The guinea pigs have settled in really well. They're living outside in the big cage with the rabbits and seem to be very happy! The brown all over one is Annie and the black and brown one is Clarabel.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Adding to the menagerie...
Well, you can never have too many pets, right? We've recently welcomed two guinea pigs into our family, Annie and Clarabel. They come from our good friend, Donna, and her family. Her boys were not so interested in the guinea pigs lately so she wanted them to go to a home where they would get a bit more attention. Luckily, our two kids are absolutely enthralled by their new pets. They love to hold them and pat them and it's a bit easier to fit a guinea pig on their lap then our big rabbits:
The guinea pigs have settled in really well. They're living outside in the big cage with the rabbits and seem to be very happy! The brown all over one is Annie and the black and brown one is Clarabel.
The guinea pigs have settled in really well. They're living outside in the big cage with the rabbits and seem to be very happy! The brown all over one is Annie and the black and brown one is Clarabel.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
What's been happening
Most of you who read this will be aware that I had a miscarriage in December last year. Or so we thought. It turns out that I actually had an ectopic pregnancy which was only detected last week. I had to have emergency surgery last Friday to remove it. I am feeling very thankful to be sitting here today writing this because I came very close to losing my life. I didn't realise just how close until after I had the surgery.
Fast forward to a week ago, I had bad tummy pains so went to the emergency dept. Had a scan which showed I had a mass in my tummy (they couldn't pinpoint exactly where it was, somewhere near my ovaries and uterus but not attached). They did a urine pregnancy test which came up negative but didn't do a blood HCG (which would have shown up a very low level of HCG had they tested!) The Doctor got me an appt to see a gyn in two days time and sent me home. Had my appt with the gyn on the Tuesday. He wasn't sure what was going on, wasn't even sure if it was a gyn thing but he wanted me to have more blood tests and a specialist ultrasound. So I had my blood test and went in for my scan on Friday at 2.30pm. The doctor doing the scan picked up that it was an ectopic straight away. It looked like it was on my ovaries. He rang my gyn. My gyn had the results of the blood tests which showed that I still had HCG, albeit at a low level. The gyn gave me two options, wait until Monday and have another scan to see if the ectopic was moving down the tube by itself or have a laporoscopy straight away. He thought it was probably better to have a lap as the pain had increased that morning. It was a very difficult decision especially deciding to leave my kids for the night (Esme still breastfeeds a lot during the night so I was worried about her getting distraught) In the end we decided it wasn't worth the risk to my health if the ectopic ruptured so we decided I should have the surgery. By 6pm that night I was in theatre!
It turned out that the ectopic pregnancy was in my tube. It was starting to leak so I'm pretty darn lucky that I went in for the surgery when I did. The gyn also said that it was lucky that it was a very slow growing ectopic pregnancy. He told me he didn't think it was an ectopic in my first appt with him because I didn't seem like I was in enough pain and told me I had a very high pain threshold!! In the end I had to have my tube removed because the ectopic was so big. But the gyn has said that it will only reduce my fertility by about 5-10% and that people who don't have a tube on one side have still been known to get pregnant from the ovary on that side still (apparently the egg travels around to the other side - pretty amazing!) So I'm feeling very grateful to be alive and that I am still able to have more kids.
I guess I learnt a pretty important lesson about following up on things. My GP wanted me to have a specialist ultrasound quite early on, when they weren't able to see anything in my first ultrasound but I refused, thinking that my body was sorting things out itself. But I think I knew that things weren't right. I'd been having tummy pains on and off since the supposed 'miscarriage' but I keep brushing it off as normal.
Anyway, I can't dwell on the 'should have's'. I am alive and for that I am very grateful. Now I need to focus my energy on recovering and healing. I am glad to finally have an answer to everything that has been going on. It has been a very difficult four months and I've had to deal with a huge range of emotions. It's going to take me a while to process it all emotionally and mentally but I will get there.
Fast forward to a week ago, I had bad tummy pains so went to the emergency dept. Had a scan which showed I had a mass in my tummy (they couldn't pinpoint exactly where it was, somewhere near my ovaries and uterus but not attached). They did a urine pregnancy test which came up negative but didn't do a blood HCG (which would have shown up a very low level of HCG had they tested!) The Doctor got me an appt to see a gyn in two days time and sent me home. Had my appt with the gyn on the Tuesday. He wasn't sure what was going on, wasn't even sure if it was a gyn thing but he wanted me to have more blood tests and a specialist ultrasound. So I had my blood test and went in for my scan on Friday at 2.30pm. The doctor doing the scan picked up that it was an ectopic straight away. It looked like it was on my ovaries. He rang my gyn. My gyn had the results of the blood tests which showed that I still had HCG, albeit at a low level. The gyn gave me two options, wait until Monday and have another scan to see if the ectopic was moving down the tube by itself or have a laporoscopy straight away. He thought it was probably better to have a lap as the pain had increased that morning. It was a very difficult decision especially deciding to leave my kids for the night (Esme still breastfeeds a lot during the night so I was worried about her getting distraught) In the end we decided it wasn't worth the risk to my health if the ectopic ruptured so we decided I should have the surgery. By 6pm that night I was in theatre!
It turned out that the ectopic pregnancy was in my tube. It was starting to leak so I'm pretty darn lucky that I went in for the surgery when I did. The gyn also said that it was lucky that it was a very slow growing ectopic pregnancy. He told me he didn't think it was an ectopic in my first appt with him because I didn't seem like I was in enough pain and told me I had a very high pain threshold!! In the end I had to have my tube removed because the ectopic was so big. But the gyn has said that it will only reduce my fertility by about 5-10% and that people who don't have a tube on one side have still been known to get pregnant from the ovary on that side still (apparently the egg travels around to the other side - pretty amazing!) So I'm feeling very grateful to be alive and that I am still able to have more kids.
I guess I learnt a pretty important lesson about following up on things. My GP wanted me to have a specialist ultrasound quite early on, when they weren't able to see anything in my first ultrasound but I refused, thinking that my body was sorting things out itself. But I think I knew that things weren't right. I'd been having tummy pains on and off since the supposed 'miscarriage' but I keep brushing it off as normal.
Anyway, I can't dwell on the 'should have's'. I am alive and for that I am very grateful. Now I need to focus my energy on recovering and healing. I am glad to finally have an answer to everything that has been going on. It has been a very difficult four months and I've had to deal with a huge range of emotions. It's going to take me a while to process it all emotionally and mentally but I will get there.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Jacob starts Kinder
This week marked the 3rd week of Jacob being at Kinder. I had meant to blog about all of this earlier but I keep running out of time!! I can't believe how quickly and easily he has settled in to it all. I had expected him to be reluctant to let me go but he has surprised me. Yesterday he told me 'you go to playgroup mummy' (Esme and I go to playgroup next door while Jacob is at kinder) because he didn't want me to stay! I'm so glad we made the choice of Steiner kinder for Jacob. It just suits him so perfectly! His teacher is very quiet and gentle. She understands that some kids don't want to be bombarded with attention as soon as they walk in the door so she waits until they approach her. All this has been great for Jacob. Combined with lots of outside play, lots of helping to prepare morning tea together and lots of play with toys made from natural material, he is having so much fun and I feel comfortable knowing he is in good hands.
Sewing creations for little girls
I'm having a lot of fun making clothes for Esme at the moment, particularly cute little summer dresses and skirts! It really is a lot of fun having a little girl to dress (I'm making the most of it now because if she's anything like me she won't appreciate her mother choosing clothes for her when she's older lol)
Here's some of the things I have made so far:
This material I bought already shirred but the rest of the dresses I have shirred myself
This skirt is from a top I bought for myself and the op shop. It had a ruffley hem that I didn't like so I cut it off and overlocked it together. Easiest skirt ever! The owl on the t-shirt was stitched by Chris.
This is actually a top I made for a christmas present, Esme also has a top like it but it doesn't fit her anymore :(
Here's some of the things I have made so far:
This material I bought already shirred but the rest of the dresses I have shirred myself
This skirt is from a top I bought for myself and the op shop. It had a ruffley hem that I didn't like so I cut it off and overlocked it together. Easiest skirt ever! The owl on the t-shirt was stitched by Chris.
This is actually a top I made for a christmas present, Esme also has a top like it but it doesn't fit her anymore :(
Our new bunny palace
After gaining ownership of our latest bunny, we decided that the outside cage we had for them just didn't cut it. Chris did a great job of making it but with two (kind of LARGE bunnies) bouncing off the sides, I was a bit worried that the wire wasn't going to hold! Also, a while ago I had decided that we didn't need the wire on the bottom of the cage so I took it off and then discovered that our bunny liked to dig holes under and out!! (She never did that when she was little!) Silly me thought it must just be because she was bored being by herself so I happily put both bunnies outside when we got Tiddah thinking it would be safe. Unfortunately that wasn't the case! Chris went out one night to collect the bunnies and came running back inside to tell me that they had gone. They had dug under their cage and then under the deck (the cage was butting up against the side of the deck)! Luckily, after much crawling around under the deck and the house in the dark, we were able to catch them again.
So, to cut a long story short, we ended up getting a new cage for them off ebay. It is HUGE! Lots of room for them to run around and keep themselves happy. Here's some pics of them in their new bunny palace:
So, to cut a long story short, we ended up getting a new cage for them off ebay. It is HUGE! Lots of room for them to run around and keep themselves happy. Here's some pics of them in their new bunny palace:
Our ABA group in the local paper!
So I thought you'd all like to see our article in the local paper, promoting our local ABA group and one of our upcoming meetings about slings.
You can view it here
The great thing about the article is that we actually had a new person with a 12 week old come along after reading the article! It's always lovely to see new faces (our group has been plodding along recently) and she'd seemed keen to come back too after our very successful slings meeting (I think we even convinced her to buy a hug a bub too after trying one our member's ones on ;))
You can view it here
The great thing about the article is that we actually had a new person with a 12 week old come along after reading the article! It's always lovely to see new faces (our group has been plodding along recently) and she'd seemed keen to come back too after our very successful slings meeting (I think we even convinced her to buy a hug a bub too after trying one our member's ones on ;))
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