Today I am drinking Almond Cookie Crumble tea. Unfortunately I no longer have the packaging for this tea, so I cannot get the ingredients for it and this particular tea has been discontinued due to T by Daniel no longer making it. It tastes yummy, I also used unsweetened almond milk in it, due to it being a black tea, the combination makes it extra nutty.
On Friday there was a major Rogers outage for all of Canada. I was one of the unlucky ones that had both Internet and cellular phone issues pretty much the entire day. Sometimes you don’t realize how much you depend on technology until you don’t have any access to it anymore. Parts of me felt a little lost with out it, makes me wonder how we ever went without technology before lol.
This Saturday I really wanted to get out of the city and was in the mood to go for a picnic. We ended up driving to St. Thomas ON and ended up eating Chinese food at the park. It was nice, and the weather was perfect. I also introduced a splash pad to my daughter, the first time I tried to dip her feet into the running water, she freaked out, but the second time I tried, it seemed like she really enjoyed it.
Sunday… I had full intentions of doing chores. But I was just not having it, I was so exhausted and had zero interest in doing anything at all. This doesn’t happen to me often, but when it does… it hits really hard.
On Tuesday I had gone to Vaughn Mills with my friend Gloria and my parents. It was a nice day out.. I have not walked that many steps in a very long time, pretty much before midnight I got a total of 11,000 steps, which on a normal week, I’d be lucky to even hit that much in a 5 day period. I also did some shopping and got some new clothes for my baby girl. I can tell she is definitely going to be really spoiled by me.
Lets see what the rest of the week will bring for us.
The way my Tea Talks are going to go is that I will discuss something completely random, something that is just sitting on my mind or just something I want to get off my chest, it could be a complaint, an accomplishment, something that makes me angry or happy. It can change each time, but will only be written when I am drinking tea. Each Tea Talk post will also include a little chit chat about what type of tea I am drinking that morning/evening. There is no particular day or time that these posts will occur, it can be fairly random, kind of like a journal or a diary per say, but will be numbered for tracking purposes, just to see how far I can take these Tea Talk posts.
For today’s tea, I am drinking Toffee Caramel Pu’erh Tea (Ingredients: Pu’reh tea, almond pieces, natural flavours) mixed with Chocolate Fudge Cake Rooibos Tea (Ingredients: Cocoa beans, Rooibos tea, date pieces, golden raisins, candied ginger pieces, roasted buckwheat, brittle pieces, licorice root, hazel nut, sunflower blossoms and natural flavours). I was running out of the Toffee Caramel, but in order to get good amount of flavour in my tea, I decided to mix it with another tea I already had started. Both of these tea flavours have come from Sipology. For these types of tea’s, I normally take it with a milk or creamer, today I chose Starbucks Almond & Oat Caramel Macciato flavour. So my tea is definitely very very very flavourful!
One of my favourite things to do is shop, which honestly could be really dangerous, especially if you are terrible when it comes to budgeting and tend to spend far much more than you probably should. Well, for me, I have noticed that there has been a lot more clearances, which, honestly, is my favourite type of shopping. When I was at the mall today, I went into one of my favourite stores, Bath & Body Works… such a DANGEROUS store… sometimes even worse than book stores for me. I got a few lotions, body sprays and a shower gel (I have far too much in my over stock pile right now… but, who can walk away from a clearance sale without shopping?), I do intend on making a separate post to show exactly what items were purchased.
On top of that sale, there was also a clearance sale with Scentsy, which I have ordered a bunch of Scentsy Buddies, Bitty Buddies, a new wax bar and a few dish soaps. Most of the Scentsy products is for my baby girl, whom I am obviously spoiling before she can even play with stuffed toys. The wax bar and dish soaps are however mine. On top of that, there is Thirty-One, one of my friends (former lead) was selling some of her stock for discounted prices, which I have a few items I am purchasing from her that I can put into good use. So I do have quite a few items I am super excited to receive.
Currently I have been keeping busy with my baby girl Hailey, I am currently on Maternity leave and loving it, however, I have been sucking when it comes to giving myself some well needed pampering time. I have been however, been trying to read more often, and have been trying to blog a little more, just to get into the hang of writing something often, eventually hoping to use this motivation to write a novel or even some short stories, something publishing worthy… one day.
On top of the new parenting duty, and the reading/writing.. I have also been occupied with so much wedding planning related stuff. I remember when I told myself years ago… like YEARSSSS ago… that I wanted to become an Event Planner, and now when I’m planning my own wedding, it makes me question if that would have ever been the job for me… I cannot make decisions to save my own life and I keep flip-flopping. Cannot wait to do specific wedding related posts when things start coming along. I am also super excited for my Bachelorette Party, because it would be the closest thing to a vacation from this crazy life… as much as I will be sad to be away from my baby girl and my Fiancé for a few days.
Another thing that I will be pre-occupied with this year would be moving. For just less than two years we have been living in a basement apartment, not quite to my standards as it doesn’t really feel like “home” to us given certain circumstances. We will be moving back in with my Mother-in-law, which will be to keep her company, but it would also help us save money. The market is just wild this year, houses being sold for over a million… rent pricing going ridiculously up. Living with in-laws this time will be a little different, we are actually painting the rooms, so they will be a little more personalized and we wont be feeling nearly as cramped as before. Unfortunate circumstances though, my Father-in-law had recently passed away this year, which I am incredibly sad about. I wasn’t super close with him, but, I felt a connection with him through talking about books, he also always treated me like a daughter of his own, and he felt like a father to me as well. I often think about him, and about our cat Josie. But I do know they are both watching over us.
On top of those two close deaths we are dealing with, my great aunt had also passed away recently. I was not as close with her, but, it still hurts. I haven’t seen her since I was younger, but she was always the most sweetest lady ever, and always made the people around her feel so loved.
I was originally due April 16th 2022. However I ended up feeling the contractions (or at least they felt like it would be contractions) all night/early morning. On April 17th 2022 at approximately 5:30am I woke up to go use the bathroom, I had almost reached my bedroom door when my water broke. When I got to the bathroom I noticed a weird colour mixed into the pad where the amniotic fluid was, this was also roughly the time that I lost my mucus plug. I personally thought it was blood at first, but then it looked a little yellow or green, which means that the baby had most likely pooped inside. I took the time to shower and wake my Fiancé up. We also made sure we ate some breakfast, as when you are in the Hospital, at least when dealing with labor, you are no longer allowed to eat.
A few hours later, we ended up going to the Hospital. I was able to go up right away, and showed my vaccine passport, my Fiancé had to wait until I got registered before they would let him into the birthing unit.
It did not take long at all for me to get registered, the nurse checked to see how far I was dilated, which was not very far. They had also decided to keep me at the Hospital instead of sending us home, since the water had broken.. plus… baby pooped. My contractions at this point had completely stopped and I was told that they would need to speed up the process and induce me, as they only had 18 hours to get the baby out. Mind you.. I did not want to get induced at all… but I felt like there was no choice there given circumstances.
The pain came pretty hard and fast, I honestly would not recommend anyone getting induced unless if they have to. Let the birthing process go naturally if possible, cause that shit hurt and does not give you the chance to gradually get used to the contractions. Now, because of how much pain I was in, I gave in and asked for an Epidural (originally when the nurse asked me.. I did decline.. because I wanted to try to go as natural as possible for this birth). It took what felt like forever for them to finally get the Epidural going… for some reason my Fiancé was not allowed to stay in the room during this process, and it took the nurses several attempts to get the needle in the right spot. Apparently the struggle was that my lower back was so stiff from an injury that I had from years ago when I was in a car accident.
Eventually I got to 7-8 CM dilated and was told that the babies heart rate had dropped twice. The first time took approximately 10 minutes to go back to normal and the second time 15 minutes. Which then we were told if it happens a third time, it might take much longer to recover. They highly recommended I get an Emergency C-Section done this way they could get the baby out a lot faster, and prevent the chances of her heart rate dropping again. Of course I agreed to the C-Section, honestly anything to keep the both of us safe.
They were pretty quick about everything, which was good. The Anesthesiologist that was at the Hospital was busy with another patient and was going to take too long to attend to me, so they had to call another one in, and she arrived pretty quickly. They did the freezing for my lower half, which honestly was not given enough time to numb me and I felt every little thing. Because of the amount of pain I was in during the C-section they had highly recommended for me to get put under, which I said no. They then kept pumping me up with drugs to make it tolerable. I was gripping the hand straps tightly to make sure I would not interfere with the surgery. My Fiancé was trying his best to comfort me, cheering me on, lightly rubbing my head. Shortly after they pulled my baby girl out, I had passed out. The nurses had no clue why and they were not able to get a heart beat rating from me because the finger monitor fell off due to me gripping the straps tightly.
Not too sure how long after, but, eventually I did end up waking up and I was not able to hold my baby girl due to being out of it, and they feared I might end up dropping her. I did get wheeled back into the birthing room with my baby on my legs and her head kind of leaning on my lower abdomen.
Hours after the C-section, super early the next morning I was finally able to drink again and be cautious of what I eat. I was also fed Hospital food 3 times that day and the day after. I was also pushed to use the bathroom myself and was told to walk around as much as I could, and try to get out of bed without assistance. It was a struggle, but, I did it. My Fiancé also had to help me out of bed a few times. The Hospital was more or less ready to discharge us 24 hours after the C-section, but I was determined to speak with the lactation specialist, as I was interested in Breast Feeding or at least pumping (that honestly did not last long… but speaking with the lactation specialist was very informative).
Even though nothing went according to plan for my Birthing experience, I would still go through it all again. Hailey is honestly my pride and joy and I love her more than anything else in this world. ❤
Before I dive into the actual pregnancy, I wanted to say I actually had a feeling I was pregnant. A day that my colleagues and I had gone for Sushi was the day I was talking to my coworker and saying I had a feeling something was off about my body, like something was just different and I didn’t know what or why. She however told me not to worry, and its probably nothing, I even mentioned that I think it could be pregnancy, and she just kept saying I wouldn’t worry about it. Well.. that was the last day I had all-you-can-eat sushi.
My hunch was because I was off of Birth Control pills (I decided to go off of them because there were too many side effects that were happening, and I was scared of blood clots… even more that some COVID vaccines plus COVID itself can cause blood clots.. why take BC pills that are known for blood clots too…) I had a bit of a period, but not a full blown period.. it was less than what I had while on the pill, but I shrugged it off because maybe its the pill that needs to clear out of my system. During my “next” cycle.. it seemed a little off too and didn’t seem right in the slightest.. so one of these two periods must have been the “implantation”. Because my periods seemed off, I asked for second advice from a friend of mine.. at this point I spent close to $30 on pregnancy tests but didn’t want to use them till I was sure what was going on. My friend told me to wait a few more weeks and if I miss a period or my period isn’t normal to test myself. Well.. my body had other plans and gave me the most wicked heart burn ever days after the conversation happened (mind you.. I never had heart burn before.. so I had to google it).
I looked at the heart burn as a sign that I have to test ASAP. And as I was thinking.. I ended up being right..
I was definitely pregnant!
Took a second test to be sure and it was positive again, but this time because it was the digital one it said…
3 + weeks!
When I told my Fiance, we were both nervous, but also excited.
My pregnancy was fairly interesting, I did not get the morning sickness or the crazy cravings that most Women got during their pregnancies.
At the very beginning my pregnancy was pretty minimal with the symptoms (honestly never know what to call them), I would only ever feel super nauseous when it came to me not eating enough, and only once during the pregnancy did I come close to vomiting, and that was due to being so nauseous from not eating for a long period of time, that if I did not get food inside me that second, I would puke. I am actually pretty grateful for not getting the morning sickness, as I had not puked since I was only a little girl.
I was turned off from the smell of garlic and onions cooking, I was able to smell things from far distances and the smell of smoke/weed bothered me more than it normally did. We were ordering Hello Fresh for a while, and I was not even able to eat that anymore because the smell of the seasonings cooking made me feel disgusted and nauseous, and just forget about the taste. Lettuce tasted like grass and I completely lost interest in eating salads. Tomato made my stomach feel bloated.
The only craving I could recall having in the earlier stages was fries and hot sauce. I needed to have hot sauce in everything. And fries just smelled and tasted way better than usual. Pasta also tasted better than usual as well. The craving did not last long, but, because a lot of seasoning seemed like a turn off for me, I did stick with having hot sauce during the whole pregnancy, as that was my safe option. There was some things I just really wanted at specific times, like one day it was a burger and then another day I needed to have Greek food, but to me I don’t really call those cravings because they are one offs.
Eventually anytime I ate fast food or anything overly greasy, I felt a tightness in my chest and stomach.
Since the pregnancy “symptoms” were so mild, I barely even felt pregnant, till my stomach started growing and clothes stopped fitting me, I was unable to make certain movements or I would be completely out of breath just going up a flight of staires (mind you.. I was never fit to begin with), would be twice as hard days I had to go to the office lugging my stuff up the steps while wearing a face mask.
The heart burn and acid reflux got worse closer to the end of the pregnancy, maybe the last couple of months, and when the heart burn did come, it came really hard and usually always at night prior to bed time. Closer to the end of the pregnancy I also ended up having to deal with swelling feet and ankles, however, they did not get as bad as a lot of other people have claimed them to be, it probably helps that most of my pregnancy was during the Fall/Winter, so I did not have to worry about the heat aggravating it.
I must say it was pretty cool being pregnant at the same time as a few of my close friends and one of my cousins. I was able to keep in touch with them and we exchanged stories about our own pregnancies and helped each other out. Plus its easier to talk to someone that is dealing with the same thing as you, verses someone that isn’t. Also having people close to me that were also pregnant the same time as me, made me realize how different every pregnancy is.
A few annoying symptoms I did get was the one time I had a bloody nose.. literally I sneezed once, and that’s all it took for a Niagara Falls of blood leaking out of my nose, the horror on my Fiancé’s face when this was happening was priceless. It was such a weird feeling too, because I never seen so much blood during a bloody nose, nor have I ever seen blood pour out so quickly from a nose bleed. Luckily the nose bleed was just a one off. The other annoying symptoms were the sensitive gums, which caused my gums to bleed almost every time I brushed my teeth. AND MY SINUSES, my sinuses were going nuts during the entire pregnancy, most likely from a post nasal drip. So I did end up buying a humidifier and it was my best friend during the pregnancy.
I had a few ultrasounds done in the beginning, one ultrasound was done too early, and I had to go back two weeks later to make sure the pregnancy was progressing. And then I had one done for the anatomy scan, which I had to re-do because the baby was facing the wrong way. The tech did not want to tell me the gender of the baby, and my OB ended up writing on a piece of paper to say it was a girl, but, she told me that it does happen where the gender is sometimes wrong, and she did not recommend me telling too many people. So when I went for the repeat anatomy scan, I did ask the tech if it was still a girl, and she confirmed for me it was a girl (this was a surprise to my family, because I have three nephews, so woohoo for a girl). Unfortunately due to what my OB told me about not telling too many people, we decided not to waste money on a gender reveal. However the theme of my Baby Shower was girl… I’ll post about this later.
My favourite parts of the pregnancy was going to my OB appointments and hearing the babies heart beat, on top of that I loved feeling the babies kicks and to be quite honest, I do sort of miss feeling those kicks. Unfortunately due to COVID and the precautions the OBs office was taking, my Fiancé was unable to experience any of the baby appointments. I am hoping by time we decide to have a second baby, that it will be a little more normal and that he wont be able to miss future appointments.
Shopping for Maternity clothes was RIDICULOUS! Went to a few stores and a mall or two.. and tell me how finding a Maternity clothing store is nearly non-existent anymore and I pretty much just had to purchase larger sizes that ended up being too large for me to wear anyway. I did get lucky that one of my friends gave me her Winter jacket from when she was pregnant, because I was literally not having any luck at all…
The hormones and crying for the tiniest things ever was bad. But not nearly as bad as I was during my period as a teenager.
I am so very grateful that my pregnancy turned out to be an easy one, and that the hardest part was probably getting to point B from point A due to the waddling at the end. Or when the baby was still riding high, it was hard to move when I was in bed because of all the extra weight in my stomach.
I know I already posted what my hopes are for 2022, but this post is a little more elaborated and I feel like it would keep myself more in check and accountable to get these accomplishments. The things I want to accomplish for this year is overall to better myself as a person and to prioritize me, while becoming a good Mother to my soon-to-be-baby.
Focus on Self Care: I have decided to make every Monday my designated make a homemade specialty coffee day (I’m not one for a lot of caffeine, so it’s a good way to help motivate me to get through an insane work day. When my nails start looking bad, I will do my nails and make them look pretty again that same week. Sing out loud. Curl up with a blanket and watch a movie or shows with a cup of tea or hot chocolate. Unwind and relax with a cross word, puzzle or diamond art (I’ll be trying to do this once a week, mostly on a Friday).
Skin Care: My goal is to cleanse, tone and moisturize twice a day (morning and evening). Exfoliate every Monday. Face mask every Wednesday and Sunday.
Read More: My goal is to now read a chapter a day if possible. Last year and previous years I went weeks or months without reading, and reading has always been my great escape or unwind time, so I seriously want to focus on reading more regularly.
Regular Organizing: My goal is to daily find something in the house either to clean or organize, so then my weekends become easier. I have been pretty good with this so far this month, and I find that once something has become organized, I feel a weight lifted off my shoulders and overall happier.
Eating Healthier: Eat more veggies, fruits, grains, and protein. Consume more calcium, iron and vitamin C. Overall eat less sugar and calcium. Try cooking more homemade instead of ordering in, eating frozen boxed or canned foods. Also to do more health related research to gain more knowledge about health and nutrition.
Exercise More: Right now because I am pregnant I will accept baby steps. Make more movements around the house, stretch, squats, dance and light weights. Once Winter is over and the baby arrives, I plan on going for more walks, get into yoga and more steady intense workouts to become heathier again.
Be a good Mom: I really want to make sure I get into the habit that 90% of things should and will be homemade like the baby foods. Also want to make sure I read to my baby daily and educate as early as possible.
Take Lots of Photos: I really want to get into taking more photos and scrapbooking or creating photo albums. Create new memories. It may help me realize that it is the small things in life that can make us happy.
Become financially stable: I want to get my credit card paid off, start saving money for retirement and for short term goals like getting a better place to live. I know especially this wont come easy this year, but I am already making the right moves, and I just need to ensure I continue to make the right moves without slipping up.
Write more: Even if its just a blog post here and there or journaling, it is a form of writing. I really want to get back into doing writing prompts OR get back into writing stories, which I have not been able to do in years. Goal one day is to publish a novel, even if it wont be this year.
All these items that I really want to focus on this year is not necessarily in a proper order, but it is the things that would mean the most to me if I can follow as closely as possible to accomplish my goals. With COVID things have been a mess and I got into really bad habits the last two years like stress shopping and emotional eating, stopped working out and put on a lot of weight before getting pregnant. Put everyone else before me and slacked on self care and had trouble sticking to a good skin care routine. 2022 will be my year to officially take my life back.
I know I have not been posting anything since the Summer, things have started getting a bit hectic, plus been dealing with something we have been keeping a secret for a while. We only recently (a couple of months ago) been open about it more publicly.
WE. ARE. EXPECTING.
YES… EXPECTING.
For the first while, the pregnancy symptoms were very mild, did not get any morning sickness and mainly just experienced nausea if I was waiting a bit too long to eat. Honestly, if it was not for the pregnancy test, I wouldn’t have even known I was pregnant.
Just this past month, I have been experiencing more pregnancy symptoms, my sinuses are very bad, especially when I’m at home (we live in a basement, so I hear the air tends to be more dry), I ended up getting a humidifier to help it. Headaches come from time to time. And the ultimate worst of it is the heart burn I’ve been getting, and that only started about two weeks ago, especially any time I eat something deep fried (which sucks, because for a while I was craving French Fries), today it happened more so when I was hungry and didn’t eat, and after eating. Oh yay… heart burn.
I am currently at my 22.5 weeks mark. So just more than halfway there.
The more time that goes on, the more real it all feels. The more excited I am getting, we are getting.
As much as we have a lot of time to prepare, it also feels like time is already flying by and that time just feels so tight.
I also frequently feel the flutters, and it feels funny, but, so magical at the same time. I cannot wait to actually start seeing the little baby kicks.
I honestly cannot wait to meet this little bean and be their Mama.
ATrueBornWriter 