Meet Janina!

Hi folks,

been quite a while, but with good reason. The last weeks of my pregnancy were filled with preps for the baby's arrival. At the night of the full moon (Jelena was born on the day of the full moon I heard afterwards), which was saturday september 30th, I got contractions, after a couple of hours they seemed to stop. All morning long, I got a contraction now and day (quite painful), but they never got as close to each other as they needed to be. In the afternoon they picked up again, I decided to walk from my parents house to my house, to do some things (make chocolate mousse, to eat after the delivery ;)), made pancakes for Jelena, and then walked back to my parents to pick Jelena up (she was taking her nap there). Still had contractions... they even seemed to get closer, got some of them every 7 minutes, which was the time they needed to be to get to the hospital, unfortunately, they spaced out again. Got home, went for a walk with Jelena ..., after putting her to bed, took a hot bath, still had contractions, went to bed - couldn't sleep because of the contractions (second night with no sleep), they kept coming every 10-15 minutes, not the 7 minutes they needed to be. Around 1h30 in the night (october first), my water broke, contractions came a lot faster then - called in the grandparents to babysit. Arrived at the hospital (did not get offered a wheelchair to get to the maternity-ward, and walking that distance with contractions was not easy!), got my 'labour-room', and was put on the monitor at 2u17 in the morning. Apparantly, those contractions weren't coming as they should, but they did do all the work, the doctor was called in for emergency delivery - Janina was born at 2h46! she got the following measurments: 49 cm and 3kg430.

After 2 days at the hospital (here in Belgium we can stay 5 days), I went home. I got almost no sleep at the hospital, but for the rest I felt awesome. My blood-pressure is not normalised yet, hopefully this will fix itself soon.

Janina is doing great, she's gaining weight and growing as she should on mommy's milk. She does have lots and lots of cramps :( Jelena had those too, so I did expect it, it's hard to get much done in the house becaus of it, since I'm carrying her around mostly.

The big sister is also doing great, she's 'helping' caarying Janina, she's holding her hand, ... off course, now and then there's a small jalousy bug, nothing unexpected. Jelena is really growing up now, it's amazing, those last few weeks, she's started to remember the text of some childrens songs, she sings them while in bed, or playing. She's really making sentences now, she understands so much, she want's to do everything herself and doesn't want to understand she's sometimes still too small to do it and she needs help, with frustration as the result. And the tantrums... terrible two's! And then she looks at you, with that cheeky smile, those eyes bright with misschief :)

Stitching-wise, I made some more 'congrats with your new baby' cards, but nothing else. No time to get any stitches in right now.

Thanks for taking the time to read this