Slliding doors

Well, I can't believe it's been so long since I posted last. And I had just said I wanted to blog more!

I am working on a photographic post about the children and Carlito as per kind request of Valery, nearly there!

I was hoping to have a post this weekend on some more DIY we are doing to the house. We are replacing the door to the en-suite for a sliding one. Mike is doing it all, following a video on youtube!! That is awesome let me tell you, and it will be perfect I have no doubt. But of course it wasn't done in 3 days, probably it won't be done before we go on holidays on sunday, but we'll be very close to have it finished.

And at the same time we kind of made up our mind we'd like to move...sell the house and buy a fixerupper so to speak, something to put our stamp on like we did with this one, but hopefully with a bit of a garden. I must admit the reason why I am set on moving is our neighbours living on the ground floor...they are lovely people but constantly smoke. We live on a toxic cloud of stale cigarette smoke. I hate it. I know I'm particularly sensitive to it, I think it's disgusting and above all it's disgraceful I cannot enjoy my balcony or have the children play there because every 5 minutes one of them is out smoking. Their place stink just as you walk by it. They are not infringing any rule of course, there'e nothing that can be done. We did last year some works to eliminate the smells coming through the vents, but there's nothing we can do about the air that comes into the apartment from outside!! Anyway, that's it, we had our place evaluated and that gives us an idea of what we can afford. So eyes peeled to the websites hoping to see something suitable at some point.

Project California is well underway, when I come back from the holidays at the end of the month I will start writing a proposal for funding, I have the full support of the College and Mike is enthusiastic too, my parents will likely come with us for a while at least, it should be good!!

Still on work, I have been asked to give an oral presentation at a conference in Belgium in October, I am so happy about this, for one reason or another I mainly presented posters to conferences, so this will work a treat to increase my visibility.

We have some serious regression in the sleeping department with Oliver, I will have another post about this as I have started to lose my temper with him and this is NOT the way I want to parent, so I will share some nice tips that are helping me which I found from reading different articles etc.

I love you all my readers, wherever you are.

Time is flying

Martina  is 3 weeks and 2 days old but it feels like yesterday she was just born...yet it's as if I've known her forever, I can tell when she is crying why she is crying (no more the gazillion hypotheses  of the random kind) I'm so much more relaxed I can hardly recognise myself. I don't wish the time away and in fact I'm cherishing every moment of this new-born stage. I remember when people were telling me with Oliver the usual "Ohhhh enjoy it, this time goes by so quickly!", I was thinking 'Really? Do you swear it goes by quickly? It feels like an age already'...I was in such different place then and I'm trying not to feel guilty about how I felt at the time (it's not like I had a choice of course). I remember looking forward to going back to work about a month into motherhood, days were dragging on, a lot of time in my hands but couldn't plan a full day, I couldn't really understand other moms dreading the thought of going back to work, how could they cope all day with a baby who does very little? And Oliver was very easy, not demanding at all, once he was fed. I suppose it was also a different time of the year, January, freezing cold, with snow like Ireland never saw before, short and dark days. Now it's spring, albeit still an Irish spring, but it seems to contribute to my positivity. Martina is still very easy, in fact she is great, even though I feed her on demand and my nipples are sore and cracked despite the shields, I would't want anyone else to take it from me. I still bleed on and off (apparently normal when breasfeeding) but it means I never know if not having bled for a couple of days is indicative of dryness or not. I feel I'm in full mommy-mode which was not the case with Oliver were I was more like...a basket case to tell you the truth, but I can only see it now that I know it can be different and wonderful.

The nights are only ours, Mike has moved to Oliver's room during the week and I just have her. For a few nights she only anted to sleep cuddled beside me. After fighting this for a while (I'm not much for co-sleeping, but just because I worry I'll roll over her etc, so I'm actually not sleeping at all!) I gave in and snuggled her beside me. Her smell is wonderful and my heart melts away. Oliver comes in to the bedroom in the morning with Mike to use our bathroom and he is such a big boy, he's very quiet if he thinks we are still sleeping and doesn't jump on the bed or anything, but if I call him, his eyes lit up and comes into the bed, wants to hold Martina and he's so gentle and sweet, you should see him.

If I'm not feeding Martina I always spend time with Oliver when he goes to bed. I love our time together, he loves it too. Story time, cuddling time, resting time (for me). It's as if I rediscovered him in the new vest of big brother who says "Mamma, Martina is crying, she's hungry".

I'm sure it's normal but my sex-drive is below zero at the moment, and while I miss Mike that way, I'm just in a different dimension, a deep sense of contentment which seems to last forever and I am sure I never felt this way before.

My mom left today after almost 4 weeks. My dad came up on tuesday to meet the new grandchild and returned home with mom. They have been great, nothing like the last time they were over, I deeply miss them now and I wish we were closer, though I don't want to move back to Italy and they'll never move here, so this is our reality...

As of the last couple of days Martina has a sore tummy in the evening, I think it may be that I've eaten chocolate, though I don't know, hopefully it'll pass soon as it's heartbreaking seeing her in pain.

Love to all.

How it all went

Thank you thank you for your lovely comments! I'm sorry Mike didn't get to post further updates as he promised so now that I have some time I'm going to do it myself!

The c-section: I went to the hospital early with mom, while Mike was taking care of Oliver and bringing him to the creche. I was checked in and I knew there were 4 sections scheduled that morning but I thought I would have been last. That was not the case! Mike wasn't anywhere near the hospital when the nurse said "I can bring you up to the theatre now..." or dear...I tried to call Mike on his cell which wasn't under coverage (he was just parking) then texted him and went up with mom to the prep room. Mike called a few minutes later, he had parked and forgot the phone in the car, run back, saw the txt and panicked! He was running to the hospital at that very moment! He made it in the end, I thought it was actually quite funny, didn't get distressed and was very focussed on meeting the baby, hoping she would be healthy and that all will be just fine.
The c-section was a breeze, very calm and relaxed unlike of course my previous experience...Dr. W is truly wonderful. He went through the previous scar commenting how low it was (he said about 2cm lower than normal...odd as he did it!). As he pulled the baby out and above the curtain for me to see, he said "You are having a little lady!" what a surprise! She looked beautiful, wasn't crying (but she was obviously breathing) and just had this curious look...amazing. He then chatted away to me while baby was being checked by the paediatrician, saying it wasn't an easy delivery due to the position of the incision but they managed nonetheless. I think they had to use a forceps as our little girl had some bruising on her left eye and forehead.
Of course we had no name at all...or actually, we had her third name, Phoenix as per our tradition, but that wasn't enough! We had thought in the previous pregnancy that if it was a girl we would have called her Erin, but to me she just didn't look like an Erin and the name (while I absolutely love it) didn't seem to fit as her first name...Erin would be her second name so. It took us a couple of days before settling on Martina. I love Martina. She is the sweetest thing. I thought Oliver was an easy baby, but Martina tops it without a doubt. She is content all the time, cries if she's hungry, that's all.

Oliver: Oliver came to the hospital with Mike the day after Martina was born, I had a nice private room and thankfully visitors (though restricted to immediate family) were allowed. We took the approach of not making a fuss about the baby (she wasn't named at that stage) and just focussed on him till he took an interest in the baby (she was in the plastic transparent cot) and we followed his lead. He asked to touch the baby and we had no problem with it, then I asked him if he wanted to hold her and he was beside himself with happiness. This is one of the best pics of that day...look at his face! Very proud big brother!

Now that we are home, he is still very sweet, though we try and dedicate as much time to him as possible and this is made easy by Martina who is no fuss at all. Martina is in our room but in her cot and this doesn't seem to be a problem for him. He doesn't wake up at night when we are feeding her or changing her nappy etc which is great, but he is waking up very early and coming to the bed which is a killer as I may just have gone back to sleep after the feed...So the plan is that Mike is going to take care of him once he's up in the morning, hopefully he'll settle back into his normal sleeping pattern soon.

Martina: She is adorable. The feeding is a bit of a problem as like Oliver, she doesn't latch on...and this time I have a bit more milk, not much mind you (wishfully thinking it can still get better) but I do have it. And she is voracious. So I am back in the trenches of pumping, feeding her my milk, trying to latch her on with any device invented, giving her an additional bottle and settling her back in her cot (which is literally just putting her back down). In total this takes me over one hour. I can already tell we will be doing elimination communication with her very easily...she is very easy to read and already last night I got her to poo in the loo (well the sink effectively, sorry TMI!). She doesn't have a feeding pattern yet, can sleep between 2 to 4/5 hours and unfortunately for the moment the longest stretches are during the day! But I can't really complain. Having a toddler to mind though seriously adds to the fatigue and I can't thank my mom and Mike enough for ebing so helpful.

Emotions: It's definitely much better than the first time. Of course I didn't have a traumatic experience this time and I was nearly at the of the pregnancy. I did enjoy the pregnancy, can perfectly remember everything about it (you may remember after Oliver was born I had a total black out on the pregnancy experience) and loved Martina exactly like I love Oliver from the minute I saw her. I am also not worried about SIDS as much as I was with Oliver. All this helps. But of course there is a "but". I am addicted to hospitals and medical environments. Though I again went home after 3 days of hospital stay rather than the recommended 5 (once again I had no real need for pain management, felt well and up and about very quickly), I am mourning the fact that this is likely my last pregnancy ever, I won't get to interact with Dr. W anymore (you know the way your OB feels to you as the person that makes your longed for miracle a reality, brings the baby into the World and hands it to you, to me he has very much a god-like status), I won't get to experience one of the happiest things in my life which is the birth of a healthy baby. Then I think maybe just maybe we could have a third one, we still have 4 blasts after all...and then I think how difficult it would be not only economically but also practically to have three children...and then I think how people do manage and so on. So I don't know. Maybe this door is still open but it has to be for the right reasons while at the moment it seems to be for the egotistic wrong ones.

Well if you read this far, thank you, I'm going to try and pump some more!

20 months (and 6 weeks!)

My little baby is not so little anymore, he's 20 months today! He's the joy of our lives, and I want to give a little summary of where he is at.

Teeth: he has 11, and I think the 4th molar is about to come through.
Sleeping: Sleeps through the night since we sorted him out after coming back from holidays. I can't recommend that book highly enough!
Eating: He eats everything, of course he has his preferences, but overall he's happy to try new things. Still no nuts as such for him, we just don't have many in the house in general I suppose! He's on two bottles a day (breakfast and night-time).
Talking: He is a chatterbox though it's not too clear to us what he says most of the time. He has though a lot of words which we now understand very well, most of them are in English, bar a few that are in Italian. It's very funny. He understand very well both languages.
Walking: Not a problem there, he's mostly running now in fact. He's becoming more and more adventurous and climbs chairs, tables, sofas etc. Of course he goes up the stairs too, a bit more reluctant in coming down. We still don't let him go up or down on is own though.
General behaviour: He is a very very sweet boy, very affectionate and generally quite obedient, he has his moments of course, but for now we didn't have too many tantrums. He's using his soother only at night and sleeping time, so he's growing out of it. In the creche he's in the last of the wobblers room, he'll stay there till he's two and then will move to the toddler room. He still uses the loo anytime we bring him there, we are not toilette training at all yet, but when we are at home that's where he does his business most of the time.

And I'm 6 weeks today! Nothing to report, the occasional very minor spotting still happens, and when I'm saying minor I mean it's only a hint on TP sometimes in the evening which I think may be connected to the progesteron suppositories. I have no reason to think something is wrong. I did go through a day or two where I thought that the sac looked very low in the uterus (you know...I pretend I'm an ultrasound expert!) so in the end I texted the Fav Doc who responded very quickly telling me off for being on the internet too much, that the sac is where it should be and to just stop. So I did. On tuesday we'll see how things are progressing, I think I feel a bit different this time from when I was expecting Oliver, the nausea seems a bit more (mostly every second day) and definitely the bad taste in my mouth is very prominent. I wonder if it may be a girl this time. I tested again this morning (as per clinic requirement) and the test is the same as last week. So this control line that should disappear isn't happening and I start thinking that it's a random thing depending on how much die they put in. My test line is very strong, comes up instantly. That's all I can say, and sure we'll know more on tuesday.

Next week the first years college students are arriving...let's the madness begin!!

The 10 Days on my own

Thank you for all your support on my FET day experience, I don't know if you guys get back to see the comments, I realised I could reply to what you have said and I did it in a couple of occasions!

Anyway, 2dp5dt and trying not to think of it, so I'm writing my last blog post on the holidays.
You may remember that Mike and Oliver travelled back to Europe alone, while I spent another day in San Fran before flying back East to Boston and to a nearby conference. 10 days were LONG without the family. Sure, by the time I was at the conference I was quite busy, but I did miss my little one terribly. The fact that he wasn't sleeping for Mike at all made it even worse. Thanks to the time difference, I was often able to be on skype with them when Oliver would wake up in the middle of the night and not resettling at all. Desperate times call for desperate measures and Mike had relocated Oliver's cot in our bedroom. Still, the one thing that really seemed to help, was me singing to him lullabies through Skype. Given that I am a terrible singer and that I may know about 2 songs, I really think he was just worried I was never coming home. Poor chicken! Of course on top of this he was teething, top two premolar are nearly out now but it wasn't fun.

I loved Boston, I actually prefer Boston to San Francisco, probably just because it has a more familiar feeling. I did one of those hop-on, hop-off tours and it was great. Weather was hot and definitely more humid than in Cali, but totally manageable. I stayed at the Kendall Hotel in Cambridge and totally recommend it. It's a lovely area (I had to go and walk the grounds in Harvard!), hotel is superb and very very conveniently located. So keep it in mind if you happen to go that way! Tripadvisor never lets me down!
Of course one of the highlights was buying the Mac Book Air! And thanks to you all for the tips, yes I have the Office 2011 but the incompatibility I was mainly talking about were between graphic programmes we use in chemistry which lose their original formatting when you copy the schemes in Office for Mac (only). So it's a bit of a pain, but nothing too major.
The conference was a great success, definitely one of the best I've been at and will certainly re-attend in two years time (same place, same venue!) but by the time it was over I was well ready to go back home. I had already described my quite eventful journey back so I will close this post with another little paragraph on Oliver and some of the things that worked for us to help resettle him in a proper routine.

So a part from the first two days I was back, with Oliver really tired and unwell due to the viral infection, our little man stopped sleeping through the night. This was already happening while on holidays, but it was getting out of control. Not only he would wake up for hours during the night, but he had also started not wanting to go down to bed at night. At the beginning I was certain it was separation anxiety, what if mamma was disappearing again? I could see he really wanted to be held tight and his crying wasn't the annoying nagging one, it was the sobbing type, the "I'm really afraid/upset" kind of cry. Furthermore, I seemed to be the only one he wanted. Let me tell you, after a week of this I was ready to hire a nighttime nanny. Surely others may have had this experience, surely there is some technique we can try. I looked among the various books my SIL had given me on parenting (and I never read) and found I had this one called "Beyond Toddlerdom" written by Christopher Green. That was not really suitable as it deals with children behaviour from 4 onwards, but the same author has written this other one called "New Toddler Taming" and the reviews were great. Anyway, I bought it and I am really glad I did. The book is full of very good tips and mostly common sense, but it also shows you how a toddler thinks and gives lists of things that are normal behaviour and others that are behaviours to be rectified. It has a full chapter on sleeping and he has optimised what it is called the "controlled crying techniques" which is NOT the CIO technique, it specifically prevents any crying situation from escalating, the author states that it is proven that after 10 minutes, most toddlers don't actually know anymore why they are crying and become very scared. It's totally pointless to ley it get to that level. Anyway, we tried it and within 2 days our Oliver was back to full night sleeps. Seriously, this was just a little short of a miracle. He says it in the book you have to allow 3 days and 90% of the time it works like a treat. Glad we were not the 10%! The going to bed protest occasionally resurface (mostly monday night, after the first day back in the creche) but we now have the tools to handle it very well and within 10 minutes at the most he's always quiet (normally we don't know when he falls asleep as we leave the room that he still awake). Let me know if you try it out. Of course there are many other chapters dealing with tantrums, feeding and toilet training, so it's really good and furthermore it's written very lightly, with lots of examples from his experience as a paediatrician who specialise in behaviour.
Anyway, going to read a bit more of the book!