Oh, my! Was it that long since I last posted? Well it was not an easy year (and a third..), I have wanted to write here, but, well time, energy etc. Anyway, since I'm here, just a picture of Butterfly and Rainbow..

A mother of two..

I sill cannot believe i am a moher of two, a girl and a boy. Wait, let me go back 3 weeks (and a day) to the 11th of December (did i mention in previous post being in the high risk ward?). At about 20:30 i was sitting the bed doing a crossword puzzle when i feel something wet down below. First thought is could it be that i just peed?! Next thought was how embarraing (roommate was with her husband). "I think my water broke" i told her.

Can't be, i said. I am only 31 (plus 3) weeks! I can't be deliveing now! Oh, forgot to mention the amiotic (no spell check her so please forgive my teribble spelling..) fluid. Baby A had too much while baby B had too litle, so 2 days before giving birth they drained some amiotic fluid from baby a hoping it would help.

Anyway very soon after Ofir was born (21:27). She was born vaginaly, and at 1.008 kg, what a big difference from Butterfly's birth! I still had that breaking point where i cried that i can't, but still tchnically it was a very easy birth.
I did not see her after birth. I was at peace with myself and no need of seeing her. I believe she had a reason for being, for coming to live in me for a brif time. I am thankful for her for making me a mother of twins but mostly for not dying inside me rather dying soon after birth. I believe she chose it was time for her to go. I wonder if she and Rainbow had some goodbye kicking between them (i would like to believe tha yes, she did say goodbye to her twin).

All this time, i was shaking terribly. I was scared and i was freezing cold. So when the doctor pushed his hand in and said twinB is breeched so c-section, as much as i hated the idea of an operation etc, i was so scared and cold that i actually welcomed the oppertunity of being sedated.
Rainbow was born 10 minutes later, weighing 1.328 kg. He is doing fine, hopefully will be able to come home soon.
I'll finish with some pics.. (Ok, can't pn this devise, so when o come home and have my good old computer..

Ofir and Rainbow

The Shortest Version
I am pregnant. Twins. One of them doesn't have a brain. Don't yet know what the next step is (that is how and when to finish its life).

The Short Version
I totally believed I was not pregnant, so much so that I refused to actually have a pregnancy test - I just couldn't bear the thought of seeing another negative result (more so it being my last attempt). I did feel strange things but was sure it was either a tumour or that my inner female parts had fallen or something like that. I did learn I was pregnant when my tummy started growing really big and I had some milk from my boobs.
I saw the doctor yesterday (one that I made an appointment when I thought it was a tumour etc) and saw that there were twins, one of them a bit smaller and without a brain. He sent me to the hospital for further consultation as to what to do.

Ofir is the name I had for if I had twins, so that's the name of the foetus that won't survive. Ofir is a Biblical land of gold.

I do not know the gender of either - I didn't want to know. I do know that they are not the same gender.

I was going [about a week ago when I wrote the above..] to write a much longer and detailed version (aka The Long Version...) but I think the above gives the main story.
A great happiness and a great sadness mixed together.
I want to somehow say goodbye to Ofir. He or she is my child. I am not sure what or how. Will it be right for me to see him/her after birth? etc. I do feel Ofir kicking in me. I go from wanting to ignore its existence completely to wanting to cherish its picture forever. I hope to use this platform to say goodbye from Ofir.



Rainbow, on the other hand is the name of the twin that should survive. Butterfly chose that name.. She, btw, doesn't know about Ofir, only that I am pregnant with Rainbow. Though she does know something is wrong (it is hard to hide). But she did say the other day while playing (that is, not to me) that it can't be that mummy has twins because her tummy isn't so big. It is hard hiding from her when she is around me most of the day (a homeschooling single mum..). I am starting to wonder if I should tell her or not.

Unschooling, Learning to Read and Bilingualism

I am currently unschooling, which means I do not actively teach Butterfly but let her choose what she wants to learn. This doesn't mean I don't do things to enhance her learning, but I do it based on what I see interests her. For example she asked about the sun setting and just explaining wasn't enough so I bought her a globe so I could shine a torch in a dark room and show her while turning the globe round how the sun sets. Meanwhile she got interested in the counties on the globe, so one thing leads to another [unfortunately the globe broke quite quickly].

I mainly want her reading/writing and early maths skills to be "unschooled" [in the future I do intend to do more teaching, though with a tendency towards unschooling] as such I didn't want to teach her the alphabet song or letters etc  before I saw she was ready for it. The time has come when I felt she was ready and so I got her some magnetic letters. Hmmm... Butterfly took no interest in them. I thought that's how most children somehow learn to read, while playing with letters. I also thought that reading books to her will lead to her "reading" them back to me while slowly getting it and really reading. Nope, that never happened.

What she does do, and I believe will be how she will eventually learn how to read and write, is to find printed words [they are everywhere! on her bag, on a box for a toy, on a kid's tent, etc..], copy those words and then come up to me and ask what she has written, I love that she does that because that is her unique way.

She doesn't do this everyday, rather from time to time. On the one hand I would like her to do it more often, I am eager to have her reading or beginning to read already, and she seems so far from it. On the other hand I do want to give her the time she needs. Research shows that when kids are left to learn at their own pace (i.e they don't have to keep up with the pace dictated by the school or by homeschool parents who teach "by the book") they learn to read anywhere between the ages of 4-9 or even later, so we do have time, no need to rush..

In the beginning, the words she copied were in English, but now she finds words both in Hebrew and in English. I am not sure if she distinguishes between English and Hebrew words [though totally different!]. It seems that she doesn't but maybe she knows more that she expresses. Anyway I am wondering about this [I thought she would first learn to read and write in English and then in Hebrew. Seems that nothing goes how I thought it would :-) ]. I know that you don't teach reading simultaneously in two different languages, especially languages so different, more so when one is from left to right and the other from right to left. It is just too confusing. But that is true when actively teaching reading. What happens with a bilingual unschooled child is not something I know much about. I do believe it will slow the learning thoughI do believe she will eventually learn to read and write but how and when.. no idea!

Twice in one day..

It is a hot day. Me and Butterfly go to several shops, get ourselves something nice to eat, then go nearby to sit in the shade on some grass and enjoy ourselves. Suddenly I realize we are missing her scooter. as we assume that we forgot it in the last shop which was nearby, I tell her to wait for me, I don't even put on my sandals and I go.
Well of course it wasn't there! And I had to go barefooted on the hot pavement to where we did forget it. Anyway, as I was returning with the scooter, from a distance I could hear a child crying, and I just knew it was Butterfly. It wasn't that I identified her cry, I think I was too far for that, but it was more of that knowing feeling one has. Seems I was a bit too long and she got scared and she even started to pack our stuff to look for me (luckily I got there before she actually went off...).


Later in the evening she was going to spend the night with my mum. Her cousin also wanted to join, which sounds like great fun! But when I left she suddenly wasn't so sure about spending the night without me. She has spent the night a few times at her grandmother's without me and was very happy about that, but maybe reminding her earlier about the first time she "spent the night" at grandma's [we lived in a unit in her house] and how I had to be with her, caused her to reflect. Anyway she did agree to stay (with her cousin, sounded much more fun than going home!) and I limped [=blister on foot. see above story...] my way home. I came home, relaxed, ate a bit and about an hour later decided to call to see how things are. As I pressed the number 2 to dial to my mum [the shortcut key] the telephone rang. It was daughter asking to come back home. That was totally amazing because it really was that same second!


And on another note.. I've got a FB friend. Someone I know personally from the homeschooling community and I really love her. Except she is pregnant now and ohhh.. Although I suspected she was pregnant, her "announcement" (more asking for advice on a FB group we both belong to) was painful. It was probably a crappy timing for me as I was just beginning to come to terms with me not being pregnant.
Anyway she did mention in another FB group we both belong to how she hates being pregnant, also about having pregnancy diabetes. And I get it that some women just hate being pregnant, even women who try for years to get pregnant [NOT her case] can feel crap and horrible about the actual pregnancy. I did enjoy my pregnancy and really loved it, but I do get it that others feel differently.
She now posted a short status saying that being pregnant is like being in a prison; being with pregnancy diabetes is like being in a dungeon in a prison.
It is her page, she can say what she wants and she is having a hard time. But oh, how I would LOVE to be in her place. On one hand I want to say something bitchy about how there are women who would love to be pregnant, on the other hand, as I said, it is her page. I think I will be much more relieved than her when she finally gives birth!

Butterfly has a book with her story. Something I bought which talks about donor sperm plus IVF but since they were out of print, I had to print it myself and laminate and put it together as a book. In her eyes, I created this book for her..

The other day she said to me - mummy, I will make a book for you. And this is what she made:

(don't know what she drew on the left. any ideas?)

the last word is the Hebrew for boob, since that's the word we used.

After she drew the pictures, she told me the story and I wrote it down. These are mostly her words. I did add the sentence about being pregnant (how could she skip over that...) but the rest is hers.

Guinea Pig

My daughter has a new pet - a guinea pig. She feeds it, plays with it, cleans its cage (hopefully!) and whatever needs to be done. Well actually it is all because of Stirrups Queen and a post I was reading (http://www.stirrup-queens.com/2015/08/559th-friday-blog-roundup/) and Butterfly seeing the guinea pig just fell in love with that animal.

As it happened to be Peggy's birthday,

Peggy
[not ours but exactly the same..]

she got a guinea pig as a present!

And this is our [well Peggy's] new guinea pig:

As you can see, he's got a wheel and some food and water and some games (he did have a place for going into and Butterfly did try to make a see-saw for him).

I just love my kid's imagination and how she can play pretend and create a real-imaginative world from the things around her [unfortunately we are not allowed real pets in out flat]. I also love how we've learnt a lot about guinea pigs, each time she asks a question (what does it eat? does it like water? how long does it live? etc) we google it, watch a video and learn more about this animal.