This Is Not A Maya Post

Maya Kisses Daddy, originally uploaded by Luminosity.

I won't write about Maya in this post.

I won't tell you that she sometimes pulls her lips in and back in a Cabbage Patch Doll kinda way when she tries to talk.

Definitely won't mention that she started farting and pooing up a storm when we sat in front of a breastfeeding education class, where I was breastfeeding Maya to demonstrate how it's done, to a group of expectant couples. That she got that look in her eye, where she loses focus on the breast and gazes absentmindedly. Then proceeded to push her little body straight and grunt. So, I saw it coming before everyone else did.

So, I wont go into how she has impeccable timing once again.

I also won't talk about how we spent the afternoon today, just the two of us. Lying on the bed on our sides, curled facing each other and having a conversation for at least an hour. Then I fed her there, both of us still lying on our sides until we drifted off to afternoon nap-land. That we woke up around the same time quite content with all in the world, two peas in the pod.

So, that's all I have to write about not talking about Maya.

And she giggles

Maya Smiley Girl, originally uploaded by Luminosity.

Yesterday marked another milestone...two in one week , wow!

Josh and I were laying beside her on the bed, jiggling a new toy over her face when she, out of the blue, let out the cutest most magical little set of giggles I have ever heard!

I could hardly contain myself when she proceeded to giggle even more, I imploded with giggles myself!

Like a friend of mine once said; A baby's laugh could stop a war.

She Speaks!

Pretty baby, originally uploaded by Luminosity.

My little darling uttered her first word yesterday (around 4pm 14th November 2007...gotta record the time/date for prosperity sakes.)

She has been trying her hardest to talk for the past 3 weeks or so, where she'll lock eyes with mine (or whoever is looking into her eyes) and she'll be so focused on trying to make sounds into words. Then, when I speak, she'll stop and focus on my mouth and then try to mimic my mouth movements and she'll move her tongue out of her mouth because she sees that the tongue is involved with talking somehow...and she'll resume with trying to form 'words'.

So, there's been one recurring word throughout, which sounded like "Ahhgooo".

Yesterday, "Ahhgoo" turned into "A girlllll"

Her first words being "A girllll" makes sense, considering they were the very first words she would have heard when she was pulled out into the world: "It's a girl"!

I know every mother thinks this but I have the cleverest child! ;)

Jab Day

Maya B&W, originally uploaded by Luminosity.

So, today was the day that I'd been dreading: Immunisation Day.

I roped in the services of my sister, an experienced Immunisation-Day-Times-2 mama to be my support and/or to hold Maya if I decided I couldn't bear to hold her myself. We walked down to the Maternal Health facility, took a number amongst all the prams, crying babies and crying-harder mummies and I sat down to let Maya get some comforting milk in her system before she took the jabs. I had spent the morning playing with her and telling her that I needed to take her to get some needles because they would help her to not get sick etc etc.

I think it helped me more then it helped her. She was so happy and smiley this morning too, I felt like shit that I was about to turn her day into a crappy one. It was worse when, right before the nurse jabbed her in the thigh, she was sitting contently in my arms and talking away to me and smiling.

As the nurse took the first of the needles to her thigh, I watched her face turn from content to a look of surprise and pain then she screamed her lungs out and cried in a "WHYYYY did you DO that to me mamaaaaaa!" sort of cry.

It was awful because when she started to calm down and hug into me, searching for comfort, the nurse would do it again. She had a total of 3 needles.

God, I started to cry...it just felt so cruel. (I know, I know....it's for her own good yada yada).

Even my support mama started to cry!

She was ok and smiling not long afterwards, after I gave her a comfort feed on the boob but an hour later she started to feel it and started crying, shivering and all that lovely stuff associated with ones body trying to fight the half a dozen or so recently injected viral bugs. I gave her some baby panadol and spent the afternoon and evening cuddling my darling girl and kissing her over and over as she slept, whispering in her ear to "Sleep it off my sweetheart".

Some days I wish I could have kept her safe, warm and sound in my womb.

On a happier note, I ran into a childhood friend and her mum (they were neighbours when I was growing up and have known them for 18 years) at the center. Georgie has an 8 week old little girl and was there to get her immunized also. Turns out she lives around the corner from me!

Yay to catching up with an old friend and having her as company whilst taking this mummyhood journey together for the first time!

Maya Grin

Maya Grin, originally uploaded by Luminosity.

I'm in the living room, Josh is in the bedroom getting Maya back to sleep.

Cue deep, 'official' sounding voice over the baby monitor:

Josh: "Come in Tina, this is God speaking....Where... is... the... dummy.......?"

Tina: "If you were God, you'd already know where the dummy is...."

A Scary Halloween

Maya Towelled Up, originally uploaded by Luminosity.

My Halloween night had a quite scary moment and not in the way one might think, not Halloweeny scary.

I went to move Maya's bassinette closer to my pillow just before I went to bed myself when a sleeping Maya suddenly flung her head up with eyes bulging open in panic and she lurched up fighting to get a breath of air. I cried out "Oh my god!" and picked her up as she gave a little frightened. Josh was already in bed and asked me what had happened and I explained as I rocked her side to side, upright in my arms. A minute later though, I lay her down to re-wrap her and she was all smiles.

Mummy wasn't though...mummy was out of her mind worried and wondering "What if I decided to stay in the living room for even 5 extra minutes"? or "What if she did this when I was in the shower during the day?" etc.

Turns out, upon consultation with the maternal health nurse and my mum, that she may have just been startled by me and not, as I was thinking initially, just struggling to breathe coincidently as I walked in the room.

The most terrifying thought in the world to me now is losing her. That's what I mean when I say that, since she's been born, the world really can hurt me now.

I have a shot of her with a pirate hat on, which she borrowed from her cousins yesterday for Halloween...haven't had a chance to upload it yet but will.