Our last goodbye

Today we said goodbye for the last time, and it felt so final. We had a wee service, not even that actually, just a priest there to give a blessing and say a few words. That tiny, white casket is the saddest thing I have ever, ever seen. Something I never thought we'd see in our little family. We each laid a flower on top and Mr 3 a drawing also. It was a drawing of inventions, he said, and he will give it to the postie to bring to baby L.T. in heaven so he could make the inventions.

It was a really tough goodbye. I didn't want to leave the little casket there, I wanted to gather it up in my arms and carry it away. Somewhere. That's my baby in there, my littlest boy.

I miss him so much.

What I imagined...

I had envisaged three little boys going off to Auskick and the under nine's.

Three little boys heading off to cricket on Saturday morning in the summer.

Three boys driving us crazy with their noise and mess.

Three big strapping boys crashing home after school or footy training and rummaging for food.

I saw me being The Queen of the Kitchen, feeding them and their mates really good food. Teenage boys think with their stomachs, don't they? I saw myself teaching them to cook.

Three of them.

Baby

This time last week I was in labour. It seems so hard to believe, it wasn't meant to happen that way at all. I woke up that morning with the slow realisation coming over me that it hadn't all been just an upsetting dream.

Labour was about 7 1/2 hours long, my shortest by a long way. Drug free.....do two panadol count? Baby L.T. was born, with a tiny bit of that 'oh wow' factor I've heard about in regards to a natural, drug free birth. All 320 grams of him. He never took a breath, we didn't expect him to. We spent an hour with him, the midwives took hand prints and footprints for us.

We said our hellos and goodbyes.

We cried.

Life after baby

Had a rough afternoon yesterday, too many tears, cranky at the kids, tired, short tempered. I've still got to get back to doing the school run, which hubby has been doing for me up till now. I dropped off this morning, but managed to escape without really speaking to anyone significant. Got to go back this afternoon. I'm just hanging out with my 3 year old for now and following his lead, he's been a bit neglected of late.

It was one week ago today I found out our baby had no heartbeat.

A week ago tomorrow that I gave birth to him.

My only natural, drug free birth.

My milk came in, but I've managed to keep that under control and it's going away again.

Not sleeping too well, I think my body is waking me up to feed the baby.

We live in a very supportive community, surrounded by many friends, acquaintances and well-wishers, but it's still really hard right now.

Baby

We lost our baby boy last week, stillborn at 28 weeks. I'm not ready to say more than that right now.

Making space

The organisation bug has spread to the kitchen.

Yay for that, although we do luckily have a rather large kitchen, despite the overall smallness of the house. In it's previous life, the kitchen was done in pink and included a built in booth and seats, which are now looooooong gone, thankfully.

So, see this wee corner?

It was housing two recipe folders, two fruit bowls, the bread, the butter dish, my beloved thermomix, a large granite mortar and pestle and a knife block. As well as whatever random grains or nuts I happened to be soaking at any given time.

And now, gorgeous (mostly) emptiness.

'Scuse the enormous bowl of lemons, they're all ripening at once and with carpal tunnel making itself felt in my right hand....thanks baby #3......I'm not getting them juiced in anything like a hurry.

Meaning, that bowl wouldn't usually be there, post organisational blitz.

So what happened to the items that used to inhabit this space?

Well, apart from the knife rack (which I LOVE!) that dear Hubby installed on the underside of the shelf thus doing away with the wooden knifeblock that sat on the benchtop, most of the bulkier remaining items have been relocated here....

Which is actually a built in nook for the microwave.

See the power points? And the, er, unfinished wall that was always hidden by the microwave?

Where's the microwave gone?

Well, I was all for getting rid of it, until we left it unplugged for a couple of days and I realised I do actually use it, not for anything momentous mind you.

So now, the microwave resides here:

Which is one half of the cupboards under the kitchen sink, beside the dishwasher.

Brilliant, I tells ya!

Beside the micro is a plastic bin I store recyclables in before taking it to the recycling bin outside.

Where the micro is now, there used to be a second, identical plastic bin, for recyclables.

Take the second bin out (which means I'm walking one bin out more often, instead of making two trips with two bins, less often. Got that?) raise the shelf up a level (necessitating a hole to be cut in the shelf so the drain pipe from the kitchen sink can nest snugly in it

and ta dah!

More room on my bench and a less cluttered look overall.

I am newly in love with my kitchen, aaaaahhhh.....