Things Nina likes
1. Breastmilk
2. Having no nappy on and being able to kick her legs in the sun
3. Being in the sling
4. Being bounced up and down (especially by Martin)
5. Having a bath
6. Having a massage
7. Going for a ride in the car (although it has to be going be fast)
8. Sucking her fist

Things Nina doesn’t like
1. Being hungry
2. Being tired (then she forgets how to get back to sleep)
3. Getting dressed
4. Getting out of the bath
5. Not being held

I have a bit of a habit of coming in on blog discussions after they have finished but both Tom and Andreana wrote a piece on original sin on their blogs that I thought were very interesting and I have been thinking about them a lot. I guess one of things that really inspired this thought is that I spend a lot of time watching a new born baby and I have wondered if I think she is essentially sinful. I have decided that the answer is no. I suppose many will think that is just an emotional response and I accept that a lot of it is but I also think it is biblical and I will explain that now.

The cosmology (to use Andreana’s phrasing) that I grew up with and that I want to raise my child with is that she is made in the image of God and that she is a precious, wonderful part of His creation. As it is says in Genesis 1:27, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” Then in Genesis 1:31, “God saw all that he had made and it was very good.” So then Adam and Eve sin and God says, “the man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil” Genesis 3:22. Therefore, I don’t think Adams sin automatically means that the rest of humanity is no longer made in God’s image or negates thne fact that God’s creation is “very good.” For God created Adam and Eve (as he does the rest with us) with the free will to choose sin and knowing that he still thought it was good.

I also think that the story of the Bible as a whole is calling us to take responsibility for our sin. However if we are born with original sin and there is no other option but to sin we are more like robots who are programmed that way. That allows me to believe that when I do cruel things to other people it’s not really my fault but how I was born. I believe that I was born with the potential to not sin, to be perfect like God, Jesus even said it himself, “Be perfect therefore as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). That I am not perfect is not how I was born but my own free will. I believe this makes Jesus’ perfection even more powerful. We could all have done it but we didn’t.

I also think that original sin does make people feel inherently bad and I don’t think that this fits again with the Biblical notion that God is love.

Finally (and this is not a Biblical argument) I do think we teach our children to sin. We might tell them with words to share their toys or to not hit each other but they see on a daily basis adults not sharing their “toys” or treating others violemtly and cruelly. Kids learn what they see before they understand words.

So that’s why I don’t really believe in original sin. That and it doesn’t really make sense either.

Weekend mornings, lying in bed with Nina and Martin. The two loves of my life within arms reach.

I am very grateful for all the people that we have living on the block here at Honeymoon Gap. There is of course my mum and Keith who are super generous with us all and are always great for a chat and a cup of tea or a glass of wine with nibbles. Then there is the marvellous Carney who has been living in the little cabin since January. She is the funnest person ever especially with the kids. She also has had a fairly steady group of visitors who pass in and out who are also pretty great. They are usually here to protest about some environmental or indigenous issues and the conversations around the campfire have been very lively. Currently, Ryan, Alice and Crunchie are with her. I admire them all immensely and the way they live so simply and with so much integrity. And finally, there is John and Marilyn and their gorgoeus kids. They are great too and have taught me so much about indigenous culture. The kids are always up for some play which keeps the energy up here. We are a diverse group of people but we all get along so well. There is a constant flow of people to different houses as well as a constant flow of things going from house to house (although that can get a little frustrating). I am especially grateful for the way they have all welcomed Nina into their lives and have been so willing to help me out. Be that cook a meal, hold Nina while I have a shower or keep me company over the many hours I spend at home.

The highlight of our week together I think is Saturday morning. The Saturday morning panckae tradition that we had at Enmore has been ressurrected here. Over the last months a lot of pancakes have been eaten here. It’s very fun.

Smitten – I could watch her all day (and I pretty much do)
Tired
Constantly unsure if I’m doing the right thing
Very grateful and in love with Martin
Very grateful to all those on the block for their help
Joy
Sadness
From purposeful to purposeless in two minutes
Sore nipples
Sore back
Suprised at how little I seem to be able to get done
Overwhelming love
Tired (needs to be said more than once)
A little bit anxious
Blessed

I just want to say that I think my mum is truly amazing. I’m 28 years old with one baby, an amzing husband plus loads of friends and family very close by to help out and I am financially relatively comfortable. Despite all this I am still finding this whole mum thing pretty overwhelming. On the other hand when I was born my mother was 21 and lived alone far from my father and family and had to survive on next to no money at all. And hardest of all there were two babies. I truly don’t know how she did it. She’s incredible.

This is going to be a long one, it was a long labour but more importantly it was filled with lots of learnings for me that I am going to try and reflect on here.

It began at 12.45am on Friday, 3 September. Gemma had been praying all year that Nina would wait for her arrival and it seemed those prayers paid off as she had arrived the day before. Although perhaps it was one of those “be careful what you pray for” moments as I think it was pretty heavy going for her. The first contractions were coming pretty irregularly about 20 minutes apart and not that strong so we tried to sleep in between. I was also trying not to get too excited in case it didn’t amount to anything. At about 4.30am though they were getting stronger and coming more regularly so we went and got mum and Gemma up. I continued to labour at home until about 8am when they were coming between five and ten minutes and we went to the hospital.

I was going pretty well when we arrived at the hospital. The contractions were painful but I was feeling positive and we were managing them well with massages from Martin. The midwife did an examination after we’d been there for about an hour and said I was three cms dilated. I would have liked to be a little more but she thought it was all fine. So we continued for a few more hours. I walked around, had a bath, lay on a fit ball etc. Basically I was able to do exactly what I needed to get through the contractions. The midwife was so supportive and Martin and the family were amazing supports. I had, had no drugs at all and was still feeling positve despite the contractions getting stronger and more frequent. It was exactly what I wanted and had been raving about for the months before. An active, non-medicalised, woman focused birth.

At about 2pm a doctor came in and wanted to know where things were at. So they checked again and discovered I was still only 3cm dilated. This was fairly disappointing but nobody was freaking out yet. 2 hours later though when it was still the same it was decided that I should have some syntocin (not sure about spelling) to really get the contractions going as nothing was happening naturally. This was a bit disappointing for me but we were all getting tired and I was pretty hungry and not moving was getting frustrating. These artificially induced contractions were intense. I laboured with them for a few hours but then it became impossible for me. I was getting very distressed and screaming out in pain. Martin and the family stayed with me and continued to be incredibly encouraiging but that was helping less and less. The midwife offered me an epidural or some morphine, she thought I was beyond the point of gas being helpful. Still hoping to avoid an epidural I accepted the morphine. Gemma thought this bit was hillarious as it made me a little bit dopey and I started saying some fairly ridiculous things which I have a limited memory of. Although it calmed me down and I was screaming a little less, it didn’t help the pain though and by about 11 (I think although time was now fairly lost to me) I got an epidural.

I was pretty devastated. I was now hooked up to about 10 machines pumping in pain relief and monitoring the baby and me. I couldn’t move anywhere. My hope for a non-medicalied birth was gone. The epidural was amazing though. I could no longer feel a thing so was able to calm down. Although another check revealed I was still only 3cm dilated. We began to discuss a ceasarean. I still wanted to avoid this though and the Dr expressed some hope that now I had an epidural they could really up the syntocin and this may get things moving. I opted for this option so they upped the syntocin one last time to give it everything we could. Thankfully I couldn’t feel a thing and I was even able to get a little sleep through it as was Martin and the family. We were all exhausted as you can imagine. I hadn’t eaten anything either apart from an apple, muesli bar and a few pieces of chocolate.

At 1am they woke me for a last check. Still only 3cm dilated. Again a caesarean was raised and this time no one saw much hope that it could be avoided. I asked them to give me some time to decide so they left us to decide. I asked, as Quakers do, if we could sit in silence for a bit and see if we could get some guidance from God. I wanted to pray for a miracle but instead felt a strong sense of God saying, “Emily this is not the time for miracles, this is the time for trust in defeat. Trust, that even though it has all gone wrong and everything you didn’t want to happen has happened, all will be well. Trust that I am here.” So when they came back I told them I would have a caesaeran.

They prepared me for that, which meant more machines, needles etc and wheeled me up to the operating theatre. There were about 10 people there including a delightful African nurse who called herself big nanna. They cut me open and at 2.28am on Saturday, 4 September, our precious Nina was born. They had to check her over first but she was in Martin’s arms a few minutes later. I had to wait about half an hour though as they stitched me up. I couldn’t hold her due to the operation but they lay her next to me in bed and I just cried with joy. I was more tired, hungry, thirsty than I had ever been in my life, as well as still reeling from the disappointment of it all but the midwife said to me, “look at you, you can’t stop smiling.” And I couldn’t. At 4am they wheeled me back down to my room in maternity. Mum and Gemma left and we were all, after 27 hours, able to get a little bit of sleep. Although it wasn’t long before I had to feed her etc.

Over the following days I reflected on the event. I had always been afraid of birth as mine was a fairy torturous event for my mother and I thought I would take as many drugs as I could to ease what ever pain but as mentioned I had become really inspired over the months of my pregnancy by “active birth”. The idea that birth was a non-medicalised, woman focused event. I had also, as I prepared myself physically and emotionally for it, heard God say to me over and over “Emily, do not fear”. What did all this mean in the light of what happened. Was it all just crap? Had I got it all wrong? I don’t think so. Birth is a natural, beautiful thing but sometimes it goes wrong. In the past or in places like Africa women die. I was blessed enough to have kind and talented people around me to help out. While I hope other women don’t have to use it I shouldn’t despise the intervention but be grateful for it. And I did not need to be afraid. When God calls people away from fear and to courage it doesn’t mean that everything is going to work out exactly how they wanted it to. It doesn’t mean they will be spared all heartache and pain. This certainly wasn’t the case for Mary or many others who heard this call throughout the scriptures. What it means is that God will be there. There is a bigger picture that even though we do not understand it we can trust. This I suppose is the mystery of our faith.

So I am grateful to God. I am grateful for all the midwives and dr’s who helped me. I am grateful for the time I did labour even though it was painful and I had a caesarean in the end. I am grateful for my amazing husband, mother and sister who stayed with me throughout it all even though it was also incredibly hard for them to watch me writhe and scream in pain. And mostly I am grateful for Nina, my beautiful, beautiful girl.

Although it is probably the time of my life when I have more to blog about than ever, if the last couple of days are any indication, this blog may be fairly neglected in the next few weeks at least as I settle into my new life of feeding, changing nappies etc etc. Who would have thought that a baby could take up so much time?

I will say though that I am completely and totally and overwhelming in love with my baby girl. As you all know her name is Nina Luz. Luz means light in Spanish and she is the light of my world, I don’t even care about how corny that is. Keith told me once that when you have a child you discover a love that you have never known and he is not wrong. It is also a love that is completely indescribable so probably no point in even trying.

Many of you will probably know also that the labour didn’t go at all according to all my hopes for it and one day I will write that story. 26 hours worth though so too long for now but I wanted to say thank you to all who prayed for us through out it all. And God was there reminding me that we can trust him even when it all goes wrong. That he is good. Good in the things of our lives that are good and good in the things of our lives that are not good.

We are two days overdue and still nothing. I am exhausted I have to say. Sleeping is pretty impossible at the moment, I am so uncomfortable. When I wake up in the morning everything aches so much from the struggle. I feel like I have gone ten rounds in a boxing match. I also have so much mucous in my nose and head that it is very hard to breathe. I have started snoring, sometimes I even wake myself up.

I guess though if this journey is teaching me anything it’s to wait patiently in trust and hope. I am trying to do this better.

I’m due to have a baby tomorrow. I really, really hope it comes. I am so over being pregnant and so excited to meet my child.