Lesley's Page | ||||||||||||||||||||
Parenthood is one of the biggest changes that can happen in a person's life. Watching a child grow as you nurture her with love is incredible. In November I became a mother for the first time after nine months of having this other life growing inside me. Ingrid's birth was an adventure. Everybody expected labour to last a long time as it was my first pregnancy. But Ingrid surprised everyone. I started feeling contractions at 2am on 30th November, but there was no pattern to them by 5am when I called the midwife to let her know how things were going. There was still no pattern to the contractions by 10am when I phoned her again to give her an update, so she suggested I have a bath, in the hopes that would help things along. By the time I got out of the bath, the contractions had pretty much disappeared and at around 11am I felt comfortable enough to try to lie down for a nap, which I hadn't felt able to do before. I never made it to the bed. I sat down on the side, but then, suddenly, I had an urgent need to push. When the next push came about five minutes later, we contacted the midwife again and she asked us to go to her midwifery clinic, less than ten minutes from the hospital, so she could see how far along I was. When we arrived at the clinic at about 11:30am, the midwife was seeing another client, but there were two other midwives there who took one look at me and ushered us into a back room. Ingrid was born in the back room of the midwife's clinic just over half an hour later at 12:10pm. Afterwards, I felt pretty good and Ingrid was healthy, so we came back home. |
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Here are
some other things to know about me: |
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I'm the oldest of five so I have three younger sisters and a younger brother. My parents have been happily married for 28 years. |
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My husband, Jonathan, is American. I met him while I was at college in America. By the time we got married in November 2003 we had known each other for about six years. Married life is wonderful. We have a daughter, Ingrid, who was born in November 2005. Parenting is often a challenge, but, of course, has it's special happy moments. |
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While I
stay at home, caring for Ingrid, I am on six months of maternity leave.
I work for Fairfax Sunday Newspapers
which publishes many newspapers around New Zealand, including a major national weekly paper. But I'm not a journalist. I work in the library, doing research for the journalists and cataloguing the newspapers to go into an electronic database, among other things.
I will be returning to full-time work at the end of May, which I am
expecting to be hard. |
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Last updated: April 2006 | ||||||||||||||||||||