14 Weeks Baby!!!! :)

Dear future pregnant self - it's really happened!!! I'm practically healed!!! At 12 weeks I was completely miserable feeling sure I'd NEVER recover, then 2 days later I was feeling amazing!!! Now 2 weeks later I am up and down a little, but generally a MILLION times better!!!!  I don't have a lot of time to write at the moment, but rest assured future miserable sick pregnant self, you totes get better at the end of the first trimester - all will be well :) :) :)

I'M SO HAPPY TO BE PREGNANT!!!!

I just spent a few minutes writing a post (below) about how terrible and awful I feel, and how I'm having a very difficult time being pregnant.  It is awfully hard and tough at the moment, but it is also, AWESOME!!!!!!!!!

I am soooooooooooooo excited!!! :)  I am overwhelmed a lot lately with all the 'hard' that comes with this time (that will hopefully be finished soon!!), but it feels like I have a bunch of layers of hard, starting at the outside - physically it's so hard, I'm so sick, then there's the next layer in of emotional hard - hard not being as 'there' as I want to be for the children, hard not looking after my husband and making his food the way I like to, hard being completely helpless and reliant on others to get my children to school, etc., being so useless, bla bla, bla Actually I think the emotional hard is a few layers all on its own.

But THEN, inside of me, right at the centre, surrounded by all the hard, is a sparkling ball of excitement and anticipation and wonder and gratitude and thrill and SO MUCH LOVE, that sends shivers and happiness through all my other layers when I can push aside the 'sick' and 'guilt' enough to let it!!!

Because we're having another BABY!!!!

We have 4 so far and there's not one among them who isn't AWESOME and AMAZING and INCREDIBLE, and one of the BIGGEST BLESSINGS OF OUR LIVES!!!!

And those little angels are sure excited about the baby in my tummy!!  As often as I can stomach it they are lying beside me rubbing my belly and talking to the baby :)  They can't wait to find out whether it's a boy or girl (tiebreaker round!!! ;)), and see it and hold it and cuddle it!! The girls are way too excited about how fat I'm going to get again!! ;)

Lately as I lie on the couch almost constantly, watching the children play, I often find myself just grinning at their awesomeness.  I love the way the girls are joined at the hip every second they're not in school.  Their imaginations are fabulous - they're mermaids, or princesses, or teachers, or pirates, or fairies, or doctors, or Mums, or aunties, or whatever the day brings.  They look after each other, and they look after me.

In this whole long journey so far of me basically being almost completely useless to these girls, they have not waned in their wonderful and helpfulness.  I am completely amazed at how incredible they've been - and I expect them to be good - they usually are!! :)  But they are soooo thoughtful and sweet!  They pray for the baby and me, they ask if they can get me anything, they look after their little brothers, they help out whenever they're asked cheerfully, and without complaint.  I seriously can barely believe how wonderful they are.  And I'm so grateful for them, and grateful that they're not just sick of me being sick and frustrated with the whole business and just wanting more attention.  They are the exact opposite, and have been so comforting to all of us!!  I never want to treat the girls like they have responsibilities like James & mine.  We are the parents, and it's time for them to be children and enjoy their time.  We definitely teach them to work and look after their things and look after each other, but not in a way that makes it their 'role' at this time.  Their role is to grow and learn and progress and love and build beautiful relationships and be happy and feel free and safe.  They'll be parents and homemakers of their own homes one day, and hopefully they will love it like we do!!  I don't want them to have a bad view of having children or a home to look after through any negative connotations of growing up in a big family and having big burdens placed on them through me not doing my job properly, if that makes sense.  Anyway, they have 'stepped up' at this time so beautifully and eagerly, without even being asked, and though they're helping me at times with things that I normally would never ask them to do, I'm so grateful that they're so kind and excited and happy to help, and they have seriously made this hard time so much easier for me by being such angels!!!  I can't stress how awesome they are.  And how cheerful and sweet!!!  And they have been such comforts to their brothers when I am being sick or something and they've led them away to play and distract them while I sort myself out!  Ana cleans the entire house every day she is home.  Without me saying a word to her I'll suddenly notice that they toys are all gone, and she's gone about and tidied everyone's rooms and made their beds.  What 4 year old does that?!  And Maggie gets home and assumes a place as everyone's entertainers and defenders, and reads to her siblings and thinks of fun games for them all to play together while I try to pull myself together.  They are both angels.

And then I watch the boys play.  And they're soooo so different to each other.  SJ is so quiet and sweet, and he has his own little world of cars and planes and dinosaurs, and he likes to share it with people, but it's special for him.  He loves giving cuddles and kisses and grins shyly when he comes and 'plants one on me' ;)  Christian just walks around trying to discover and destroy anything he can get his hands on at this stage, and he's so neverendingly cheerful and persistent and bouncy and loud, and loves being the center of attention!!!  They, unlike the girls, have spent this time fighting hard to get a bunch of attention from me.  If one of them is cuddling me the other will inevitably try to cuddle me too! - It has been very difficult for me when I'm super sick and it's really hard to have them crawling all over me, but what a blessing!  I have these 2 completely perfect and adorable and so different sons, who are so happy and sweet and loving, and love crawling all over me lol.  And SJ is starting to talk SO WELL, and loves testing out his language progress, and Christian is just so ridiculously confident in every way, nothing is a boundary to him.  Watching them makes me feel so happy - until the terror of them both thundering towards me for some quality cuddle time when I feel like I'm going to be sick comes round again ;)

It's been my longest ever break between children, and I am SO EXCITED to have a newborn baby again :)  I'm so excited to hold its tiny hands, and snuggle it all day long!  I'm so excited to feed it and look after it, and be awake feeding it in the middle of the night like we're the only two people in the world who are awake at that moment.  And I am SO excited for the love it's going to be getting from every angle around here!! :)  SJ seems to understand this time that there's a baby in my belly (he was 100% oblivious with Christian lol), and he has been soooo gentle and sweet patting my belly, and the girls are all over it.  They have been super big sisters/mother hens for a good 2 and a half years now (longer for Mags!), and are VERY excited for the new addition to our family.  They are having fun anticipating whether girls or boys will overtake the other in numbers around here, and keep chatting about what all of it's physical features will be, from the curly/straight hair debate to whether one of the children will have 'matching green eyes like Mummy's', or continue the 'brown eyed baby' trend the rest of this family follows :)

And of course James is super excited as well :)  At the moment he's all business trying to get us through this hard time and look after me and the other children, but he is the most incredible dad, I am so grateful he is my husband and our babies' father!!! They are soooooo blessed - we all are! - to have him!!! :)  Sometime in the first few hours after bub is born, we always manage to have some time up at the hospital while our other children are with our mums, and I will rest while James holds the tiny new baby in his arms and gets to know him or her.  It's such a beautiful time for both of them and I'm excited to see him bonding with the next one!!! :)

I know it's going to be hard/busy when bub is born next year.  When we had Christian last year and suddenly had 4 children 4 and under it was struggle time for me - I think it took me about 7 months to feel like I got my head above water again!!! But what a blessing of a challenge!!! By the time this 5th one is born Maggie will have turned 6 already, and she and Ana will both be in school full time, so I'll just have the 3 at home each day.  Every baby we have had has been such a happy, wonderful miracle in our lives, I really can't express how happy we are to know there's another on its way.  We feel sooo blessed!!!  When we were first married and it took us a long time to finally get Maggie, I don't think we could have imagined how blessed we would be to be surrounded with such beautiful children so quickly afterward!!

Oh and I know I said it but I'm so excited to have a newborn!!! I've always thought newborns were kind of boring, but since I've had mine, I've realised they're the most interesting, beautiful little things in the world!! :)  I will happily spend hours just staring at my baby, laughing every time it yawns, excitedly pointing every twitch out to James, or whoever is 'fortunate' enough to be nearby ;)  Babies are awesome.  They have no downsides.  Unless you count sleep deprivation as a 'downside', which you might be justified in doing ;)  But they are just perfect, and straight from God, and it's so exciting to be holding in your arms the tiny bub that's been chilling out in your belly for 9 months!! And so exciting for all of us to shuffle down to a 'new normal' in our family, with another little bundle of fabulousness.

So although I mentioned 'the hard stuff' in this post, and in great depth in the post below this one, if you look at the video in the post below that one, you'll see how excited I am ;)

Future Abby: read this when you are pregnant and morning sick...

Hi future self.  So I'm 11 weeks and 2 days pregnant :)

I am really, really sick.  And have been for about 6 weeks now.  The last 6 weeks have been horrifyingly bad for me - I don't know why they came as such a shock (this isn't exactly our first rodeo!!), but as much as I know it's going to be hard, you really and truly just forget every single time, and unless you're IN the moment, you can't quite imagine it.  It's like labour I'm sure, but that's a while off for now, so I don't need to worry about it yet!!  (As terrifying and horrific as labour is, the things I've learnt that stand out the most to me from the other 4 births are,

a) you usually live through it (I literally and quite seriously could barely believe I was still alive after Maggie's traumatic labour and delivery hahaha :)), and
b) YOU GET A BABY AT THE END!!!  SO YOU BARELY CARE WHAT YOU JUST WENT THROUGH!!!!!!!! :) SERIOUSLY!!!! :)  NOTHING BEATS THAT!!!!)

Anyway, I'm at a point in this pregnancy where according to my pregnancies with the 4 children we already have, I should start getting better in a week, and be almost entirely well in 3 weeks.  But I'm having some trouble believing that.  Will I really and truly just wake up and be able to get out of bed like a normal person?!  Will I be able to stop eating constantly and not want to be sick every time I move an inch?!  Will I really be able to eat whatever I want?  Could I just eat a normal sized meal 3 times a day and nothing weird and awful and desperate 50 times inbetween each?  Could I do my washing without sucking the heck out of a Preggie Pop in desperation that I'll be well enough to get all the pieces on or off the line?!  Will I actually be well enough to fold the washing? Push the pram? Make dinner? Play with the children?  Will I not feel like a bacon & egg muffin & hashbrown meal is the only thing that can really save me each morning??!!!

In my head I think I will.  I mean one day, surely?  But I am having a really hard time believing it!!

I've basically been a useless sloth for a while now.  I've barely taken the girls to school - probably not more than 3 times in the last 6 weeks at least.  They have spent a LOT of time in before & after school care, taken early and picked up late by James, they have spent time before/after school in James' office, my Mum and Dad and brother Oli have done a bunch of school runs for me, and friends have taken them and brought them home (even taking them to the playground for a play a couple of times!).  I guess the whole 'school' thing has added a different dimension to this pregnancy - I usually just cancel everything during these first few months and stay home, but I think it might be illegal not to take your children to school?! ;)  I've barely cooked, or cleaned, or made food.  Mum has spent so much time coming over in the mornings and helping with the boys until their naps, at which point she's made lunches and popped them in the fridge for later, often made dinners, and I've you know, sat on the couch or in bed pathetically.  James has been working SO HARD at school and home this term (probably his busiest school term ever - terrible timing!!!), but has had a lot of late nights, and Mum's even come over sometimes at night to help with dinner when James was busy.  But when James has gotten home he's had to clean up everything, get school uniforms and lunches ready for the next day, catch up on washing, etc. etc.  Basically I've been a huge burden on my husband and children and parents and siblings.  Which is actually really hard to stomach for a long period of time.  The constant guilt and feeling of helplessness has really gotten to me!!!  (Though at the same time I'm HUGELY grateful!!!!!  They are amazing.  I am sooo blessed!!!!  But sorry guys!!! :S :S :S)

Anyway, (you'd think the complaining couldn't go on much longer but I've been playing Take 2 for years, and my complaining is on another plane ;) - so I'll cut myself off ;)), I've read back on some of my old blog posts, and was sort of comforted to see that I really was super sick at the start of each, and I really did get better by 14 weeks.  But were all of those really as desperately bad as this pregnancy?!! - Cause I don't remember anymore!!

SO I wanted to write this to reassure myself:  This pregnancy is the WORST EVER.  It is SOOOOO HARD!!!!  I can do NOTHING and feel COMPLETELY HELPLESS AND GUILTY.  I am 11 weeks along and definitely no improvement yet.

And now, I'll wait till 14 weeks and report back to future pregnant again me, on whether or not I really and truly improved.  That way maybe next pregnancy I'll be able to hold on to this, and let myself believe in a brighter future ;)

So good luck current me, and future pregnant morning sick me.  Fingers crossed my '14 weeks' magic moment keeps holding true!!!

And now I'm going to write a post about how excited I am to be pregnant.  Because I am :)

Just saw this again. Love it :)

Banana Milk :)

I love Milo, but I can't keep drinking Milo because it's 'junk food', sigh.  But I keep craving milk (or Christian does, and I have to drink more to make more!), and not wanting to waste my treat for the week on a Milo (oh did I mention I find it hard drinking plain milk? - ew!), I asked James (who was on his way to the shops) if he could see if there was any yummy but not junk food milk.  He paid me out for a second and then he suggested I just blend a banana in some milk.  Genius.  I blended milk, a banana, a little cinnamon and a little vanilla essence (it is sugar free!) and it was delicious!!  I don't like ice cream, so it was like the yummiest version of a smoothie for me, ever!!  Loved it - weight loss win!! :)  Honestly I think it might be fattier than a Milo - but less addictive for me, because it doesn't taste at all like chocolate ;)

"I'll tell you what, you've got your hands full!"

Every time I go anywhere, people stop me and say this.  Like, LOTS of people.  There's a lady who sits on her front porch every morning when we walk to school, who says it every time we pass.  People stop me at the shops and say it.  Everyone I bump into at school says it.  I know they just want to say something - to comment on the fact that we have 2.35 more children in our family than the average Australian household these days.  I think they want to empathise - to let me know they know it must be busy having 4 young children.  Generally it's a friendly comment, but often it's a little incredulous, and like they think I'm a little nuts.  A bit of me is worried about what they'll all be thinking and saying when we have more kids! It's not like 4 is that unusual after all - I know heaps of families with way more!!

I don't really know how to respond to this.  

"Oh my word you're right!" 

"Oh these aren't mine - kids are just drawn to me.."

 "Yeah.. hey what do you say about lightening my load a little and carrying these two through Coles for me?"

I pretty much just laugh awkwardly and say "Yes...".  

I just saw a much better response quoted under a random painting of a mother and baby:

"If you think my hands are full, you should see my heart."

Much better.

Fitness Challenge! Week 4

So as of today I've lost 3kgs.  It's exciting, especially considering I haven't been able to work out a great deal, since I keep injuring myself!  It's been soooo frustrating on that front! - I still feel super unfit and weak, but I'm stoked that I'm managing to lose some weight just by the eating part of the challenge, yay!

Walking, running, weights, everything else seems to be out of reach though, so I've pulled out a 'Mumalates' DVD a friend gave me a couple of years ago - it's specialised pilates for post pregnancy, so hopefully I'll have something good to report before long?!  I'm hoping that if I build up strength slowly, I'll be able to move into more active and rigorous exercise soon!  Netball is still going - I'm completely useless, cause I've hurt a ligament in my left leg and as soon as I start moving into a jog/run it pulls again or something and I can barely move! :s  But hopefully I build up a little more fitness through that once a week, since I'm not really able to treadmill :P

I am sooo tired all the time with these 4 childrens, it's hard to keep up with anything at all that means taking a great deal of time out of my day that doesn't involve them, so blogging about the challenge is at least as hard as fitting in exercise!!! lol.. But I'm still going!!

Oh and my 'treat for the week'-s have been getting less awesome, because I can't 'take my chocolate' the way I used to be able to, sigh.  It's partly good cause it means my body is used to healthy stuff and not junk anymore, but partly sad, cause I love eating chocolate!!! lol.

Anyway I'm not thinking straight so I'd better go to sleep, hopefully this made sense :p

xox