She’ll only sleep on her belly! I am so unsure how to deal with that. Our little girl has not been properly sleeping in her cot for a very long time now. Because a friend of mine suggested it, I tried putting her in her bed on her tummy after she’d fallen asleep. What can I say? She’s been happily sleeping in there for the last two hours!! Every two minutes I poke her to see if she’s still breathing - that’s how afraid I am of the SIDS. I really don’t know what to do about this…the poor Laddie has been taking care of housework and cooking as well as working his butt off for SO long now - because Munchkin refuses to be left alone or to sleep in her own bed (when lying on her back). Nothing gets done here otherwise. It can’t continue like this, there are things that need done. But at the same time, how can I allow my baby to sleep on her tummy if that’s a contributing factor to cot death? We have a doctor’s appointment coming up soon, I’ll need to ask about that…

At the risk of getting all doom and gloom at this, I would like to say: I am working on it.

After joining McFit I was totally into it and went there every possible day that was scheduled. When the baby came, all that changed. Of course my priorities changed and I stopped going.

Now that I have started a new job and thus am on new working hours, it seems almost impossible to get the time to go to the gym. The gym that I am paying for, regardless of whether I am going or not.

One thing I keep reminding myself of is that if something is important and worth doing, you have to make the time for it. So somehow I will try and get back into the gym and back on track with losing.

Also, another issue that has cropped up is that the cost of living is a little too big for us right now and we are having to pull in the belts a little, or what was the saying…”cut the cloth to suit your means”. I digress, we need to start saving on food stuffs and not have anything expensive, which quite a lot of the time are the healthier things in our diet. We often feel like you need a credit rating just to go to the local supermarket.

Are any of you guys feeling a similar “crunch”?

Hey there!

For the first time in a looooong while, our baby fella has decided to actually fall asleep in her cot, so I decided to hurry up and write an ickle post while I have the chance.

Nursing issues have been resolved - hooray!! For the last eight weeks, my little one and I have been struggling. A few days ago then, my baby girl decided she wanted to nurse like there is no tomorrow - no ‘tools’ needed anymore! This development makes me very, very happy. And it’s all so handy, too. When she wants food, I can just sit down and nurse my baby. No more fussing with bottles and all that jazz.

Other than that, Sophie is growing and developing very nicely. We just had the U3 this Monday - the required checkups for children are ‘Us’ over here. U stands for ‘Untersuchung’, which means examination. So anyway, we’ve had the hip screening and everything and our Munchkin is totally healthy. She is now about 56,5 cm /22.4 in tall and weighs 5440 grams/ 12 lbs.

Finally, the biggest news for today: We got our very first conscious smile from our baby fella yesterday! She’s 8 weeks old now and we were soooo waiting for it. Today, she smiles quite often when I talk to her - my heart just melts every time.

Here are some more pics of our little one and also a little video - ignore my German babbling, I took the video for my sister.

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Weighing myself this morning (more out of curiosity than anything else), I realized I am now roughly 20  kg/ 44 lbs lighter than before the pregnancy! I have absolutely no idea how that’s possible and it scares me - I now weigh 116 kg/ 255 lbs. I am confident my weight will go back up quickly after I stop nursing my little girl, but for now that’s what it is. I don’t want to lose weight this fast and unexpectedly, as I know it just won’t last.

Anyway, must work on healthier eating and exercise - unfortunately both of these things are almost impossible for me to do these days, as I am still getting used to dealing with my baby all day. Also, Munchkin will only sleep on my belly at the moment, which effectively leaves me no room or time to do anything, really.

Sorry to be so short, but once more, I gotta run. :)

Hee hee, we were missing for a month and now we are posting like mad!

So, I wanna talk about what has happened to me recently, but it’s sorta private, so I will have to ask you to log in.

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Phew, that was not so hard, was it?

When I got pregnant, I was aware that breastfeeding had been an issue for the women in my family for generations. Unfortunately, in most cases there is no way for me to find out why most of the babies in my family have been bottle-fed. Only my aunt was able to enlighten me as far as her own story goes - her first child was very ill, so he was taken away straight after the birth and fed formula while apart from his mother. My aunt tried to feed both of her daughters when they were born, but to no avail - no milk would come. I was told that my mother also was unable to breastfeed my sister and me, but I never really found out any details about that. So during this first pregnancy, I was aware that I might not be able to nurse my child at all - I wanted to, mind you, but I told myself I would not beat myself up overly much if it did not work out for some reason.

So, up until the birth of my little girl, I felt quite confident that I would be able to arrange myself with formula feeding, if that’s what it had to be. Well, what can I say? I seem to have underestimated my subconscious grossly.

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In any case, after a long period of intense emotional struggle, my little baby and I now seem to have come to an agreement of sorts. I get to nurse her as long as she will tolerate it. When she is too tired to continue trying, she gets the bottle.

Phew…now that I am coming to terms with this chapter of raising my baby, I am focusing on having her close to me - I recently acquired a Sling and am now getting an advisor in for that as well, as I seem to struggle with the concept of binding it properly. Since I know it’s really good for my fella, though, I will keep trying. Pictures to follow, if success sets in

Hey there!

I am terribly sorry for the long silence - things have been incredibly strange and hectic around here lately, not only because of our little baby girl, but also certain other developments, which I will hopefully be able to elaborate on soon. Right now, I can never really be sure of how much longer our fella will be asleep, so I need to be quick. Also, long overdue, here are some pictures of our firstborn for you.

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Her birth was quite an experience for us both, I daresay. Our Munchkin was remarkably unimpressed by the induced labor and refused to scoot down properly - so, after almost an entire (very warm) day filled with contractions, power walking, pill taking and devoid of either water of food (since they thought they might to potentially have to put me under general anesthesia later on, they did not want to take the risk a full belly might pose), it was decided at 4 pm that Munchkin would have to be brought into this world via c-section.

I was incredibly scared of the operation itself, the PDA and the time after, so I indulged in a good cry for a little while after I got the news. After that, everything moved extremely quickly. Putting the PDA into place actually hurt more than I thought. The resulting numbness of my lower half was scary, to say the least - I felt utterly out of control and was mortified, as the team of nurses had to lift me off the birthing bed that I was lying on and onto the contraption which you apparently need to be on to get a c-section done.

I started shaking uncontrollably and felt sick to my stomach very soon - I threw up about 8 times between this point and the end of the surgery. I was told that both the shaking and the sickness were common side effects of the stuff running through the nice little tube sticking in my back. The Laddie was with me all the way - I can’t express what it means to me that he was just there, calmly talking to me about the things we’d already prepared for our fella and what it’d be like once she’d be with us, all the while discreetly wiping away at my mouth to keep me comfortable when I’d thrown up yet again.

My doctor then proved my midwife right - she had said to me before that he takes only one minute to get to the baby after the initial cutting at a c-section. Amazingly, so he did. I’d barely ‘felt’ the cutting when I heard a loud cry and my baby girl was held up for me to see. My wrinkly little baby…she looked thoroughly displeased. Our Munchkin was born on 13th of May, 2008 at 5:30 pm.

I managed to convince the Laddie to leave my side and go be with Munchkin while she was getting her initial check up - just a minute later she was brought back in and I could give her a kiss. Cute blue eyes were looking at me slightly confusedly before my baby was taken away again to get dressed.

After I had gotten stitched up, I was monitored close to the operating theatre for quite a while, but was able to hold my child for the very first time. The situation itself was a little bit awkward, as I had to try not to pull any of my cables or tubes out while holding her, but the Laddie and I were so fascinated with our baby that this was not much of an issue for long.

Later I was eventually moved to my room, where things would develop not so very perfectly over the next few days - but that’s a story for yet another entry.

There is a load of things I want to tell you all about, but for the time being, I will have to go and try to get some rest while I can. I hope you’re all doing wonderful out there!

Hey there peeps,

Sorry for the long time no see. As the birth of our first child draws closer, it’s been quite hectic, to say the least. Things have sort of calmed down now, so we are having a little time to relax.

I am going to get geeky now, so I will say sorry in advance! But this is site news, so please continue…

I use a system called Joomla. This is much like Blogger and Wordpress. It’s the system that keeps the sites running. Well, I have thrown in the towel on trying to get Joomla to do what I want it to do and now I am going to have to change a whole lot of things to get everything up to date and fully functional.

A while ago I promised that you as a reader would at some point be able to log in and get the behind the scenes look at what we think and are doing. It would not be making out blog private, but it would rather mean that trusted readers that comment and then are able to log in can see our photos of the baby and all the places we have been going.

Well, as I touched on before, Joomla is a B***h to allow this to happen. So I have to upgrade the site to the new version and also create a new template!!

*puff* *wheeze*

So what will this mean for No Magic Pill…Well, we will release the new site asap, with all the blogs merged into one site again. Here you can either view (or have the subscription) to see all 4 blogs (Life, Baby, Weight and Tech Pill) in one site. Or you can view and subscribe to the Pills you like the most, cutting out all the other bloggles. Merging everything, to be honest, is what I should have done in the first place, but I am only human.

This time round you will be able to log into our site, but don’t worry, you won’t be spammed! In fact, you won’t get any mails from us at all, unless I am quick enough to get this running before the baby comes and I can mail you guys to let you know the Lassie and the baby are ok.

So in short…Watch this space, as No Magic Pill will change into something bigger and better than ever before…hopefully…

This week, I have the first pregnancy-related weight gain to report: 0.8 kg/1.76 lbs over the last two weeks. I knew it would happen at some point, but it’s still kinda sad for me to see the number go up again. I just need to remind myself that I should be happy if I manage to get through the remaining weeks without going over my start weight of about 135 kg/297 lbs. I am at 126.5/279 lbs right now, so I am not quite there yet. Next weigh in will be in two weeks.

Other than that, I am seriously craving fruits and greens right now. Unfortunately, most stuff I want is not yet in season, so I am impatiently awaiting the arrival of strawberries and asparagus. There’s another yummy dish I would LOVE to eat right now, but can’t really get in Berlin (it’s a very popular dish in Hessen, where I grew up. Goethe’s favorite meal): Grüne Sosse (green sauce). It’s basically a sauce consisting of either yogurt, schmand, quark or cream (or rather a combination of them), a load of very finely chopped herbs, hard-boiled eggs and a bit of seasoning. You eat the sauce cold, along with boiled potoatoes. There’s no taste quite like this and it is so, so, so lovely in spring and summer. Must. Have. It. I’ll maybe try to get the individual herbs here, so I can make it and be merry.