Introducing Evangeline - A birth story

Our little girl has arrived...and I have finally written the story of her birth:

Evangeline was born on Thursday the 10th March, on her due date. In the days before her due date, my blood pressure had risen and was being closely monitored by my midwife, Karen. The obstetrician and midwife thought it was best for me to be induced, as my blood pressure was remaining somewhat elevated, even though I didn't have any signs of pre-eclampsia yet.  I had a stretch and sweep procedure on Monday, then on Tuesday had some cramps and lost the mucus plug. On Wednesday night I went in for an appointment with the prospect of being admitted and having the cervidil balloon inserted to induce labour. The doctor examined me and determined that I was already in early labour, so the plan was for me to come in Thursday morning for an artificial rupture of membranes then syntocin drip if needed.  Early Thursday morning I woke at 2am with contractions happening every 7- 10 minutes, and too painful for me to sleep through, so I got up and timed the contractions, had a cup of tea and tried to prepare myself mentally for labour. By 4am my contractions were every 5 minutes although not consistent.

Heading into hospital to be induced

My husband and I headed to the hospital early in the morning, nervous and excited.

By the time I got to the hospital my contractions had petered out, which my midwife said was fairly normal due to adrenaline and being in a less familiar environment.
They gave me IV antibiotics as I had tested positive for Group B Strep, then the midwife broke my waters.  After this I walked the corridors outside the labour ward to use gravity to hopefully get my contractions started. By 11am my contractions were coming every 2 1/2 minutes and were very painful, with not much of a respite between. I got my TENS machine out and used that to help with the contraction pain, but my back was really sore and the TENS didn't seem to help a whole lot.  After another hour I was in a lot of pain, writhing through each steady contraction, and felt like they never really stopped, each one coming on top of the other. I was standing leaning against the bed and trying to sway and move and release the tension.  Soon I felt hot, nauseated and unable to cope with the pain and I remember saying I didn't want to do this anymore. Karen suggested to try some gas and air, but I declined the first few times as I didn't find it helped in my previous labour. Eventually I relented and the gas and air really helped calm my breathing and made the pain a little more bearable. Before long I was starting to feel the urge to push at the end of each massive contraction and my midwife suggested I use a standing squat to birth my baby. My husband was on the other side of the bed, holding my hands and I started to feel vague urges to push but it felt like another 10 or 15 minutes before it was an urge I needed to go with.

Once I started pushing things got a little scary as my baby's head emerged but her shoulders got stuck - for over 4 minutes which I found out later. At one point the midwives pushed the emergency button and the room suddenly filled with the emergency medical team, another 10 or so people. I had an awareness that she must be stuck and that it was getting bad, and seeing all the emergency personnel rush into the room with concern on their faces scared me, and I felt a determination to give the biggest possible push to get her out. The midwife lowered the bed and I ended up in a very deep squat and used all of my power to push, whilst a midwife must have inserted her hand to help guide my baby's shoulder out. Such a huge sense of relief when my baby's body slipped out. Her skin was a dark purple colour and she wasn't moving much or making any noise, and they immediately cut her cord and took her to the resuscitation trolley. It felt like forever until we heard a little cry and I kept asking "is she ok?" The worry and fear on my husband's face frightened me.

Newborn Evangeline 

Eventually our precious girl was breathing and stabilised, and she was placed her on my bare chest, wrapped in a towel, for skin to skin contact.

As I stroked her cheek and felt her nuzzle against me, and saw her eyes opening and taking in her new world, the relief and happiness was overwhelming.

We felt the name Evangeline suited our beautiful little baby girl, meaning "good news" or "bearer of good news". At birth she weighed 9lb4oz / 4.2kgs, was 53 cms long and her head circumference was 35cm.

Big brothers having their first cuddles with their little sister. 

An up and down home schooling day.

38 weeks pregnant!

The tolls of late pregnancy are catching up with me. Today I am 38 weeks along.  My sleep is disrupted, I wake often and most nights have bouts of insomnia in the early hours of the morning - usually around 3am to 5am. Physically I am experiencing lots of different aches and pains, and while I try to go for a 2km + walk every other day, it's very slow and uncomfortable. But all of this is to be expected at this stage of pregnancy and I know it won't be much longer! However, it means I am finding it hard to be enthusiastic and patient when I am teaching the boys. Today was one of those mornings where I felt tired and irritable. That's when it is especially great to have my husband around to step in and help.

The old railway line at The Gulch

One of our formal home schooling lessons for the day was completing the second half of a History lesson (from First Class Resources) entitled "Getting to Know a Town or City". We had to complete a timeline of historical events in our chosen city or town. We chose to study the little seaside town we are living in. We researched the history from the original Aboriginal inhabitants, to the European discovery of the area by Captain Tobias Furneaux in 1773, early developments in the area, up until more modern day advancements.  We learned that there was an old railway line leading up to the ocean, in an area called "The Gulch", which was used to transport sheep, timber and fish to load on boats to distribute to other areas in the state and interstate.  The history book we referenced indicated that remnants of the old railway line could still be found at The Gulch, so we decided to go and have a closer look as our excursion in the afternoon.

Looking at old photos, this one was very interesting
to my 9 year old, depicting a shark captured in 1940s

It was really good to head out to explore our area and my 9 year old was excited to find the railway line and bits of corroded metal that had fallen away from the railway line.  We then went into a history room situated in a nearby original fisherman shack that has recently been restored, and looked at some old photos of the region.  The shack is an information station that also serves coffee and ice cream, so we treated the boys to an ice cream afterwards - with a stunning view from the sitting area!


It was refreshing to go out and look around at some of the areas that link into the history we are studying. Being able to see and physically explore the areas we are studying seems to enhance the boys' understanding and learning and interest.

And it's good when the day ends happily!

Ice cream with a view!

Home schooling newbies!

In 2015 as we planned for our year of coastal living, we knew home schooling would be the best option for our boys. They are both on the autism spectrum and experience anxiety, particularly when faced with new situations, so the thought of plonking them into the local public school -  which would be a completely new and unfamiliar situation with no familiar faces around them - did not appeal. The only real solution was home schooling. Initially I felt a fair bit of trepidation about this prospect, having no idea where to start with planning for teaching the boys ourselves, and overwhelmed with the weight of responsibility for meeting their educational needs for the year. My husband never doubted we could do it.

As 2016 drew closer, I linked in with some home schooling groups on Facebook, sought advice from friends who have home schooled their children, read information about how to include Australian National Curriculum into home schooling and started researching curriculum options. We submitted our application to the state body for home education registration and we were successfully approved right at the end of December. 

After researching various resources, I decided to purchase lesson plans for Maths, English, Science, History and Geography that aligned with the Australian National Curriculum. There's a vast array of content available but I was able to narrow down our choices and bought some excellent complete lesson plans from First Class Resources and RIC Publications. Once I had the curriculum sorted, I felt much more settled about commencing homeschooling and even began to look forward to starting! 

We started on 3rd February. The boys were fairly enthusiastic and actually had been asking when we would be starting for a few days beforehand. I drafted up a schedule and we experimented for the first few days to see what would work best. A few weeks into home school, the schedule has been refined somewhat and seems to be working well. Obviously this will be subject to change! I'm a bit anxious about making sure we get through enough formal learning content each day, which from my reading of others' experiences, seems to be a common concern for home schooling newbies. I'll probably relax with it as we grow more confident and comfortable. Fortunately the boys seem to be happy with home schooling most of the time, aside from the expected hiccups as we transition to a different way of doing school and add in much more structure to life at home. We finish our formal learning around 12pm - 1pm most days and this means the afternoons consist of more fun, experiential learning tasks. 

We set up a designated space in the living area to do our formal work and this seems to help the boys get into a good head space for doing "school". Eventually we plan to build on an additional room to our shack, which can serve as the home school space and will offer more work space to set up computers and so on. 

Thought I'd add some photos of our early days of home schooling! 

Our formal learning space - the table was a fortuitous second hand find 
that is perfectly suited to our needs

Our weekly schedule as it stands currently 

The boys working together on a Health task 

Big smiles on our first day of homeschooling.

Our year of living differently

This blog has been created for the purpose of chronicling our year living in a small coastal town on the east coast of Tasmania, while my husband and I have leave from work, commence home schooling our two boys - and in March, welcome a new little baby girl into our family. 

It will be a learning curve for all of us but one that we are excited about. Our hope is that this year will be a time of interacting more closely as a family, building upon our relationships, living life more simply and enjoying a more relaxed pace of life. Living beside the ocean seems to facilitate a less hurried and a calmer approach to life. Our boys love the beach, as do we, and they seem happier and more settled when they can swim in the waves, draw in the sand, and skip along the shore, on a daily basis.  

We feel privileged to have this opportunity to live life differently to our "normal" for a year. It will be an interesting journey!

Our local beach

The boys in their happy place - no matter how cold, warm, sunny, l

ight or stormy it is - they love being on the beach