Someone's going to be a big sister! Baby#2 Arriving February 2019

I am officially 14 weeks pregnant with Everly's little brother/sister, and thought it high time I start documenting this pregnancy before it's all over. Gosh it's VERY different with a second pregnancy, and I am determined to not let time slip by without at least attempting to do everything I did while pregnant with Everly. I'm pretty sure this is not going to be easy, as life with an-almost-toddler is pretty crazy, and some days I feel as though all I've accomplished is keeping my child fed and watered...like a good plant haha. But even if that's all I have been able to do, I still give myself a pat on the back, because let's face it fellow moms...no one else is going to!

So, let me start at the very beginning.

I had an inkling that I was pregnant about 10 weeks ago (just like I did with Everly...click here to read more about the start of that pregnancy). Again, just the same as what happened with Evs, I took pregnancy test after pregnancy test, because I just 'had a feeling' and all 5 of them came back negative. Then I waited a few more days, took one last one (well, I actually did another 3 after this next one came back positive) and there was no denying the double line. This was just before the Creighton Aloe Festival, where I was going to be setting up and selling Gin cocktails...needless to say I was unable to actually sample any of my exciting homemade cordial concoctions and had to rely on the repeat customers and cheesy gin smiles as the day progressed to know that they were indeed good!

My mom came to visit from Joburg, mainly to babysit Everly while Farmboy and I worked our little bums off day and night at the Aloe Festival...me doing Gin and setting up the stalls etc and Farmboy who worked many a late night smoking enough pulled pork to feed 1000 people! My mom arrived armed with a ClearBlue Week Calculator pregnancy test and, thank goodness no morning sickness had hit me yet, as I was surrounded by meaty smells and alcohol! The test maxes out at 3-5 weeks so I knew that, 1. I was definitely pregnant, and 2. that I was about 3 -5 weeks pregnant. 

I decided pretty early on that I wasn't going to go for as many scans as my first pregnancy, and only popped into a GP with a very old scan machine to do a very basic check up. She struggled to find baby, and eventually found a little blob and a which was a bit of a dissapointment to be honest. She thought I was actually not as far along as I had thought, but still, it was nice to get a visual confirmation and see the strong and healthy heartbeat.

From about weeks 6 - 10 I had terrible morning sickness, something I didn't have at all with Everly (could this be a sign that this little bundle is a boy???) and I've also had all the same symptoms as before...spots on my back, dry and cracked heels, having to go to the bathroom CONSTANTLY, and feeling incredibly tired around weeks 6 - 8. My tummy also POPPED around week 10. I have done very little exercise (I'm going to blame those weeks of nausea but in reality, now that i feel back to my old self, I've just been plain old lazy). I am determined to get back to Pilates, and keep up with walks around the farm. I have also not been very good about drinking water, and have been AWFUL with snacks and junk food (again, I want to blame those weeks of nausea but in reality I know I've just been lazy to cook healthy meals) but I am suffering because of it and it's not fair on the little growing life inside of me. As of tomorrow it's back to low carb/Banting (mostly) and no more sugary drinks!

This week I went along to a Gynae for my first official scan and check up. Baby is doing well and was so lively on the scan, waving his/her hands about and kicking up a storm. She estimated my delivery date to be the 22nd February, but if I end up having a cesar (I am hoping to be able to make my VBAC *vaginal birth after cesarian* dreams come true as I ended up having an emergency cesar with Everly, after a VERY long 40 hours of labor...blog post to come on my birth story soon) then baby will be here around the 8th Feb. I went into labor at 37+6 days and Everly was born exactly on the 38th week. So, this new little one may also arrive early.

Finding out that I was indeed pregnant, was a HUGE shock for both Farmboy and myself. While we both wanted more kids (and the fact that I wasn't on any form of contraceptive....mostly because I didn't want to put my body through any more doses of hormones after being on the Pill for 15 years before Everly). It's just that we hadn't planned for their to be such a short gap in-between our little ones, or that I would fall pregnant so quickly. I am in no ways complaining, it's a 'hashtag' blessing (sorry, I couldn't hep myself with that '#' considering how it gets bandied about these days) to be able to fall pregnant without any complications and I am in awe of what a woman's body is able do...carry and grow a life...but at the same time, I was filled with so many mixed emotions. Just before I found out I was pregnant, I was feeling fantastic, I was back down to my pre-pregnancy weight (and then some!) and was just feeling so healthy! I was just getting used to my body again, feeling strong. This definitely contributed to the feelings of shock.

Another reason for the shocked emotions was because up until that time I was still breastfeeding Everly, like, a lot! I was feeding her 4-5 times a day, and while I have always known that breastfeeding is definitely not a hard and fast form of contraception, it is more on the unusual side to fall pregnant when feeding so frequently. I only had one period (when Everly was about 7/8 months old) and then I guess the next month I fell pregnant. I think around the 7 month mark I had dropped her night/early morning feed and so my body must have started getting ready to make more babies. In case you're still wondering, I am still breastfeeding Everly, but am slowly weaning. She has had absolutely no issue with dropping feeds so far (since a week ago I now only feed her twice a day, when she wakes up in the morning, and when she goes to bed at night). I had initially planned to breastfeed until a year (she will be a year in just under 2 weeks time!!!) but I've loved our journey so far (click here to read our breastfeeding story), and if I wasn't currently pregnant, I would probably carry on until she decided she had had enough. I still seem to have enough milk for her, but she eats her solids really well and has even continued to sleep through on the od occasion I haven't been around to feed her at bedtime, so I know she probably isn't needing the feeds much anymore. I know that its going to be a very bittersweet moment when I give her her last feed, but at the same time, I would like a few months of my boobs back before the next little one is here and I am back to being the in-house dairy cow :)

I also had a lot of up and downs in the very beginning, mostly because I felt like 'I already have a baby' and Everly really was just a baby at that time. And she is still pretty much going to be a baby (in my eyes at least) when her little sibling is born. But I am encouraged by all the moms I know who take the small age gap in their stride. And it's happening either way, whether I am mentally prepared or not! I'm just going to have to roll with the punches, I mean nappies (because boy oh boy are there going to be a lot of them! Although we are hoping Everly will have started potty training by them...she has been in cloth nappies since the very beginning and from what I have read, it seems cloth nappies really help with potty training...we will have to wait and see!).

You can read more about my first pregnancy, as well as all my pregnancy posts by scrolling through the images below (just click and you will be taken to the full post). I'm hoping to make some more videos like I did for my first pregnancy, so please do keep me accountable for those!

As always, thanks for following along.

x

#FromFarmToTable - Homemade Baby food in Collaboration with Tommee Tippee

If you've been following me for a little while now, you might have seen my previous posts here on the blog and on Instagram where I’ve been sharing the beginning of our #EverlyStartsSolids journey.  My little girl is now 6 months old, and we are well into the swing of things when it comes to weaning her onto real food. I'm so excited to share this post with you, showing you how easy it is to make your own baby food, ensuring you avoid all those nasty additives and preservatives that are in store bought purees.

Although we are using fresh veggies from our own little veggie garden, you can still make delicious and nutritious meals for your little ones using store bought fruit & veg. 

Our veggie garden goes through a lot of ups and downs. Sometimes it looks amazing and is bountiful, and other times I spend my life picking off the millions of snails that find their way onto anything and everything that grows. Plus there's the constant battle with the weeds. But even though it takes a bit of work, there's nothing quite like the feeling of picking your own homegrown vegetables, and eating them fresh from the garden.

Having our own veggie garden has also inspired me to make all my own first meals for Everly. We live out in the middle of nowhere, and so it's pretty much impossible to pop to the shops and stock up on ingredients. But I'm really not going to complain, when these are the views we look out on every day...

Today I want to share with you one of the recipes from Meg Faure's Weaning Sense recipe book. This is her Rainbow Veg Mash, and is a really lovely 'base' to start with, and then to add other more exciting flavours to once your little one is used to it. So far I've added chicken stock, liver and cream cheese to it, and Everly has loved it! The recipe makes about three baby cup fulls which you can freeze easily for future use.

I've really been liking the Tommee Tippee Explora Freezer pots for freezing, as they have a very clever rubber base that allows you to ‘pop’ out the frozen food easily. They are also dishwasher, microwave & steriliser safe, although I prefer to heat up Everly’s food using hot water as I’m not a huge fan of the microwave. I also love the Essentials food pots (the pink see-through pots pictured below with the pinks lids) for storing left over food, and particularly for heating up her meals. They stack beautifully, taking up less space in your freezer, and are ideal for traveling too. Also, as they are see-through, you can easily tell what food is inside. This is particularly helpful if you are like me, and like to make & freeze in bulk. You can tell at a quick glance whether it’s butternut or beetroot, and grab what you need.

When it comes to actually steaming & blending baby food, I can't get over just how easy it is to do with the Steamer Blender machine from Tommee Tippee. I was sent over one to try, and at first I thought it to be a bit of an extravagance. I mean, can't you just use a pot and then transfer everything to another bowl and blend using a hand blender or blending machine? Well, read on friends!

Now, while you can just use any old pot you have at home to steam and then blend with another device, the Steamer Blender just makes things sooooooo easy. It's as simple as; chop veggies, pop into the jug, press some buttons and voila, a perfectly steamed & blended meal…ready to be eaten (or frozen for later).

When steaming veggies, it's really easy to forget that a lot of the goodness stays behind in the water. With this machine, the water stays in the jug, and then is used to blend the mixture. This way, all the goodness goes right back into the meal. And if you are already past the first few weeks of starting solids with your little one, you'll be happy to know that you can set the amount of 'blending' you'd like. You can make really smooth purees for the beginning stages of your solid food journey, or you can leave it chunkier as baby progresses to more textured food. Or you can skip the blending stage altogether…there are so many different options. I have to say this gadget really does make life simpler.

I've even been known to whip up a good couple of batches of sweet potato mash for Farmboy and myself, so believe me when I say you really will get a lot of use out of the Steamer Blender, even as baby gets older.

I have been freezing extra 'single' food into ice trays (ice cubes are the perfect size for Everly's first meals as she isn't eating that much just yet). Then I go shopping in the freezer, picking out a few ice cube combinations and then pop them into a cup to defrost. You can also take the frozen cubes out the night before and put them in the fridge to defrost overnight if you're the sort of person who remembers to do that. I always plan on doing that and then forget!

Another huge bonus when it comes to the Steamer Blender machine is how easy it is to clean. I know not everyone is as crazy about doing the dishes as I am (for realsies, I genuinely find doing the dishes to be relaxing and FAR prefer it to cooking!). So for those moms or dads out there who despise doing the dishes, this piece of tech is going to change your life! There aren't a million and one pots and pans and spoons. It's one jug that is easy to rinse clean, and then can be popped into the dishwasher if you're feeling really lazy. Otherwise it's a quick rinse in hot soapy water and then you're good to go!

Want to see the steamer blender in action? We made a fun little video showcasing our meal prep and would love to share it with you. You’ll also be able to see our menagerie of animals, in particular, #AmberTheGinger & #ShadowTheJindo. 

We hope you enjoyed the little glimpse into our lives here on the family dairy farm. I've got lots more video ideas (including a few on cloth nappies!) which I'm going to be putting up on my youtube channel soon. Let me know in the comments below if there's anything in particular you'd like me to make a video about. 

I post a lot of behind the scenes photos & videos over on Instagram Stories, so make sure you're following me over there too. Please do drop me a message and say hi, I love making new friends! 

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Interested in finding our more about other Tommee Tippee products? The brand is very active on Facebook and have just launched their South African Instagram Account for you to connect with them and ask any questions you might have.

This post is sponsored by Tommee Tippee but all thoughts & views are honest and my own. 

Early misty farm mornings || Life on a dairy farm

After a particularly bad night (or rather a week of a lot less sleep than usual) I'm going through my photos and reminding myself of all the things I have to be thankful for. And at the top of the list, living in such a beautiful place...even when the whether is grey and cold.

Here are a few photographs from an early morning adventure to feed the calves with Dad. Most mornings, after Evy wakes up and I feed and change her, we walk down to the dairy office to see what Dad is up to. On this particular morning we caught him just in time to hop in the bakkie and go with to feed the calves. What a fun adveture for little Everly.

Everly had so much excitement, she promptly passed out halfway through. I'm treasuring these rare moments of her falling asleep in my arms. She used to easily fall asleep with me holding her, no matter where we were. But now that she's bigger and more alert as to what's going on, it rarely happens anymore.

I'm not sure where the last 6 months have gone to, it's sort of passed in a blur and yet in those hard moments, time has dragged on. It really is true when they say 'The nights are long but the years are so very short' and so I'm going to keep reminding myself to pick up my camera and keep capturing the every day moments so I can look back on them and remember.

Life with a Baby - Week 15

Oh goodness me...it feels like someone has swopped my sleeping newborn cherub for a wide awake and ready for action infant, literally overnight! 

It was just the other day that I was thinking that the 3 month stage is just the best...and then just as I was getting used to all the giggles and smiles, along comes more changes which have left me feeling a bit frazzled. Before I go on with this post, I do want to give myself a big pat on the back for keeping a little human alive for the past 3 and a half months. I have completely surprised myself, mostly because I was absolutely terrified about becoming a mom (see posts below for more on my pregnancy journey): 

I loved being pregnant so much that there were times when I wished I could stay like that forever!And the idea of what was to come really scared me. Mostly, I was scared of being 100% responsible for something so small, who depended on me for every.single.thing, and then the worries of what exactly I would do with her all day. Those first few weeks went by in such a blur, I needn't have worried. Mommy instincts do indeed kick in, and before you know it, they are no longer a newborn.

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I have been wanting to share a post on life with a Newborn for ages, but, life with a newborn doesn’t allow for much of anything other than keeping said newborn alive! I have a handwritten draft of that post which I will hopefully share with you all soon. I’m going to include lots of the baby things/paraphernalia we loved and that made our lives easier, and the items we felt were a bit of a waste of money...stay tuned for that soon!

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According to the plethora of baby books I own, here are a few possible explanations, as well as a few others I have thought up :

• The dreaded 4 Month sleep regression (eeek!)

• A growth spurt

• Teething (she has been drooling A LOT! but no sign of any pearly whites just yet)

• A Wonder Weeks developmental leap

• Travel or disturbance of environment/routine (we flew to Joburg a couple of weeks ago? Also we have been visiting lots of family and friends so this could be an added element?)

• Since returning from Joburg, we have moved her out of her bassinet and into her cot...her baby nest has also become far too small and now she is just in the cot as is, perhaps she's missing the snugness of the baby nest?

• And the most probable one...she's just being a regular baby, growing and changing with no real explanation as to why she does what she does!

Up until now...

Evy has been a wonderful sleeper from day one. I had mentally prepared myself for literally NO sleep for the first year of her life, and so the fact that she would sleep 3-4 hours at a time during the day, and 5-6 hours at night in between feeds (Evy is Exclusively Breast Fed Or EBF) in the first few months was a wonderful surprise. I can't really say that it's one particular thing we do that makes her sleep like she does (or rather...DID!), I think a large part of it has to do with luck and her being a really content baby. But I'll share the routine we follow, because I'm pretty sure it does at least play a part.

I know it doesn't really need to be said, but I want to say it here...all babies are different, and some babies, not matter how much 'sleep training/crying it out/routine fixing' you do, just want to be close to mommy and are never settled until they are on their mommy. I am a general busy body, and wanted to try my best to have Everly fit in with our lives (this is only really possible up until a point) instead of us fitting in with her. I also want to say that a lot of my friends have babies who have had terrible reflux and so their journey's have been very different to ours. If you think your baby has reflux and you've been having a really really hard time, I'd love to share these two blog posts by my friend Sophie (an extraordinary mommy I'm so lucky to call my friend)...click here.

We try to be quite flexible in our routines, but our bedtime schedule goes a little something like this:

• 6pm bath time (depending on her afternoon nap I’ll either feed her one side right before bath time or when she wakes up from her last nap which can be anywhere between 4 & 6pm). Then once out the bath it’s a quick massage, a nice big clean nappy (we are using cloth nappies...click here to read more about our cloth nappy journey so far) and pyjamas. She generally screams blue murder if we take too long to get her clothes on after her bath, and I guess I would too if I was left to get cold on a changing mat after a lovely hot bath.

• +- 6:30pm feed the other side and burp her

• +-7pm sleep time

In the last few weeks she was sleeping right through until about 3 or 4am when she would wake and I would go in and feed her (and change her nappy if she needed) and then pop her straight back down again where she would sleep until around 6 or 7am.

We have been pretty strict about Everly’s sleeping right from the very beginning. I had been told to put her to sleep in a way that I could realistically do at 1 in the morning, and so a dummy works best for us. I knew there was no way I wanted to be up rocking a baby to sleep every time they woke up and so we were pretty firm with putting her down and letting her settle herself to sleep. 

Here's how put Everly to sleep at night:

After her bath & last feed & burp, we pop her straight down in her cot while she is awake but drowsy, put her dummy in and walk out the room. Depending on whether she’s sleeping on her side or back, we’ll give her a few bum pats (gosh I will someone had told me before having a baby how life changing bum pats would be! Pretty much never fails to calm her down when she gets niggly). This is the only time of the day that I feed before her sleep.

And during the day:

I try to follow a 'wake-eat-change-play-sleep' routine during the day so that she doesn't associate sleeping with feeding, as feeding before sleeping makes life really hard as baby ends up refusing to go to sleep without a feed. This has become so much harder to do lately as she is awake so much more. From about month 1 to month 3, she would sleep about 3 hours at a time during the day, which meant every time she woke up it would be time for a feed (I have fed on demand and she would generally go around 3 hours in between feeds during the day). We do the same sleep routine during the day as at night. Except this time she gets put down after play time, and it can take a little longer depending on how tired she is/how much of a good mom I've been and actually played with her vs. popping her on her play mat to play by herself.

And now...

For the last week or so, she's been waking up after quick 45 minute naps during the day (sometimes stretching two 45 minute naps together...what is called 'linking' in baby lingo) and it's just not nearly enough time to get anything Adult/Roxy/Non-Mommy related things done. This has been really hard for me to adjust to, and I have found myself getting more and more frustrated. But, this is just part of the mommy-hood journey, and I'm sure there will be lots more moments like these to come. But please, comment below and let me know I'm not alone!

Her new night time wakings have also been harder to adjust to. She's been waking up a few times, and I've managed to get through some of them by going in and popping her dummy back in, patting her a few times and then walking out. When that has failed (and I've been back and forth with the dummy numerous times) I have resorted to feeding her and then putting her back down to sleep. We do have it relatively easy, but still...the last couple of weeks been an adjustment.

I wanted to share this post here (and anymore 'Life with a Baby' posts I am ever actually able to write) as a way to document my journey through motherhood. If you have a baby or if you're having a baby soon, I hope you find it useful or inspiring (or perhaps you'll just have a good old chuckle at the things I find difficult now as I'm sure there are worse to come).

But most importantly, I want to share this post because each of us first time moms are walking our own paths through motherhood, and our struggles, no matter how big or small they might seem in comparison, should unite us together, rather than making us feel alone <3.

Now for the fun stuff...

Current fav nickname: Bobbin

Loves: Being sung to and any and all music! Likes to face forward when being carried so she can see the world. LOVES being naked so she can kick and squirm and fling her arms and body about.

Hates: Tummy time! The amount of tears we ave both shed as I have watchd her squiggle and scream on the mat has left me traumatised. But, there is light at the end of the tunnel! After a good 3.5 months of really struggling with this, it seems that she has graduated from blue murder screams to mumbling her distaste at being placed face down on the floor. It was a pretty viscous cycle for a while, the more she cried the less I forced her to do tummy time (an the more judgey eyes I'd get from my mommy friends), and therefore the harder it was when I did pluck up the courage to do it. But I am happy to say, we seem to have found a position she can tolerate, and this has made tummy time on the floor a bit easier as she is getting stronger.

Here's my absolute favourite photo of her doing tummy time (and the ONLY time she has ever actually stopped crying and actually smiled...#mommywin!). Let me know if you'd like em to write a blog post on tummy time, and how you can actually make it a fun activity rather than a horrible chore.

Teething: Loads of drool, both hands always in the mouth (a few choking episodes where she's opened her hand while it's in her mouth and her fingers have gone down her throat...poor thing!). Everything goes into the mouth now, her hands, my hands, any and all toys, and her favourite thing to grab and suck on...my hair (ouch!).

Eye Colour: Grey? Dark Blue?

Hair Color: Dark Brown 

Weight: Weighing in at 6.2 kg's, Everly has officially doubled her birth weight! 

Feeding: Breastfed

Sleeping Aids: Her hands, a dummy & a little soft giraffe taglet/doodoo blankie

Current clothing sizes: 3-6 months (although she has been in this size for a good while). I'm going to blame it on the cloth nappies ;) I have still managed to squeeze her into one or two of my favourite 0-3 month outfits, but these were mostly her sweet little jackets and jerseys. The 0-3 month onesies and leggings haven't fitted her for a good many weeks! 

Currently eating/not eating: in the beginning, I found that the only thing that really seemed to upset Everly in my diet was tinned tomatoes. I pretty much carried on eating everything I had eaten during pregnancy. Something that I am pretty sure plays a big role in her afternoon grumpiness and something which I try to avoid is caffeine. The days when I do drink caffeine, I try to have it as early in the day as possible. This has seemed to lessen the 4 - 5pm bbay meltdown period  considerably!

That's all for now friends. I'm hoping she settles back into her usual sleeping pattern, and if not, all the smiles and the talking and general cuteness will undoubtedly make up for it all.

Wishing you all a wonderful Christmas and festive season from all of us here on the farm.