a bedside table at the other end of the bed: my poor squeamish boy. And the bed, taking up most of the space in the bedroom, was empty! Hilarious. I should probably have just stayed downstairs.

Things started moving very quickly. The gas and air arrived out of Gemma's car, but I didn't need it, I was fine and I wanted to be able to feel what was going on. When transition started I felt exactly what was happening. Another midwife arrived (standard procedure). My waters burst soon after with a big pop and the hard work started, but four big screaming pushes later out she came, all in one go, just before 10am. She nearly landed on the floor because it was so quick; I was still kneeling at the foot of the bed so I think gravity helped!

I am so triumphant that I did it all myself and with no pain relief. I don't think I actually needed a midwife to be honest. Other than checking everything was okay all they did was catch the baby (and Mum says she nearly didn't even do that!) and keep everything clean! I'm glad they were there but I would have been happy with just Mum there.

Afterwards Amelia and I curled up on the bed and had a few feeds and some rest. Ben came home and D settled him for his nap, then when he woke up it was time to meet his little sister.

He is so gentle with her, it's lovely. He sometimes gets a little frustrated because he obviously wants my attention for himself too, but generally he is absolutely brilliant with her. It's a miracle but, I can honestly say I already find life easier with the two of them than I did with just Ben. I know that sounds crazy, but it is true. Amelia completes our family like nothing and no one else could.

This was the actual moment Ben met Amelia.

I know everyone gets gushy about their kids, but I am astounded by how much love I felt for Amelia instantly. I adore Benjamin, but we had a rocky start and I didn't really start to bond with him until he was about 3 months old. It was hard to like him at first when I was battling with post-natal depression and in constant pain and misery. He changed everything about my life, and at the time I wasn't all that happy about it! I feel like I had to earn the love I have for him with sacrifice. What I mean is, every minute I spent awake with him in the night; or rocking him for hours and hours while he screamed ALL DAY; or feeding him constantly even though it hurt so much I was in tears: all those sacrifices bound him to my heart. All that hard work I poured into him made me love him fiercely because I was draining myself to fill him. It made him part of me. I don't know whether anyone but a mother can understand that.

With Amelia it was completely different: the moment I saw her I loved her deeply and needed to be near her. The first three or four days there was nothing I wanted more than just to hold her and look at her. The bond between us was instant and powerful. If she wasn't touching me I felt like a part of me was missing. It's amazing how different the two experiences have been. I'm so glad I had another child so I could know what this feels like. I'm enjoying life so much now.

Amelia is a real mummy's girl so far, it is so sweet. When I come into the room she always knows and turns to look at me when she hears my voice. I am so excited for the future, going to Young Women activities together and doing personal progress, and watching girlie films! It's fab having a girl. And I am glad that Benjamin has a little sister. He is going to be a wonderful brother. I loved having sisters but I was always a little jealous of my friends with big brothers, so I'm pleased that Amelia will have that experience. We're such a happy family :)

It's been a while

I'm back! I'm hoping to be a more diligent blogger from now on. I need to find a subject that I'm interested in I think, so that I feel more incentive to get on the computer and do my posts.

I've decided today to let Ben sleep as long as he wants to instead of waking him up after a 2 hour nap. He's been quite tired this morning and I'm interested to see how long he will stay asleep if I just leave him. So far it's been 2 hours and 42 mins! He has been getting up at 5.30 a lot of mornings though, and his normal wake-up time is 6, so his total sleep is not quite as impressive.

I haven't even blogged on here about Amelia! She is born! My little bundle of joy arrive on 12th September 2011, and she really is a joy! I will have to start a post specifically about her birth, because it was such an incredible experience for me. I will start that today!

Things are going well, she has started to get into a good sleeping pattern now during the day, and usually wakes up twice at night (which I define as around 8pm-6am) which is good. The first 3 weeks she was waking every hour and a half to two hours which was a killer. Now her stretches are more like 4 hours... mmmmm.... Things started to improve when I started putting her on her tummy to sleep. I know midwives tell you you must put them on their backs when they are tiny, but seriously, the night I first let her sleep on her tummy she fell asleep in her crib and slept a 7 hour stretch (8pm-3am!!!). She turns her head during the night and has been lifting her head since she was about 2 weeks, so I feel confident in her being able to handle it.

Yikes, 2 hours 50 mins, can I leave him longer than 3 hours?? Actually, I think I hear him... yep. Ok, bye!

Running

Just a quick blog while Ben is still asleep: he's been sleeping an hour and 20 mins already (he usually sleeps about an hour) so there's not enough time to start doing anything, but I'm also aware he could sleep another half hour or so possibly, so thought I'd come on here for a while.

I have started going running with a friend from church and I am doing quite well if I do say so myself. I used to go running every day (except Sunday of course) on my mission and really enjoyed it. I was on my mission when the 30 minutes of exercise rule was started and was diligent in taking the time to keep my body fit. I saw numerous benefits for my health- being able to stand up all day on Temple Square with sometimes only one 30 minute break is no mean feat!

I have decided that I have been given such a wonderful gift. I lost a lot of weight before becoming pregnant with Ben, then a little more during the first trimester. Since Ben was born I lost the baby weight extremely quickly and was back into my normal size 12 jeans two weeks after the birth. I was eating anything and everything I wanted and a LOT of it, but breastfeeding seemed not only to make me an eating machine but at the same time to make the fat seem to drop off. Three months later I was almost back to the same size jeans I was when I returned home from my mission (UK size 10, US size 6: I know it doesn't sound amazing but it's small for me), without any of the effort! Sadly my breasts look set to never recover (of course this is due to having a child, nothing to do with breastfeeding), but everything else is looking very trim if I do say so myself.

Anyway, having seen how some of my peers have struggled to lose the baby weight I have decided that I need to show my appreciation for this gift by making an effort to keep myself this way. I do enjoy exercise on my own terms, i.e. I love cycling and running, but I very much dislike the typical girlie-bonding types of exercise (yoga and aerobics spring to mind!). I'm quite a private exerciser, I suppose. Anyway, I think I have found a great running buddy. She's a hard worker and fun to talk to. She also sets a good resting/walking pace, whereas I'm better at setting and maintaining a good running pace.

After our second run I'm really enjoying it, and I didn't pull ANY muscles this time! I'll keep posted on how it goes.

Walking, work and cuddles

It's been an exciting few weeks! Ben has been learning to walk! I can't believe how quickly he's progressed. To be honest, I am totally astounded by how brave he is. At the beginning he fell over a lot of course, but he just keeps trying. He's started to climb a lot now too, and he'll fail and fall over and over and just keep trying. It's really funny to watch, but also just makes me feel delighted that he has learned so much.

I have got to know him so well over the past few months. It's really special to be able to enjoy him and not have to battle with pain, depression and misery! I had such a hard time the first few months, in many ways, but things seem to be settled now. I have discovered that I have a very sociable boy. He loves to be around people and often goes walking around in the park chatting to everyone and giving them smiles. He's also really funny, trying to make me laugh or copy him. He is very affectionate, but saves all his cuddles for particular times of day, which makes them very special. I am surprised by how different he is to D and me, and yet he really fits in to our family well. I thought he'd pick up on how we are and be similar, but Ben definitely came with his own personality! There is no one like him. He's just brilliant!

Those closest to me know how much of a struggle I've had with deciding whether or not to go back to work. I was due to go back about a week ago, and I thought for a while about returning part-time (only in my job, part-time means 4 days a week which I think would have been too much for us, so it wouldn't have worked anyway). However, the day that Ben started crawling was a turning point for me. I suddenly realised what I could have missed! And since then, seeing how much confidence Ben has when I am there to catch him or give him a cuddle has really confirmed the decision for me. When he is sad or frustrated or triumphant I WANT TO BE THE MUMMY! I don't want someone else to be the one he goes to when he needs comfort, and I don't want it to be someone else clapping their hands when he succeeds. Being a full-time mum is hard work, but it's MINE!!!

Since I last posted, one of my sisters has got married and two of my sisters have become pregnant, so lots of change for our family. I'm excited for Benjamin to have some more cousins close to his age. Seeing my sisters battling morning sickness is not much of an incentive to starting another pregnancy myself, despite the subtle and not so subtle suggestions of everyone who knows my sisters and me! I am finding the frequent questions about when we are getting pregnant again rather rude, although not particularly annoying. I just find it amusing that people think it's any of their business (and I usually tell them so, which has produced some great reactions!). I don't feel in any hurry, probably because D and I are likely to only have two children. When the time is right I'm sure we'll know it is, and we will be even less likely to discuss it with the plebs :)

My little giant

Just thought I'd update with some pictures, since Ben is changing so quick. He is now in 3-6 month clothes (which is right for his age) but having just bought them I have realised that they seem likely to only fit him for another couple of weeks! He's only 14 weeks! He is chubby but so tall; the same size as a 6 month old in our ward. It doesn't bother me in the slightest, expect that I really like the clothes I bought!

He can hold things now...

...which makes it easier to bite them!


Polar bear!


We went to Ikea today with Grandma Bec to look for cots, but I couldn't find one there that goes high enough so that it doesn't hurt my back when I lift him out (he's so heavy). So the search continues...