A rather fancy afternoon treat

This past weekend was a special occasion for our little family. It has to be said that I enjoy the finer things in life. I'm not a high-maintenance kind of girl in terms of clothes, or shoes, or makeup, but I do enjoy pursuits that have a touch of old world elegance about them - experiences that make you feel special, in pleasant surroundings, with good company, and where polite attendants cater to my every whim.

And so, my dear Leslie searched high and low for a birthday present for me this year that would tick all of those boxes. And he found it at The Windsor Hotel, whose traditional afternoon teas are something of an institution in Melbourne. When I say he had to look high and low, what I really mean is that he knew exactly where I like to go for special occasions, so he went there and bought me a gift certificate! The weekend sittings are always booked out weeks in advance. I didn't think that was much of a problem, however, as it meant I would get to celebrate my birthday twice - once in July and once in August - and a girl can't really complain about that.

I would normally have gotten a bit frocked up, but I seem to be without any well-fitting attire at present, having lost all of my baby weight immediately after Alice was born, but then proceeding to put it all back on as a result of 2am, sleep-deprived, desperate binges on biscuits and sweet tea. As a result, I feel uncomfortable in pretty much every item of clothing I own. A birthday shopping trip did little to solve this dilemma as I ended up feeling very glum in about a million change rooms trying to find things that looked good. Consequently, I have just begun a healthy eating and exercise plan, but obviously this started after the fancy afternoon tea...

Alice did, though. She couldn't wait to wear her beautiful little winter dress for the first time. It had been hanging up in her wardrobe, gathering dust, just waiting for an occasion to make a gorgeous baby the very picture of old-fashioned infant chic. Les told her that it was going to be a long afternoon of sweets and savouries, so she made sure she got in a really good sleep before we left. There's no way she wanted to miss out on seeing the scones, the decadent cakes and macaroons, and especially the crepe station! 

She napped in her bed.

Then she napped on my lap.

We bundled her into the car, where she slept all the way to the station. Then we caught the train into the city, which was so relaxing, with so much rollicking and rolling along the tracks that it, too, lulled the baby back to sleep for the twenty-or-so minute trip, which left Les and I with nowhere else to focus our attention except awkwardly on the couple across from us who were focusing all their attention on us, or more specifically, Alice.

We arrived at the hotel, helped into the foyer by the doorman, or footman, or, I'm not really sure what he is known as, but he's the fancy guy who opens the car door for you out the front. We had a bit of time to spare before our sitting so we sat in the lobby and soaked up the ambience. There was a harpist, some big Chesterfield lounges, lots of mahogany and charm, and...a big, gaudy, flashing neon sign hanging over the reception counter, which was so out of place to be an almost comical addition to the scenery. Not wanting to waste her energy before afternoon tea had even begun, Alice slept in her pram whilst we waited, too.

At 2.30pm we were shown to our table, feeling very special and very posh as we were led through the beautiful tea room. We sat, were poured tea and coffee, salivated over our tiered stand of goodies, and  waited for Alice to wake up so we could take a photo of her sitting next to all the goodies.

We waited. And we waited. And we waited some more. The baby would not wake up. She just wouldn't! 'We've come all this way...' we told her. 'We've paid all this money!' we implored. But still she slumbered. We poked her. We prodded her. We got her out of the dark, cosy pram and into the bright afternoon light. But on it went. The sleeping. It Just. Went. On.

Les tried handing her to me. I also had little success in coaxing this little cinderella from her deep repose. 

The two women sitting at the table beside us seemed quite bemused by the situation. They offered to take a photo of us all together for our album. I was going to have a whole page dedicated to Alice's first afternoon tea. But we just couldn't seem to get a happy snap where we were all smiling at the right time, without a goofy look on our faces, or, more importantly, where we all had our eyes open (not mentioning any names...ALICE!)

Despite our daughter's disinterest in the proceedings, Les and I had a wonderful time. I loaded my plate up with goodies but could only manage to actually eat a fraction of what I wanted to. The sweets were so rich that one bite of each and your stomach was already turning. It was really hot inside the tearoom as well so I started to feel really sick by the end of the afternoon. 

As we were contemplating leaving, of course, the child awoke! Wide eyed and wondering where the hell she was, Alice came to life just as we were ready to prepare ourselves for a dusky siesta. To pay her back for her tardy awakening we made her pose for about a thousand pictures, whether she liked it or not. 

She didn't like it a lot. She didn't flash so many of her winning smiles. But at least we can say she was conscious, and sometimes you've got to take what you can get!

One month old!

We've had a big week. Alice reached the very momentous one-month-old mark. She also, finally, reached her expected due date today, the 10th of May. Two milestones in one week! Her one-month birthday was a cause for celebration in our little house. In fact, every day we've had her in our lives has been a celebration, as cliched as that sounds. We still really can't believe we got to the other side of the pregnancy. We still can't believe she's here. We still can't believe she is ours. We especially can't believe that we get to keep her - that she's growing stronger and more resilient every day.

We had a visit to the maternal and child health nurse this week where we discovered that she has grown 4cm since she was born, and that she is also putting on a pleasing amount of weight. She currently weighs 3.45kg, and is finally beginning to fill out her little grow suits that until now have been a bit on the roomy side. She is a perfect size 0000 at the moment and we are trying to get a good amount of wear out of the lovely little outfits we've recently bought her before she grows out of them!

I just love dressing her up. I love any chance I get to look at her gorgeous little limbs and to feel her warm, soft skin upon mine. She's not a great fan of getting in and out of her clothes but she doesn't complain too much, she just squirms around a bit and screws up her face when we pull things over her head. We are still quite slow in dressing her, afraid that we will be too rough and accidentally pull off an arm or a leg, or a little finger or toe. We're slowly learning that she's a much more robust little creature than we give her credit for, though. She's actually getting really strong - I've noticed it in her little legs, especially, and two different medical professionals have also commented on how good her head/neck control is for her age. We've been encouraged to start giving her some 'tummy' time and her grandfather bought her the world's most gigantic play mat where she can practice (seriously, it takes up our entire living room). So far the cats seem to be enjoying the play mat a lot more than she has, though!

I can't get enough of Alice's milestones. I'll make a milestone out of pretty much anything. They were the things I desperately missed out on when Max died, and that I spent months and months longing for. It's why I'm going nuts gathering mementos of all of Alice's milestones, from ordering commemorative birth certificates, to having sculptures made of her little hands and feet, to buying a trolley load of albums and decorations from a scrap booking website to make her a very special baby memory/story book, to collecting all of the little tidbits from her hospital stay (ID tags, the name signs from her little cot). I even took photos of the first pieces of mail she received addressed to her (a package of presents from my mum!). I'm sure I'm going to end up with thousands of mundane photos. Maybe I'll forget what those random images meant at the time, but for now they seem important. I want to gather all the 'evidence' of her existence I can find as if those things might finally convince me that my baby is here, that she is safe, that she is mine.

Here's something else I did. I bought these little month-by-month stickers ages ago and daydreamed about being able to take photos of her wearing them as the calendar turned throughout the year. I bought them from this cute Etsy shop and there are tonnes of designs to choose from. I was beside myself with excitement about being able to whack one of the stickers on her this week. It gave me such a thrill that I didn't even get stressed that she was crying at the time - I was having too much fun! Here she is modelling her '1 Month' sticker. The photos crack me up. She's so expressive with her little arms and they are so long and skinny!

Speaking of photos, we were also excited to have a professional photo shoot of our little family this week. My friend Bek from Little Red Photography is an amazing photographer who is really able to capture the essence of the subject and the occasions she photographs. Bek took some photos of Leslie and I after Max died, incorporating some of his special keepsakes, and she also found some ways to include Max in our current batch of photos, which meant a lot to us. Alice was a good sport for the whole afternoon, only getting unsettled towards the end of our visit to Bek's lovely home. She was very accommodating of us posing her and passing her around. I haven't seen any of the images yet but I know they will be very special and that we will treasure them forever.

Les has been working from home the last two weeks. It's been nice having him at home - just knowing he is there in case all hell breaks loose is reassuring, though nothing of the sort has happened so far. I know that I will manage perfectly fine when he goes back to work, I'm just nervous about it. I'm nervous about not having any back up. I'm worried I'll never get out of the house. What if Alice starts crying and I can't make her stop and I'm the only one here? Nothing seems as scary or dire when there's someone by your side, even if there's nothing additional they can do to help. I have the phone numbers of a bunch of helplines that the hospital gave me on the fridge, so I suppose if all else fails I could swallow my pride and dial them up!

The week ended on a high note. Alice and I made our way, sans Les, to see Melanie this morning, then we took yet another trip to the hospital where she was born for an appointment with a lactation consultant. Feeding has been a very serious challenge for me (I'll write more on this later) and I've seen a bunch of consultants for help so far. The one I saw today was the only one who has really helped, though. It wasn't that she told me anything especially different to what I'd already been told, but she seemed to be able to communicate in a way that just made sense to me, and in the space of a few minutes she fixed a couple of simple mistakes in technique I'd been making and things pretty much improved instantly! I came home with a new feeding plan. It is going to take a lot of work, but I'm committed to giving it a red hot try over the coming weeks in a final attempt to make breastfeeding work for us both. Alice was an angel throughout, even sleeping peacefully while I had some lunch and a cup of tea in the now-familiar food court. Thankfully she also seems to enjoy being in the car as we had a long day getting in and out of it. There's not usually a peep out of her when I'm driving, which is a relief!

So that's a rundown of Alice's fourth week of life, although a mundane one (my update, that is, not her achievements!). I'm basically just typing what ever comes into my head, with very little forethought, which is about all I am capable of at the moment!

More from all of us soon!

Getting to know you

My dear little pea,

You are 3 weeks old. So new, still, and yet we already cannot remember what life was like without you. How did we ever sleep without your little lamb-like bleats in the background of our dreams? You know there's no sweeter sound I've ever heard than your little baby breaths - the ones that make your chest rise and fall, the ones I jump out of bed in the middle of the night to feel upon the back of my hand. Those tiny puffs of moist air, which come so naturally, so effortlessly for you, kickstart my frightened heart one more time and I pray - yes I even pray - that I'll never again know a time without them whispering into my ear, as they do when you rest your tiny blonde head on my shoulder in the middle of the night.

The list of things I know about you is growing by the day. You're so familiar to me that sometimes it feels as if I'm not getting to know you for the first time, but rather that I've known you already, before, somehow, and that I'm merely re-discovering you all over again. I find myself saying 'oh, that's right...' when you pull one of your many highly-expressive faces. 'That's the face you make when you're hungry...'. I recognise each of your looks instantly. We communicate, you and I, we already share a silent, secret language. As each day passes all the pieces of you are beginning to fit together. I'm still amazed that each morning when I open my eyes you are there. You are here. Still here. Still here, and you're mine. You're all fact now, aren't you? Not a hint of speculation or wishful thinking about you. You are no longer a far-off dream.

One fact I've discovered about you over the last couple of weeks is that you love to have a bath. I'm sure you'd love to have a bath much more often than Mummy and Daddy want to give you one. We're still too scared that you'll be cold and slippery and that we'll mess things up, but you are so very patient with our fumbled attempts to get you into and out of the water, and you don't even wail when we wash your hair, even though I can tell that it is your least-favourite part. You seem content to put up with it as a trade-off for the warm waves of perfectly-warm water that you float about in (your daddy, as you'll soon realise is his way, makes sure the water is a perfect 37 degrees with his trusty thermometer).

Before the first bath you ever had, in the hospital when you were only 3 days old, the midwife told us to be prepared for a commotion. 'They all hate bath time,' she laughed as she lined up some tiny baby toiletries. But you made a liar out of her from the get-go! You looked surprised, perhaps, a little overwhelmed when Daddy first lowered you into the water, but certainly not perturbed. That's our girl. Our surprising and wonderful girl. I knew that's what we were both thinking.

At three weeks old you already have your own peculiar ways. When you're in the bath, for instance, you insist on having a face washer of your very own to clutch across your little body. If we don't give you a separate one at the beginning you just grab the one we are using to wash you, which is an extra challenge when we've only got so many hands. So your little face washers have become important security blankets for you and it makes us laugh a lot. I must try to get it on camera next time.

During the last week we have all been very busy settling into life with you in our home. You spent the first two weeks of your life in hospital, so it is both a novelty and a blessing to have you home with us where you belong. You have had a couple of outings into the big world since you came home, though regrettably most of them have been for medical appointments for either your or Mummy!

You went back to the Special Care nursery for a weigh-in and the nurses were very pleased with your feeding efforts! Mummy also saw a nurse who helped her learn how to breastfeed you better as we've had a bit of a hard time together with that. You also met a very special person, a doctor called Melanie, who has helped your mummy through the many months she was pregnant with you and even for a long time before that - when you were just a thought and a wish. Mummy goes to talk to Melanie every Friday about how she feels and Melanie just loves you. She melted when she saw you in the waiting room and spent the whole appointment with you on her lap. She knows just how much you were wanted and wished for.

Meeting Melanie for the first time

You also went to the hairdresser for the first time, but even though you have an incredible amount of hair, and people are always commenting on it, the hair cut was not for you but for both Mummy and Daddy whose appearances had been sadly neglected for many weeks! We were both sprucing ourselves up in preparation for a family photo shoot that is happening on the weekend which we are very excited about. We can't wait to have some beautiful photos of you to show off to the world.

The best trip by far was finally getting to take you to our favourite cafe, Miss Marie, where we go for breakfast every Sunday. You were universally admired by the other patrons and the staff. No one could believe how tiny you are! Mummy spent a lot of time drinking cups of tea in this cafe while she was pregnant with you and so it was just fantastic to be able to wheel you in there in your pram, all safe and sound, just as I'd spent all those months hoping and wishing.

You and me outside the cafe

 

 

You all tuckered out after your first cafe visit!

Get bigger and stronger each day, Alice, though not too much bigger and stronger just yet. I want time to enjoy you just as you are.

Love Mummy