Life and its little pleasures

Lily in the city

There are worse things in life than to have your first NYC Tribeca rooftop party at 14 weeks...

Check at 19 and 29 seconds...

30 State of Mind: The Aftermath from Pieter.

Lily

On February 7th, at 2.10am (after 20 ours of labor!!), our daughter Lily Karen Windsor was born.

More on the experience later, for now, we are enjoying and getting used to our new family.

On hold

It seems like my life is a bit on hold now... Waiting for the baby to come and not able to do a whole lot of other stuff as I get tired almost immediately. Even just walking starts hurting after 15 minutes, so going to the mall up the street here is too much of an effort and I honestly can't be bothered...

My ankles have decided to disappear completely now. All that is left is fat, water-filled stumps. I haven't gained any weight in the last 10 to 12 weeks, so that is actually making me feel quite good. All in all, I gained about 30 pounds or 13.5 kilos. Could have been much worse, I guess, but I have an extra 6 kilos to lose that I gained from quitting smoking last year. But I'm not going to worry yet about loosing the weight, I know I have 5 months until my big wedding celebration in Belgium... So that gives me a good goal to work towards.

Although I have another 2/3 weeks to go, I am considered full time now. So it's totally up to baby dear to decide when to join us. If only I could do more to get him/her out besides forcing my husband to have sex with me...

Any tips?

Done

Ok, I'm done with it... Seriously, get this baby out of me now! I have no idea how I'm going to last another 3 weeks feeling like this. Mike keeps telling me I'm a trooper, but I feel nothing like a trooper... I just want to get this over and done with.

I'm tired of the extra weight, sick of the not being able to sleep, I hate the acid-reflux and stomach issues... Turning over in bed takes me 30 minutes and hurts all the way. Even moving a laundry basket with my leg turns into a sharp pain in my uterus. How did so many women do this before me without complaining!!!

At the same time, I'm feeling more and more nervous about the delivery. What if it really, really hurts? What if the baby is not ok? What if the baby is ugly? (And don't give me that bs of "no baby is ugly") What if something goes wrong? I know I'm being stupid for worrying, but I just can't help it.

Pffff... These last couple of weeks really are the hardest...

Monkey

The monkey really likes my belly... He can be kind of cute in the evenings when he needs attention. And yes, the belly keeps on growing. To monstrous proportions... I feel like I don't have enough space inside my body for this baby. My stomach is going to rupture any day now with Alien-like hands creeping through my skin!

Baby names

Ever since we found out that I am pregnant, Mike and I have been tossing around names to each other to see what we both like and dislike. We realized quickly that we have completely different tastes when it comes to this. I like short, 1 to 2 syllable names, that are simple. Mike seems to like weird, long and unusual names. So conversations like this happen quite often:

Me: What about Max for a boy?
Mike: Yes! Maximilian, I love it.
Me: Nono, I mean Max, just Max, nothing behind it.
Mike: Huh? But it is short for Maximilian?
Me: Nonono, it doesn't have to be short for anything... Just Max
Mike: No, I hate it

So after names like Sam, Emma, Nathaniel, Balthazar, James, Gregory, Gustaf, Hazel and Femke were quickly dismissed, we were kind of stuck. On top of that, our names had a few of our own "rules" that they had to follow.

First of all, the name has to be pronounceable by both our families, meaning both in English and in Dutch, without sounding too weird. So Wout, Tuur, Kaat, Manon, Lotte, Seppe and other very typical Flemish names are out as my family-in-law will have a hard time with those names. Luckily, English names are fine for my family, as long as they are not too complicated...

Secondly, the name has to fit with the last name Windsor. And although I thought a British royal name would be cool like Charles, Harry or William, Mike didn't agree at all... 

We both like the names Silas, Noah, Lucas, Eli, Sarah, Becca and Seth, but as we are both very strong atheists, I have a problem in my mind with these very biblical names... I don't want anyone to think I would name my baby after someone in the bible. Maybe that sounds silly, but that is just how I feel, no matter how much I like the names.

Since we are no Frank Zappa or Bob Geldof, names like Ahmet Emuukha Rodan, Moon Unit, Peaches Honeyblossom or Pixie are not really an option...

So this exercise proved a bit more difficult than we thought at first, but I think we came to a good result. For a boy, our top 2 is Cole and Miles. For a girl, we love Lily and Ella. At least for now... (response of 5 -year old Marie to the boy names: Wat? Cole? Miles? Da's zo moeilijk... Waarom niet gewoon Bertje?)

We have about 11 weeks to decide...

Decorating the baby room - phase 1

Mike has started on the decoration of the baby room and I'm really excited! We decided on putting up a mural with animals we both like. We just started the work, so we have a ways to go, but check out the first steps we took:

- Before we started:
 

- Step 1: painting the circles

 

- Step 2: drawing and painting the animals



 

Mike still has to add some animals, add details and do the cleaning up of the edges. But I really like where this is going!

If you have a suggestion of an animal you think we should add, let me know in the comments!

Making time

This seems the big problem with my blog... Making time for it... I really do want to try and come here more often and write some more of what is happening in New York and my life. So I'm making a (very) early New Year's resolution to spend more time on my blog.

As you could read in my previous post, a lot has been happening around here. Mike and I got married on the 26th of August at City Hall in New York City, which was quite an experience. Mutti and papa came over from Belgium for the occasion, so did Mike's mom and dad and their significant others. Some of the pictures of the day are online on Flickr. You can see them by clicking here.

I'm now more than 6 months pregnant and growing... and growing... and growing... Although I'm very happy and excited about the future, the nine months leading up to this wonder are anything but pleasant. I can't complain of anything being wrong, but this being pregnant thing is just not really my thing. Extreme tiredness, legs and feet that hurt after a 10 minute walk, hands and ankles that are swollen, difficulties with sleeping, humongous boobs (Mike doesn't really mind this part), 15 to 20 trips to the bathroom every day, back aches etc... Let's just say that I'll be very happy when this is over (and the real changes commence)!

According to our doctor (who is fabulous), everything is ok. The only thing that they have to monitor is that I had placenta previa during my 20 week scan. This means that the placenta is too low in my uterus. Usually it moves up by week 30, but if this doesn't happen, then I will have to deliver this baby via a caesarian section. In a couple of weeks I will get a new sonogram to see if anything changed.

The apartment is almost completely ready for the new addition, the only thing we still have to do is paint the mural in the baby room. Although I say we, I actually mean Mike as he is the creative in this house. I'll surely put up some pictures of the result, once the room is ready.

After a week in Belgium in October, I'm now going to be in New York until next summer. The week at "home" was really great and thanks to my sister, I now have everything you could possibly need for a newborn, including a car seat, bouncer, play mat and clothes to dress a full nursery.

Last week I participated in a survey for a stroller brand, launching a new buggy in the US. The reward for participating in a 1.5 hour interview was a brand new Teutonia stroller system, which I'm very happy with of course! I did the interview on Monday and it was pretty straight forward, giving my opinion on the stroller, the competition and the communication brochures that they are planning. They are calling me later this week so I can customize my own model and have it delivered to my home. I'm quite curious and I will definitely let you know what I think of the stroller!

More to follow soon.