2011 New years resolutions.

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1. Have a baby
2. Loose weight

Well 2011 started off a little differently. I turned 30years old. I realize, now, that not many people share my enthusiasm for turning the big three-zero, but for years I have been the youngest of our friends overseas. With the very eager babysitters at hand, and still heavily pregnant, Murray and I headed out for breakfast at Mission Bay. I really did forget how beautiful New Zealand is, and sitting at a café across the road from the beach, overlooking the ocean and Rangitoto, well it can’t get much better, can it.

After stressing that our third baby would arrive on Christmas Day and hate me forever for such bad planning, or having the baby on New Years Day and then forever having to share my birthday, our little girl decided to come another 11 days later. On the 11th of January at 7.05pm Emma Isabella Findlay Burt finally entered the world. She weighed in at a whopping 9 pounds 13 oz (or 4.47kgs). After a fairly straight forward delivery, things seemed to turn sour quickly. I didn’t stop bleeding and needed surgery. I managed to avoid a blood transfusion, but did need to be in the high dependency unit and was monitored closely. I am not great with medical things, especially needles etc, so having tubes and drips in abundance was not an easy thing. The staff at Auckland Hospital were amazing, and I’m soo glad I was in NZ for all this drama.

The rest of our January trip in NZ was a bit of a blur, as we expected Emma would arrive on time like her sisters, we had lots planned. We went on holiday to the beach with Murrays family, dedicated Emma at church, celebrated my birthday/farewell/introduced Emma, went to more beaches and more farms, packed our stuff to be shipped to Kenya, Doctors/Dentists/Optometrists appointments, freshly vaccinated, new glasses and a few fillings later, the wallet had been well and truly thrashed, not to mention all that shopping.

We are now back in Kenya, its been a week, and NZ seems a distant memory, especially as I butter my bread that falls apart and is stale, or as I reach for my UHT milk to put on my cereal. The girls are well and truly ‘home’, very happily reunited with their shoes and toys, and friends. Kenya is definitely our family home, It’s the longest place Murray & I have lived in since we were married, its where Charlotte has lived since she was 8 months old, where Hayley has lived since she was 2 weeks old, and now we bring Emma at 3 weeks old back to Kenya.

This is home now . . . . and that’s a little hard to handle, not just for us.
What will 2011 bring for us? Who knows, except I’ve already had a baby, turned 30 and lost 15kgs :)

Happy New Year,
Love,
Miriam

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