Summary of the decade dubbed the "Naughties"

This will test my memory, trying to remember the last decade. Its hard enough remembering what I did yesterday. How could I forget I became a mother in 2000....

My first child surprised us all by being a girl! We didn't try long to conceive her, we were married 2 months before I became pregnant with her. I knew I was in the family way when we traveled to WA and came back driving across the Nullabor and just didn't feel quite right. A doctor hadn't a clue so waited til we came back home to see the family doctor, not having a clue ourselves what to do next. We didn't know about home pregnancy tests (now I know they are unnecessary - I knew I was pregnant!) and what on Earth do you do when pregnant anyway? Trust the doctor? Well I couldn't even back then. But I did all that was expected, went to all the appointments and thankfully only one ultrasound and it was quite stressful anyway. The labour went well as the midwives ignored me - probably assuming I would labour for at least 10 hours. We didn't rush in so by the time I arrived in hospital I was in established labour and it went fast. Obviously they had no idea how far I was. When a midwife asked to perform the first internal (which didn't happen), I was required to get out of the shower where there was much relief. My waters broke and 13 minutes later my daughter was born. I had a tear that required much stitching. I found that hard to deal with and took gas. Having a baby and becoming a mother was a surreal feeling.  I was shocked by how difficult being so depended on was yet I adored my daughter and didn't want to be a way from her.

Unfortunately in many ways I ignored my instincts and did things like controlled crying, avoiding co-sleeping and not breastfeeding beyond 12 months. When you know better you do better. So after some trials and being sick with Graves disease which required 2 weeks in hospital with surgery, I finally became pregnant again.

We co-slept  from day one. I had a son in 2003, we as a family became close, we fell in love, it was a wonderful time. Unfortunately it was a traumatic birth for me. I had  a borderline third degree tear which took 6 weeks to recover from. It was a beautiful time in our family though, my daughter at 3 years, 2 months became a big sister. She told me she loved me for the first time when she first met her brother. And she started to become more outgoing when he arrived.

I thought my idea of having 5 children was not ideal at this stage. I could be happy with the boring average of 2 children, the pigeon pair. We left it to nature - as we do, and soon enough I was pregnant with my third child. My eldest son was quite unwell with severe eczema and still in nappies when our next child was born in 2005 so it was challenging. He was 2.5 years old and I believe quite put out by the new arrival. I had wanted to accidentally have him at home, having a freebirth appealed to me. I thought it would be my only chance at not being treated disrespectfully by strangers who thought they knew better. I wanted to avoid a tear so read up about breathing rather than pushing through contractions. I still had a tear but my recovery was better despite the place of birth, the hospital again. I had planned to birth in the birth centre but I was kicked out for borderline iron levels which meant I was high risk according to them. This meant I had a drip and catheter post birth, not with consent. As soon as he was born, I knew I would have a freebirth the next time. I had had enough. I researched unassisted pregnancy and unassisted birth and I was not going to do it any other way. There was no question....

Until of course my husband expressed shock that it was still on my mind when I became pregnant with my 4th child. Ultimately it was my choice, so we planned for a homebirth, buying a birth pool which was actually something my husband had always wanted for us. Water birth was just something not available to us in hospital. It was the best choice I ever made for our family. I am still dealing with issues related to my hospital births but being able to knowingly avoid it was exactly what I needed to do. In 2008 I had my wonderfully normal physiologically natural birth at home in water.

It was special - I brought  him out of the water myself after a short undisturbed 1.5 hour labour and foetal ejection reflex where it took only about one minute to push him into the world. (I pushed for less than 3o minutes in all my labours).

I had my first babymoon and I could easily say I was on a high for close to a year. I never knew I could enjoy pregnancy, birth and the newborn stage! It was awesome, no other word for it. I did things as my instinct dictated, we still breastfeed, co-sleep and cuddle as needed. J is 27mths now and we are expecting our 5th child in this new decade - May this year.

Okay that was just about my babies. I have to add that I did see some bands live and participate in other hobbies that I adore (I do not want to estimate how many kilos of yarn I have knitted and crocheted into wearable garments or other items). I saw magic dirt (the best band in  the world) play a few times which I am grateful for, the bass player passed away sadly also.

We traveled to quite a few beautiful coastal  and rural towns and loved our roadtrips.
I became an aunty to nieces and nephews and we lost my Pop, my husband's biological father and sister.
Thankful for my photos that helped me to remember some of these things, also for being online so I can try to keep a regular journal of happenings in my childrens' young lives.

In summary this decade was a learning decade. I learned to be a better mother, wife, person. And guess what? Still not perfected so I keep trudging forward doing all that I can with the knowledge that I have been fortunate to require all the while making more mistakes to learn from. And I still don't know how to trust in people, but I have learned a lot about love.