Tips and tricks for bringing on labour – aka How to evict your baby

When those old wives sat around weaving their tales they certainly spent a lot of time on the labour inducing ones. I tried a couple of things with Monkey but as you would know if you’ve read my Birth Story (errr novel) I was still induced anyway. I’m convinced it is because I didn’t have enough time.

Next time I won’t be caught out like this. Next time I will be armed and ready with labour inducing techniques coming out my wahzoo (closely followed by a human being hopefully). I did a bit of research on the topic recently and compiled this little list so if you are keen to know what’s what in this department head on over to You and Baby and check it out. Or if you’ve used some of these yourself or something different altogether then leave me a comment and tell me all about it. I want details!

Psssst…if you click on this gorgeous baby belly (yes that’s me!) it will zoom you on right over there.

A Day in the Life – Friday

Woah. I made it. I have posted every day of this week and kept up with Kerry’s awesome Day in the Life series.

This is despite the fact that I am bone tired. Talk about a busy week. And it’s only going to get worse before it gets better.

It’s almost 9pm here right now and as soon as I’ve scheduled this post I am SO  going to bed. So let’s get this party started.

A Day in the Life – Thursday

Fabulous idea. Go brain!

It was another really busy day today. And I have a cold sore to prove it. Too much going on before the big trip. Today was my second work from home day in the week. The schedule is pretty similar to yesterday’s. 

A Day in the Life – Wednesday

What a little legend!

Today is Day 1 of my work at home days (there are two). These days don’t have as much going on so I’m going to try a different format.

7:45am – This is our goal ‘leave the house for daycare’ time. We don’t always make it but today we did even though Monkey slept in until 7am. Double hooray! Dare I say that I might be getting good at this? Better not. It will all go to hell in a handbasket if I so much as THINK it. 

A Day in the Life – Tuesday

First ever sticker book. LOVED IT.

Well today technically started at 2am when Monkey woke up crying. It is so rare for this to happen these days that I actually bolted upright in my bed with surprise. I’d had the late night remember (in Monday’s wrap up) so I was a bit startled to be jolted awake less than 4 hours after going to sleep. I was so startled that as I raced into Monkey’s bedroom to see what the hell was going on I totally forgot that I’d recently put a toddler gate on his door to stop him creeping out at bedtime.

BOOM.

I connected with that MOFO. Damn. Hopefully that should keep its existence firmly planted into my memory banks for next time.  And we are off to a cracking start to the day.

It’s here. It’s happening. Two whole weeks without my awesome 2 year old.

Oooo look I’m in the reflection. Best. Place. Ever

I can’t believe I am doing this.

Right now I am feeling a mix of excited and traumatised which are two really weird emotions to be feeling at. the. same. time.

Holy crap.

As I type this I am sipping on a steaming hot cup of coffee and eating what I think must be the world’s best bacon and egg roll (it has hollandaise on it people). To top it all off this is all taking place ringside to what is arguably one of the best views in the world: the airport.

Yup, the airport.

Some people like mountains, others like the sea, but me baby, I like the airport. I’m not sure what it is that stirs me so but it goes straight to my soul. It’s not just that I’m excited about going away. Airports rock my world even if I’m just dropping folks off or picking them up. Yeah I know. I’m weird like that.

Best every bacon and egg muffn

For me, the airport represents a world of possibilities. It reminds me that the little plot I’m currently occupying is just that, a teeny tiny little plot and not the centre of the universe after all. It refreshes and invigorates me and gives me a thirst for life.

We actually live on the flight path for the local airport so I get to see planes flying over on a regular basis. I LOVE it. Every single one of them makes me smile and I don’t find them to be a bother at all.

Anyway I’m faffing on about airports when what I really wanted to talk about is the fact that I’m going on a holiday (woohoo!) but that it involves me being away from monkey for 2 whole weeks (boo).

I think it’s pretty fair to say that emotionally I’m like an unstable explosive at the moment. Freaking traun wreck. For the past few days I’ve been racing between feeling excited to see my brother and my friends to feeling traumatised about leaving my monkey. Boing, boing, back and forth, I’ve been picking up quite a pace.

I want these in grown up size please.

I left in the early hours this morning so we had to do a pretend departure for Monkey last night. I even put my bag in the car to make it seem more real. He’s a cluey kid and wouldn’t have been easily fooled. He’d watched me pack and we’d been talking all day about mummy going on a plane and him staying with Oomah (my mum) and Didee (my aunt). We prepped him so well that he barely batted an eyelid when I left. I was trying so hard to give him a big squeezy hug and he just pushed me away and said “I stay Oomah. Bye, Mummy”.

So good. And sad. But good. And a relief.

Won’t be needing one of these baby rooms for 2 weeks. That should make me happy but instead it made me cray.

I thought I’d cry at that point but I didn’t. The whole thing just felt really surreal. Plus I think I’ve had a mammoth amount of adrenaline coursing through my body this past 24 hours. Kinda makes it hard to feel things.

The tears came though. As I snuck out of the house this morning to get my airport transfer I felt like a naughty schoolgirl sneaking out to see her boyfriend. Pump, pump went the adrenaline. Once on the bus I started to catch up on my blog reading. I started reading this post by one of my blogging friends about the earthquake in her home town in the Phillipines last week (they’ve had thousands of aftershocks – weird) and promptly burst into big silent tears when I got to the bit where she is worrying about her son. It brought all of my fears to the surface and all of a sudden where I had been otherwise numb there was the biggest most overwhelming feeling ever. It was like someone was sucking the breath out of me and all I could think was What have I done?.

Well what I’ve done is leave Monkey with people who love him who are also very competent at looking after children. When my mum and aunt (who have raised 5 children between them) return home at the end of the week Monkey will go and stay with his dad, a very competent and loving father. It will all be ok. We will Skype and he will see me and we’ll blow kisses and it will all be fine. It’s not the moon, it’s just North America and worst comes to worst I can be back in 24 hours. I’m not THAT far away.

Besides, as I keep reminding myself, he’s 2. He will not even remember this when he is older.

So I put my head back and practised my deep breathing. Things were going to be ok.

And hey, I can’t say I’m not excited about two weeks of sleep ins. I mean, come on, I’m no fool. It’s the bomb.

A Day In The Life – Monday

This week I am going to be giving you a glimpse of my life from Monday to Friday in an average week.  I don’t usually write general update posts, I tend to wait for “something” to happen or write about a particular event etc, so hopefully this is something fresh and new interesting for you all. Or maybe my life is boring as batshit. If so, I apologise!

Baby shower games it won’t take you ages to organise

If there’s one thing I know it is that , these days, most of us are time poor. So we don’t have time to sit around and sift through a gazillion baby shower games online wondering which are fun and not too hardcore to prepare. I’ve taken the hard work out of it for you (because I’m just nice like that) and put a list of my favourites together. ALL are super easy to organise and require limited materials. They are also a lot of fun to play.

So if you are in the market for easy baby shower games then click on the pretty pic below and it will zoom you right on over to my post. Ciao!

When your uber awesome efficiency system fails you…or you fail it.

It’s one or the other really, isn’t it? User error or system error. And in this case I think it might be me. But the system had a fault so it failed me too. Except I created it.

OK. I suspect this isn’t making a lick of sense so I might start at the beginning and you can tell me what you think.

I have this super sophisticated to-do system going on at the moment. It involves post-it notes and my kitchen cupboard doors. See. TA DA! 

Things My Kid Will Never Do (because I’m the world’s best parent)

Yes, yes, I was going to be the world’s best parent. And then life happened.

Pre-baby most of us had certain ideas of what sort of children we would raise. Mine were going to be impeccably mannered little human beings because I was going to be a super dooper parent who never did any of these atrocious things those other slack arse parents do.

You let your 4 month old chew on your mobile phone? Oh nooooo. I would never. And I didn’t. But he got his mits on it eventually and I’ve done a bunch of other things that I’m sure have caused many an observer to shake their head and tsk tsk at me under their breath.

Two years into this parenting gig and I now know that we all do what we can to get by. And some days that involves TV all day and toast for dinner as much as I don’t want that to be how it rolls at our place. Some days it just kinda does.