emerging from the fog

I've been lost in some kind of maternal fog since Mari came about a month ago. It's been a whirlwind of feeding, changing, bathing, cuddling and getting stuff done. My head is still spinning. I finally have a moment to use the computer so I'm going to make this a quick update:
-Mari has gained 1 kilo, she loves walks in the garden, cuddling with her dad, and Jackson Browne's music. She has real stinky neck cheese :)
-I am finally one kilo below my prepregnancy weight and can fit in to my old jeans. (Vain, I know but YAY!!! anyway) I think the weight I lost might be my brain though, I feel like it's missing.
-We can not stop kissing, holding, playing with Mari. My mom swears I'm spoiling her rotten.
-Mari decided at around 2 weeks that she would rather sleep with us in our bed. She cries when we put her down in her crib and immediately settles down when we bring her to ours'. I really love co-sleeping with her though. I think she's decided her crib is her 'changing room' because that's become it's main purpose. She becomes quite indignant when she wakes up to find she's been left to snooze there.

Here are some pics folks:






Oh, and I am still crafting. Mostly mindless zombie knitting but hey, it's pretty relaxing! Anything I can knit while nursing is game. Right now it's the pinwheel baby blanket using Bouton D'or Medina. It's a viscose/wool blend and is very pretty:

Mari.

Well, she's here. My own little girl :) Mari Wangsai born on August 15th 2007 at 5:35 pm. A total surprise popping out at 37 weeks. I was caught completely un-prepared. She's so tiny, 2.5 kilo and 48 cm long with a darling apple dumpling face. She has lots of fine black hair, sharp little nails that she scratches me with and a tiny little bud of a mouth. I'm completely in love. Here's her birth story:

At 6 pm. the day after my 37 week exam I started having irregular contractions, they became pretty regular at about 10 pm. coming once every 5 min. It was so early I actually thought it was false labour and went to bed, tried to sleep through them until at 8 am. I called the hospital and they had me come in immediately. Turns out I was 1 cm. dilated and 75% effaced. Went to the delivery room and laboured there till 5 pm. The doctor came in and checked me, it turns out I hadn't made any progress at all and her head wasn't engaged. They decided that it was probably because my pelvis was too small for her to fit through and advised me to have a C-section. I really didn't want one, but I was worried about her, I don't know how much stress she was under during the long labour, so I agreed. It turns out that the C-section wasn't as bad as I thought. Kinda like watching an episode of ER... Anyway, the epidural blocked out any feeling in my lower body so I had no idea the doctor was actually lifting her out. I thought they were still looking for her when I heard her whimper, then cry and the doctor was saying she's a girl. I just laughed out loud! I was so happy to have her here and it was so unreal that they have actually lifted a real live living human being out of my body. I remember thinking 'Now we are two.' Me and Mari have been occupying the same space for so long having her out of my body felt like a huge step.

After that was the long road to recovery. I'm really glad the hospital here is so pro-breast feeding. It was really hard learning how to feed her, I'm not sure I could have done it with out all the advice I recieved. She's a very good feeder and has a very good appetite, but in the beginning it hurt so much. Like someone pinching your nipple over, and over, and over again. But I'm really glad I'm able to breatfeed her. I look at her poo and feel like, yeah, that's my breast milk right there :D

I'll try to post pictures when I have time again( God knows when that will be, it's been all Mari 24/7 since we got home.) The Mr. has been wonderful, I couldn't have hoped for a better partner through all this. He's been very patient and attentive during my recovery from the C-section, and he's just so in love with Mari. I think he's used up all the memory chips we have taking her pictures! Anyways, pics later. I promise. Right now I have to go get some sleep before the little miss wakes up for her next feed.

Losing my religion.

I went to re-new my ID card the other day. Had to change from Miss to Mrs. since me and the Mr. are now officially married by Thai law, and I decided to change my religious status too. I used to be Buddhist but had stopped believing for more than 6 years now. I never really identified with the Theravadi Buddhism that's pre-dominant in Thailand anyway, so I didn't want it written on my ID that I do. Simple enough, I didn't expect to be turned in to 'the woman with no soul' at the city office.
Here's what happened.

I went in, got in line, had my photo taken, blah blah blah... Then the staff person asked for my blood type and religion. I told her B and to leave my religion as a blank, she said ok. On to the next que.

The woman who checked my info looked at my blank religion and said:
Her: You don't have a religion!?
Me: Yeah, can we leave that as a blank?
Her: But how can you not have a religion? Don't you believe in anything?
Me: I'm still looking around... (Thought:It's none of your business anyway!)
Her: What was your religion before?
Me: Buddhist.
Her: And now?
Me: Nothing. I'm still looking.
Her: Why aren't you Buddhist anymore?! (Voice getting louder and higher)
Me: I stopped believing in Buddhism...
Her: Hey! Hey! She doesn't have a religion! (Shouting to the person in the next stall)
What about your parents!? What do they have to say about this!
Me:....

I can't believe she actually started asking about what my parents thought. To a woman almost 30 years old, Married, heavily pregnant, what would that say about me if I still had to ask my parents for permission about my faith. I opened my mouth to tell her my father had passed away, and my mom didn't mind what I believed, but I just couldn't waste anymore words. I just shook my head. At that moment the person next to her told her 'It's ok for her not to have a religion, it's not important info.' So with no back up she just started going on about how the ID didn't look complete and so on and cranked out my card.

LADY, WOULD IT BE COMPLETE IF I LIED ON IT?! WOULD IT?!

sheesh...

7/8/07

It's my birthday today. I'm 27, officially. 26 was a rollercoaster of extreme ups and downs, so I'm hoping 27 will be a smoother ride.

Plans for the day:
-Doctor's appointment, to check up on lil' red and see how s/he's doing.
-Home, a bit of laundry, maybe some crafting.
-Dinner out with the Mr.? We'll see about that one, I haven't decided on a good place yet.

Well, here's to what I hope will be a calm, mellow, happy year.

*Hmm.. The post goes up as 6 Aug. Must be the time zone difference, for the record, it's already 7 Aug here in BKK.

Joy!!

I FINALLY FINISHED THE BAG ORDER!!!!

No more teeny tiny bits of bag to sew in place, no more teensy weensy little stitches and finally some time to knit!! Yay!!

Here's some pics of the bags:

Here they are pre-cloth pom pom. I don't have any completely finished pics yet coz the Mr. took my camera to Chiangrai, so I'll just say that this is the photo I took when I was soo close to finally finishing I could almost taste it.

Now, aside from sewing (and more sewing...) I've been baby sitting this lil' devil:

And I do believe I'm satrting to understand his language...

And this is a pair of felt booties for little red (The baby's belly name)

See more of these babies here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/bittybooties/

Undercover

I've finished the baby blanket. An order came in for some small change purses due next month meaning I needed to finish up my current projects so the quilt was done yesterday. I just cut out the back fabric (hot pink really soft cotton flannel) and the quilt batting. Layer it with the right side out and the batting sandwiched in between and tacked all that together. Then I sewed a border around all four sides and quilted the whole thing and it was finished! The quilting was very simply done just quilted along the borders of each square so in all it took just a day. Yay!

Sling thing

I bought a length of fancy printed cloth to make this sling since I was in Tokyo. It was a designer's print, I can't seem to recall here name... Amy something... but the print is REALLY cute and I finally dragged out the fabric and made up this baby sling. Here's some pictures of my dog Taka test driving the sling. He's around 6 kilos and he didn't feel heavy at all. But then he would only stay in the sling for maybe 5 minutes at a time so I'm not sure if I'll be saying the same thing after half a day of lugging baby Red around...