Presents

Yay!
Bram gained 175 g. in 4 days and is now (finally) back on his birth weight...
This means that mommy and daddy can sleep a little longer at night.
Thanks for eating so well, Bram!

Over the past few weeks we have received many many presents for Bram.
Too much to mention here, but I believe hand-made presents deserve some special attention.
Here are some fabulous hand-made gifts:




Socks made by Lies









A bath-cape made by my friend Rob's mother









And extra special credits for my friends from Stitch 'n Bitch Atlanta,
who got together and made this gorgeous blanket!!!
Thank you so much guys!
I miss you too...



Left: with name tags of who made which part...
Right: Bram is two squares big now. I can use the blanket to show you his growth (-:










I luv my blanket!










Oma Dineke also made some presents for Bram. They will be featured another time, as soon as I have pictures...

First times

A day of many 'first times', today...
First time under the shower (loved it),
first time in the baby cuddle (a 'draagdoek', a piece of fabric that you wrap around you to carry the baby)(loved it too),
first time visiting someone else (a b-day party of a friend. Bram was the center of attention, even though it was a milestone b-day for my friend Rob).

I am doing better every day. But I did catch a nasty cold, and we had to start feeding Bram at night again. He sleeps through the night if we let him (we have such an easy-going little man!), but he did not gain enough weight yet, so I have to feed him more often and we even give him some extra 'dessert' bottle food. He will be weighed again on Tuesday. Let's hope he is fattening up now, so we can sleep again at night... Mommy is a little (lot) tired.



Bram is tired too...









I know they're not 'real' smiles yet...
but isn't he the cutest baby ever!?








I guess today is also 'adorable-pictures-day'

(-:

Opa's birthday

Today was my dad's birthday.
It makes me sad that he will never meet his grandson Bram.
Bram's second name, Gerben, is a mixture of the names of both his grandfathers: Gerard (my dad) and Ben (Martijn's dad).
I think my dad would have liked that.




Outside for the first time!












is that a smile?












Back to being his serious self.

Baby blues

Or rather, mummie blues.
I had a setback for a few days.
The effect of the blood transfusion was over, and I am not very strong yet.
Add the 'baby blues' (kraamtranen) that every new mom apparantly has a few days after the birth and some problems with my stitches, and I was a very unhappy Wollekje for a bit.

Getting better now, lots of presents and cake helps (-:
Happy birthday to me!


He loves his bath...
So relaxing.











Even Bram cries sometimes.

I'm back...

Hi all!
I am back online (-:
I probably won't post everyday, but I am happy that I am capable of getting out of bed again, even if only for a little bit...

As Martijn told you in his update the birth was difficult and I lost a lot of blood.
One positive thing: I am now forced to eat all the foods I missed during the pregnancy: steak, roast beef, paté... Doctor's orders, to get my iron level up (-:

I will leave you for today with two pictures:














Our beautiful boy earlier today, and his proud daddy.

Martijn is the best! He has to do everything himself since I am in bed most of the day. I haven't even changed a nappy yet...
I just want to say here that I am the luckiest wife with a hubby like him!
Love you Tijn!!!

Pictures!!!

What a weekend this was for the two of us!

Annemarie had a lot to go through and now she is regaining strength for the next two weeks.
Let's just list the hurdels: Gel to open up, medicine to get contractions going, a contractionstorm, morphine, 2 inch in 1 hour, ventouse, episiotomy, birth!, stitches, two bags of blood and All of this, exept for the blood, in 16 hours. And the first 10 hours were so gentle the docter was even suggesting that Bram would be born the next day (:

But!

He is all worth it! (:















Annemarie and Bram















Taking a bath




















Looking good!

It's A Boy!!!!!!!

After an intense day Annemarie gave birth to

Bram Gerben Hijink

Born May 12th 22:38
Weight 4125 grams (about 9.1 US pounds)

I am sorry but no pictures yet
Although it is a beatiful, healthy, wondering what's in the world around him baby!!!
I (Martijn) am so confused that I forgot to bring the camera back home to download the pictures from the memorycard that I did not forget to bring home (:

Annemarie is still in hospital to recover from her achievement and she will be home tomorrow.
Pictures will follow tomorrow!!!

Hospital admission tomorrow

Well, all your crossed fingers and toes and prayers did not help (but thanks for trying!), so we were off to the hospital this morning to discuss the plan of action.
Baby and I are both fine still, but in their experience waiting longer for a natural start of the birth only helps in a few percent of all cases, and the risk of complications is getting bigger. So tomorrow morning, at 6.30 am, I will be admitted. )-:
Since my body apparantly still wants to hold on to baby they may need to do some extra tricks before they can induce the actual labour (again, I'll save all the nice details for private conversations, if anyone is interested...), so it may take another two days (!) before we can finally meet baby. The 12th or the 13th it will be then...

My lucky day??

Not?

Sigh. This morning has been a rollercoaster ride...
The midwife just left. She officially enrolled me in the study, and then tried to induce labour.
She was supposed to 'break the water' (whatever the English expression is) but it did not work.
I'll spare you the details. It happens sometimes that they just cannot do it, and I guess this really is not my lucky day after all.
So, again, we are back to the waiting game.
So, again, fingers crossed that it will start by itself before my hospital appointment tomorrow...

My lucky day?

After all?

At the exact same moment I hit the 'publish post' button, the midwife called that they made a mistake. She mixed up a number and when she re-checked it appeared that I am part of the test-group after all... Can this day become any weirder?

My lucky day

Not...

I ended up in the control-group.
Back to waiting it is.
And hospital tomorrow.
Everyone fingers crossed it will start today!

Maybe tomorrow

All still quiet on the baby front.
I don't have much to write, but if I don't write I am afraid all of you will think 'it' is happening (-:
Went out for a walk with my mom. The weather is still brilliant. Had a cool drink on a nice terrace in the shade (bitter lemon: you can't accuse me of not trying) and found an orange plant for the empty pot-holder on the French balcony.

Tomorrow morning the midwife will come by to enroll me in a study. Yep, as a scientist I could not say no, so I will be the guinea pig myself this time. If I end up in the test-group she will try to induce labour while I am still at home. If I end up in the control-group I will receive standard care, meaning that I will probably have to go to the hospital on Thursday to discuss my options with a gynaecologist. If baby and I are fine they may wait a few more days, if they think it is time labour will be induced in the hospital then. So either way, the wait should be over before Sunday (Mother's day). At least I certainly hope so. It would be very unfair if I miss this Mother's day after all this waiting!

I lost

Don't remember if I mentioned this before, but my sister-in-law's sister (still with me?) was also pregnant. We were battling for the honor of producing the first niece or nephew for our mutual nieces...
She was due on May 2nd, so she was also late. But I just heard that she beat me anyway, her son Koen was born today.
Congratulations Sandra!
I hope you will have a quick recovery, and I hope we will be able to see each other's babies very soon!

Flowers

Today was better.
I really really love our house.
We have all the windows and doors open, and there is a cool breeze throughout the place.
We went to the garden center and got some flowers for our balconies, and also the bamboo bush I was dreaming of...
I know it doesn't look like much yet, but wait a few weeks and it will be fabulous!






Daisies for the French balcony... There is space for another pot in the middle. I was looking for orange or red flowers, but if you detest geraniums there is not much else to choose from... Will find something later this week.

















Bamboo and flowers at the 'real' balcony.

Garden centers on sunny Sundays are hell.
Our favorite place was closed, so we had to drive to a different one. Not as nice as 'ours'.
But they had plenty garden furniture for me to rest on.
And it was nice to get out of the house. I think it was the first time in almost a week...

Also, it was shocking to realize that not even flip-flops fit over my pork-chops...
Luckily, my feet got better when we had the airconditioning in the car blowing ice-cold air over them.

Think I am going to make some couscous and curry now. Maybe spicy food will make baby come out (-;

Not a good day

Didn't sleep well, and have a headache that won't go away.
Also have pork-chops instead of feet.
Must be the heat...

It has finally arrived!

Haha, I am so cruel...!

It's not the baby, but another long awaited arrival: our new couch!
Martijn picked it up at the store this morning and single-handedly carried it upstairs.
So I am going to lay on the couch (oh man, we longed for that so much in our old tiny apartment: a couch where we could lie on. BOTH of us at the same time nonetheless...) for the rest of the day.













The old comfy chair stays, of course. It is on the other side of the room now,
the part I like to call my 'Library'...

Not today

I hope.
Today is memorial day in Holland.
Not a nice day to have your birthday.
Two minutes of silence before your party can start every year.
Tomorrow is liberation day. Much more festive. And appropriate I guess, it will be a liberation for me at least (-:

It is beautiful outside, sunny, and all the trees are flowering.
Something I DON'T miss about Atlanta: spring is awesome over there, but you still can't sit outside without having to spend an hour cleaning a huge layer of pollen from your deck or balcony...
We don't have a garden anymore in our new place, but the living room catches the sun most of the day and has a French balcony. So I am sitting comfortably in the living room with the doors wide open giving me an outdoor feeling. Excellent.
Yesterday we (i.e. Martijn) started cleaning the real balcony on the back of the apartment. A trip to the garden center will follow shortly, I hope. We need lots of flowers and a big pot of bamboo (one of my dreams for this balcony: I love the sound of the wind rushing through a big bush of bamboo...). But it was already nice yesterday evening to sit outside on our bench, realizing one of my favorite birds, the 'gierzwaluw' (Apus apus, or common swift), is back in town. I love these flight-acrobats, it is undeniably spring now!

Here is a pic of the sailor jacket/cardigan/whatever I have been working on. I need to go out and buy buttons and a zipper still, but there is no place near our house where I can get those things. I made it a little large, ~ for a 6 month old baby, since it is a warm jacket. Aiming for baby to wear it in October rather than mid-summer (-:
Started working on a matching hat this morning, hope I have enough yarn left...

Update

My diet of tonic and pineapple had no effect...

Maybe I should have used larger doses, like 5 liters of tonic and three whole pineapples.
But even I have my limits.

Back in science

Ok, I decided I will make one final detour to the land of science.
I am going to test methods to induce labour.
I heard of 4 ways.
One is well-known, and I won't go into much detail because I don't want this site to become X-rated. Let's just say we tried but it hasn't worked so far (-;
Another one is wonder oil. I heard it just gives you such bad intestinal cramps that the contractions will come along. Or not, then you just have had really bad cramps and are left with clean intestines. I am not desperate yet, just a little bored, so we'll save that one for later.
So here are the contestants for today:














I am currently drinking the last bit of tonic. Had quite a bit last night as well. So far, nothing happened, except that baby is unusually active. Is it the bubbles? The sugar? Don't think I will study it to that extent, but interesting results.
If nothing happens in the next few hours I will start munching on the pineapple-core (and probably the rest of the fruit as well, pineapple is yummie) this afternoon.
I'll keep you posted.

Me and my best friends...

Comfy chair and TV...