9.5

This week's been huge so far. Met with the accountant and he worked out what my little company needs to do to buy my business partner out. All I can say is GULP!!!! But God is bigger and I trust the accountant and my husband. It's good long term for us even if it's hard right now.

I also worked a couple of days helping a friend who owns a construction company. They are super busy and I was designer/ admin girl. If you work in administration you have my greatest respect! It's hard work, no two ways about it!

But in the busyness and emotional stress I had a little gem of a revelation....

I am an immigrant and moved to New Zealand when I married a New Zealander. I was alone for about 7 or 8 years until my parents and youngest sister moved here. In those years I ached for my family and the separation was hard. We all knew that to be with one another we would have to do a minimum of 23 hours air time alone. We were thousands and thousands of kilometers apart.

I count the kms for work trips and so this week clicked the meter to zero and set off for my mothers house. She was going to babysit my little man for me while I worked. I looked at the odometer when I arrived at her house and tears came to my eyes.

She lives only 9.5km away from me. 9.5km. That's it. If we need one another and want to be with one another, we can get in the car and be there within 15 minutes. 15 minutes!!!! Slightly better than a good 36 hours of travel!

I am soooo grateful. God reunited all of us. Both my sisters live near me as do my parents. How wonderful is that? Instead of skyping and emailing and cramming time together when we can, we are able to be spontaneous. Get together "just because". I am so blessed!

I heart my husband

I adore my husband. To know him is to love him. He is a people magnet and everybody loves him. Me? Not so much! I can appear aloof and a bit snobby but I am just shy. He always appears as he is- warm and friendly, like a cosy blanket.

He has been endlessly supportive through my pregnancy. Through the very hormonal, irrational and sometimes insane moments he has just loved me and waited for me to see sense. He has continually told me that I look beautiful and I have believed him never feeling fat or ugly at all.

He is an amazing Dad and Rupi also adores him. Our favourite moment of the day is when we hear his car put into the driveway. We cram ourselves into the doorway and have long 3-way hugs and kisses. Rupi is then attached to his Daddy like a limpet for the evening.

He told me this weekend that he didn't want any pictures of Baby Girl taken in hospital. He did not want Rupi to feel like Baby Girl had something he didn't. After pausing for a moment I realised why. He's grieving like I did for the experiences we did not have with Rupi. Of course we will take pictures as Baby Girl deserves to have her special moments celebrated. But I love my hubbie's sensitive heart at loving Rupi so much and getting him.

He is also my birth coach! We are doing the Bradley method (hopefully- all things going well) and he is very into it. He reads the books and we practise every night. I trust him so much and can't imagine anyone else I would rather be with.

I am so proud to be his wife and I thank God for him all the time. He's wonderful!

34 weeks and 2 days

Infertility alert, a pregnancy post....(much love)

A day of randomness and busyness.

It started with my scan- all good. She is still a girl, phew! Otherwise baby would be wearing a lot of pink! And everything is where it should be. She's chubby round the tummy but her head is average size (praise Jesus!)

Rupi and I played in a park near a cafe and I learnt just how fast he can run straight into the parking lot.... without listening to my "STOP"!! I also learnt that I can waddle at very high speed to go and get him!

I went to my last work meeting (hopefully) and dropped all the accounting reports at the accountant. Hopefully the business tangles will be sorted very soon!

Then to the midwife who thinks baby girl may be around 8 lbs at birth. That good? I think so bearing in mind that Rupi was over 12 lbs... I like my midwife. She's good for me, a "go with the flow" person who is opposite to me. I need someone like that. If she was like me, it would be like a military operation and not good at all.



And lastly introducing my lovelies.... new shoes. My first in 18 months! A world record for me. Normally I wear heels. I LOVE heels and don't like flats. However a 15 kg toddler and big tummy mean heels are a bit beyond me.



So here are my new shoes! And the combined cost of these cuties was half of what I used to pay for a pair of shoes...not too shabby.









So all in all 34 weeks is not too bad. Sore (par for the course) and hormonal (again par for the course) but otherwise happy as a clam.

An unusual Easter

Our church holds a conference every Easter called Shout. It's amazing. No other word describes it. Every year our church goes to a new level after Shout and we love being there.

Problem for us is that my hubbies family have a family reunion every Easter too. And they all travel from far and wide and spend the weekend together. He is the only saved person in his entire family- immediate and extended and his family have been wonderful at understanding our commitment to our church and the conference. Family (whanau) is BIG to them all. We have missed 7 family reunions in a row and now that Glenn (my hubbies dad) is gone, we can't get that time back...ever. Being real, my heart aches at the times we have missed with him and the family.

This Easter my hubbies cousin was having a 21st celebration as part of the reunion. This young man has worked through major intellectual hurdles and now lives independently and has built a life and social circle for himself. We are so proud of him.

So we thought long and hard and split our time. Spent Thursday and Friday at Shout and then early on Sat morning went up north to a (gorgeous, beautiful) tiny place called Whananaki North.

The look on the faces of our family as we arrived was worth the drive and missing Shout. They ALL knew we had missed the conference and chosen them instead. The birthday boy loved that we had come and my hubbie got say a few words and tell him what he meant to us. So good. So very good.

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L-R: BIL & SIL, The birthday boy and my MIL and us.

And last night we put on a 40th anniversary celebration for my parents. I say "we" lightly as my sister did 95% of the preparation and work. What a lovely evening. The crowd was heavy on the South African and light on any other nationality! The food also featured South African cuisine- babotie and chicken briyani. Needless to say, I made a pig of myself!

The happy couple, my Mom and Dad

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Here I have actually pushed my Dad to one side as he was cutting the cake skew (have I NO shame!?!) He is complaining about having an interior designer for a daughter.......!








My gorgeous sisters (and giant me- I am a LOT taller than they are) We normally stand together with our arms around each other and are not usually this formal (!) Hope this photo is ok, Pen and Nik?

So yes.

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All in all a good Easter. An unusual Easter, but a very very good one.

Tapora

A place of fun times, happy times, restorative times, loving times and God times.

Tired

I am so tired. Emotionally drained without any reserves . Am I supposed to feel this way at this stage- 32 weeks? Is it part of pregnancy? I have no idea.

There's been so much going on. An emotional earthquake has ripped through my sweet little business and there are massive changes to come. In my personal life I tried to please someone and ended up pleasing no-one with the consequences unexpected. Anyone been there? And there seem to be more friend and family tangles coming.

I am so tired. I keep wanting calmer waters but don't see any in sight.

A verse keeps running though my head and I know it's for me from Him. "Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me- I'll show you how to do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly." Matt 11:28

There's no real answer except what is found in Him. Life does not slow down and there is no typical rest period for us pre-baby. This is what we have and I know we can do it, with grace and ease. The way and the answer are found in Him.

A jolly good book

I am reading a wonderful book at the mo. I have to ration the time I spend reading it as I have a couple of birth books and oh, the BIBLE to read as well. Not spending as much time there as I would like.... gotta get in the Word more.


There's a lack of positive and uplifting books for an adoptive parent to read, I have found. Much of this is because of the philosophy and beliefs that pervade the culture we live in. I have essentially found that the social services and justice system is not pro-adoption in NZ. And this has been confirmed by our lawyer and other adoptive parents too.




In the 50's and 60's children were removed from their birth mothers and adoption was closed. Bad for everyone concerned. We have seen the effects in our own family and it's not pretty. But the pendulum has swung too far the other way where sometimes it's hard to find any positive viewpoint on adoption at all. The pressure that is placed on young girls (even Sweetpea at 14 years old) to keep the baby is wrong.


*Disclaimer for any birth mums reading this* Don't get me wrong, sometimes it IS good for birth mums to keep their babies and I am all for choice. The choice is YOURS and yours alone right up until you sign the papers. But if you have made up your mind, like Sweetpea did, then support is needed, not coercing.



Recommended adoption literature seems to support this viewpoint with the belief that nothing is as good as the birth mum/ child relationship and the adoptive child is doomed to spend their lives trying to fill the gap left by separation/ loss. One of the books recommended by the adoption social services is the Primal Wound. Oh boy. I read this book at the time when the first adoption possibility we were approached with had failed.



We were away on holiday and I started reading this book. It filled me with a devastating sense of loss that I would never be a "real" mother. Not only could I not produce a child myself but if I was fortunate enough to adopt I would not be able to fully be a mother as I would not be good enough. I drove to the boat ramp to pick up my hubbie and I drove right to the edge of the river. I had one foot on the accelerator and one foot on the brake. The car jerked forward until I could see down into the river. I wondered how long it would take for someone to find me and I just wanted to end it all. It would have been so easy. I am not how long I sat there but it took a superhuman effort to put the car into reverse and back off. It took me to a bad place that took me months to climb out from.



Yes there is a wound caused at our birth but it's caused by separation from God not from a person. We all have to deal with a primal wound and only Jesus can heal it.



My father-in-law who was adopted helped me deal with some of this loss and poo-pooed the book. As an adoptee (from a closed adoption and very happy for it to remain so) he gave me hope. How I miss that man!



So I am always looking for books to read that are real and balanced. That don't deny adoption issues but are also positive and affirming about adoption. This book I have been reading is fabulous. It presents a rational and balanced perspective on bonding/ attachment and a whole lot of other issues.



It's called "Talking with Young children about adoption" by Mary Watkins and Susan Fisher. I originally got it to know how to start to bring up the topic with Rupi. Our adoption is very open and we want it to be something he has always known about. But the book has turned out o be so much more! I can't recommend it enough.



One of my favourite lines is: "Adoptive parents often lose sight of the fact that their children's nonadopted peers are fighting the same battles and feeling the same pains but are scrapping on fields other than the adoption front, using other metaphors." Ahhh... the sound of sanity!

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Another great author (and I think she is adopted herself) is Sherrie Eldridge. Her books are also quite balanced and we got the idea for a life book out of this book. I got both books off Amazon.











So one of the things we are doing is getting a life book together for Rupi. We got ours from Parents inc and it's called MyStory.



It's such fun putting it together and at the beginning of the book there we are along with Sweetpea and J. So hopefully Rupi will start to associate us and him with Sweetpea and J from the beginning.






Because this IS wonderful and positive and amazing. Chosen by Sweetpea and orchestrated by God, a family was made. And we need to read about how incredible it can be and work towards that, not worry about the gaps and lack and focus on the negative! Amen!