Home and busy

A couple of weeks before I delivered I had a dream.  Actually to be perfectly truthful it was more like a photograph that became etched in my mind. It was of me sitting on our couch, squashed between Emilia's two set of grandparents with us all staring at my still very present bump.  You see, both my parents and Matthias' parents were due to arrive in Berlin more-or-less on my due date and despite feeling like I was going to deliver a few days early, I kept telling myself it was more likely going to be a few days late.  Matthias' parents could only stay for a few days and if the timing was even just a little bit off there was a  good chance that Matthias' parents would fly home to Vienna having seen nothing more than me and my bump. As the date approached I began to worry that Emilia would be late and there we'd all be, sitting on our couch, drinking tea, talking about the weather and trying to ignore the elephant in the room which was my overly pregnant self and no newborn to hold.

Thankfully, so far Emilia seems to be taking after me in the timing department. She arrived just a little bit early, 24 hours before the first set of grandparents arrived, giving her and her parents a lovely little window of time to get to know each other and recover.  And the birth itself? Perhaps it was the Heubleumen sitzbad, copious amounts of Raspberry Leaf tea or the benefit of good genes (and I rather think it was the latter) but it was quick. Five hours from woe to go.  Two days after she was born and Matthias, Emilia and I walked out of the hospital, through the park and back to our apartment.

Six days later we were back again. At eight days of age Emilia decided to test both her parents by inhaling some milk up her nose. Babies breath through their noses. Curdled milk up the nose means no airway and no airway means not a lot of breathing. Thankfully she screamed and tried very hard to clear it herself. Thankfully her Papa was calm enough to make an educated phone call to the ambulance while her Mama tried patting her back and suck the milk out of her nose. Thankfully babies can be a little bit purple for a lot longer than adults.  And we live close to the hospital (remember that walk home?). Thankfully with a little bit of medical magic in the ambulance and then some more in the Paediatric ward the milk was removed and Emilia turned pink again. Most importantly, thankfully after two days of observation it was deemed to be "just one of those things" and we are now all back home again. 

Home and busy with the bits and pieces that come with getting to know a new little one. My parents are still here and helping out enormously.  As I get more active and Emilia and I find our rhythm I'm hoping to spend a bit more time out and about with them exploring Berlin. In mid-August we will all spend a week in Vienna meeting the rest of Matthias' friends and family and celebrating one very-important birthday and the wedding of a good friend. With all that's going on around here I feel the need to step back abit from this space, but not completely. And so I've decided to join in Susannah Conway's August break - a picture a day, no words - starting on Monday.

Speak to you all in September.