a 30 day update

gosh i have been a slack blogger. i guess i will play the newborn baby card, because it is the easiest card to play. i could probably even slam that card on the table as my excuse for thinking about shutting down this little blog, but i want to document the story god gave us, and so through my sleep deprivation i will soldier on.


ella vera hutchins was born at 12.20pm on 7 march 2012. after 14 hours of torture labor she was put on my chest. she was a screaming hot mess but she was all mine at the same time. she was mine in a way that something had never been mine before, and every day she grows and changes i feel like it is a day closer to her no longer being mine any more. one day she will belong to her friends, school, her job, life in general, but in these first precious weeks she belongs solely to me. at our three am feeds on the couch while the world sleeps i fight to remember to savour the moment, because while it is so hard, it is so rewarding at the same time. 


she has started to recognise my voice and to smile, that means a lot.


also, sometimes she screams in such pain (we think it's a tummy pain) and I feel so helpless, and that is hard.


poor ella started her life with jaundice, then she was having a devil of a time eating meaning she wasn't putting on enough weight, it was at that point that formula was looking mighty tempting but i am glad i persevered with breastfeeding because now she is growing and putting on weight like a champ!


we are approaching week five and all in all it is starting to get easier. 


during labor i literally couldn't understand how people have more than one child. while writhing in pain i was planning our lives as a single child household, and i was totally fine with it.


but now i get it, you are holding perfection in your arms and why wouldn't you want more of that?

little by little, week by week

i've been working on a little project for the past forty weeks.
well I guess I've been working on two little projects. one is sleeping blissfully upstairs and the other is here! 

i've always found fascinating the body's ability to drastically change itself in short periods of time. i really wanted to document that change over this pregnancy, so with nick's help we took photos almost every week to watch the changes. unfortunately we couldn't get a week thirty nine photo because baby ella decided to arrive three days early.

it's true, from little things, big things grow...

post script

while i do wear an inordinate amount of stripes

in this case, they're intentional