Karen's Journey

Hi all

Am still around Lyn - just been a busy wee bee... and unfortunately Rachel has not been in the best of health :( She has recovered from her cough/cold and sore ears but is now severely constipated! Today is day 7 since her last bowel motion. We have tried every "trick" in the book and ended up at the Dr's yesterday afternoon as it was really starting to get painful for her at times. Dr suggested boiled/pureed prunes and rather than giving her the juice - to actually give her the prunes themselves (pureed of course). And then if they didn't work in 24hrs to get the prescription for lactlose filled and give her a dose of that. So did the prunes for her and she adored them and demolished them very quickly!!! No luck over night... and so this morning I gave her some more prunes before day care and warned them that it could happen today... but when I rung them at 1.30pm today I got told - nope still no luck and she was really starting to cry when pushing. So I left work, picked her up and gave her the lactose syrup - its a very strong syrup so she is only on 1ml once a day (the Dr is confident it will only take 1 dose to work) Almost 5hrs later - still no movement so we really do have our fingers crossed that something will happen tonight. I am not prepared to let her go all weekend without anything happening so if no luck by lunchtime tomorrow I will be calling the Dr and chatting to her about the next step we can take which trust me is not a pleasant step!

When you see the pain in her eyes and on her face when she is trying to push it out - it is so heartbreaking and when you hear the heartbreaking sobbing/screaming in the middle of night - you just want to start crying yourself! Anyway, thats whats been happening in our house at the moment - so that's definitely our number one priority at the moment.

But apart from all of that - things are cruising along. Still doing really well with the water intake - between 1.5 - 2.5 litres a day during the week - just gotta work on the weekend intake. Food - well still not always the best of choices - some days its great and other days - well not so great! I had my first official weigh in on Tuesday with the Healthy Eating Club at work - not a good start - over the first two weeks - I recorded a gain of 800gms! And without making excuses - TOM had just arrived the day before and with that came a HUGE chocolate spurge!!! So mainly my fault - but like we all say - onwards and downwards on these scales! I have enjoyed my lunches this week - have been going 1/2's with a friend of mine to buy healthy sandwich fillings and keeping them in the fridge at work and then making our sandwiches each day.

I did manage to set up a blog just for Rachel but it is for family (and a few close friends) who live out of town around NZ and the world so that they can see her grow up. Its going to be mainly photos with the occasional paragraph thrown in. Got one wee problem and that is the comments facility - the settings are exactly the same as my one but for some reason her blog just won't allow comments! Got me totally puzzled but am still working on it when I have the time!

Anyway, better get moving, bottles etc to make up. Got a nice weekend planned with a catch up with some girlfriends on Saturday afternoon - some of whom haven't met Rachel yet so hopefully she will be up to that visit otherwise she might be staying home with Daddy. Then on Saturday night, our whole antenatal group are going out for dinner - no babies and no daddies! Just the mummies - a good chance for a catch up and a Mothers Day celebration for us celebrating our first mothers day.

Hope you are all doing well - talk soon xx