I’m almost back home. I’ve spent three amazing days with my friend in Portugal, without a moment of awkwardness, at ease with each others preferences or silences or conversation.
I’ve visited Coimbra, which is a nice student city, famous for its historical university. We had coffee at a lively bar by the river while people from a dance school advertised their courses by dancing some African dance by the river bank in front of us.
River Mandega, Coimbra
The University of Coimbra
I’m finding very difficult to find time to write these days… I keep “writing posts in my mind”, but it’s always when I’m walking/working/playing with Pallino/in bed!
I had a long weekend last week, Monday was a bank holiday and I don’t work Tuesdays, so it feels like a mini holiday! On Sunday I took some time off and spent the day with my friend Al – I wrote about her in this post. She used to organise walks around London, mostly around the Capital Ring : it’s a ring of almost 80 miles connecting parks and pedestrian paths along the Thames… it’s one of the magic things of London, I think Al walked most of it! I missed all the walks in the last couple of years, because I was pregnant first and exhausted later, so I was very keen of joining one last walk before she left… I suggested we visited the London Wetland Centre and the Isabella Plantation in Richmond park, and we couldn’t make a better choice! I’ll leave the pictures to speak for me… Continue reading
Pallino has been unwell this week, and didn’t sleep much. He had a rush and a throat and ear infection… the GP gave him antibiotics for a week, and he’s been sleeping more than usual during the day, but unfortunately less at night. I was busy at work and very tired, so trying to reconcile work and family has been quite hard. Luckily L could take a day off on Friday, so I could work, but I had to work a couple of evenings as well, after Pallino went to bed. It worked OK, apart from me being tired. However I haven’t finished the report I was writing and my colleague who was supposed to help me hasn’t done anything because she was working at another project at the same time, so now I still have a lot to do. Anyway, Pallino is feeling better now, and hopefully he’ll sleep better too (please, please)!
A friend of mine called me and told me that she got a good job… in Australia. Continue reading
I wanted to post this for New Year’s eve, but…
What a year it’s been… I’m writing with a little, sweet, clever, gorgeous baby boy next to me. I couldn’t wish for anything more, so much that I didn’t feel the need for any other gift this year. And still I received a few small and big gifts from people who love me, and it was great to feel that love.
We spent ten days in Italy, and we came back almost more tired than when we left… but it was great to see Pallino playing with his grandparents and the rest of the families, and he seems to grow up so much during the holidays!
He started drinking milk from the Doidy cup without problems, for example, which makes me much happier to take him to the nursery now. And now he moves with the music and claps his hands and he’s so cute!!! My mum got him lots of clothes and for each of them I said they were too big, but then I tried them on him and… they fit just right! So now he’s 7 months old and we are on size 1 year…
L says that when we are in Italy we can feel that we matter for someone. And that’s the other side of things: when we are home, in London, we are more lonely. We do have friends but they don’t seem to care about us, not actively I mean: they are happy to see us, but they wouldn’t make an effort to make us happy, so to speak. Maybe it’s just a cultural behavioural difference, nobody’s fault, but it weighs on us every day, especially because L is the kind of person who goes the extra mile for a lot of people. And L is not happy at work, while I’m going to start working again after eight months of maternity leave and I don’t feel confident at all.
We spent New Year’s eve at home, had a nice dinner, watched a movie and played board games, L and I, after putting Pallino to sleep. We hadn’t received any invitation to go out, but honestly this time I was happy to be with L alone, after the holidays and the journey back.
I’m happy of what we have and I feel incredibly lucky. The new year is going to be hard work, but we’ll make it. If I could wish for something, it would be to have the strength to smile to Pallino every day and enjoy his progress and discoveries, whatever happens. and I’d wish for L to be more content with his work and less stressed out. Happiness is never alone, it lives together with all our fears and shades all the time.
Here’s to a New Year of love and many many moments of happiness!!
It’s 9.45 am and as usual my pelvic pain had me wake up feeling miserable… so now I’m sitting in the nursing chair and hopefully I’ll be able to do something from my to do list later on! I still have to finish my hospital bag: I think I have everything important, but I need to show L what’s in there and where he can get changes or refills if needed, and also I need to check that I actually have everything for the baby, since last week we were given a good checklist at the antenatal class, but I haven’t really had time to compare it with what I have prepared already.
Last weekend we had our last breastfeeding class, with the nct, and then we went to the pub with the other couples, which was really nice. Hopefully we will keep in touch and maybe become friends! The class was a refresher of information I already had at the NHS class, but this time partners were present too, so it was very useful for L. He can’t understand why breastfeeding is not an exact science though, he thought you could learn the ‘right’ technique and you wouldn’t ever have problems. He’s going to have a few more surprises when it comes to raising children, I suppose… However, I see one point he makes: when they tell you about breastfeeding, the tutors start saying that sometimes it’s difficult, support is available and we should not give up straight away. They carry on showing wrong habits and so on. All this before showing a good example of when things work well. So unless you’ve seen already how it should be, you might get confused: why should it be difficult? what stops you from doing the right things? Honestly, I’m not so sure myself about this last point. I understand that a lot depends on the child innate instinct, and the mother should not stop him from following it by taking certain positions; also, if the baby is already desperate because he’s been hungry for a while and wasn’t being fed, he needs to be calmed down before he can latch on properly. But apart from that, it doesn’t seem so difficult. It must be one of those things that are easy in theory, but not in practice.
The bottom line of the session was: if you have problems, before despairing and torturing yourself for months, or giving up, call someone to help you or attend a drop-in breastfeeding session.
Sunday was a warm sunny day and I had a nice visit from three of my ex-colleagues. We went to have lunch in a pub near my place and then we played board games all afternoon. It was good to see them and meet their partners as well! They traveled between one and two hours to come here, so I really appreciated the effort, and it was good to know that they haven’t forgotten me and we could still talk easily to each other… only 6 months have passed, but life has already changed so much for me, and being distant doesn’t help in keeping alive friendships, but it went very well 🙂
What is essential is invisible to the eye 