Marking the days

Counting down, first of all, these last few days (or weeks) of being Five Plus Bump. Impatience (mostly due to baby being engaged and my hips being correspondingly painful) battling with enjoyment of this moment right here and now. And add in just a tiny dash of "am I ready"?!

Counting down the days until my sweet Morgan has completed her fifth dance around the sun. How and when did she get so grown up? Something subtle but astonishing has changed in her lately, so that even relative strangers comment on it. The library security guard: Gosh, hasn't this one started to bloom? The guy in the wholefoods shop: It seems like barely last week she didn't say a word, and now look at her!

Oh it's so true. She is suddenly tall, she is speaking up in public and standing up for herself and her likes and dislikes, she is starting to read and write, she goes off on her own to Sunday School and for sleepovers: what happened to this soft little baby creature?!

Counting down, as Advent is upon us, these weeks of celebration and sharing and warmth, marking the turning of the year, celebrating the birth of the Christ... As we do throughout the year, just, at this time of year, with a few extra little traditions backing us up - and how can I not enjoy the little old fashioned English play of words in Son/Sun? :)

Ordinary extraordinary days. How can I possible capture it all? This is my everyday. Right now.

Puzzles and snack times and afternoon naps.


Stacks of drawing and writing, plans and games, heaps of lego tipped out on my bed and abandoned, time for knitting away in the quiet moments.



A toddler in a storage box. This is my life! :)

Waiting outside Martin's work in the rain. Children running in to Church on Sunday morning. Season table for the first week of Advent.



It seems irresistibly bright today, and real, and precious, and immediate. This strange wonderful ordinary life. I am so blessed to be here.

27

What did I desperately want to do on my birthday? In spite of clicky hips and h.e.a.v.y bump? Walk on the moors. And I did. And it was beautiful.

It's so desolately perfect up there with the whistling winds and the acres of amber bracken and browning heather... Even with the children running around it is a lonely place.

Something in it and something in me were in tune, and I cried a great deal, mostly over feeling just so utterly inadequate and unprepared to be a mother (again; or even of these three perfectly beautiful independent feisty human girls). When did I start becoming morose about birthdays, and still feeling so very young and wondering what, exactly, I have done with these years so far and if it was the Best and Perfect thing...

OK I'm feeling better today, and able to see the silly pregnancy hormones for what they are, and hold my family close and see them as blessings and myself as a blessing to them. :)

I made myself chicken curry for tea (tough luck, non-curry-eating family, you can have rice!) and had baklava instead of birthday cake, and pondered how to spend the book token from my Dad. And the years go on, and I am 27, and soon I will be 27 with four children. It's impossibly hard to imagine, and some days it's hard hard work just now to even get there. But it's pretty beautiful, too.

And who knew? My cat loves curry sauce almost as much as she loves broccoli and melon!

Sometimes it's like this...

Here are my two bigger daughters, playing PlayStation Lego StarWars, in the utter chaos of our living room.

And here is the result of some more insane nesting. It beats the crazy hormonal crying, anyway.

I have to say, it's feeling like a long week again. My hips are getting very uncomfortable and I feel very done with being pregnant already, in spite of logically knowing it is likely to be several more weeks.



There are definite highlights. The children are so wild and happy and beautiful. I am loving having a bump for all the discomforts (and yet again, the return of the sickness). And we are getting out and about, enjoying these precious days before newborn-ness takes over (as it must, soon).



My henna is still bright. Beautiful decorated bump!


I am trying to remember how grateful I am to be here, now. Impatience keeps on creeping in, and of course tiredness, and time seems to be passing so slowly. But there is a lot to be thankful for. :)

Blessing

A gathering of friends to celebrate me! And this little one growing bigger and stronger day by day. And our rapidly approaching meeting earthside. :)

Henna, of course.

And silk painting, hangings for on my walls right now and for playthings once baby has use for them.



Beads for my birthing necklace.

And just being surrounded by love. :)

Bump

This is me, walking away from our hospital appointment with a HUGE grin on my face and a spring in my step. Yes, that placenta hasn't just shifted a little bit as I've expanded, it has moved one heck of a lot and is a good 5cm away causing NO PROBLEM WHATSOEVER!!! Minnow also obliged by turning head down just so that the consultants could get to see a lot of hair and had a tricky job checking thoroughly for placental blood vessels around that *engaged* head. :)

The consultant was so sweet and encouraging, and looked at the screen a good long while with the midwife sonographer, and then said she wasn't 100% sure about what she was seeing, and looking back at my notes. Then she ran for a colleague, who came in wearing her coat and bag clearly ready to go home, and the second consultant also looked from notes to screen, and said something like "can't even be called a previa at all" and my heart gave a little skip.

When she said "5cm from the os" and wrote it down on my notes, and said, "it's tricky to see around this head!" I just had to check, we're really definitely not breech any more, really? Yay! The second consultant congratulated me roundly, said it was most unusual but wonderful news for us, and went off home with a smile. And I went out of the room in just such a daze.


Thankyou, a million times, to all of you who have prayed for us and sent us your best wishes. Oh, baby bump, clever baby, thankyou for co-operating and oh I am so so glad all is so very well with you. I felt some strong tugging and scrabbling this week and wondered if you were helping us along a little, and you certainly got yourself turned around nicely in time for the scan today! It's so great to know we will meet you when you are ready and in your own way after your own labour (and mine). You wonderful little thing!

Reading and, um, starting some more knitting!

Borrowed more of the Temeraire books, and read them all in a couple of days. The distraction is welcome! Knitting, going slowly at first with the Faraway So Close shawl, since I am needing to master new methods of working increases. The yarn is GORGEOUS. I treated myself to Manos Del Uruguay silk blend for my birthday (next week) and am actually knitting something for me! :)

We'll be off to the hospital soon. I'm trying not to keep going over possibilities in my head, right now. One way or another, I'll have more firm news, so very soon.

Gifts

Finished baby gift for my sister in law's little one. Tim and Nusa's tiny daughter has finally been born, and I finished knitting for her just in time. :)

A sweet kind thoughtful wonderful gift from a kind Green Parent mama. Minnow can't possibly love it as much as I do, please please thank your DH for his beautiful handwork, and thankyou for your kind thoughts.

The greatest gift of all, right now, baby still growing and doing fine, no bleeding or other emergency; a healthy pregnancy and every possible hope of good news from the consultant tomorrow.

Leaves and Sky

The sound of many many birds chirping away in the trees above us. A little chattering two year old telling us how much she loves the birds, and will they not come and sit on her hand please?

Games and sweet laughter, yelling and running up and down, climbing and swinging. My beautiful girls, brimming over with life and joy.


A neat tiny round baby bump, so close to meeting us, so close. Sweet little one, how I have loved these Autumn days of carrying you warmly inside.


The colours of the leaves, above, below, around. Crispness of gold and bronze, and the beautiful reds and yellows, shapes against the grey-white of the sky.

Smell of damp moss, nourished earth, and woodsmoke coming off the allotments. Cool grey-green smells speaking of renewal out of these endings.

Black branches, woodsmoke, bright leaves, cool grey chill of Winter's approach. The world is holding its breath.

Today is a day made for joy. For holding close. For warmth. Today is a day to get outside in the cold fresh dampness, and come alive.

Ninth Moon

Everything I expected about probably giving birth after our tenth full moon is still up in the air, turned on its head; I might be birthing this baby any day, or next week, the predictability (for me) of going overdue and birthing practically on my own are really the tiniest of outside chances.

Baby is so active and happy. I am still feeling relaxed about whatever happens. I just wish I knew now, wish I could tell. Will my expanding curve of belly have carried that placenta far enough? Will this baby turn now? (I have felt it try several times, but it seems to get its legs wedged and then give up!) Will I come away next week with a date to have this baby in my arms, or more wait-and-see? (As much as I would prefer the freedom to go back to wait-and-see, I dread most of all an ambiguous situation in which I'm advocating for a different approach to the hospital and nobody knows for certain which would be best.)

I am as tired and uncomfortable as is usual for this stage. Somehow I have gone from feeling barely pregnant to being well aware of how big I suddenly am and how the baby is inclined to prop itself with an elbow or sit itself on my bladder! Oh precious little one, keep wriggling and getting fatter, grow strong and healthy. Be ready, when we meet, be ready.

This week is dragging by.

Knitting/Reading

Not much on the go for me at the moment except knitting. That and watching junky sci-fi on TV any chance I get (pretty good as a combination activity but requiring of children being otherwise engaged unless I want them to have nightmares).

Today I started working on a simple vest for my neice, who was due this week and isn't showing any sign of appearing yet. I was knitting that petal lace for her, but it turned out far too big and I have somewhat lost momentum now I don't actually *have* to do a billion loooong rows of stockinette (why do I keep on taking projects that require so much of it?)! The reading on display I am halfway through reading aloud with Jenna. There is something special about sharing my own childhood favourites. <3 For myself I'm actually pretty much only reading snatches of this. My birthday present from hubby.
A much wanted *tiny* cute little Transetto edition of the King James Bible. I don't really have one go-to translation I use for study, just prefer to have a selection to refer to, but I do like the old-fashioned poetic KJV and NKJV for straight reading. I also like this for being simple - no fuss on the page, nobody telling me how I ought to read it, just pages of text with unobtrusive numbering.

Oh, and for good measure, a finished project... Unfortunately my camera doesn't like taking pictures in artificial light and I can't be bothered to mess about with settings, so it's a bit overexposed - the colours are the lovely lovely pure wool I put up pictures of a week or so ago - but here's Minnow's Spiral Blanket. :)

Just needs a bit of light blocking and a couple more ends sewing in. I do have a BIG pile of projects that "just" need ends sewing in...

The living room floor is barely visible under toys today, and I feel as if I could happily just sleep for a week. The laundry isn't yet piling up again, though, and the emergency hospital bag is packed and ready to go. I ordered myself some very lovely yarn today to make a shawl actually for me. The children are running amok. But in a happy kind of way, generally. And I had porridge with Autumn berries for breakfast, yorkshire pudding and gravy for lunch, and am about to make stew and dumplings for tea. Warming late-autumn joys. Really, Minnow is happy and kicking away, so what more could I want?