Middle Name

At the time that Victoria was born, we hadn't yet chosen a middle name for her. We'd had several discussions on the subject but had yet to make a final decision.

There were several factors influencing the name we were to choose ...

• It had to be a short name, one or two syllables at the most. Because both Victoria and Hamilton are long and multi-syllable, we agreed that a long middle name just wouldn't be appropriate.


• It couldn't end in "a". Victoria Sandra Hamilton just wouldn't work.


• It couldn't end in "y". Vicky Sandy Hamilton just wouldn't work.


• It potentially couldn't begin with a vowel if the two names didn't run together well, e.g. Victoria Elizabeth.

We came up with a short list of names that we liked that fit the criteria:

Victoria Anne
Victoria Jane
Victoria Louise
Victoria Marie
Victoria Rose

However, following Victoria's unconventional birth we all agreed that her middle name needed to commemorate the event. Suggestions included Front Yard, Lawn, Daisy, Pixie (from the bottom of the garden), Sunshine.

But the name which struck a chord with everyone was Melrose, the name of the street on which she was born. We weren't completely sure it worked as a name though, so the compromise we reached was to name her ... Melanie-Rose ... or Mel-Rose for short.

And so in naming her Victoria Melanie-Rose Hamilton we broke our number one rule and made her middle name even longer than her first and last names. I guess sometimes rules are made to be broken!

http://vickymelrose.blogspot.com has been registered, however it may be some time before she is able to blog anything. Unlike big sister Kathleen.

Victoria is doing well and growing strong and healthy. So far she seems more settled than Kathleen was at her age, and she is sleeping well during the day (and ok at night). Kathleen adores her little sister and constantly wants to kiss and cuddle her. We have to keep reminding her to be gentle.

Cheers,
Megz

Victoria Hamilton

Peter and I are now proud parents to a second daughter, Victoria (undecided middle name) Hamilton. Kathleen is a very proud big sister who loves to give her little sister lots of kissies and cuddles.

Victoria was born at 3.10pm on Saturday 17 November 2007, weighing 2.780kg / 6lb 2oz, at home.

It was not planned to be a home birth. In fact we were on our way to the hospital when all of a sudden she couldn't be held back any more. And so our second daughter was actually born in the front yard of the house!!! Big huge thanks to all the neighbours who appeared out of nowhere and provided lots of help.

I've heard about people giving birth on the way to the hospital and laughed and said "couldn't you have left earlier?". Now I don't want people laughing at me the same way, so here is the whole story from my point of view...

(warning it may get a little graphic)

Saturday morning I woke up and felt like this was going to be the day. Victoria was already a week late, and every morning Peter would ask me if "today is baby day". As I got out of bed I felt a trickle. My waters hadn't broken but they were leaking. As the morning went on I felt period-like cramps. So when Peter asked if it was baby day I said "maybe".

In order to give me a little space, I suggested that Peter and his mum take Kathleen out Christmas shopping. They had some stuff they needed to buy anyway, and Kat was fascinated with the Christmas trees and decorations last time we went to the Warehouse. I suppose it was about 11am when they went out.

The cramps were getting stronger and I re-read through my midwife's instructions on when to call her. They said "When contracting every 3 minutes lasting 60-90 seconds for an hour". I phoned anyway just to give them a heads up that things were beginning. I spoke to the backup midwife who didn't seem overly concerned, said that it could take up to 48 hours and to call back when the contractions had been lasting 60 seconds, for an hour.

So I settled back to try and watch some TV and take my mind of things. Over the course of the next hour the contractions became strong and regular, probably only lasting 20-30 seconds (I was unable to time them myself).

I would say labour was definitely established by 12 o'clock.

Now Kathleen's birth took about 5 hours. She was also a week late and was induced. I have heard that inductions can speed up deliveries. I've also heard that second and subsequent babies can come quicker. Had Kathleen's birth been normal and not an induction then I don't know how long it would have taken - 12-14 hours is the average. So I didn't really know what to expect in terms of how long it would take. All I had to go by was my midwife's assurance not to worry until contractions have been 60 seconds long for an hour.

By 1.15pm the contractions had become intense and I was starting to think about pain relief. I texted Peter who said he was on his way home.

At 1.45pm I couldn't stand the pain any more and hopped in the shower, something which really helped a lot last time. However this time it didn't help much so I hopped back out again. Contractions were at least 30 seconds long, and definitely less than 5 minutes apart.

At 2pm Peter, Mimi and Kathleen got home. Mimi began timing my contractions, while Peter looked after Kathleen and put her down for a nap. The contractions were lasting about 45 seconds and were 2 minutes apart. They phoned the midwife who again said to "not worry until contractions have been lasting 60 seconds, for an hour".

I don't know how long until the contractions reached 60 seconds in length. Not long, maybe another half hour. But I still had in my mind that I had to wait at this stage for another hour before doing anything.

At 2.45pm I suddenly felt the overwhelming urge to push and knew I was reaching the "transition" stage. I fought back against the urge with all my willpower. The midwife was again phoned and she agreed to come to our house. She lives about 20 minutes away.

Peter and his mother kept insisting we needed to go to the hospital. I just wanted my midwife to be there.

After another 10 minutes even I agreed we couldn't wait any longer and we slowly headed for the car to drive to the hospital. We had to stop a couple of times for contractions. Being upright slowed the contractions down a bit thankfully. During all this time I did not push once, apart from the initial time when the transition phase started. I successfully fought off each subsequent contraction.

We walked down to the car and met the midwife at the gate. I felt another contraction starting and dropped down onto the grass to ride it out. The midwife watched and then she agreed to go on ahead to the hospital to get things ready.

Peter went on to bring the car out, and I stayed where I was which was behind the garage, out of sight from the road but as close to the car as possible.

I felt another contraction starting. I tried to fight it, as I'd done before, but this time the urge to push just overwhelmed me. As I struggled to bring it under control I could feel the baby's head crowning and knew it was too late. So with one more push (on purpose), the head was delivered. I told Peter it was too late, the baby was here, but he didn't believe me. He came over and saw for himself, and after another minute and one more push, I delivered the rest of the baby into his arms.

And so Victoria was born. On our front lawn. At 3.10pm. After 3-3 1/2 hours labour and only 3 pushes.

The neighbours appeared out of nowhere with towels and water and phones and you-name-it. Mimi phoned an ambulance after I screamed out "it's coming", and they arrived maybe 10 minutes later to cut the cord and transport Victoria and I to hospital, where the midwife delivered the placenta and checked us out.

After such an exciting entry into the world, Victoria is quickly settling into her role as the smallest member of our family, keeping us awake half the night and being on the receiving end of lots and lots of cuddles.

More updates to comes over the next few weeks and months.

-Megz

How quickly they grow...

So, we're getting all of Kathleen's old things out and ready for Not Nooboo to use. Kat is fascinated with all of it and wants to play with it. She loves the rocker (which she calls a "rocket") and will put her toys in it, or climb in it herself.

Here's a comparison of Kathleen in the rocker when she was first born, and now. These pictures are pretty close to the same scale. It's hard to believe just how much she has grown.



Cheers,
Megz

PS: No sign of the little one yet.

D-Day

Well, today was meant to be Due Date for Not Nooboo, and with two hours left in the day, there's still no sign of the little one.

Guess he or she is going to be late, just like big sister Kathleen.

-Megz

Renovating

It is now almost a year since Peter, Kathleen and I moved to Wellington. The house we're living in used to belong to my parents, and we've been here since pretty much Christmas last year. All that time (and longer) we've been talking about renovating the house.

Now this is a bit of an emotional subject for me, since it's the house I grew up in. However there are several things that I would be happy to see the back of. Such as the 1970's carpet and wallpaper. I've been looking at these for 30 years now and I am SO OVER IT. I know patterned wallpaper is making a comeback at the moment, but I'm ready for a change.

So Peter and I have been talking about renovating the house for quite some time. We have come up with several different ideas and plans. The house is essentially 2.5 bedrooms (2 bedrooms plus study). And with baby number two on the way, we would ideally like to make it a 3 bedroom plus study house.

After much discussion and deliberation, we hired a Project Management company in July this year. Right from the beginning we said "baby number two is due in mid November, so we want everything done by end October at the latest". They said "Yes, we can do that".

The reason for hiring a project management company was
- so that they could take care of bringing together all the different contractors involved
- because they have contacts in the industry and know who's available in that time frame
- because they have good relationships with the contractors and get good rates from them

Peter and I came up with a design that we liked, that made minimal changes to the house. However as we talked with various people along the way we made a few changes to the plan.

Here is the original layout of the house as it was when I was growing up:



And here is the layout of the house as we have been living in it since Christmas last year.



What this floor plan doesn't show is the temporary nature of this layout. Because we always knew we were going to be doing renovations, we kinda just put things anywhere we could find the space when we first moved in. The house was already furnished when we moved in, so we had to cram both our furniture and my parents furniture into the house.

Thus ... The dining room was used more as a store room for bits and pieces, and not really used for anything else. In Kathleen's bedroom were stored a couple of unused beds, propped up against the walls. In our bedroom was the dining room hutch full of serving plates and glasses, and our big Plasma TV. It was always intended that the Plasma TV would be wall mounted in the living room. But knowing the walls were going to come down some time in the near future, we never bothered to wall mount it, and instead had it at the end of our bed - oh dear, how sad, never mind ;-)

So, here is the floor plan we proposed creating as part of the renovations.



Note that the walls come out between the kitchen and laundry, and kitchen and dining room, to make one large room. And half the wall comes out between the kitchen and living room, with a breakfast bar put in the gap. The idea is that anyone in the kitchen is not excluded from any socialising being done in the living room, and they can also see the plasma TV mounted on the wall.

You will also note an extra wall being built in the front bedroom. This would be a temporary wall, the kind they have in office buildings, that would provide separate bedrooms for the kids while they are little, but which would be taken out at a later date so they could share one big room. I was concerned about the new baby waking during the night and waking Kathleen up if they were sharing a room in the early days.


So, we dealt directly with the Project Managers, who arranged a valuation and an architect and builder and plasterer and Council building consent. Another reason for choosing a Project Manager was their expertise in this area and being able to get it all done quickly. Sadly this wasn't the case. The planning stage took much, much longer than we wanted it to. I understand that it is important to get everything right in the planning stage, but there were times when a week or two would go by simply because we were "waiting to hear from somebody".

Finally, on Sunday 23rd September, they got back to us with a final quote and project plan / timeline. Up until this point we really had no idea what it was going to look like in terms of cost or time involved (but we knew it wouldn't happen overnight). We knew we would have to move out of the house while the work was going on, and had planned on moving in with Peter's mum.

The timeframe had the builders starting work on Monday 1st October, basically one week from the date of the meeting. It had them finishing the work on Friday 9th November, i.e. the work would take six weeks. HOWEVER this is the day before baby is due!!!


So that would have given us ONE week to pack up EVERYTHING in our house and either store the stuff we don't need in the short term downstairs in the basement or take what we do need over to Peter's mum's house. Which, as it turned out, we would never have gotten it all done in one week.

The next problem was that we'd then have to move everything back again, with a toddler AND a newborn.

But the worst part of all was the quote itself. It was way, way, way over our budget. Of course that was including all the "nice to have's" that we'd asked them to quote for along the way, such as granite benchtops and rimu finishings. But still, Peter talked to a few people and everyone seemed to think that it was overpriced by about 20%.

So to summarise, we had been given one week to:
- pack up and move out
- decide what bits to cut out of the project to bring it into budget
- decide on all the extras such as which carpet and which paint and so on.

It was just NOT going to happen.

So, rather than be rushed into such an important and expensive decision, we've put the whole thing on hold until the new year. Right now we're going back to the drawing board trying to figure out what to do.


In the meantime I have still boxed up the things we don't use on a regular basis and stored them downstairs. Because whether we do it now or in February, it still had to be done. And it's easier to do it with only one baby in the house rather than two.

We have also rearranged the bedrooms as per our renovated plan:
- Partly because I'd done all this prep work and wanted to see some benefit from it.
- Partly in order to see if it really works or not before we spend the money.
- Partly to make room for Peter's mum who has now rented her house out and come to live with us for a few weeks until she moves back to Texas on a permanent basis.
- And partly to make room for Not Nooboo, who will probably end up sleeping in our room for a while.

So the floor plan of the house now currently looks like this:



The biggest change from how the house has been previously and from our renovated plan, is that Kathleen's room is now the room off the kitchen (i.e. what would have become the dining room). We were surprised to find that it is actually a pretty good size for her at the moment, although of course it probably won't work long term. I still envisage that long term Kat and the new baby will share a room once the baby is old enough.

Peter and I are still deciding on our options. One option is to simply redecorate and not make any structural changes at all. Right now though we are enjoying not having the stress of moving - although having said that we've spent the past couple of weeks getting the Salvation Army to take away all our excess stuff, and then moving Peter's mum and her stuff in with us.

But now that is all done and we are sitting back and waiting for baby to arrive. It won't be too long now, so watch this space.

-Megz