Thursday, November 25, 2010

The journey so far...

So here I am, 16 weeks into our first pregnancy and I thought that it would be a great time to recap our journey so far.

I think it will be very fair to say that Jason has been ready to have children since we married 6 years ago. However, around the time that we married I started a new sport for me, triathlon. Not long into my triathlon career I made the New Zealand team which led to some new sporting goals (namely a medal at a World Championships). Additionally, we wanted to own our own house prior to having children.

We achieved one of these goals in 2006 with the purchase of our Pembroke rd property in Wellington.

The triathlon goal took a little longer. After 21st (25-29 age group), 17th (Elite), 10th (30-34), and 13th (30-34) placings at various triathlon world champs I finally achieved my medal goal with a Bronze medal at the 2009 Long Distance World Championships in Perth.

So once this goal was achieved, we still had a little time to wait prior to starting to try for our family, this next wait was to get all our health insurances in order, but essentially we were ready. We are living in a place that we consider to be very conducive to raising a family, we are in a good position financially and most of all, we are both ready to embark on this exciting phase of our lives.

Roll forward to August 2010, and we fell pregnant on our 6th Wedding Anniversary weekend. While trying to fall pregnant I was doing some casual training for a local half marathon. The weekend prior to our wedding anniversary I ran 65km in 3 days, with one of those sessions being a 30km run at faster than 5min per km pace.

Fast forward three weeks and (unbeknownst to me at that time) I was pregnant but I was INCREDIBLY tired and still on the start line for my race (unwillingly however, given how tired I was feeling). Anyway, I had to walk 7km into the race and from then on I walk/ran the remaining 14.1km. Hmmmm this was the first inkling that I may have been pregnant.

Mid the following week I was still feeling tired and had been suffering a fever (38.5 degrees) so I visited my doctor. She suspected pregnancy, so we had a blood test- which was negative. A day or two later I had a "hankering for burgers and fries" not a usual craving for me, but in hindsight a small sign.

The following Saturday I decided to take a home pregnancy test and:
At this stage I was pretty excited (and also nervous). Jason was also very excited. Over the next few days I took a few more home tests just to check that I was still pregnant (pretty conclusive evidence really):
You may recall Poppy was named to represent its size the day we found out- a poppy seed. The next size reference was a lentil, so I much preferred Poppy as a nickname over Lentil haha.

Once the pregnancy was confirmed via blood test at the doctors it started to sink in that our journey towards parenthood was well and truly underway.

So pregnancy for me has meant extreme tiredness, more so than when I was training in my hardest weeks, and for some days all day nausea. I also had an unfortunate side-effect: insomnia. So in my early weeks I needed at least 4 hour nanna naps each weekend day and I had absolutely no energy to exercise at all (which for me has been a very tough thing to cope with).

For Jason, a pregnant wife means tiredness, crankiness, funny food cravings and aversions (I recently went off red meat!!!!) and quiet weekends at home.

Around week 9 we told all our immediate family the news of the impending arrival. Unfortunately not long after this I experienced some unexplained but reasonably severe cramping. This was when we got to see Poppy for the first time, we needed a scan to confirm viability- but we saw Poppy's heartbeat straight away. Phew.

The next stage was our nuchal translucency scan at 12 weeks 5 days, which checks for chromosomal disorders. During this scan it was truly amazing to see how much Poppy had grown. We could make out hands, feet, arms, legs and face. A week or so after our scan we got the results and we were very low risk for Downs Syndrome
(1:8695) and even more low risk for the other two chromosomal disorders tested.

Since around week 14 my symptoms have settled somewhat and I have been undertaking a little more exercise. Now I just feel very unfit after 14 weeks of minimal exercise. I aim for 4 exercise sessions a week at the moment and as my energy increases I will increase the number of exercise sessions a week.

So looking forward a couple of weeks - I have another check up at the GP in week 18, we have another scan in week 19 prior to heading to Queensland for Christmas and Poppy will be 20 weeks old on Christmas Day.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Crowded House at Sandalford Estate

Recently Jason and I had an afternoon/evening with Crowded House at Sandalford Estate Winery in the Swan Valley. I made some triple chocolate muffins and bacon and egg pie which we added to some good quality vintage chedder, gherkins, and crackers as well as some good scorched almonds and our picnic was set.

Neil Finn hit the nail on the head when he said "what a wonderful place to be on a Sunday evening". And it truly was, the temperature had dropped to a balmy 25 degree evening (well down from the 36 degree day) so we had a beautiful breezy, warm spring evening with a fantastic sunset.

The beautiful sky just added to an all-round lovely evening, with a great venue that catered for the 8000 plus crowd with ease, creating a chilled, relaxed atmosphere.

Here we are with Kent and Fiona, just chilling, eating our picnic food and listening to the warm up bands.

A couple of stage shots and some of the fantastic surrounds we were treated to. The lake and fountain was a lovely touch.
Neil Finn introduced himself as: “Neil, full of zeal. Neil, Neil, lemon peel from Te Awamutu.” His sense of humour was evident as well, encouraging the audience to wave to one of many planes that flew overhead towards the airpor: “We couldn’t afford fireworks so we asked Qantas to supply a plane,” he joked after playing Four Seasons in One Day.

We were treated to some old Crowded House favourites, i.e Don't Dream it's Over, When You Come, Locked Out and Distant Sun, ensuring plenty of crowd sing-a-longs and dancing, as the signs requested:
Finally, the last song of the night one of my favourites. During this song the crowd raised their mobile phones on Finn’s request, waving them slowly above their heads as all the lights were turned off. And with that, Better Be Home Soon boomed out. It was a magical moment.
All in all it was a great night out and we both had a lovely time.

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Movember

The month formerly known as November is a moustache growing charity event held during November each year that raises funds and awareness for men's health.

Jason's work has a team and he is starting to look somewhat Magnum PI ish, or even a little like Goose from Top Gun.

What else is there to say really.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

All about Jason...

So all my blogs seem to be about me, so this post is just about Jason and a few of the things that he does to keep himself occupied here in WA. Jason works at a small niche company called Yambay. From their website "Yambay is a leading provider of field-service, job scheduling and mobile platform products servicing enterprise customers from the resource, utilities and field-service sectors". In my words (and Jason will probably tell me I have it wrong haha) Yambay provide the mobile software that companies suh as Western Power (electricity transmission and distribution) use for fault call outs. Jason spends about 3 full days a week down at Western Power in East Perth and the other 2 days at his main office in Subiaco.

Here's a few shots of jason over the last couple of years.

In terms of recreation, Jason has a few things to keep him occupied. Firstly and foremostly (well it takes up mst his time anyway) Jason has a passion for his computer and his online games. Some nights I have to get up and remind him that its 2 or 3 in the morning. Here's Jason playing. His headphones have him connected with other members of his playing group (clan). They all talk to each other. It was a bit weird at first hearing him talk (seemingly to himself) in the other room, but now I am used to it.Jason did a lot of martial arts growing up and recently he has headed back to it. This time to do brazilian jiu jitzu (BJJ) two nights a week. This is a martial art, combat sport and a self defense system that focuses on grappling and ground fighting (thanks wikipedia).

It teaches that a smaller, weaker person can successfully defend against a bigger, stronger assailant by using leverage and proper technique—this is by applying joint locks and chokeholds to defeat the other person.

This is Jason's gi hanging on the line drying out after a night of BJJ (I wasn't allowed a photo of him in it). You will also see the BBQ in the background, Jason is a whiz at BBQ cooking.Next up is Jason's green fingers and his love of bansai. Here is a sample of his plants out in the garden on the $5 table from the recycling centre. The big one in the bag was bought to celebrate Poppy and will stay in the bag for at least another year or so while it develops.
Here are a couple of the smaller bansai, with many, many years of growing ahead of them.
Finally, Jason plays water polo for the Melville Water Polo Club, this club is amazing, they have their own swimming pool, right on the edge of the Swan River (near Fremantle). See below for a shot of the pool. Jason plays once a week and trains once a week. His team is pretty good, often winning 12 or 13 goals to 1. Jason does lots of other things but these are the main ones for the moment. See ya next time.

Friday, November 5, 2010

A new addition to the family is on the way...

Hi there,

Well the blog title says it all really. Jason and I are expecting an addition to the family around 14 May 2011. We had the 13 week scan today and the following are a few pictures of little Poppy (as Baby Papps is called at the moment). Poppy was named to represent its size the day we found out- a poppy seed. Poppy is now 69.9mm long!!!

Here's a photo of Poppy's heart beat, sitting at around 134 BPM.

This is relaxed Poppy, feet up on the wall of the uterus and hands behind the head. No doubt that so far Poppy's taking after Jason in this shot.
Poppy has two normal arms and hands, if you look closely on the right, thats a thumbs up.
The arms crossed over from above.
Finally the spine.
SO all in all, everything is normal and healthy and where it should be.

From now on the blog that used to be all about triathlon will no doubt become all about little Poppy and the progress through the next 27 more weeks.