Hate and Intolerance

As I write this, it hasn't even been 24 hours since our little country was rocked by a horrible act of terrorism. I think most New Zealanders, including me, lived in a bubble thinking that this was the type of thing that happened elsewhere in the world, not in peaceful New Zealand.

I am in shock. My sister drove past one of the mosques that was shot up about 20mins before things started happening. It's so close to home that it's terrifying.

I worry about what the future holds for my little girl. Why is there so much intolerance and hate?

My heart goes out to those people who were affected by this atrocity. Kia kaha.

Thoughts about the future

I see all the pictures and videos of children Patricia's age and younger doing things that she should have been doing months ago.

I wonder what the future will hold for our little family.

Will she walk? Will she see? What extra challenges are there going to be for us?

I believe everything happens for a reason and this little Princess was sent to us for a reason. We are capable of dealing with everything that life throws at us. But it is hard. I won't deny it. We'll get there.

What's been going on

I haven't posted in quite a while on here as between Patricia and myself, we've had a multitude of health issues.

I've just had my second round of surgery since having her. First surgery was to remove my gallbladder after I developed gallstones just after Patricia was born. This second surgery was to repair a moderately large hernia that developed after my last surgery - helped along by the fact that my abdominal muscles were quite separated from pregnancy. I'm hoping this will be it for me (fingers crossed).

Patricia is the sweetest little girl but she does have a number of developmental delays. She is now 14 months old and is still learning how to sit. She doesn't talk, though she makes plenty of noise. She does her own version of crawling which is so cute and loves to roly poly all over the place. She also has almost no interest in grabbing onto things. She'll put her hands in her mouth, but nothing else. She sometimes puts her hands in her food. Speaking of food, she loves her food. But it has to be relatively soft as it tends to get stuck on her high arch palate. We haven't found anything that she doesn't like to eat. She has issues with both her hearing and vision. She'll be getting grommets in a few weeks and they're still trying to find a reason for her vision delay.

She has three therapists. A neuro-developmental therapist (NDT), speech-language therapist (SLT)and a Resource Teacher Vision (RTV). They're all fantastic at helping with her development.

I'm thinking that I might start a series (when I have time amongst all our appointments) detailing our journey from pregnancy onwards. It's not being the easiest of journeys but it'll be good to document it all :) 

The two of us last night

In the next month we (so far) have the following appointments:

Me - nurse to check surgical wound, nurse to take stitches out and follow up appointment with surgeon.

Patricia - Paediatrician, grommets surgery (under general anaesthetic), testing her optic nerves and retinas (also under general), visit from her NDT and SLT. I will also have to organise her 15 month immunisations to happen somewhere in amongst this all. 

Wish us luck! 

Introducing...

Patricia Brigid

Born 10 December 2017 at 8.15pm

She weighed 3.035kg


We had a bit of a rough start which I'll go into on further posts. We're now almost 3 months along and we're finally getting into a bit of a routine (ish).

I plan on doing a broad overview of my pregnancy, as well as my labour and delivery story, our first few weeks and a 3 month update. But as with babies, who knows when exactly things will happen :P We love our little munchkin and we're enjoying seeing her develop into her own little person.

Update

So it's been a REALLY long time since I posted on here.

Main reason being that I'm 6 months pregnant with our first baby :) Due December 9th.
So we've been busy getting prepared for our new arrival and sorting stuff out.

I'm not going to promise anything in terms of this blog. I'll pretty much post when I feel up to it. It won't be regular. I do still have lot of ideas for posts written down - I just need to get around to writing them :P

So that's my brief update for now. We're really looking forward to our new arrival and the challenges that will bring.

Ireland - Donegal (photo heavy post)

I really liked Donegal. We didn't spend all that much time there - only driving (on a bit of a tiki tour) through but it left quite an impression on me.
We started off in the town of Donegal where we had spent the previous night and headed off in the direction of the Slieve League cliffs. We drove through quite a few cute fishing villages on the way.
Slieve League was amazing. They are the tallest sea-facing cliffs in Europe. Apparently there are some falcons that nest there which we were hoping to see, but alas, we didn't see any.
From there we worked our way to Ardara (my bro-in-law's GF's family is from there) and then we went via Glenveagh National Park on the way to Northern Ireland.
NB - all these photos were taken by AJ. I would link to his website but he's changed something and I can't link to individual photos.

Donegal town

On the way to Slieve League

Slieve League

The countryside is Donegal

A pile of peat

We got stuck behind heaps of these tractor/trailers

Ardara

More Donegal countryside

Glenveagh National Park

More countryside

Wild weather

So, the whole North Island has pretty much been ravaged by the remains of Cyclone Debbie. We don't usually get it all that bad, but actually developed a pond in our backyard...