A new arrival...

Meet the newest addition to the Quirky Bean Family!

Baby Lynton is 8lbs 4oz of squishy loveable perfection! He ended up being 11 days over due so on the 1st of October at 7am I went in to be induced. My waters were broken at 8am and I was started on Oxytocin, I didn't have my first contraction until 11am. As the hours progressed I didn't and bub didn't look like he was going to make an appearance on his own. I stayed 3cm dilated through horrible irregular contractions until late afternoon, it was hard hearing that after so many hours of such irregular pain I hadn't gotten any closer to meeting our baby boy, I found I just couldn't cope any more on gas alone. It was just crushing, the little amount of control I felt I had went out the window and I ended up needing an epidural. For about an hour afterwards I was so exhausted and tried to sleep... guess what happened?! While I was dozing I dilated the remaining 7cms! I remember the midwives telling me to push then the obstetrician coming in...all she said was that baby needed some help coming and all of a sudden things started happening around me. Forceps, an episiotomy, internal stitches, a manual removal of the placenta and 800ml of blood loss later baby Lynton was finally born, put to my chest and oh my the world just stopped turning. Meeting our baby at 7.33pm was the most incredible experience of my life! A part of me is disappointed that I couldn't go into labour on my own, that I couldn't birth my child without needing all the drugs available to me, that when it came down to it I couldn't push effectively enough to bring him into the world on my own but I couldn't have planned for any of it to happen and there was nothing more important than our little guy's safe arrival. Of course then I was stuck in birthing suite until 5am the following morning because the epidural hadn't worn off until then, I was trundled off to a room and from then on our lives changed forever! It's now 11 days post birth and like all new parents we're stumbling our way through it all; even with all the troubles that come with learning to breastfeed, the sleepless nights, the worry we feel over every little hiccup and noise our baby makes, we are absolutely smitten with our son and really, we finally know that somehow everything will just be ok.

Now that he's here we're focused on our BIG move to the Northern Territory in 2 weeks time and somehow planning a trip to see my family before we leave, lots of huge changes are coming our way, lots of new experiences and I'm sure lots of new stresses but to be in our space again with our own routines and essentially having our own lives back everything we've been through up until now seems worth it. Adjusting will be the biggest step for me, and I'm terrified that my depression will sneak back but at the moment, taking it one day at a time is our best and only option.

Welcome to the world, my darling Baby Shmoogle Bean! 

The beginning of a new adventure!

I've decided to affectionately label our soon to be new little family the Quirky Bean Family. From the day we announced to my parents that we were expecting, my mother knicknamed the little blob on the 7 week ultrasound 'Ju Ju Bean', when I was young I was 'Shmoogle Bean' and I guess they both just stuck! Mind you my mother also used to call me Doo Doo Bug but hey, who wants to be publicly known as a Doo Doo Bug? I'm sure it was meant as a loving term of endearment and she wasn't in fact referring to me as a dung beetle. Well that little Ju Ju Bean of mine is now 8 days overdue and driving his mummy and daddy insane with waiting. Every little twinge I wonder if it's the beginning of labour! As it happens Baby Bean is posterior and hasn't begun to engage at all so this mumma bear will be trotting off to the hospital in 2 days time for an induction. Back to blogging!! It's particularly convenient as in about ooooh 2 weeks time, this little family will be packing up their lives again and taking one heck of a long road trip from Albury, NSW to Palmerston, NT with a newborn baby. There will first be a 13 hour trip from here to Port Macquarie where we will spend a week with my family, then from there we begin an 8 day 'adventure' by car to nearly the other end of the country. You see now why this is such a crazy decision?! It's no crazier than moving here in the first place mind you. We came here when we did because we reasoned that moving before Baby Bean was born would be easier than after. HA! Funny right? Trust me, the irony is not lost on us. 

But it's a step in the right direction! 

We aren't the first people in human history to be making such a journey under these circumstances though, and that gives me hope that it can be done. I try not the think about the multitude of things that need to happen between now and when we get on the road because let's face it, who wouldn't have a meltdown?! And believe me when I say I have had more than my fair share of those lately. As I said, it's been difficult. The best we can do is take it one day at a time and work through what needs to be done one bit at a time without looking too much at the big picture. The big picture is a wall sized Pollock/Warhole mash up framed in solid lead and hanging precariously on 3 rusty nails hot glued to the plasterboard. Do what needs to be done and don't think too far into the little things or your brain may explode. Not so much COMPLETE denial, but small amounts to get us through isn't such a bad thing. 

It's been a bumpy ride but we've had amazing outside support from various military personnel, we've had a lot of advice and encouragement come from people who have lived and worked in Palmerston and everyone we speak to tells us that we couldn't have scored a more perfect first posting. My husband was *somehow* (thank the universe!!) lucky enough to transfer straight from a stand-down reserve position into a full time position. Once we got over the initial 'there's no way we can move that far' shock and started to work through the planning process we realised how completely do-able it really is! We worked out a rough travel plan that suited us and got the green light for it, we have a place to live picked out on the other end, we've arranged for all our things to be picked up and moved (handy thing that we were already packed!), we're sorted travel for the two furbabies...it's working! BUT it really does come back down to Baby Bean's arrival. He'll be here no later than next Tuesday but so much of this depends on his delivery and both his and my own health. There is absolutely NOTHING more important right now than getting little Bean here and in good health.  I tell you what, when you've been growing a little person for 9 months and you go 8 days past your due date it REALLY tests your patience and sanity! (You know what else tests your patience? Having a multitude of people ask you everyday whether you 'had that baby yet' or tell you which day would be convenient for his birth... why do people insist on asking idiotic questions to a hormonal blimp? It can never end well)
 We just want to meet you little man! I want to see what colour your hair is, what colour your eyes are; I want to see your tiny toes and feel your little fingers wrap around mine! I want to see you take your first breath, feel your new skin, wrap you up and snuggle you and tell you how much we love you and what a perfect joy you are to our lives. It's all well and good to be told you have a tiny human inside you, it's all fine and dandy to feel those kicks (and when your baby is posterior... you really FEEL them!) but looking down at my stretchmarked mass of bump I constantly find myself wondering how just an inch or two under there is a teeny weeny perfect little baby. It's surreal! 

Everytime we go into town and I hear a new baby cry I have this overwhelming urge to rush to it and comfort it, it's driving me bonkers. I keep having weird dreams about babies and NONE of them are the slightest bit realistic. One night I dreamt that I gave birth to the baby out of Spirited Away!! Every night I go to bed wondering if I'm going to wake up to my waters breaking, or to that first contraction and wake up disappointed the next day. Then to go in for my last OBS check up and find out that I hadn't dilated at all, and that baby is still very high up really dampened my spirits. I was hoping for just a little bit of progress... I've been told that labour can just spring on you out of the blue and take you by suprise, and I've been waiting, but it hasn't happened for me yet. As another day comes to an end I'm getting less and less confident that I'll go into labour on my own. It was just one of those things, you know? It can't be helped of course, whatever needs to happen to make sure Baby Bean arrives happy, healthy and screaming is fine by me. That doesn't stop me from being terrified of being induced of course but I'll manage! 

So there we go, today seemed like as good a place to start as any... right on the edge of all that's about to change! Or on the edge of glory... if you were Lady Gaga. I'm off to, oh wait, no I'm not off anywhere, probably just 1 metre to my left to bounce on my fitball for a while in the hopes that baby might fall out. That's how it works right? 

P.s I see my parents tomorrow sometime, they drove all the way here to visit and to be here for the birth. My mum told me that once they've given me all the squeezes and belly rubs the rest of the family have sent I'm going to look like a half empty squeezed tube of toothpaste. What's life without humour?