Saturday, November 29, 2014

The arrival of Charlotte Rose Papps - born 11 November 2014

At 2.19pm on Remembrance Day (11/11/2014) Charlotte Rose Papps was born via C-Section. Charlotte had been lying sideways for much of the pregnancy which meant that C-Section was the only safe option for giving birth (for both mum and daughter). As it happened, Charlotte's cord was also round her neck.

Charlotte needed two lots of oxygen following her birth, but once the paediatrician and the midwife were happy with her we were allowed our first hold - she was much smaller than her big brother (by nearly a whole kg) at 3375kg (7lb 7oz), 49cm with a 36cm head.
We were able to head straight back to ward after the surgery (where they also removed a cyst from my ovary) bypassing recovery. This was great as we could all stay together from the moment Charlotte was born. 

Charlotte took a while before her first feed... after 6 hours the midwife expressed some colostrum for her (1 ml) and fed her that. It probably wasn't until 10 hours post her birth that she had her first breast feed. 

I was generally pretty lucky with my C-section recovery as I had a shower the evening after she was born, most patients won't be up and about until the next day. I felt great after the shower and it meant that I had a better night than I otherwise would have I think. We went private care this time, so Jason was able to stay the night which meant that he was able to do all the nappy changes for that first night for me.

Ethan came to meet his sister for the first time on Wednesday morning. He was super excited and very proud! I loved seeing how gentle he was with his sister!
Ethan visited us every day in the hospital. 
Ethan was on hand to help with the daily bath at the hospital as well, which was lovely and gave mum time to have a shower and a rest!
Baby Charlotte has been a good sleeper thus far, here are a few shots of her first few days in hospital. She came out so much smaller than Ethan that we needed a couple of emergency trips to the shops for some smaller clothes!
More hospital photos of Charlotte! Looking gorgeous in the outfit her Daddy picked out for her! The far right photo in this collage is our first selfie together (taken at 2.30am).
 We got out of hospital on the Saturday following Charlotte's birth, Charlotte seems quite content to be home!
I have even got some sleepy, milky smiles from Charlotte already (which is lovely). Charlotte likes to have one sleep a day on someone's knee
 Here are some of my favourite photos so far... Charlotte on her rainbow blanket! and one of her first eye open photos!
Welcome to the world Charlotte Rose Papps!

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Walking, Walking, Walking!!!

120 days before the end of my pregnancy I decided to take on a walking challenge, it was to walk 500km in the remaining 120 days (which averaged out to around 4.2km of walking per day). I had been having a tough pregnancy and as I am a goal oriented person, this challenge was just the thing for me! The rules were simple, I only counted additional walking - no incidental walking (i.e walking that I would have done if I didn't have the challenge) was counted. 

At the start of the challenge I aimed to get a few km in the bank so that I could relax a little bit later on as walking got a bit harder. Initially I walked to work a few times a week (which is around 7km a trip). Here I am mid challenge, all ready to go walking.
I walked even when there was no outside option. Here I am at the Melbourne Airport hotel, I walked 3km on the treadmill and 1km in the pool.
We are so lucky to live close to lake monger which has a 3.5km walking path around the lake. Perfect for nice easy pregnant walking!
We also live close to Yokine reserve, which also has a 3 - 4 km walking track (depending on which path you take).
I finished the challenge on my birthday with a 3.7km walk (last year for my 36th birthday I ran 36km, so this year I walked 3.7km - next year I hope to run 38km). The belly was getting much bigger here (close to term) and I was a lot slower than earlier days!
 I even managed to talk Jason into coming with me on my birthday walk!
 Here is the record of my walking, as you can see I really tapered off near the end, so it was lucky that I had a few km up my sleeve!
I finished the challenge 10 days early - which was lucky as wee Charlotte arrived the next day!

Project New Lawn - Phase 2

After the reticulation was finished the next stage for our lawn project was adding a new soakwell in the area, moving all the dirt in and then levelling the site in readiness to lay the grass.
Last weekend Jason, Ethan and Gran drove north of the city to pick up the 45sqm of grass for laying.

Wow, what a difference our new lawn makes - how good does this look!
 Lots of extra playing area for the kids, and less scraped knees for our hurricane Ethan!
 We are also anticipating that the additional lawn area will ensure that this area remains a little cooler in the hot summer months ahead! We now have 42 days water use exemption to water and bed down the new lawn! 
 So two weeks from start to finish and we have a new lawn! Pretty amazing job by Jason! We will look to replace the existing lawn (as its in pretty poor condition) around March/April next year!

Sunday, November 9, 2014

Project: New Lawn (Phase 1)

Last weekend we decided to rip up the old patio and replace with new lawn. We wanted to do this for a couple of reasons - Ethan constantly scrapes his knees on the bricks and its quite hot in this area of 40+ degree Perth Summer days. Here it is before we started!
Ethan (AKA Spider-Iron Man) came along to help!
 Midway through the job! Each brick weighs between 3.5 - 4kg (we weighed them) and Jason had to move over 1500 of them!
Here is the pile of bricks as it grew throughout the weekend (latest news is that we managed to sell them all within a day of listing them online). 
 Ethan loved the new sand emerging... although his mummy didn't like the sand being traipsed through the house so much!
Next job was to get some new dirt (just 7 tonnes of it).
We were lucky enough to have a friend of a friend to help lay the reticulation. All done in one day! Its a lot easier to dig trenches in WA sand soil than NZ soil, that's for sure!

 Here is the pipe being laid for the reticulation. 
 Finally, Ethan and Jason moving lots and lots of dirt. Hopefully next weekend we will lay the new lawn! I am very excited to see the results (and to stop the sandy foot prints being laid throughout the house!).