You finally arrived...

The day before you arrived I hit the lowest of all lows and cried before I went to bed and each time I got up in the night to use the toilet and then just sat on the couch and cried when the sun came up in the morning knowing I was still pregnant. I spoke to Betty and she encouraged me to get back on the train as I compared being pregnant to being on a train ride that you need to stay on until the baby decides it is time to stop. I wanted to jump off the train instead of just staying in my seat patiently waiting for Kiran to come to us. I decided not to use any means to induce our baby as I just wanted him to choose his special day. So I got back on the train and decided to change my perspective as I figured my grandmother and ancestors did not have "40 week" pregnancies and probably had babies between 42-42 weeks. That suddenly made me feel fine again and that next evening, I started to feel more changes that made me think, this baby is certain to come any day. Plus, I also thought, baby will be here within the week for sure as the longest a lady had gone over with Betty was 43 weeks and 6 days.

Well, after waiting 19 days past his due date and going through a 42 week 5 day pregnancy, our little boy, Kiran Studzinski Power arrived to us on January 7 at 9:30 in the morning after a 2.5 hour labour weighing in at 4 kilos and 57 cm in length. It was a beautiful birth which was captured with 1,500 photos and a video. Magic is the only way to describe it. It made me feel complete in so many ways. We were surrounded by a lovely group of women including, Tamara Da Silva who looked after Maia, Cass Hawkins, who took the video and gave me great energy, Kyle Powderly, who took the photos and Betty, our midwife. David was a dream and was there by my side the whole time. I am just about to write our birth story, but just wanted to write this note. It has been three weeks and little guy is starting to smile periodically. Maia has started asking questions about different animals and if they live in water like today she asked, "Mumma, do horses live in water." My Mom arrived from the USA this week on Wednesday. David went back to work on Thursday. Betty finished her visits with us on Wednesday. I ended up getting sick with Mastitis on Friday and was just very, very tired with flu like symptoms from exhaustion as Kiran is having a bit of trouble after feeds and may have a mild case of reflux as he just sounds like he is clearing his throat in discomfort after we lay him down at night like something is coming back up and so we get up with him and hold him and try to burp him and sometimes that can go on for an hour after a feed. So I now go to bed between 6-7 pm and have a nap during the day.

The first week of your life was far too busy and the biggest mistake we made was to have too many people over. I think because we waited so long for our little man that we were anxious to see people. We hadn't had a Christmas with family and had been alone really since David had been off from work on December 21. So a month in isolation made us open our doors far too soon whereas with Maia was kept our little baby moon very private and to ourselves, which I would HIGHLY recommend for any other parents. So Carmen and Bill came the day of the birth in the afternoon. Carmen had been seriously ill following surgery with her gall bladder and basically was still so unwell that Bill should have taken her to an emergency room of a hospital and not convinced her to come to our home. I had never seen anyone so sick in my life apart from when my Mom was in hospital with pneumonia. Carmen basically was weak, had a severe headache, could not eat, could not sleep and was running to the toilet on a regular basis to throw up. She had to go and lay down quiet often and could only hold the baby for very short periods. She had trouble breathing deeply and had pain in her side. It was terrible to watch her and so our baby moon high was overtaken by the illness of his mother. We were still excited to have our baby and I felt on the highest of highs full of energy, but that was contrasted with the lowest of lows seeing David's Mum so sick and David had never seen his Mum so ill in his life, so you can imagine. It was not the best of timing for a visit and I wish Bill would have respected Carmen when she initially said that she was not well enough to come as we did not push her, but just said that they were welcome to come if she felt up to it, not knowing how sick she was, so Carmen and Bill arrived late on Thursday afternoon and stayed until Saturday morning. I was exhausted by the time they left and had a good rest. We then had media come to the house to interview us about home birth as there is a lot of media about the changes in home birth legislation in Australia and so Channel 9 and 10 came to see us as well as an interview with The Australian, which did not do home birth a bit of justice. And then we helped fly David's brother to see us from the following Thursday till Saturday, once again, we were tired and worn down and wish we had just had a quieter first week. It was just that desire to share our new baby with family after not seeing anyone for a month. Since then we have kept it slow and steady. It is lovely to have Mum here. She is a blessing and I don't know what I would do without her. I know she does not speak her mind and so I have to encourage her to tell me when she is tired of playing with Maia as she just keeps going and then she will think to herself, Gee Jenny is leaving it all up to me. When I am happy for her to look after Maia so I have a moments to myself to rest or just look after Kiran, but would be happy to step in and give her a break. So that is just what I am trying to figure out at the moment in regards to having my Mom here and how to keep things balanced as I have not really felt that full of energy to do much besides look after Kiran, but I know that better days will come and I will have my energy back. Like I said to myself last night as I was rocking the little man in the middle of the night, one day, when he is a teenager and I wonder what he is up to, I will wish for the nights back when I was just holding him in my lap and rocking him to sleep or settling him. Time to go. Baby is crying and David needs my help. Birth story is next.