You love to put things in order. Like today, I was outside hanging the laundry and you were next to me hanging the socks on the metal drying rack. You really hang them up so well and neatly, it is like I did them myself and you LOVE to put on the clothes pegs. That is another thing that you can do for a period of time if in the mood is to stand there and just hang clothes and pegs on the clothes horse or just sometimes hang the pegs. You have excellent fine motor skills.
You love books and you love to be read to. You are able to accurately identify colours and have been doing so for a number of months as well you can count to ten without an error, but you don't yet understand the concept of ten and if you count objects, you may understand one and two, but above that, you just use rote counting.
You ability to verbally express yourself is outstanding and you are also able to identify and state your emotions. Like one day we were driving in the car to the home birth mothers' group and you said that you were sad. And I asked you why and you responded that Tara gets to drink Momma's milk. And so I validated that you were sad that you no longer were having milk as Momma did not have any milk. I decided when you were around 21 months old to see if I could persuade you to give up breast feeding and in its place, read a book to you. It was a gradual transition where I stopped feeding you in the morning, then after your sleep and eventually stopped feeding you before your sleep and the last feed to drop was the feed before bedtime. You seemed to accept the change quite easily and when you would ask me for milk, I would tell you the honest truth that there was not any more milk and that they were empty and if you would like a book instead. You started saying, "Book instead." I was finding it difficult to breastfeed as my nipples had become so sore after getting pregnant that it was a very sharp, cutting pain on my nipple as soon as you would latch on. So I was much happier knowing that you were not stressed with the change and we could make the transition to no milk as I knew I didn't want to be the only person to put you to sleep at night due to the milk factor and seeing that the new baby was coming along, I wondered how I could juggle both. To be honest, if the change had upset you and you really seemed distressed, there is no way I could have stopped feeding you your "milkie" as you called it. It seems though since I did drive the change and it was not initiated by you, you still have the desire to breastfeed and recently have been saying, "When the new baby comes, Momma will have milkie. I want milkie." And if you remember how to feed and latch on, which some people have said toddlers forget once they stop feeding, but if you do remember, I will happily feed you occasionally during the day. So let's see what happens as I really enjoyed feeding you milk up until my nipples started hurting me and even then, I still enjoyed that closeness once you were attached to my breast and the pain was gone after the initial latch on.
The other thing that you have initiated on your own practically is going to the toilet. Maia, honestly, you are so clever and with it for a two year old. One person in our music class thought you had turned three and I can see why as you have a wisdom and a knowing in your face, your behaviour and your verbal expression that goes beyond your two year old age. I basically started to ask you about using the potty and I pull out a portable one and let you run around nappy free and I started suggesting that you go wee on your potty and before I knew it, you took to it like a fish to water. In the last week, you have figured out the session in your bottom means that a poo is coming and you now regularly take a poo on the toilet. The first time you did so, I was in the computer room and I heard you sit down and before I knew it, you were running in the room announcing that you had done a poo on the potty. So now I just need to figure out how to leave the house without putting a nappy on you. I tried this week and just brought you potty to the play group and you would go to your potty and you actually took a poo on the potty. You really have make it easy. I still put a nappy on your at nap time and when you go to sleep at night as I don't know how to make that transition to getting you not to wet the bed and it just seems so much easier to use a nappy at night. I don't feel like having our sleep disrupted at the stage as being pregnant, I can use ever bit of sleep that I can get as I seem to be my worst when I am either tired or hungry meaning, my level of patience with a two year old is not as high and you are an excellent little girl. You just are starting to not listen and I can usually cope with it and get you on track, but when I am tired, I tend to be short tempered with you, which I know is not the best way to handle the situation. Overall, I feel like I am a good mother and love you beyond words as you are an absolute pleasure to be around.
You also have this incredible ability to entertain yourself and find thing to do that interest you while I am either trying to get something done on the computer or am preparing food or cleaning the house. I really appreciate that about you.
Today, we worked together and made burrito sandwiches and you enjoyed spreading the beans on the flat break, working together to cut the tomato and then putting it all together for yourself with beans, tomato, lettuce and cheese. Yes, you eat lettuce and actually in the last few months have been saying at the dinner table, "I want salad." At first we would just give you tomato and cucumber, but now you want it all including the greens, which I find to be incredible for a two year old child. Today, you ate two dry squares of sushi paper and asked for more before I gave you your quinoa and beans.
One of your favourite activities is drawing on your easel. You love to make circles and just scribble there with markers or crayons. Today, I brought out the water colour paints and you really enjoyed yourself using the paint brushes and then your fingers to make designs together.
The other lovely thing you were doing today is holding on to one of the towels that was haning on the hills hoist and walking around in a circle singing the train song that we sing at Kindergym..."Down by the station early in the morning...."
In terms of your social skills, you are definitely a shy and reserved child, but you have become much more comfortable with other children and do not seem scared of them like you used to when I last wrote in this blog. You do not initiate going off with a child, but, for instance, if I suggested that you go and play with Tara, a little girl of 2 and a half at the play group, you will venture over to her. You don't exactly play, but you tend to like to observe other kids and are a great observer in general. You really just stop and take it all in. Where most children are in their own world, you are looking at the world around you with great interest.
Most people would not know how well you communicate as you tend to be very quiet around other people and they are always surprised when you do get comfortable or are not thinking and start to sing or something. That is just part of your cautious nature with other people.
Today we woke up to a red sky. I had never seen anything like it. The winds were so wild and strong that they had actually brought red earth to the city from hundreds of miles inland and
visibility was close to zero in the distance. It finally cleared by the afternoon, but everything is now covered in red dust and it even made its way in the house even though we had our doors and windows closed.
In terms of how I am doing in this pregnancy, I am having such an easy time. Thankfully, I have very easy pregnancies and I don't really suffer from morning sickness, just a bit of an off feeling in the first three months that is remedied when I get something to eat. This pregnancy has been a bit different to how I felt when I was pregnant with you as I am just so busy running after a two year old child that I don't tend to stop as often to connect with the new little one, but this has changed somewhat in the last month as I can feel the next little person moving regularly inside me. This weekend, I will be 28 weeks pregnant and feel a sense of relief when I get to that date as your cousin Danny was born at 28 weeks and although it is not an optimal age to be born by any means, the survival rate is 95%. It is just a funny milestone that I felt in your pregnancy as well as this one.
The other interesting thing that came up during this second pregnancy was old emotions that I had carried from my own childhood watching my own mother in her pregnancy with my younger brother. My brother and I are 14 months apart and he was premature due, I believe to the stress that my mother was experiencing at the time. My father was having an affair while she was pregnant and that time was filled with much sadness and grief. So there was actually a part of me that was starting to feel anxious about giving birth to a second child as I somehow was transferring my experience of watching my mother go through a difficult time in pregnancy and after the birth to my own experience. I started to wonder how I would cope with two children and could feel the tension really building around those emotions, which weren't even mine to begin with and it was making it difficult for me to connect up with the little one growing inside me. So I have gone now for two sessions with Peter Jackson, the man who founded the calmbirth program and practices Private Subconscious Mind Healing. It has changed my life and my experience in pregnancy and how I am starting to view myself in a different light. In the first session, I had a powerful imagine of me writing my own life story and handing a book to my mother with her own. Since then, the excitement about having another baby is starting to build and I can see myself being able to love both my babies and include you in the way that I will mother the next baby. Thankfully, you are such an easy child and I know that really you just require some love and nurturing as any child does, but you are also very independent in many other ways. I have one more session with Peter, but what I have gained so far is a better concept of myself. I am beginning to see myself in a more positive light as I have always tended to view myself from "what I do wrong," instead of "the beautiful person that I am." I am starting to better understand my boundaries with my Dad and that I am not here to solve his life or be his counselour, nor my mothers, but I can just write about my life and share that with him without getting involved in his chaos. And most of all, I am starting to get excited about having another baby and feeling confident that I can manage with two children.
We have also decided not to move to our home in Berry until October 2010. There was too much pressure on David to find a job by October this year, then we realized that it would be too stressful with a pregnancy and then after the birth in December, we wanted time to enjoy our new little one and settle in as a family. I will be taking you and your baby brother or sister with me to the USA in June next year and we will stay for seven weeks. That may be too long as I don't want to be separated from your Dad for such a long period of time, but I wanted to go to see my grandmother's old house, which was bought and renovated by my uncle, and spend the fourth of July there as I used to spend a week there when I was a child. I also wanted to be with my family in Canaan Valley at the beginning of August and also give us time to get over the jet lag. I was hoping that your Pop Pop, my Dad's new Chinese wife, was not going to yet have her visa, but it looks like that his going forward and she will most likely be in the country by that time. I really don't know how to deal with all that and really don't want to. There is a part of me that really doesn't want to have much to do with my Dad and then there is a part of me that is not able to walk away, so I maintain a relationship with my Dad over the internet mostly and just try and keep it polite and caring, but also maintain a healthy boundary...which is in progress as I have the habit of getting myself sucked in and dishing out advice.
In the next two months, we will be preparing this house for the new baby's arrival. I just need to get so many things in order and get on top of paper work, sorting baby clothes, changing our rooms around as Dad and I are moving our room to the back of the house where we were when we gave birth to you. This house does not have much storage, so we are trying to figure out how to put it all in order and get rid of what we don't need any more, which really is not much. Anyway, lots of things on my mind, but it is all good. I just need to focus my energy on getting it done and we will be ready for the next little person.
I am hoping the new baby decides to come before Christmas as I would like him or her to have a separate birthday from "Baby Jesus" and "the New Year," as well as be able to have Dad use some of the public holidays to stay at home with us a bit longer. He will be here for a month and Grammy Jean will come for a month after that, so I am very lucky to have such lovely support.
I enjoy my work as a pre-natal educator teaching the calmbirth course. I taught my last course over this past weekend and really get so much out of empowering couples around birth and the highlighting the fact that women's bodies are amazingly designed for birth. It is just sad how the media and the public in general sees birth as a medical event instead of a natural function of the female anatomy. Right now the current trend is to see women's bodies as faulty unless proven otherwise, while it should be the reverse, Women's bodies are beautifully designed for birth and there is a small percentage of women who may need the medical safety net. But women who go into hospital now a days have so much fear that inhibits the natural progression of their labours due the above as well as the system itself puts women within unnatural time frames for birthing, that all the medical interference actually creates more problems that would otherwise be the case if women were just left to birth under their own devices. That is why I choose a skilled and independent midwife to birth you and your brother or sister at home as why not start from a place of trust in an environment where I am comfortable and if the need were to arise, then I would turn to the medical safety net for support, but why start there? I like Dr. Sarah Buckley's reminder that women like any mammal need privacy and a feeling of safety in order to birth. Just like cats, they don't birth on the front lawn, they go to a comfortable and quiet place where they feel undisturbed and safe in order to give birth to their off spring. Home is that place for me. I hope if and when you or your coming sibling decide to have children that you will come to also remember the beauty of birth from your own birth experiences at home as well as what I have instilled into you about the wonder if women's bodies and how marvellously they are designed for birth. I feel in this way I have given you the best start in life. And I can see that it has paid off as Maia you are a very happy, content and loving little person and you have been that way from the moment you were born...you did not cry at birth and you never cried for the first six weeks until I took you out of the house and you were overwhelmed by the newness and pace of the world outside our home. (And believe it or not, you slept through it in the sling right next to me, but babies are so sensitive....you could feel the change of energy when we went to down town Sydney for my appointment with the chiropractor.) The other thing I want to mention about both my pregnancies is that I have chosen NOT to have ultrasounds for reasons that are explained in the writings of Dr. Sarah Buckely. If I need to have one for medical reasons, I will most certainly do so, but I like keeping the mystery as well as not having to worry if something did come up on a scan. I would be able to handle reality much better when holding my baby instead of worrying the entire pregnancy about something that I could not change anyway.
Your Dad and I have also decided not to inoculate either of you at this time as we are very sceptical of the pharmaceutical industry's motivations and there is so much information right now about the potential debilitating side effects of vaccinations that we worry about how it may harm your health and welfare as young children. Maybe once your immunity systems have matured and you are a bit older will be consider a few of the vaccinations, but it is such a confusing issue and we just don't want to move forward without really looking at how it may affect you long term.
Well, this has been a really long post and I really do hope to write more often, but at least I am getting down some bits and pieces about your development every few months. We adore you and feel so blessed to have you and your little brother or sister inside me. I kiss you a hundred times a day..smile and you have also helped me connect with our next baby as you speak to him or her and cuddle and kiss the belly at least once a day if not more...
I love you Maia...Momma.
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