A Record?
I break another record, an unenviable record for the longest gap between posts. But I do have an excuse (well sort of) in that the last month has probably been one of the busiest of my life. In that time I've written four essays of at least 4,000 words and I've had one exam. Plus Amalia's been growing and growing, which is just amazing to watch so it's been a pretty exciting month.

The other big event which is happening soon is that we're moving - yes again - this time to a much bigger place which should be really cool. I'm looking forward to having more space for everything, and also to having a dish-washer which should hopefully make life a whole lot easier. The only problem is that it's a bit further away from the city, and also it's down a really long and windy driveway. Moving is going to be a bit of a mission, as it always is, but hopefully this place will be a long-term solution and we won't have to worry about moving for quite some time after this shift.

It's quite amazing to watch how Amalia has developed over the last couple of months, every once in a while noticing something completely new, such as her rolling over just a couple of days ago, and forever becoming more interested in her surrounds. It's funny that although it seems like the last two months have just flown by in some respects it also feels like Amalia's been a part of the family forever, it's quite difficult to imagine our life before her... which is what everyone always says happens but you feel yourself saying "oh yeah... that's not going to happen to me". But of course, they're always right. It shouldn't be another month-and-a-half until I post again, my last exam is on the 26th of June and although I have my scholarship to complete hopefully I will have a little bit more time for other things like sorting out our new household and maybe even posting here a little more often. It's funny how I get into a pattern of things, and the pattern of not posting makes it difficult to actually summon myself to write something in here - even though I have insane amounts of things to say.

Long Gap
Yikes, this has been the longest gap between posts for a couple of years and I do feel a bit bad about it. Things have been a little bit busy lately though, as we're starting to settle down into a pattern with Amalia. I'm also back at university now, which is going to be an inredibly busy few weeks ahead so don't be particularly surprised if there aren't a huge number of entries in the not-so-distant future.

Things are settling into a pattern, which is nice as it now seems like we've had little Amalia forever and it's a bit hard to imagine life without her. Funny how everyone always says that, and you think "surely it won't be like that" but it does end up being that way - imagining the place with just me and Nats, and trying to remember it seems to be incredibly difficult and an incredibly long time ago. She's been a bit unsettled lately at night, and tends to scream a lot just as we're going to bed which is rather frustrating but most of the rest of the time she's very well behaved and seems to be quite enjoying herself which is nice. In the past its often seemed like the young babies that I've met are really unhappy with the world and are almost screaming "put me back.... put me back!!!!" but it just doesn't seem that way with Amalia. Sure she cries, but she's very alert giving us the funniest looks at times.

University is getting pretty interesting, although the pressure is really on now with essays coming basically one-a-week from now until early June. Then I have three exams which is something I just don't want to have to think about yet... but interestingly enough I'm not too stressed about it all, which means that I'm either confident in myself to get it all done or I'm just not in touch with the realiy of how much I have to do. But on the up-side I got offered a $3000 research grant yesterday to expand upon my literature review that I wrote earlier on this semester, during the July holidays which will definitely be a huge help. Sure it will mean that I don't get a holiday, but the money compared to what I would get working fulltime at McDonald's is incomparably more so there really isn't a choice. It will also mean that I will potentially have close to 20% of next year's thesis written (with the obvious need to change bits around etc).

Oh... and I turned 22 just over a week back. Happy Birthday to me.

Two Weeks Already!
It's pretty crazy to think that Amalia will be two weeks old tomorrow. It really seems like just yesterday we were at the hospital, and she'd just been born. But then on the other hand it seems like ages ago that we didn't have her, almost like she's always been there - which she has in a way, but it's definitely different now. But first things first, she's nice and healthy, and has grown 2.5 cm in length and around her head since she was born as well as putting on about 200g of weight which is a good sign. She's developing reasonably good sleeping patters, as we've got 6 and 5 hour sleeps out of her the last couple of nights which is definitely a good sign.

Last Friday Nats came out of hospital. It was really amazing bringing Amalia home for the first time - welcoming her home was really cool. She seemed to enjoy the car-ride, and loving the baths that we've given her since she's got home. I guess she's got my waterloving genes, as I spent half my childhood at the beach, which is still one of my favourite places to go. So we had a pretty cool weekend, last weekend as it was Nats' sister Grace's 6th birthday and we had a nice big party at her Grandmother's. Amalia kind of stole the show, with her first appearance at a big party, and it was so incredibly cute to see Alexandra's (Nats' 22 month old cousin) reactions as she was so careful and intrigued by this little thing.

However, by Monday night Nats was feeling rather strange. She had been bleeding quite a bit all day and it was only seeming to get worse all the time with some rather significant blood clots coming out of her. We called the midwife, who was rather concerned and suggested that we call an ambulance. So I did, and we ended up at the Emergency Department back at North Shore Hospital. Nats was examined, and it seemed like the bleeding had stopped but they were going to get her a room to stay in for a couple of days... so we waited to be transferred, and waited, and waited. By now it was 2am in the morning and everyone was feeling incredibly exhausted. Amalia was awake with nowhere for her to go to bed, Nats was tired and sore, I was really tired and worried and it was just not a good scene. Nats threatened that she would go home if they didn't get their asses into gear and sure enough, a bed just popped up in the maternity ward and she was transferred to spent a rather better night on a far comfier bed in a much nicer environment. She had to spend a couple more days in hospital, as it was discovered that she still had some placenta left in her uterus which is rather unusual after a c-section. But anyway, it was a big pain in the ass, but things have cleared up since then and Nats seems healthier than she's been for quite some time.

Birth Story

Wow.... it's been an incredibly crazy week. I guess the story starts on last Saturday evening when Nats was starting to feel some rather strong contractions - she told me that she'd actually been feeling them reasonably consistently since the morning but hadn't wanted to tell anyone because she felt that it would just put the hecks on everything and all the contractions would just stop as they had done two weeks before. So we adopted a bit of a 'wait and see' policy, hoping that things would develop as Nats really wanted to go into labour naturally rather than have to be induced - we were booked in for an induction on the next Tuesday. Her contractions continued, but didn't really intensify that much until around 10pm, so while my head was thinking that perhaps this was it my heart just didn't want to get too excited as I didn't want to experience the same let-down of the previous time when we thought that everything was all go, but it had just stopped cold. By 11:30pm things seemed to be rather well established, so I thought that we'd better start timing Nats' contractions to see whether she was experiencing the 'three in 10 minutes' that is a good sign that labour has been established. So between 11:30 and 12:30 I timed all of her contractions, writing down what time they started and whether they were strong, not-so-strong, or extra strong. I think she had around 15 contractions in the hour, of varying strength, which meant that labour probably hadn't been totally established but we were certainly getting close. I then called our midwife, who suggested that we stay at home for as long as Natalie felt comfortable - and that we should call her when we felt it was time to go to Birthcare, the birthing centre where Nats had decided to have our baby. I felt really tired at this point, having worked an eight hour shift at McDonald's on the Saturday, so I went to bed to just have a little doze as I thought it might be a long night.

About two hours later Nats woke me up, moaning through what seemed like a much stronger contraction than I had heard so far. I asked her why she hadn't woken me up, as I thought it was time we should head off to birthcare - but once again she said that she dind't want to get too excited as things might stop. But by this point I was pretty sure that there was no turning back, so I decided to call her grandmother to say "this is the call you've been waiting for"... and that she should come and pick us up so that we could go to birthcare, I then called the midwife and she said that she'd meet us at birthcare around 4:45am, which was about 40 minutes away. So we got everything organised and waited for Nats' grandmother who arrived fairly quickly, and then once we had organised ourselves we headed off to birthcare. It almost felt a bit deja vu from the previous time as we ended up in the same birthing suite. Nats quickly got into the pool, which seemed to help things as her contractions were now starting to get stronger and stronger. I think she was in the pool for a couple of hours - evntually getting to the point where I could tell that she was in a lot of pain, which was very difficult. I was feeling really really tired, but I felt that I was doing fairly well and that was rubbing off on Nats, who was making good progress and managing her contractions really well. Probably around 8 or 9am Nats got out of the pool so that our midwife could check on her progress - and she announced that Nats was doing really well, she was 8cm dilated. Only another 2cm to go now until Nats was due to start pushing, by now I was getting excited as we might be having a little baby before lunch time. Nats stayed out of the pool as Colette (the midwife) asked us whether Nats wanted her to break Nats' waters, as that might lead to the last 2cm dilating really quickly. Breaing Nats' waters wasn't easy, and Nats was in lots of pain which was really heart-breaking, I was trying to make her feel better by giving her lots of kisses and holding her hands but she was still crying. Then she was sick, which is quite common during this phase of labour (the ugly transition phase) - and feeling really uncomfortable. She moved around a bit, going from the bed to the shower, then back to the bed, then walking around a bit for the next hour. By then Nats really felt like she wanted to push, but knew that she really needed to hold on for a little bit more so that we could be absolutely sure that she was a full 10cm dilated (otherwise the cervix can become swollen and you go backwards really quickly). So around 10am Colette checked Nats again, and we got our first nasty surprise: Nats had gone backwards to either 6 or 7cm dilated which was really depressing and downheartening. I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach, and Nats seemed to lose a lot of enthusiasm for it all - she had done all this incredibly hard work over the last hour for what? Just to go back to where we were around four hours ago... She was also feeling really really tired and ill, so Colette thought it would be a good idea to put an IV into her arm so that she could give Nats some liquid that would energise her a little. That didn't work, as Nats has very difficult-to-find veins, and trying to put a needle in her hand between contractions just was too difficult. About this time we began to consider our options: Nats seemed just too tired and worn out to do all the extra hard work that would be required firstly to get her back to 10cm dilated, and then to push the baby out, but in saying that we really didn't want to give up on our plan to have the baby as naturally as possible. So we waited a little bit longer to see whether Nats was going to make some progress.

By midday Nats hadn't made any further progress, and was feeling the pain more and more. I couldn't stand to see her like this and she felt like it was just getting a little bit too much. At this point Nats thought that we should transfer to North Shore Hospital, where she could have an epidural to take the pain away and hopefully give her a chance to recover some of her energy as she wouldn't be writing in pain during each and every contraction. It was a difficult decision to make, we had both talked long about trying to have the most natural birth possible - to avoid it becoming 'medicalised', which was rather inevitable in a hospital and when you have an epidural; but we both felt as though things just couldn't continue how they were. Nats was just in too much pain, she was too tired and feeling too ill. So we drove the 20 minutes or so to North Shore Hospital - which felt like the longst 20 minutes ever along the bumpiest roads ever. Nats was in tremendous pain with each contraction, and they were coming one after the other - leaving no time in between for a rest. Finally we got to North Shore Hospital and made our way up to the delivery suite, and Colette arrived along with the hospital's obstetrician. The anaesthetist arrived relatively soon (although it felt like ages), and started to organise the epidural. Natalie's mother and father caught up with us then, so I went to the cafeteria with her grandmother so we could have a bite to eat (I hadn't eaten since dinner the night before and was bloody starving). When I got back they were preparing to put the epidural in Nats' back - which if you don't know is a bloody huge needle which puts a tube into the spine through which painkillers are injected - and I held Nats' hands while she had the injection. I remember at this point feeling like utter crap, this wasn't what we wanted and things were going completely wrong: we were meant to be having this baby naturally, at Birthcare, we weren't supposed to go backwards. So while the epidural went in I was crying, Nats was crying through the pain of the contractions (she couldn't move as that could lead to the needle going into the spinal cord with obvious dire consequences). This was probably low-point number two, after the time hearing that we were going backwards.

Luckily the epidural seemed to make things better, Nats was only feeling the pain on one side of her body - which was eventually fixed by another top-up of the epidural - and I felt like she was back after almsot 'zoning out' during her immense pain. So we sat there and waited for things to develop: Nats had a fetal heart-rate monitor and a contractions monitor on her chest which printed out, so I watched the ups and downs of it throughout the next 3-4 hours. Nats had reasonably regular contractions and I started feeling a little bit better, maybe things were going to improve and maybe Nats was going to have enough energy to push our baby out. She was getting synthetic oxytocin pumped into her, which is supposed to increase the strength of her contractions and it all seemed to be working. Nats had another examination and had made a little bit of progress, but not necessarily as much progress as would be expected - however I remained pretty confident. The obstetrician was to come back at 6pm and do another examination then, which would determine whether Nats was ready to push or not. The midwife (Colette's partner Eleanor had taken over as Colette was really tired), was a bit concerned about the position of baby's head, even though the obstetrician had confirmed that Nats had a 'roomy pelvis' that would probably be large enough to fit bubby's head through it. So we waited, and then at 6pm the obstetrician came back and did another examination. Unfortunately she concluded that Nats hadn't really made nearly as much progress as would be expected, and it seemed as though the angle of bubby's head meant that it would be incredibly difficult to fit through Nats' pelvis - we could just wait and see for another hour or two but that meant that baby might get stuck during delivery which would be really messy and might require forceps, which we utterly wanted to avoid at all costs. So she suggested that the best option might be for Nats to have a caeserian section.

Both Nats and I really really didn't like the idea of a c-section. We had discussed it and we both knew that it's major abdominal surgery, has a very long recovery time, and is something that we definitely wanted to avoid. But we had a really good talk to both the obstetrician and to Eleanor, and it seemed like the only sensible option - bubby seemed really happy where it was, the heart-rate monitor was really consistent indicating no sign of fetal distress, but the risks of waiting just seemed too high for us. So we made the incredibly difficult decision of saying yes to the operation - this was definitely low point number three, all our plans were now completely out the window, I felt as though it just wasn't fair - we had got so far at birthcare, they had a nappy all ready on the towell-warmer for our little baby and I was so confident that it would be arriving in a nice, natural manner and yet it had come to this. Nats got ready for the operation, and I tried to console her - to somehow make her feel a bit better which was very difficult considering how I was feeling. But we eventually made our way down to the operating theatre, I was able to go into the theatre during the operation which seemed a bit scary as I am rather squeamish when it comes to blood. But I was assured that there would be a screen up and I wouldn't have to see anything if I didn't want to. I got changed into a theatre outfit, and grabbed the camera so that I could take some pictures of our baby's first minutes.

The operating theatre seemed quite 'out of this world' - with all these gadgets and about 11 staff inside the room. It all seemed incredibly well-organised which calmed me down a little. Nats was still having contractions, while they tried to put the spinal anaesthetic (slightly different to an epidural, providing a much more complete pain-killer but not completely knocking her out from the chest down as she was still able to wiggle her feet a little. Meanwhile I couldn't get the bloody camera to work, no matter what buttons I pressed nothing was happening, I changed the film which probably ruined half of the film that had previously been in there but still to no avail. I was slightly panicking that I would miss taking a record of one of the most important moments in our lives - so I asked around if anyone had a camera. My panicked cries for help led to a polaroid camera being rushed in from nearby as well as someone had a photo-capable mobile phone. I was so thankful, and the operation soon began. I held Nats' hand as they began opening her up - we had a doctor right by us who was letting us know what was happening at every step which was fantastic. Nats felt a few pushes and pulls, and then at 8:13pm we were told that our child was about to be born, I heard a cry and then the obstetrician lifted our baby.... GIRL.... up for us to see. I felt absolutely amazing, there was this gorgeous girl that we had created, Nats gave a really tired smile and I went over to where they were giving our little baby girl her check-ups. Everything seemed fine, although she was rather purple and rather large. I took a few photos of her with the phone's camera, as she began to turn a nice pink colour. They put her on the scales, which came to a rather large 4.73 kg. I wondered what that was in pounds and ounces, as that's what birthweights are normally given as - they pointed to a chart on the wall, and I discovered that she was a very healthy 10 lb 7oz! I announced that to Nats, who was lying there getting stitched up - and then I got to hold my beautiful daughter for the first time. I felt so proud of the both of us, that we had managed to create something so beautiful. We eventually were able to head to the post-op area as Nats got some more pain-killing drugs, which would hopefully stop her shaking. Our little baby girl seemed very happy, she wasn't screaming her head off which I had kind of expected and instead seemed fairly content with her new surroundings. Nats was really drowsy, but after a while her shaking stopped (to some extent) and we headed back upstairs to the maternity ward where our room was. Everyone was delighted that we had had a little girl, and soon I started making millions of phone calls to let everyone know our news.

There is more to come about the last few days, both of our time at the hospital and since we've got home - but I will write that in the time ahead. We have decided to call our gorgeous little daughter Amalia Charlotte Grace Arbury.

Welcome to the world my little girl

Just a quick note to tell everyone that we had a big baby girl on Sunday night at 8:13pm. She weighed 10 lb 7oz which is pretty huge, and Nats needed a c-section which was rather traumatic. Our little baby is so utterly adorable, and we love her so much. I will post more later, with some further details and a name when we finalise what she's going to be called. I also have some photos to post here sometime in the future as well.

Still No Baby
Still no baby. Our stubborn little child has now kept us waiting for 13 days past its due date and really doesn't seem to be showing many signs of wanting to come any time soon. Nats has been having the occassional contraction, but nothing of sufficient size or frequency to get excited about. We went to the radiologists on Monday to get an ultrasound as there was a possibility of the baby having a prolapsed cord - where the umbilical cord is below the head stopping it from dropping - but that was fine and all the signs were there that we had a rather large, but healthy baby. The midwife discovered that Nats was already 2cm dilated, which is promising and we figured that possibly things would start happening in the next couple of days. Well, four days later and we are still waiting. Our baby still seems to be nice and healthy, giving Nats strong kicks every once in a while, but is rather running out of space leaving Nats with a rather odd shaped tummy depending on which way the baby is lying. Hopefully something is going to happen over the next few days, as it would be very nice not to have to have an induction to get things started.

Sorry about the rather long delay between posts, there must have been great excitement that something had finally happened, but as of late I haven't really had the motivation for some reason to update. It's not that I haven't had anything to talk about, as you can see above, although it is probably related to the fact that I'm spending most of my online time at The Numbers Forums, which is proving to be rather addictive. University is finished for a few weeks, which should hopefully give me a chance to get ahead with my assignments so that I'm not going crazy trying to balance three essays due in a week and a newborn baby. So far this year I'm reasonably happy with how I've handled university - I seem to be learning quite a lot and the work doesn't seem like a chore. I can sit down and do some studying for an essay and it's interesting rather than the normal "damn I wish that I could just finish this". I guess that's quite promising for the rest of the year and for next year.

One down.... HOW many to go?
Well the baby seems to be very comfortable where it is at the moment, and there are no further signs that it's coming any time soon. So after the hectic nature of last weekend life has kind of gone back to normal lately - and it really seems like all of that "wow... the baby's actually coming" never really happened.

I finished my first big university assignment for the year - now only about 25 more to go! I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out, and although I was still putting the final touches on it at about 1am Wednesday night before it was due on Thursday I didn't really feel like it was rushed at all. It seemed to have enough breadth and depth for a postgraduate assignment so I'm pretty confident that everything will go well. Now I just need to turn my attention to my next one, which is actually a while away but considering that the next month is going to be a rather busy one I've vowed to make a start on it as soon as possible.

Now that we've clicked over to April there's no more debate about what month the baby will be born - the same month as its father which is pretty cool. On the downside there are a hell of a lot of birthdays in both mine and Nats' families so we just have to hope that the baby doesn't decide that it wants to come on someone else's birthday as that would be a bit annoying. I was really hoping for tomorrow, 04/04/04 would be a pretty damn cool date of birth, but as there aren't really any signs of Nats going into labour anytime soon it doesn't look like that's going to happen. Oh well.....

False Alarm
Saturday night was a rather interesting night - as it almost seemed as though I was about to be a father somewhat unexpectedly and out of the blue. I could go into a blow-by-blow account of what happened, but probably a better idea is to take what Nats has written about the night (and the couple of days after) to give you all a better indication of what happened.

I am still pregnant which wouldnt be so bad if my baby hadn't decided that it wanted to come Saturday night and after getting mummy all excited, causing me excruciating chest pains and being at the birthing center all ready to go that it wanted to stay for goodness knows how much longer. I am an emotional mess right now. I was happy still being pregnant, wasnt worried when everyone else that was due around the same time as me (and even many that were due afterwards) were having there babies, I wasnt in a hurry just taking my time... and then came Saturday/Sunday and now I am a wreck.
My baby is still quite high up so everytime I got a contraction my uterus and the baby were pressing rather hard on my diaphram, ribs and lungs causing imense pain, of course this isnt a common pre-labour symptom (that I have been told about anyway) so I was not prepared for it at all, so after about 6 hours of this I have started to panic, my blood pressure has dropped, I am shaking, crying and to top it all off vomiting alot. I couldnt stand up, I couldnt sit down nothing I did was working to ease the pain in my chest. I had already had about 3 showers but decided to go to my grandmas as she has a bath and I thought that would help. I stayed in there for as long as I could until it got really uncomfortable and then went and lay on the floor in the lounge while my grandma napped in her bed and Josh on the lazyboy. I was sick once more and was having sharp pains with the contractions at the top of my uterus, by now I was absolutely exhausted (after 5 1/2 hours of walking around who wouldnt be) and asked Josh to call Collette (midwife) and ask her what we should do as I was feeling less and less in control of things, she said to come into Birthcare, so that she could give me something for the vommiting and hopefully see some progress.
We called my mum and told her to meet us there made sure we were organised and then made the exhsusting trip (it is only 20mins away from my grandmas but I was in lots and lots of pain so every little bump hurt like hell) We sorted out what stuff we wanted to bring up with us and went inside. I got undressed and checked my urine (which showed traces of protein) the checked my temperature and blood pressure as well as the babies heartbeat and position. Explained that no my waters hadnt broken and I hadnt had a show, but I had been having regular painful contractions since 5pm (it was now nearly 1am) Collette arrived and I chatted to her about what had been happening, was reassured (if you cna call it that) that the chest pains I was feeling was because of how high the baby is, she explained that I am only 3/5 engaged and it would be favourble if I was 4/5 or more but that was ok, that the contractions were working to move baby down. My mum arrived after getting lost and me panicking that she wasnt comming at all (long story) I was still having contractions but not as bad as earlier, I was walking around and swaying from side to side for ages and things just did not seem to be progrssing at all. So we decided that going home was a good idea... If I wanted some Pethidine I needed to be checked for dilation neither of which I wanted so Collette went and told the other staff that we were going home... Discussed that I was in labour but being in a non homely environment was hindering my progress and that she fully expected that I would be able to see my feet by tmrw :)
We got home at about 4am on sunday morning and set the spare bed up at my grandmas so we could try and get some sleep fully expecting to be going back to birthcare to deliver my Bug later on in the day. I was still having contractions and my chest was still very very sore, and moving was extremely painful. I woke up again at 5.20am to go to the toilet and hoping that I would be sick to stop the acid in my throat to no avail. I went back to bed, lay down and the minute I did I had to scramble to get to the bucket to be sick, causing extreme pain as you use your chest muscles to get up. Everything that came up was dark, so I panicked and screamed at Josh to get up and turn off the light because I thought it was blood. After establishing that we didnt think it was, we settled back down to sleep.
I had a little sleep and felt a little better as my headache had also gone by now. I had some toast and a cup of tea as well as oodles of milk to combat the damn heartburn, had another sleep and then came home so that I could clean the house up (all I could think of was the fact that the house was really messy, there were dishes to do and the toilet was filthy lol the things you think of) we watched a little bit of tv and then went back down to my grandmas where we were going to stay. By now the contractions were very sporadic and nothing special so I decided to come home to my own bed. We watched some TV and called my mum and spoke to her about things that were going on in my head and her head etc. I went to bed and had about 6 hours straight sleep before I had to get up and pee and then got up to take my car to get its warrant by 10am... So I have no car, Josh is at Uni and I am all alone with nothing to do... Things have calmed down a lot now and I no longer feel like I am in labour although I feel like I have been run over by a bus, my contractions are no longer regular and I just feel emotionally and physically drained. I just hope that next time something gets started it stays that way and doesn't stop cold turkey, I still feel confident in myself that I can do this and I was never scared that I was in labour, I am just disappointed and exhausted...

I guess on the plus side (why is it always me who looks on the plus side of things?) Saturday night was probably a sign that the baby isn't too far away. It also gave a us a bit of practice in putting that "what happens if Nats goes into labour" plan into practice. I think we did that pretty effectively, although in some ways we were slightly unprepared and had to madly rush around the house collecting things we felt we might just need. But when it really decides to happen next time we will be pretty well prepared, as the bags are in Natalie's grandmother's car - who is going to be driving us to the birthing centre. I guess in some ways having a dummy run can be useful, but it was a let-down as Nats has already alluded to, going from the big excitement back to reality of everyday life.

My literature review is coming along, after being rather put on the backburner after the drama of the weekend. I've written just over half the amount of words which are required, and am slowly getting through the enormous amount of stuff that I need to write about. It's quite challenging making sure that I keep reminding myself that it is a literature review rather than a basic essay and that I need to sporadically detail where the literature surrounding the subject had reached by a certain point of time. It's an interesting topic, with a lot of potential for research as much of the writing throughout the past five years has reached the conclusions that neither urban sprawl nor compact cities can adequately respond to the complex requirements of the sustainable city - although clearly the compact city has much more promise than urban sprawl does.

Literature Review
My rather large 4000 word literature review, which is due next Thursday has reached a really annoying point in my research. The point where I almost feel as though I should have stopped with all the reading and note-taking and started with the writing, but I just know that there are certain parts of my review which I need to research a lot more. But then when I go looking for more articles or books I just find the same old arguments getting repeated over and over and over again, which is not only wasting my time by reading them all, but getting me more and more frustrated. I guess that I should be mastering the art of skim-reading a bit more, but I seem so terrified that I might miss something important that I go through meticulously and take notes from everything, probably writing the same thing down again and again. What I probably need to do now, is make up some sort of a plan for how I'm going to write up this monster, and then hopefully I'll be able to address exactly where the holes in my research are so that I'll be able to focus my research better and not feel like I'm wasting my time so much. But then I feel guilty for not putting as much time into my assignment, that instead of being on the internet I should be studying more and more. Ugh.

We had a pretty quiet day today, spending much of the day back at Natalie's grandmother's which was nice. Nats has definitely picked up my cold, and I feel pretty bad for giving it to her, although I guess that was pretty inevitable given that we live together. Hopefully it passes her by as quickly as it did to me, although I still seem to have some remnants with a pretty nasty cough that's just sprung up this evening. But anyway, the baby should theoretically be popping out on Sunday as that's its due date, but when did a baby ever do what it should so it seems like we might be waiting a while yet.

Human Geography
In my fourth year of studying human geography I think that I've got it pretty much sussed. Things go in about four or five steps: firstly we're presented with a problem, it might be that cities are polluting too much, or that we're having unequal access to health etc., second step some person things they've come up with a brilliant solution to the problem - they've done a piece of research and prove beyond doubt that this is the way to fix it, but then someone else does the same research in a different place and gets the complete opposite result. Then all the human geographers get together in a huddle, realise that there are just too many variables in the world and, in effect, just decide that everything is just too complex and too hard. That seems to be the case in my research project at the moment, which is based around trying to find out what sustainable urban forms are, as well as how and if policies that will lead to these particular forms can be implemented. Most people agree that urban sprawl is pretty unsustainable, because so much car travel is required and that it just eats up all the countryside. Problem is that all the alternatives such as more compact cities turn out to be just as big of a mess, plus the fact that it seems as though everyone would rather live in spread out urban environments, just the exact opposite to what would be needed to achieve urban sustainability. Aaaarrrgghhh!!!! I guess that eventually it has to be decided that you can never please everyone, and that you're better off just trying to please as many people with the policies that you can.

Anyway, enough of my academic spiel. Nats is now over 39 weeks pregnant, as her due date is this Sunday coming up. It's pretty scary to think that for so long March 28th 2004 seemed like an age away, there was always that inevitability that we would get there, but Nats' due date always seemed like quite a way off. Yet now it's only a matter of days, and the rather odd pains that Nats has been experiencing in the last few days may suggest that the baby may only be a few days off now. Now there's a scary thought as my life seems to be fairly full at the moment - but I guess that there are always 24 hours in each day and I'll have to make the most of each and every one of them. Hey, I'm sure writing up assignments at three in the morning, or doing the dishes between crying fits will become normal after a while..... maybe? I guess on the bright side, that even though everyone goes on and on and on about how much hard work it's all going to be, they always say that it's totally worth it. I guess that the whole emotional side of things will kick in at some stage, probably when I least expect it and I'll actually realise that I am a father, that this really is happening, and it won't seem quite so surreal anymore.

I have really been lacking in motivation to write on this page over the last week or two for some reason. Maybe it's the myriad of other things I need to get done that by the time I get onto the internet I really can't be bothered putting in the effort of writing a half-decent entry; maybe it's that I don't really feel like anything's going on in my life that's worth writing about (although I highly doubt that as there have been far more boring stages in my life in the past than at the moment.) I'm not quite sure exactly, but I hope that this phase passes, I've been writing here for over three years now and it would be sad to stop just when I'm about to have lots of interesting things to write about, and about to go through one of the biggest changes in my life.

In some ways I do hope the baby just holds on a little bit longer as I've been feeling like crap over the past couple of days and seem to have managed to catch a cold, even though it's still sort of summer. As a result the last couple of days have been full of blocked noses, sore eyes, sore throat, high temperatures and the like. It's all rather frustrating, as being sick always is, but on the positive side I did feel a bit better today so hopefully the worst of it has passed by and I'll start to feel normal over the next couple of days.

Comfy Baby
It's been nearly a week since I last updated, which is pretty shocking but every time I've got down and started to write I've sat there for a while not really knowing where to start. Not that much has groundbreakingly happened: no baby, university same old same old.... Nats is getting a bit fed up with the fact that the baby has decided to make us wait longer and longer until it blesses us with its presence. She hasn't really felt any contractions and the baby still seems quite high up, so maybe we'll have to wait a little while yet. But as her due date is only a week away today I can't imagine that we'll have to wait too much longer.

University is definitely beginning to 'heat up', as I finished my first little assignment on Friday and now have to worry about a huge literature review which is due on the first of April. I guess the positive side is that I have full reign over my choice of topic, which I've made to be the discussion of different types of urban forms and whether city planners should be focused on creating compact or dispersed types of cities. This assignment is meant to form as the basis of my thesis topic for next year, where I think I would apply the theory to the Auckland situation and maybe even a specific part of Auckland to focus on what the type of development is happening and whether that's the best option available. It will be interesting, although a hell of a lot of work as there has been a lot written on the subject and I need to get my head around where the literature is at the moment on the subject so that I know what I'm talking about.

Waiting....
I had a fairly uneventful weekend: work on Saturday was quite busy because it was St. Patrick's day and they had a parade down Queen St, then lots of people came in at the same time so things were rather chaotic for a while. Work is rather strange at the moment, not being there all the time for the first time in ages is odd - when I'm there it's like I'm in a really familiar environment (really really familiar!), and it really seems like I'm still working there fulltime. I guess that eventually, once it has settled in that I'm not there five days a week (or more) I'll eventually click that things have changed. But for now it's actually quite a nice feeling, having the comfort of such a familiar environment, and still keeping in touch with everyone there without having to go through the graft of being there for 40 hours a week.

Still no real sign that the baby is coming, although Nats is feeling quite a few less movements than she is used to which is probably a sign that the baby is getting rather squished up where it is - and therefore might feel like stretching it's legs in the not-so-distant future. Actually trying to convince yourself that there's a living baby inside of her is very difficult, no matter how hard I try to see it and imagine a newborn baby it still seems incredibly unreal. Strangely more unreal than it all did a few weeks ago.

My assignment which is due this Friday has turned out to probably be quite a lot less work than I originally thought it was going to be, which is always a bonus. The only issues are that it still needs to be done, and that even though I don't need to do particularly much writing when it comes to actually putting something on paper there is a lot of background reading to be done as the whole point of the exercise is to get us started on the reading. It seems to be that's what postgraduate study is all about: reading, reading and more reading. I guess it's good in a way that I'm becoming a bit of an expert on the strict preservationism vs. comanagement debate which is rather heated in some journals. Hopefully, once I have finished with this small assignment, I will be able to easily continue on to doing the rest of the coursework for this particular paper (which is a big long essay) reasonably easily because most of my actual hardwork would have been done. Then I'll just have to worry about my 10 million other assignments, although on the bright side I do feel like I've still got things under control as far as my assessed work is concerned although there's always that fear that it's going to come down to the last minute no matter how hard I try to avoid that (it seems somewhat inevitable throughout my university career that I'll end up rushing to finish my essay by the 5pm handing in time).

Time Flies
Whoosh..... and there go the first two weeks of university! Typically it's just disappeared faster than I could possibly imagine, which is actually quite normal and how I normally feel after the first few weeks of uni. For some reason time just seems to fly by, which really isn't a good thing as it means that all my assignments just come closer and closer. I spent most of today reading about whether indigenous people should be allowed to remain living in National Parks or not, a rather interesting debate when you find yourself somewhat coming to the conclusion that yes they should be, for the park's sake as much as theirs. By next Friday I need to have completed some sort of a literature review about whether "strict preservationism is the best way to ensure biodiversity maintenance". At the moment I'm sort of leaning towards the "no" side of the argument, although I have read a lot proposing the other side of the argument and it's quite fun going through them all and trying to pick holes in their logic. I also have another rather larger assignment due on the first of April, which is meant to be the first step towards deciding upon the topic for my masters thesis which I am going to write next year. Talk about throwing you in the deep end, I thought the whole point of your first year at postgraduate level was to get some idea about what you are going to research and here I am in the second week making the most important decision of my academic career! But anyway, the highlights of university so far have probably been: meeting up with people who I hadn't seen for over a year who've also come back to do geography after a year's break, being thankful about how quickly all my geographic knowledge came flooding back to me as it's nice to see that a year at McDonald's didn't completely rot my brain, and finally realising that I'm able to access all the library resources from home (which wasn't possible when I was undergraduate) so I will hopefully be able to do most of my study at home. Lowlights have been my mission to get enrolled, and get my student allowance sorted - which has luckily been sorted out finally, as well as realising the huge amount of work I'm going to be doing this year.

Obviously there's still no baby (that will surely take precedent as my first post once it happens!) and all the indicators that seemed to point towards something happening early this week have kind of disappeared and it seems like we're in for another week or two before Nats' bump decides that it wants to come out and meet the world. We managed to have a good talk about baby-names today which was good as we still haven't settled upon anything. Funnily enough after a mad scramble to think up of names when we first discovered that Nats was pregnant we've kind of forgotten about that rather important job over the past few months. It was kind of fun going through the names of all these sports players while Nats said "no... no.....NO....NO BLOODY WAY AM I CALLING OUR CHILD SHANE!!!....no.... etc." But it was a constructive process as we have 'sort-of' settled on a name if it happens to be a boy, which had been the most problematic of the two (there seem to be millions of girls names out there, but hardly any decent boys names). But don't think I'm going to tell you what they are, everyone will just have to wait and see....

No baby... no baby
I can just see my posts for the next while: it's going to be "day one.... no baby..." etc. until some time in the next few weeks there will appear a "hey..... I'm a father!" It's rather strange getting on with everyday life as normally as possible knowing that one of the most significant moment of my life is just around the corner. Most important things you have some idea when they're going to happen, graduations days, christmas, birthdays etc. but in this case we really don't have a clue. It could be tomorrow, it could be three or four weeks away. I guess that all I can really do at the moment is ensure that I can get to Nats reasonably quickly wherever I am, and that we put off going anywhere outside Auckland until after the baby is born.

With Nats now being over 37 weeks pregnant it has really only just sunk in that it could be any day now. I guess that I had become fairly comfortable with the idea that "it wasn't too long to go now", and through talking with Nats, our midwife, and going to the ante-natal classes I had become fairly confident in my knowledge of what was going to unfold and feeling pretty confident about the whole "adapting to be a father" thing. But then the other morning I woke up and the fact that it all seemed so soon, that we've managed to create a pretty cool new household over the past month, made me a bit afraid of all the change which is going to happen. I guess this is the transition between 'we're going to have a baby soon' to 'it could be any day now'. As a result I began to wonder whether I really am prepated mentally for it all, although at a point you just have to say "I've done the most I can to prepare, now we just have to wait and see, and react to it all".

University's well into its second week, and I am pretty proud to say that I've made a start on at least one of my big assignments - which is more than I've usually been able to say at this stage of the year in the past. I guess with all the upcoming events in my life I feel as though there's a big need for me to get started and to get ahead of my schedule of assignments. Everything looks pretty interesting, although it's a bit of a pity that my most interesting paper probably has the most boring lecturer taking it so it might not turn out to be as good as it potentially could be. But I guess the advantage of postgraduate study is that a paper is really what you make of it and as so much of it is personal research and study the lecturer shouldn't really have that much of an influence upon it. My fieldtrip to Kerikeri has been put back to the end of April which is really good as it was meant to be at the end of March, exactly when our baby is due which is a bonus as fieldtrips are always really useful in geography courses, as I learned in stage three with my fieldtrip to Hastings where I probably learned more than 10 lectures could have taught me.

Maybe they're not so bad after all...
I've decided that even though they took forever to organise my enrolment (and still haven't finished it all) I do actually quite like the University of Auckland. First of all they managed to sort themselves when it comes to accessing online journals and journal search engines, which means now with the simple entry of my university ID and password I can access something like 10,000 online journals from my computer at home. This effectively means that if I need to, I could probably complete most of my studies from home with all my resources at the touch of a button. Then secondly I received a couple of letters from the university today, the first being an (incomplete) fees invoice for a few thousand dollars which I was expecting, while the other letter turned out to be one congratulating me on the fact that I had been awarded a $2025 postgraduate study grant which means that my fees are now a whole heap less than they were before. Nice how these pleasant surprises arise, in total now the university has given me nearly $6000 in scholarship money - almost half the fees that I've paid them over the three and a bit years studying there. Just goes to show that working hard and getting good grades really does pay off in the end.

I went back to work today after almost a week's break. It was a little bit odd, after working there most days for the last year and a half, everyone was like "hey Josh... haven't seen you for a while". Saturdays are a pretty good day to work at my store, and probably the day that I've worked least often in my two years at the place. The store is reasonably busy, but it's not rush/dead/rush/dead like the weekdays, rather a more consistent type busy which is much easier to handle as a manager. We had a little bit of drama as a bunch of people decided that they would noisily protest outside our store against McDonald's and our use of battery hen eggs, some of the other managers got a bit freaked out and called all the big McDonald's bosses who pretty much told us that we couldn't do anything but ignore them unless they decided to come into the store when would be able to escort them out again. Nothing came of the protest and eventually they moved on. I felt a little bit odd as I do support what they are protesting against, but on the other hand I did feel like they were protesting against ME as I was running the shift at the time and therefore in charge of the store.

One Week Already!
My first week back at university is over, and it has been a fairly interesting week. My papers look rather full on, which is to be expected at this level, but also look to be rather interesting as I have pretty much free rein to research and write about topics that I'm interested in. It's kind of scary the amount of reading and research that I'm expected to undertake, but I guess the way to look at it all is in a positive light that I have the opportunity to learn a lot more about some pretty interesting subjects.

Nats hasn't had anymore contractions since the weekend, which means that it was probably just related to the stress and the windy weather of the weekend. Nats is pretty confident that March 7th is the date, although now that we're only three days away from that it seems as though things might take a little longer. But I guess it could all happen quite quickly so we'll just have to wait and see, as the baby will come when it wants to. But it's all pretty exciting, we're basically sorted now with only a few things to organise in our house, which means that we can really think about how things are going to be with a baby in the household.

First Day of my Master's
Trust Auckland's weather to completely screw me over again. After reorganising about 10 different shifts at work so that I could have Saturday off to go to the cricket a massive cyclone decided to hit Auckland on that day. So the game gets postponed to Sunday, which I could have covered my shift on much much easier if I hadn't been trying so hard to get Saturday off - and there ends up being a really exciting game played on the Sunday. Grrrrrrrrrr.... But I am not surprised, February 2004 has been the wettest and windiest February on record for most of New Zealand, to the extent that I've just about forgotten that it's meant to be summer. Does this mean that we'll have a really dry March/April to make up for it, or will the insane weather continue I wonder?

But anyway, it was my first day back at university today for almost a year and a half which was rather exciting. First off we had a meeting for all new 4th year geography students which was pretty cool as I was able to meet up with a couple of people for the first time since stage three geography. It's pretty cool being a special "graduate student", having special computer labs, a pidgeon hole, being able to go into the geography common room etc. Furthermore, there are only about 20 odd students doing postgrad geography so the classes are pretty small and hopefully I'll get to know most people in the not-so-distant future. I learned from doing my bachelors how important it really is to get to know people in your classes, so that you have someone to discuss things with before or after lectures and someone who can probably take notes for you if you're going to miss a class for any reason. I met up with Ella, who had her first day as an undergraduate today, which was pretty cool as it's the first time since 1999 that we've been at the same school/uni. Her timetable seems rather frantic compared to my four 2 hour lectures each week, although I know that I'm definitely going to be busy with all the readings that will be heaped upon us every week. My first lecture, Environmental Management, was probably a sign of things to come as the lecturer gave us all a 20 page reading for next week's lecture. I guess it'll give me something interesting to do during boring bus rides.

The funnest part of the day was just being back at uni, just walking around the place and feeling a part of it all again. Reading Craccum in the HSB Cafe, listening to overly-loud music in the Quad, catching up with people I haven't seen in a long time and so on... The only problem turned out to be my fieldtrip for my first paper is scheduled at the end of March, about a day after Nats' is due to have our baby. So right now here's hoping the baby does decide to come a bit early...

Enrolment Finalised.... At last!
Finally, three days out from actually starting university it seems as though my enrolment has been confirmed. It's nice to see that the university is incredibly well organised - or not! But I guess at least I can relax that it all is going to happen, and that I should be starting to organise myself for lectures and possibly find out a few of the readings which I will need to do. All the new postgraduate geography students have a big meeting on Monday morning which should hopefully clear up any further issues that I'm going to have, such as the nature of the tutoring jobs. Over the last week I've begun to wonder whether it is the best decision to do tutoring rather than McDonald's - as with McDonald's I would be able to have a bit more flexibility in my hours as well as being able to pump up my hours during the university holidays when I obviously wouldn't have any work tutoring. On the other side, I would imagine that tutoring would offer me a much better hourly rate which means that I wouldn't have to work so many hours for the money that I'm able to earn (only $130 a week before tax while I'm on the student allowance), plus tutoring is going to be a more interesting job I would imagine. I guess that come Monday I'll just have to see what kind of package the tutoring job is, how many hours a week I would be working, what the pay rate is etc. etc. and then I'll make a decision. I guess on the positive side I know that McDonald's needs me so I'm definitely not going to be left with nothing.

It seems that almost every day now we seem to get some more 'baby stuff' from one place or another. Sometimes I think that we probably now have enough things even if we were having twins! This is obviously a good thing, as I would not want to be in the opposite position struggling to find a bassinet etc. but it's just a little bit of a problem to try and find somewhere for it all to go. We've managed to fill up a reasonably large one bedroom flat very very quickly, further making me wonder how we ever squished most of the stuff into one little bedroom before. The baby seems to be moving into a better birthing position than it was a week or so ago, with its back facing outwards rather than up against Nats' back - which is a very very good thing as it makes the whole labour and birthing process a lot easier (theoretically at least). All of this could really only be a week or two away now, which is a rather scary thought, although at least we can say that we're fairly well prepared for it all.

I'm going to the one-day cricket match between New Zealand and South Africa tomorrow, weather permitting. I would be rather annoyed if it does rain tomorrow, as I've swapped about 6 different shifts at work around so that I could have tomorrow off and be able to go to the rain. It would just be my luck for it to rain the whole day... but I guess on the bright side I seem to remember saying the same things last year the day before I went to the match against India as the weather forecast was terrible, but the rain managed to stay away for the day. Here's hoping the weather gods smile upon me tomorrow.

The end of an era
And so my last week working fulltime at McDonald's begins.... the place is in a bit of chaos at the moment because lots of the staff are in similar situations to me and will be heading back to university either this week or next which is causing more than a few headaches for the senior managers. I guess that in some ways I just shouldn't bother worrying about it all, I won't exactly be there most of the time, but after so long at a place I do have a strong sense of attachment to my store. I want things to improve, sales to finally build up a little bit, the place to get itself together like it's beginning to do. Queen St McDonald's is the flagship restaurant for McDonald's New Zealand and it is pretty cool working in such a place - it's just going to be rather odd either only coming in for one shift a week or not working there at all. I imagine that over time people will disappear to be replaced by new staff and eventually I'll only know a couple of the staff working there. That's the way it is for a place like McDonald's, with such a high staff turnover you really see the whole place completely change face within 6 months.

I'm still trying to organise my student allowance, university enrolment etc. Tomorrow I will be sending off the information which I was first told wouldn't be needed, but then subsequently told that I had to give them so that they could further process my allowance. I guess I just don't understand the point of me having to get my boss to sign a piece of paper saying that I'll be only working a few hours while studying. Surely they can just liase with Inland Revenue and find out exactly how much I'm earning each week? But that would be too smart for a government agency, instead they spend about $5 on the paperwork of sending me a letter saying they need more information, a return envelope and all the associated processing. I guess the scary side to it all is that this time next week I would have finished my first day as a postgraduate student - I will have had one of my four lecturs, hopefully sorted out the tutoring stuff FOR GOOD and have some idea about how my university year is going to pan out. Auckland University has changed a bit since I was last there in 2002, a big new student amenities block has been built which is very flash and full of brilliant study space. I can see myself spending quite a lot of time there researching my inevitable flood of essays. It will be odd returning to the library, walking through the quad, even sitting in a lecture for the first time in ages when it used to be such a normal and common thing to do. I even remember my last lecture, silently screaming "yes.... and that's the last lecture of my degree!!"

Furthermore, it's on the cards that at any time really over the next month and a half I'm going to become a father! It's great to hear some words of encouragement from the few people who read this page and I do promise that I will attempt to post any news related to Nats going into labour etc. as soon as I am able to. It's odd thinking about how back in June 2002 I was announcing the birth of Nats' cousin Alexandra on this site, and that in only a few weeks I'll be announcing the birth of my own child.

Ugh.... get your act together uni
Typically my optimism regarding getting everything for unversity sorted out was misplaced. Each day this week I waited for mail confimation of my enrolment, and waited, and waited. Finally on Thursday I gave up and called the graduate advisor to find out what had happened, he wasn't there so I only caught up with him today. It seems that everything should have been sent out on Wednesday, although if that was the case for me then I should have received it all by now. So he's sending out another copy of everything on Monday. Yay, more delays. And then Studylink (the people supposed to be paying my student allowance) decided to send me a letter saying that they needed confimation of my employment status as of the start of university - never mind the fact that the university hasn't even sorted out its tutoring so I don't know what my employment status even is!!!! I don't know how much I'll be earning, how many hours I'll be working or any of that, yet with the processing times of any kind of benefit I really need to give them all the information NOW or there'll be no money at all once I start university. As a stop gap (who knows how long it will take for the tutoring to sort itself out) I asked my McDonald's boss to keep me on the schedules for one shift a week for now until I get back to her that I can't do it anymore. Funnily enough McDonald's is the only organisation that seems to have its shit organised at the moment, so at least for now I'm not leaving the place, just cutting down my hours big time.

Nats has started to have her first painful contractions this week, which got her a bit worried that the baby was going to come in the next week or two while she needs to be at least 37 weeks to give birth the way she wants so - which is just over a couple of weeks away. So we're all yelling at the baby to just hold on a little bit. I guess the fact that everything's potentially only two weeks away makes it really start to feel like it's all real. We went shopping today and bought a few more baby clothes, so it really seems like we are well prepared for the little squirt to make its way into the world.... although those are probably "famous last words" and I'll be writing here in a few weeks about how I really wasn't that well prepared, couldn't have been that well prepared, it's totally different to what I imagined. I guess that I'm just really excited at the moment, the shock of the whole situation has finally passed and I'm just looking forward to it all.