August 29th

On the night you were born

the moon smiled with such wonder

that the stars peeked in to see you

and the night wind whispered

'Life will never be the same.'

August 29th, 2005

On the night of August 29, 2005, I sat on my couch and watched in disbelief the horror that was Hurricane Katrina. It was hard to imagine that such widespread devastation could have been wreaked on North American soil let alone in relation to an iconic, historic American city such as New Orleans. The images that were being broadcast were of a type that we were used to seeing in faraway places on the other side of the world. Never in my lifetime had such devastation hit so close to home. I was numb.

I had spent that entire summer in a state of numbness. *We* had spent that summer in a state of numbness. It was truly the summer of our discontent.

At that time, I was still married to my first husband. We had been involved a serious relationship for almost seven years and had been married for two. We met at a criminal law conference when we were law students. As couples do in most "starter marriages", we advanced through the stereotypical stages of life, careers and marriage. We survived the tremendous strains and stresses of of finishing law school, articling, being called to the Bar and establishing our demanding practices as criminal lawyers. We bought our first house. We eloped to an exotic Carribean island and got married. We bought our second house. We got a dog. After my very dysfunctional, tumultuous child and young adulthood, I thought I had succeeded in building for myself a normal life with a wonderful man with whom I believed I shared a healthy, loving relationship. Like any other couple, our years together held their challenges, their ups and downs but with him I felt a sense of security and a feeling of home that I had never felt before. I believed that we were strong enough to weather anything life would throw our way.

It was the desire to start a family that would break us.

It was on a girls' shopping trip to Buffalo that my biological clock started tick, tick, ticking. Literally. All it took was a visit to the Pottery Barns kids store and one glance at the Moses baby basket and the desire to have a baby was overwhelming. We discussed it when I got home and decided that yes, this was something we both wanted to do, this was something we were ready to do, it was time to start trying to have a baby.

So we tried. We tried. And we tried. And we tried. Nothing happened. I began charting my basal body temperature, noting my cervical mucous, contorting my body into awkward post coital poses. Nothing happened. Notwithstanding the lack of success, in anticipation of our eventual success, we sold small house number one and bought bigger house number two. After several months of trying still without success, my then boss urged us to seek medical attention to see if there was some sort of physical issue at play. Our family doctor referred us to a fertility clinic where we were each sent for physiological testing. Being female, I of course assumed that *I* was the problem. I recalled a pelvic infection I'd suffered when I first became sexually active with my first boyfriend. I had sought medical attention but the drug that had been prescribed was so strong, so nauseating, that I ceased taking the medicine. As I endured the agony of having water flushed through my fallopian tubes to check for blockages, I convinced myself that my teenage stupidity had rendered me sterile.

You cannot imagine my surprise when I received the call from my husband advising me that it was not my fertility but rather *his* that was the obstacle to me getting pregnant. Apparently the doctor had called him on his cell phone while he was driving to court. Just like that. Our lives would never be the same.

As we would learn, when the fertility issue rests with the woman, the situation is much more easily rectified. When the obstacle rests with the man, it is much more difficult. There is no easy cure. We were referred to the pre-eminent Canadian male fertility specialist. If the experience of attending at that office was demoralizing to me, I can only imagine the humiliating impact on my husband and his psyche. But we went through the soul destroying process hoping that at the end our wish to become parents would be fulfilled. Our lives that summer came to a depressing standstill as we fretted over what we termed "the Subject". Despite the beautiful house with the gorgeous yard, the dog who needed exercise and attention, the gorgeous summer weather, our post-work lives consisted of sitting stunned on the couch like lumps on a bump. We were numb. Little did I know that the days left in that marriage were numbered, that our union was not and would not be strong enough to withstand the challenges that infertility had thrown at us. Little did I know that the demise of that relationship would lead to the best thing ever to happen in my life.

August 29th, 2007

I had been in labour for sixteen hours when she was finally born at 7:29 p.m. While the actual labour itself was, thanks to the wonders of drugs, surprisingly easy, the process of pushing her into the world was sheer agony. When I was a child, I had once seen a hamster giving birth. I watched amazed as the hamster ran around in circles in its cage, eventually expelling its babies one by one. As I struggled to push my daughter out, I understood for the first time how that hamster felt. Had I not been tethered by the IV and the epidural, I would have pulled a hamster, jumped off the bed and ran around the room until the baby fell out of me. As my mother admonished my poor manners, I screamed at the doctor to "get this f*@#ing baby *OUT* of me!!!!!" Exhibiting the penultimate grace under pressure, the doctor calmly asked me if I had taken prenatal classes. I replied that I had. He explained that he wanted to use the assistance of a vacuum to pull the baby out. He told me that it would be just one more push and the baby would be here. All I heard were the words "one more push". I asked him if it would really be just one more push, as if I had the option of ceasing pushing and just calling the whole thing off.

I pushed. And then, in a moment that was analogous to something out of the TLC show "A Baby Story", a baby, my baby, my daughter, emerged and landed on my chest. I could hear my mom excitedly exclaiming, "She's here! She's here! She's here!" I looked down at her, I held her, and I sobbed uncontrollably in a way that I had never sobbed before. I cried from the deepest recesses of my being because for the first time ever Life, my Life and my loss of that marriage, made complete and perfect sense.

* * * * *

Every parent fetes their child on the anniversary of their birth. As each year passes, my heart aches at the passage of time and swells with the pride of all that she has accomplished. Mothering her is an experience unlike any other. But the day carries with it other significant connotations. The Dragon and I never set out on our journey together intending to be parents. For the longest while, especially in light of what had happened with my first marriage and the way in which it had met such an unexpectedly disastrous end, I felt uncertain as to whether the voyage of parenthood was one I would be taking solo or with a partner by my side. The Dragon has more than risen to the occasion of fatherhood. Although parenthood was not an adventure I ever have expected to take with him, I could not ask for a better father for our children. And so every year, August 29th is not just a memorialization of our daughter's miraculous birth, it is a celebration of all that we have achieved as a couple, as parents and as a family.

Happy 3rd Birthday Baby Chicken.

And then we were four....

"I haven't had a full night's sleep in over three and a half months!!!" I screamed as the Dragon whined about our lack of quality time alone together.

One might think that the transition from being to a childless couple to becoming parents the first time around would be the biggest adjustment you would ever experience as a couple. Before BoBo arrived, one of my girlfriends warned me repeatedly about the ways in which both our family dynamic and our relationship as a couple were going to change when our second child arrived. Having weathered the arrival of our first child rather smoothly, especially in light of the fact that we hardly knew each other before I got knocked up, I dismissed my friend's warnings figuring that if we could handle the transition of having one kid, aside from the sleepless nights, having a second baby would be a breeze.

I. Was. Wrong.

Capital "W" Wrong.

Prior to the arrival of B2, it made me cry to think that it would no longer be just the three of us. Our time as a little family of three was, without a doubt, the best time of my life. A strong believer in the value of siblings, we both felt that we were doing Baby Chicken a favour by having another child. I was very cognizant of the fact that I would miss my time alone with her once the baby arrived. (Indeed, such thoughts still bring tears to my eyes.) I almost lost it when my girlfriend suggested that, prior to the baby's arrival, we should take Chicken out for a memorable dinner to mark the occasion of our last days as a trio. I cried for weeks every time we sat down for a meal after hearing that!

Chicken is an incredibly intelligent, intuitive, insightful little girl and we devoted a lot of time and effort to explaining what was about to happen to her, what was about to happen to us all. From the time we knew that BoBo was a boy, we knew what his name would be and we constantly referred to him by his name while he was in utero. We read books to Chicken about the arrival of babies and about being a big sister. We talked about what it would be like when he arrived and the things that we would do to take care of him and the things that we would do together as a family. We attempted to assuage our guilt about having another child by buying Chicken her first tricycle, telling her that she could ride the tricycle with Daddy pushing her while Mommy pushed BoBo in his stroller. She seemed to understand what was going on, right up until the day that I went to the hospital to deliver. The video footage of her meeting her brother for the first time is beyond priceless as she walked into the house asking, "Is my brother home?"

I'm almost ashamed to admit this but it wasn't Baby Chicken who experienced difficulty adapting to the arrival of her brother. That transition was seamless. The problems have been with the Dragon and with our relationship as a couple.

When Chicken was born, the Dragon took to fatherhood like a fish to water. You would never have known that up until a year or so before to her birth, he had been a lifelong confirmed bachelor who had no interest in procreating. The immediate and intense bond he shared with his daughter is evident in the first picture I ever took of the two of them together shortly after she was born. In that photo, he is looking at her with such wonder and amazement. She was less than an hour old and already had him wrapped around her little finger! So you can imagine my surprise when, upon BoBo's arrival, he did not appear to bond with his son. At all. As in, he rarely picked the baby up, he did little to nothing to assist in his care, he did not once get up with him in the middle of the night - all things which he had readily, happily and eagerly done when our daughter was born! While part of this was accounted for by the fact that we had his mom with us to help, I had spent nine long months growing this baby and could not help but take this completely unforeseen lack of involvement more than a little bit personally! "I would not have had a second child had I known it was going to be like this!" I screamed.

As uninvolved as he was with the baby, he over-compensated with his obsession with Chicken - ensuring that she was not somehow neglected, lavishing her with attention and praise. Each positive comment I made about the new baby was met with a completely unresponsive remark about what an amazing, wonderful, perfect being Chicken was. It was as if his male brain he could not simultaneously love and appreciate both children.

The lack of bonding with the baby was met with what in my view were increased demands on me as his partner. I don't know about you, but after weeks of sleepless nights and having a baby affixed semi-permanently to my sore breasts, sex just was not on my list of priorities. Mentally, I had prepared myself for the fact that, as parents of two young children, we were not going to have a lot of "couple" time, especially not during the chaotic first few weeks and months following a baby's arrival. Someone recently told me that upon having children many men feel like they "lose" their wives to motherhood. I can certainly understand that sentiment. Especially with two little beings to take care of, it often feels like after their wants and needs and demands are met, there just is not anything left of *me* to go around and I'm certainly not going to foresake my children and their needs for their father.

I know I am not the only one to experience such a seismic change in my relationship with my partner upon the birth of our second child. One friend found her husband not to be anywhere near as helpful with their second child as he was with their first. (Hey, at least he still helped!) Another friend, who gave birth to her second child a couple of weeks after I gave birth to BoBo tells me that her husband has literally and figuratively disappeared from their home since the child's birth. One very wise friend described the dynamic as follows: "Our bottom line is, I take you for granted, you resent me". That pretty much sums it up.

The arrival of a second child represents the growth of your family and that can't be but a beautiful thing. Even if it's rocky in the beginning, the dividends will pay off a million fold in the future. There are often times when you feel stretched to your limits and as if you are not paying enough quality attention to either of your children. But my relationship with Chicken is stronger for having had BoBo. I cherish and appreciate her more as a result of having had him. I marvel in my children's similarities and, moreover, their differences. How could two entirely different people come from the same parents? There are almost no words for the sheer, unadulterated joy and happiness I feel as I observe my children interacting with each other. From the moment he arrived, BoBo has done nothing but want for his sister to cast just the slightest bit of attention upon him. As my younger sister has said, I know now how she has felt about me my entire life.

I thrive on the chaos which accompanies two children. The day we brought BoBo home from the hospital, I relished the moment when I would have both of my children in my arms. As I held BoBo in my left arm and with Chicken perched on my lap, the baby started to cry. This startled Chicken who had never heard an infant cry before, certainly not a baby who was only a day old. Chicken started to cry too. As perverse as it sounds, I had never felt as alive or as fulfilled as I did in that moment as I sat there with both of my children wailing away in my arms.

I see Dragon's bond with BoBo is developing with time. As the baby gets older, more expressive and more interactive, I am witnessing the same type of love and wonderment in the Dragon's eyes as he interacts with his son. His compliments towards the baby are free-flowing now. He clearly loves and is loved by both of his children. As for my relationship with the Dragon, I still feel like I just don't have it in me to give at times. I've been told that the more I give to him, the more he will give to our children so I'm trying. As trying as it is at times, I'm trying...

Unfit

“The miracle isn’t that I finished. The miracle is that I had the courage to start.”

--John “the Penguin” Bingham

At the time I got pregnant with Bo Bo, I was in decent physical shape. Granted, I had never lost all of the weight I gained when pregnant with Baby Chicken but at the time she was conceived I was unusually thin, having just successfully completed the divorce diet whereby one automatically sheds twenty pounds when their spouse suddenly walks out on them. When I got pregnant last year, I was in the midst of several sessions of fitness Bootcamps and was also working out periodically at the gym. Indeed, the day before I figured out I was pregnant, I had done two back-to-back fitness classes at the gym. Upon learning that I was once again with child, I vowed that this time I would remain physically active and physically fit throughout my pregnancy. Mother nature, however, had different plans for me.....

The signs of pregnancy hit almost immediately. Within two weeks of what I assume was the date of conception, I was out of town at an annual employment education event. With no spouse, no childcare responsibilities and having drunk myself into oblivion the previous two evenings (recall that I did not at this point know that I was pregnant!!!), I decided to treat myself to a spa day. (The prime rib dinner that I devoured following the spa day should have been a clue.....) During my 90 minute massage, I noticed that my breasts were sore, really, really sore, as I lay on my stomach. That night as I lay in bed, having not consumed any alcohol, I noticed that I was really, really nauseous and really, really dizzy, so much so that I cancelled a road trip with a girlfriend the following weekend. Little did I know that this was just the beginning.....

The following week I discovered I was pregnant, following which the nausea kicked into full gear for the next thirteen or so weeks. Looking back, I don't know how I managed to function, especially at work as I remained in court on my feet litigating throughout the entire pregnancy. There were times when I was on my feet sipping from a can of gingerale in order to prevent me from vomiting in court. The act of brushing my teeth every morning inevitably ended up with me retching into the sink. By the time I got home from work at night, I was so completely exhausted (and unable to fathom the thought of eating dinner), that I often curled up and passed out on the couch. Thank G-d for the Dragon and his Mom who cared for Baby Chicken during these weeks. By the time of my first pre-natal appointment at the end of the first trimester of the pregnancy, I had not done a stitch of exercise but had actually LOST weight. And sadly, between the nausea, the exhaustion, the just-turned-two-year old, the demands of a career in the law and trying to maintain some semblance of a healthy relationship with my partner, that did not change throughout the pregnancy. I had neither the time, the energy nor the inclination to exercise.

Overall, I gained less total weight the second time around. My body managed to keep everything in check until the final week weeks when the pounds started to pack on. Sadly, the baby, who weighed in at a healthy 8 pounds, 4 ounces, did not himself account for the total weight gain of thirty six pounds and, three months later, I am left with about 14 pounds to lose before I am the weight I was when I got pregnant with him, 34 pounds to lose if I want to be the weight I was when Chicken was conceived. Regardless of the number on the scale, the damage to my "mummy tummy" this time around is so much more extensive. Unclothed, it looks like my mid-section has been run over by a truck, a truck who then backed back over me!!!!! It really is a depressing state of affairs as I continually obsess over getting myself back into shape.

This appearance obsession is not something which is new to me or something stems from the changes to my body which come from having kids. It is something which has haunted me, seemingly, my entire life. Stemming first from the rivalrous relationship which was cultivated by my parents between my sister and I (I was the "smart" one, she was the "pretty" one - there was never any room for us each to be both), I have for years tortured myself over my looks and my weight, first obsessively comparing myself with my much thinner, tanner sister, then moving on to compare myself, seemingly, with every other woman on the planet.

My foray into physical fitness started when I was 19 years old. Having been dumped by my first love a few months earlier, I channelled my angst and my energy into an "I'll show him" obsession with working out at Hart House where I was a student at U of T. I recall spending endless hours on the Stairmaster, ruminating over my lost love, convincing myself that he would rue the day he dumped me once I got myself into stellar physical shape. The exercise obsession took on a life of its own from there. The exercise was addictive and a great way to deal with the stresses of academia. I was fortunate to have surrounded myself with like-minded friends who also enjoyed spending spare time with me at the gym. We did classes, we did cardio, we ran (I was running 10km at a time several times a week), we lifted weights. I look back at pictures of me taken at that time and I would KILL, KILL, KILL to have that body now!!!! I look at those pictures and ask myself, "What were you thinking you silly little girl??? You were so thin!!! So fit!!! So beautiful!!!" I can only conclude that youth is most definately wasted on the young.

Despite our frequent pig-outs at the Chinese Laundry Cafe, I maintained a gym membership and managed to stay in fairly decent shape throughout law school. When I became involved in what was to be my next serious relationship with the man who is now my ex-husband, I became too comfortable, too complacent and let it all go to pot. All of my years of fitness and exercise were all for naught as we combined overindulgence in good food and wine with zero physical activity. Most ironically, at the end of that marriage, I was the same weight I ended up being when nine months pregnant with Baby Chicken.

As I struggle with the current state of my body, I realize that I am at a very crucial physical juncture at this point in my life. Not only am I post-partum, but I am also within the next few years facing the daunting prospect of menopause. (How fucking depressing is *that*?!?!?) I recall an older friend of mine once telling me that the desire to get her body in the best shape possible to deal with menopause was what motivated her to begin running when she was in her late thirties. I want and need to be fit and healthy for my kids and for myself as I face the next major stage of my life as a woman.

In an attempt to shed the additional pounds, I have returned to the gym. In an effort to stay motivated, I am doing various group exercise classes. This morning's class was, for me, a retro workout - the step class. While it presented a challenging workout, it was also a very maudlin experience. In the 90s, I was addicted to step. I used to literally fly over the bench, risers stacked high to the sky. That most certainly was not my experience today as I struggled to attain momentum, to avoid hyperventilating and to avoid breaking any bones. (Even when I was fit, I once broke my foot as a result of a misplaced foot during a step class.) It was, for me, a sad state of affair as I mentally compared my current exercise ineptitude with my physically fit days of yore and berated myself for ever letting myself go in the first place.

I know that I am far from the only woman to ever grapple with these issues. Hell, countless mortals have made their fortunes on the insecurities of women such as myself. Books, therapists, talk show hosts, the entire diet industry...to name but a few. As I mentally run through the list of my female friends, I don't think there is anyone I know of who doesn't have their own schtick when it comes to their weight and/or their appearance. My bff, who is older than I am, and I recently lamented, as we have many times, the fact that it's so easy to gain weight but so difficult to lose. We each spoke of our lifetime battles with our respective weights and body images and our desire, just for a day, just for a moment, to not have to battle these demons. Another good friend and I have also spoken in depth about her battle not to be so hard on herself. Take it from me - this woman is stunning, a vision of physical fitness and female perfection. She is beyond physically fit (she runs marathons for g-d's sakes!!!!!) and is always perfectly coiffed. I would kill to have both her body and her closet! Yet I almost fell off my seat when she told me about some of her weighty issues. Hell, even one of my gay friends recently confessed to me his own appearance obsession issues, as he explained to me the "ranking" system that pervades the gay community. No one is immune!

I try to be gentle on myself. I remind myself that this time the weight gain is not because of over eating and/or physical neglect. I tell myself that the extra weight and distorted physique are the result of a recent pregnancy which produced my beautiful baby boy. I try to encourage myself as, mentally, I recoil from the image in the mirror beside me while I work out. Most of all, I try to think that this is the last time in my life that I will have to ride the roller coaster of weight gain and weight loss though internally I fear that it's an affliction which will plague me for the rest of my life.

Bo Bo

He came into the world obviously unsure of his place in it. Contrary to my expectations, I fell in love with him instantly.

Towards the middle of last year, the Dragon and I decided to take the next leap and expand our family, to give Baby Chicken a sibling. While I have always wanted more than one child (my ideal was three), the Dragon at his advanced age was motivated by the desire to ensure that Chicken would have someone to accompany her on the journey of life were something to happen to her parents. I just wanted more kids. So, last June we abandoned all birth control and threw caution to the wind. As I had the first time, I got pregnant immediately. And I do mean immediately. The signs and symptoms were seemingly instantaneous - sore breasts and constant nausea. Suspecting that something was awry, the night before Dragon, Chicken and Dragon's mother were to leave for Vancouver for the weekend to visit his sister, I woke up in the middle of the night and did a pee test, the result of which was disappointingly negative. Given my age, I began to mentally prepare myself to ride the monthly roller coaster of trying to conceive.

I will never know what possessed me, two days later, to reach into the garbage can to look once more at that first pregnancy test. I was in the bathroom minding my business when a voice suddenly told me to reach in and pick it up. Much to my shock, when I looked at the test the second time, it indicated a positive result, albeit faintly. Figuring that the passage of time, perhaps the sunlight in the bathroom, some unknown chemical reaction because I swear the first time I looked at it that test was negative!!!!!, had skewed the result, I did not allow myself to get too excited. Rather, I waited for two more days, re-tested and, sure enough, received an instantaneous positive result. I was pregnant again.

This pregnancy was the antithesis of the first. I suffered from every pregnancy side effect in the book, most notably nausea and exhaustion. Fourteen weeks of it to be exact. I threw up every morning like clockwork as I tried to brush my teeth. My taste in food changed and I developed aversions to nearly everything I had enjoyed eating pre-pregnancy. No meat, no Chinese food. I survived on pasta and vegetables. "Perhaps this baby is a 'different flavour' than your first?" suggested my local Starbucks Barista.

Being somewhat of a hypochondriac, and having surpassed the magical age of 35, I opted this time to undergo amniocentesis to ensure that all was genetically in order. The test also had the added advantage of certainty insofar as the baby's gender was concerned. Being one of two girls myself, I hoped for a second daughter. As has been my mandate in life, I wanted to prove, to myself and to others, that I could raise two daughters in a healthy, happy environment, without them being pitted against one another. The Dragon wanted another girl because he simply likes girls. Imagine our shock and surprise when I was advised that the baby I was carrying was a BOY. A BOY. A BOY? A BOY?!?!? A healthy baby BOY.

We reeled at the news. My family history was not going to repeat itself. Baby Chicken was not going to have a baby sister. There wasn't going to be another baby girl to wear the mountains and mountains of adorable pink clothing that Baby Chicken had amassed. And while I am always up to the challenge of shopping, I just could not come to terms with the fact that *this* baby was a boy. As many second time moms-to-be do, I feared I would not love this baby as much as I loved Baby Chicken. I feared that I would not love him at all. Because he was a boy. Because he was not what I thought I wanted. Right up until I gave birth to him, I both harboured and expressed concerns that I was not going to love this child. Friends and family and the Dragon all told me I would love him, that I would love him just as much as I love her. One friend told me that there was nothing like the mother-son relationship. My sister suggested that that this was perhaps an opportunity for me to cultivate a healthy relationship with a member of the opposite sex. I remained skeptical and unconvinced right up until the very end. Or should I say the very beginning?

Giving birth to him was for me a very different experience in so many regards. Unlike when I gave birth to Baby Chicken, my relationship with the Dragon was far more established, far more serious, far more committed this time around. The Dragon and I barely knew each other when I gave birth to Baby Chicken. We had been dating a matter of months when I accidentally got pregnant with her. The months which followed were a scramble to figure out where to go from there. At the time of her birth, it was far from a given that we would be or stay together. You could have plucked a stranger off the street and thrown him into the delivery room, that was about how well I felt we knew each other at that time.

But this time was different. This time we knew, and loved, each other. Though we've had our trials and tribulations, the relationship had evolved and was one which we both chose to be in. This pregnancy was planned, we were a family and were choosing to grow our family and move it forward.

Physically and mentally, labour was different the second time around. Unlike the first time, I knew what to expect, something which both relieved and terrified me. When push came to shove (literally!) I knew to just bare down (literally!) and push through it, that the more focused I was, the sooner it would be over and he would be here. After fifteen hours of labour, the last three fraught with frustration and complications, my body and my baby kicked into action and, like the scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark where the giant boulder comes crashing down with people scrambling to get out of its way, my body and my baby kicked into action and he came barreling down the birth canal. I knew when it was time to push before the doctors told me and push I did - he was out of there in six pushes, arriving at 12:04 a.m. on April 7, 2010.

Unlike when I was pregnant with Chicken, I had not this time had a 3D ultrasound to see what he looked like. When all was said and done, I wanted something to remain a surprise. I think everyone, myself included, assumed that with the generally dominant Asian features, he would look just like his sister. We were all wrong. He looked just like me. Rather, my side of the family - my estranged father and my deceased grandfather to be exact. Oh, the power of genetics!

B2 came into the world obviously unsure of his place in it. My doubts and second guessing had clearly imprinted themselves on him. Contrary to my expectations, I fell in love with him instantly. Completely and totally, head-over-heels in love. He was slow to reciprocate, and understandably so, having literally grown in such an environment of uncertainty. He was sad and sullen, he woke up crying. Never had I seen a grumpier little man. He looked like a grumpy old man whose little shoulders bore the weight of the world on them. We started to call him "Grumpy". My sister put an end to that, chastising me not to stigmatize him with such a negative label. We stopped, I stopped and the difference was instantly palpable. I described it as follows in an email to my sister the following day:

Most important about our conversation last night, and what I took most from it, were your wise words about O. and not stigmatizing him. Your words obviously took affect (sic) and impacted my approach to him because this morning - for the very first time - he woke up and..... just woke up!!!!! No crying, no screaming, no pouting. He just opened his little eyes and looked around. I know in my heart that it was because of my internal shift. So I thank you for that.

The Little Man is now just over ten weeks old. He is starting to sleep through the night and I am starting to emerge from the "newborn fog". There are no remnants of his former unsure, grumpy self. He is a happy, beautiful baby boy who is welcomed, accepted and loved by all, even his older sister who has given him the moniker of "Monkey Bo Bo" or "Bo Bo" (which in Chinese means treasure) for short. My Bo Bo he is as I could not imagine our lives without him.

The Blog is Back

New name, new format (what happened to the old Blogspot formats????), my blog and I are back. In a much regretted moment of pregnant stupidity, I deleted my previous blog and then failed to resurrect it before the 90 day expiration period. What can I say? Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb!!!!! Having not saved or backed any of it up in any other format, some of my best (and most personal) writing is now lost but maybe that is not such a bad thing as some of those posts are better left unread.

Onwards and upwards as, two years later, the cast of characters pretty much remains the same with one very important exception - the Dragon and I took the monumental leap of expanding our beautiful family and ten weeks ago welcomed our son, let's call him Bo Bo as that is what his sister calls him. Lawyermummie is currently on a government funded maternity leave. Contrary to all expectations, including my own, I am absolutely LOVING my time off as this time with my family has been some of the best of my life. That's not to say that there have not been ups and downs - indeed, that is what you will read about here - but after nearly tens years at the Bar with its attendant workaholic tendencies, the opportunity to be a full time mummie simpliciter is one which I cherish.