A Letter to My Mother

Dear Mum,

Growing up I knew you were a great mum not just because compared to the others you seemed the most 'normal.' You provided us with a loving, stable home with much more than most kids get these days. You gave up your social life and sanity to deal with the tantrums, fights, chaos and all round mayhem. I knew you were a great mum, but I never understood you. And I never knew I never understood you until I had a child of my own.

You are told that when you have kids your whole world will change. Before being a parent I thought this meant primarily your time management, your schedules or your sleeping patterns. And they do, but I palmed off this generic comment so frequently mentioned to me as a stock-answer by parents and even by you to try and shock me. "Just wait" you would say, "Just wait till you have kids." It's almost difficult to put into words how your life changes when you have a child (I'm gonna attempt it though.) The sleepless nights are the easy parts. It's like a light bulb clicked in my head and everything you ever said to me now all fit together like the missing piece of a really abstract puzzle.

Eddie and I tried to describe the love we have for Elli to each other last week and what it feels like to be a parent. There are no words nor any physical action that would give the love we feel for her justice. This all-consuming sensation we endure feels like if we love her any more we would implode and even that will never be enough for her. I realised at that moment just how much you must love me and my siblings. How much you must have been heartbroken so many times throughout the years when we fought, when we yelled, for the hurtful things all of us said and for the way we thought of each other in the heat of the moments. But mostly the love; that ridiculous aching love.

So Mum, I am sorry. Sorry that I ever thought of you less than perfect. Because now, as my perception of the entire world has been flipped on its head I get it. I understand our fights, our miscommunications. I apologise. And I know I don't need to because thats the relationship a mother and daughter will ultimately face from time to time but I see how they came about now. It took until holding my baby in my own arms that I became aware of the you as my own mother. I knew you were of course, but I realised you spent the same sleepless nights feeding, playing, worrying, crying over me. Because if you could have loved me just a fraction of the completely overwhelming way I love my daughter, then there is nothing in the world I could have done that would have stopped you from loving me. Even for just one second. Even those moments I hated you, you still loved me it hurt you. I always knew this, I just never understood.

So thank you mum. Thank you for loving me like you did and still do. For sticking by our crazy, for always listening, for always believing in our stories and for always wanting the very best. I get it now. I feel like I've joined that secret club of the "Oh, just wait."

Trying to even describe how much respect I have for you now as a mother and woman is hard. It it's not to say I didn't respect or love you before. It's just different. Like I've gone over the waterfall and emerged victorious. And I know that this applies to most if not all new mums. And even though those who do not have children can appreciate my testimony, and as insulting as it may sound, until they have a child of their own, you honestly do no get it. And I didn't. I really didn't.

As a mother, sometimes I wish I could re-do things better with more knowledge or hindsight to do right by my daughter. As a daughter, I wish I could re-do critical moments with you and try and do right by you. I wish I had the ability to let you know back then during our hard moments that I turn out ok. That you are an amazing mother and that you did the very best job a mum could ever do. That I love you and that you are and will be even more appreciated than you could ever dream.

Because one day, I'm gonna want my daughter to let me know I did ok too.

Always, L xx

The Things They Didn't Tell Me...

Having given birth 7 weeks ago, it's still a hot topic among my pregnant and thinking-of-being-pregnant friends. They like to know the nitty gritty details about pregnancy, labour, birth and babies to perhaps mentally prepare themselves and yes, it's as painful as they say. Describing a few of my experiences however, it became apparent that the same things to everyone were unknown and sometimes gross and downright shocking. 

I didn't know a lot about pregnancy or childbirth myself either. Sure I knew your feet would swell or your hormones would be so outrageous even you would be scared of them, but as for the finer details and lesser known facts, my most frequent phrase was, "Is this normal?" A lot of the time when you're pregnant and especially now that I have a baby you always feel like you are the only one out there going through the motions. You're not. Everything I experienced was normal, I just didn't know!

I had the books and read the blogs, but it seems I missed a few things. There are many more weird facts but the ones below actually happened to me;

1. You can get pregnancy gingivitis

Painful and bleeding gums. Yuck. All attributed to those lovely hormones. Worst part though is when you go to have your teeth clean post birth. I can still hear the drill....

2. Your waters don't all 'gush out' like they do in the movies

I felt like an elastic band was 'twanged' inside me then a very warm and wet sensation. But it was only a few tablespoons worth. As the labour progressed and the contractions became more intense, more water was released.

3. When you go into labour, your bowels completely empty to make room for the baby's head

I didn't actually know I was in labour for the first 8 hours because of this fact. I thought it was 'poopy-pains' due to a bad piece of meat at dinner the previous night. 

4. You can be constipated for a week after childbirth

Try three weeks. Metamucil and prunes were my best friends. I still get excited these days when I have a movement.

5. Baby girls can sometimes have a 'pseudo-period' shortly after birth

Probably the scariest moment of my mummy life so far was seeing that little red smear in her nappy. This doesn't occur with all little girls but after speaking to my midwife and checking google I was satisfied I could calm down. Apparently because she had been absorbing big lady hormones for 9 months, then was rudely and suddenly cut off from them, her body shed a lining because thats where all the unwanted hormones were. 

6. Producing breast milk is a painful process

First it's the sensitivity issue and having a human squeeze the living daylights out of them. Then they blister, peel, bleed and scab. And this is all in the first three days before your milk comes in. THEN they get as hard as rocks and expand larger than Pamela Anderson circa 2004. This lasts for about 48 hours and if you're lucky like me, your baby will yank on your nipple so hard it bruises. 

7. While breastfeeding, you wont normally have a period

Perks

8. Contractions were more painful than pushing her out

Her body actually leaving the birth canal was a piece of cake compared to the hour before.

9. You'll have an umbilical cord hanging out of you for up to an hour

They give you an hour to naturally expel the placenta but if you don't you either get a little needle jab in the leg or hope the walk to the bathroom enables gravity to help. My husband and I officially have no mystery left in our marriage. 

10. You get uncontrollable shakes

Like you're in Alaska wearing a bikini. Except you're not cold. Lasts through labour and a couple hours after. 

If these are old news to you, you lucky duck, why didn't you tell me. If these are new facts I hope you will now not be unpleasantly surprised and if you have a few little known "wtf's" of your own, please leave a comment below. xx

Gluten Free Gingerbread Cookies

Normally I am too lazy and hungry to get past the cookie dough stage in baking, but seeing as Christmas is nearing and I have this weird need to be motherly I wanted to try my hand at a holiday favourite. Gingerbread cookies to me taste like happiness. They remind me of the white snowy winters we would have living overseas and snuggling up by the heater Christmas morning. Here, the sweltering heat will more likely cook them before making it to the oven and you're more likely to wash them down with a cold beer than a mug of hot chocolate but they still represent Christmas to me. 

Seeing as my family and everyone else these days are coeliacs I wanted to trial a gluten free gingerbread recipe. A lot of gluten free biscuits I find however are either too dry and fall apart or you have to mix ten types of rice, corn or almond flour together. As mentioned, I am lazy. So I searched around for a recipe that pretty much just substituted the one flour ingredient but still maintained some type of texture. 

I thought I would also share a small review of this recipe after making and tasting them so you don't have to waste your time making cookies that crumble like dust. These don't, FYI. 

Ingredients

• 2 cups gluten-free flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 1 pinch salt
• 1 egg
• 125 g butter
• 1/4 cup golden syrup
• 1/2 cup brown sugar

Method

1. In a bowl cream the butter and brown sugar
2. Add golden syrup and egg and mix till combined
3. Ina separate bowl sift together all the dry ingredients, then add to the wet ingredients
4. Mix together and then refrigerate for 1 hour 
   
5. Remove dough from refrigerator and place onto a floured surface and knead lightly
6. Roll out to 5mm thickness then cut into shapes using cookie cutters
7. Bake in 170 degree celsius oven for approx 15 minutes or till well browned 
   
8. Leave to cool on trays for 5 minutes then transfer to cooling racks
9. When cool ice with icing 

Review & Thoughts

• I thought I would need to tweak a few things to get the nicest texture or flavour but honestly this recipe is so simple and delicious there's no changes required; just a couple tips I wish I knew before making them. 
• I would knead for the shortest time possible as the dough warms up extremely quickly then its hard to transfer onto the baking tray. 
• And while one tray is baking, I would recommend putting the unused dough back into the fridge to harden back up so the next shape cutting is easy. 
• For chewy cookies, cook for about 12-13 minutes. For harder, cook for the recommended 15-17 minutes or until well browned. 

DIY: Up-Cycle Your Old Greeting Cards

For a lot of the birthday, christmas, valentine and other greeting cards I have received over time I tend to hoard and box away for sentimental reasons. I never refer to them; only re-reading them once a decade when I happen to stumble across them during another house move. I feel that if I threw them away, I would be discarding the well wishes that were written with care by those who I love. 

A couple months ago I was perusing the interweb as I do, and came across an incredibly sweet and creative article post on Good Housekeeping about different 'things' to frame to create your own wall art. After our engagement, wedding, pregnancy announcment and birth, we had accumulated an extensive collection of cards. Rmemebering the post, I decided to put them to good use. 

I thought I would share a brief How-To to obtain a very unique piece of art in your house and show you what I ended up doing in my own home. For the purpose of the tutorial, I made it small-scaled but depending on how many cards you have, it can be as small or as large as you like. 

The first step is to choose a shape to cut out. This can be anything; a butterfly, star, heart, geometric shapes, flower, animal, etc. I chose a heart. I used a post-it note and drew an outline of the shape/template on it so that I could simply stick on top of the card I was using. For a heart, I folded the post-it over so that I was symmetrical. 

Here, I simply cut out the hearts without having to draw ontop of the cards. This ensures the template stays in place. Do this for as many as you need. If the 'stickiness' wears off, copy the shape onto a fresh post-it. 

Choose a frame size that can accommodate the number of shapes you have. As mentioned, for this tutorial I had only two so I used a small frame. For a backing colour I simply applied a pink sheet of paper. The glue is to stick them to the paper so they don't move while you are adjusting everything (a lot more helpfull with a larger frame)

The End Result

It's not very hard or high tech to create and if anything it's a lovely rainy day craft idea. If you have any simple craft ideas of your own that you think I would enjoy please let me know or leave a link! Being on maternity leave gives me a little more time to tinker. 

This is what I had created a few months ago out of our wedding cards:

I also included our wedding invitations in two of the hearts and a picture of Eddie and myself.