Sad end

At last I will explain what happened to 2 of our beloved chickens. In short, a fox got them.

We'd been allowing them out of their run as they really liked being outside. At the end of November we let them out one morning and within 10 minutes 2 of them had been killed. I only managed to rescue 2 of them by getting them into the kitchen away from the evil fox that was scampering around our garden, feasting on our darlings.

A lesson has been learnt.

So with FrouFrou and Henrietta dead, Trixie and Antoinette are cold and lonely. Thank goodness they have each other. We've applied to get a couple more chickens as it's only fair on them to be in a small flock. Hopefully we can extend their run too so that they have more freedom.

Birth Story (Part 1)

Our birth story for our baby is something I want to remember. As time goes on I keep worrying that I'll forget the little details so I am determined to record it and here seems as good a place as any.

On Tuesday 13th October 2009 and 10.50am I decided to go for a walk and put my boots on in the kitchen. I felt a sudden rush of liquid and leapt to my feet in a Jumping-Jack-type stance to avoid my waters ruining my lovely brown suede boots. All I could think was "not the boots!" Little else registered as the baby wasn't due for another 9 days so it couldn't possibly be happening.

The other side is that I had been feeling 'odd' since the Friday before when I had a sharp contraction. I continued to feel strange that weekend while I went shopping for nursing tops and bras and ran a Christmas craft party.

Anyway, when I had recovered myself I decided that I ought to ring Mr Tigerlily and let him know that things are likely to kick off in a few hours or so. No need for him to dash home and be all hysterical when I'm fine on my own. I believe the first labour is likely to last 12 hours + so there was no need to panic.

Ten minutes later and I'd had 2 or 3 contractions! Time to ring Mr Tigerlily and demand he return home sharpish!! It was quite hard to speak though so it was more like "Home! NOW!!" The next task was to get some professional assistance. I'd gone upstairs to run a bath as this was alledged to help ease contractions (I still don't know if this is true!), but this caused a few problems... how to get downstairs to get phone numbers I needed? where to place myself ready for labour??

In between contractions I managed to crawl up and down the stairs a couple of times, due to making a number of errors I had to make a couple of trips. Things felt like they were speeding up even more. Irrationally I thought that the best place to go, having rung the hospital and found out which midwife I needed to ring and rung the midwife and convinced her I wasn't imagining things, was to sit in the bathroom! I sat silently next to my nice bath, not being brave enough to climb in as I wasn't sure I would be able to get out again, and waited for help to arrive......

What a load of rubbish

Nearly 6 weeks after having our little angel and life is settling into 'normality' again. We have friends over, cook dinner and sit together or potter about in the evenings. Life has not ended. Although it's not always plain sailing we are not miserable.

Now that I am getting my sense of self back I realise that it's terrible what horror stories people tell you when you are about to become a parent for the first time. If things were that bad you wouldn't wait for your friends to get pregnant before telling them woeful tales. No, you would take them to one side while they are still single and let them know what could happen to them if they were to (gasp) have a baby. You will NEVER sleep, you will be MISERABLE, you will have NO MONEY or FUN ever again.

Lots of people have babies. Some people are not even that bright, but they make a little human being and bring it up. It can't be that bad or people would not go back for a second, third or more.

We have a gorgeous little angel who is showing us another side to ourselves. Yes she can be tricky but ultimately the good waaaay outdoes the bad.

One month on

A month has passed and she's grown so much! It's been fun to see many of our friends and family, who've all been extremely generous and kind. Yesterday Immy was given this cute Santa suit - so she's all prepared for her first Christmas now!
I'm amazed at all the new things I have to do each day and she is so rewarding!