Hi everyone and welcome to sunny Melbourne. I am already
burnt, so I’m extremely happy to have spent some time out on the sun already!
It all started when I took off from Heathrow at 10pm. We
have a three way chat going of banter between Lell, Bianca & I waiting
patiently/ impatiently for baby Pettigrove. Quietly/ unquietly (P.S. JT- I'm aware this isn't a word!) I had decided
that my best use of time would be for the Baby to be born before I got to
Australia, thus optimising my time there, with both sister and baby. I had
booked to arrive two days prior to the due date as I also had the wedding of
Tosh and B to attend on the Friday 27th and couldn’t flipping wait
for either. Anyway Bianca messaged me privately at the airport saying, "don’t tell anyone,
but I have been having contractions for two days and had only slept for 4-5hrs" (this is before the plane took off mind you!).
The first leg I boarded, I decided to try and sleep. I’d had
a nice thai feed for dinner, ignored my boss's advice to get to the airport three hours prior to departure, and just fancied a couple of stilnoct and some sparkling
water , thus not breaking my dry/ boring January, so I decided to not purchase
WiFi and do just that – sleep. I slept half of the time and I had some decent
leg room so it wasn’t too bad. What was bad, was the Absolutely Fabulous movie
and the plane food so I slept through both offerings.
By Dubai, I had WiFi again. Bianca was still trying to
sleep and hadn’t really and we were trying to work out the pick-up should they
be at the hospital during the next flight. I got a few hours’ sleep and watched
three movie – Daughter (1/5 spuds, and possibly the lowest ranking Geoffrey
Rush film ever. Also it had no ending so it lost a point). Blood Father (4/5
spuds) and a war mtovie, also 4 spuds, but can’t remember the name, everyone
died, and surprisingly still didn’t cry as much as I did in finding Dory, which
I put on for the last sleeping tab induced in and out of sleep portion of my
flight.
With 17 minutes to land, that felt like 38 minutes.. it was touch and go whether they would be at the hospital or home. Then Pettie and Bianca texted they were still at home, and in underwear so just tell whoever is doing pick up to drop me off and don’t let them in. Thankfully, Hoddo was there when I got out
the airport and he picked me up illegally and we were at Bianca’s by 7:30am. I
walked in the door to a pained nude Bianca on the bouncy ball accidentally
electric shocking herself too intensely each contraction which by this stage
were three minutes apart. By this stage Lell wanted a pic of the both of us
together. I said "between the next contractions; let’s take a face selfie that
will shut her up." So that we did and then Bianca called the mid wife whilst we
put on toast for her, and decided to go in post breakfast. She ate, we all
showered then we were off. Of course Pettie drove; he is the calmer of all of
us. Still Bianca told him off for being too fast even though we all know Pettie
is the most patient and slowest driver in the world. By this stage we were
around two minutes though so it was all happening. That was until we actually
got to the hospital at 9am. Where Bianca pleaded she wasn’t making it up, but
they basically stopped or weren’t as intense. As it was a public holiday, it
was free parking so I waited until I heard (and cried) the baby’s heartbeat. All
was fine so it was my cue to get out, go home and try sleep (BTW by the time we
were checked in she was at 5cm!).
Bearing in mind I hadn’t slept for a while myself, and
couldn’t complain to my sister at all, I hopped in to their car to drive home. Except,
I couldn’t work out for the life of me how the car worked! Maybe the back end
of the bopper pushed in to the steering wheel? Maybe it just sat there and
there was a button? I dunno, but I couldn’t bloody find it. I sat there - legit
5 minutes before seeing the button and sleepily driving off back to the
apartment (please also remember I hadn’t driven a car for over a year!).
Then I was so buzzing I couldn’t sleep. So circa lunch time,
I put on some potato tots and beef snags (afterall it was Aussie day). At 1pm I
received a message from my cousins wife that she and Christian had a baby boy
at 1am that day and they had named him Ethan (cue the chart topping ‘Ethan your
mine’ song I made up when I was 5 cos I had a crush on Ethan Hawke). How
exciting, the cousins would be born on the same day! Thus gaining Grandma her
‘Twins!’. I ate and fell asleep briefly around 2pm before waking up at 3:30pm
to Bianca “Hi, I haven’t had the baby yet, Andrew said you might be asleep but
I was just ringing to say hi, I’ve just had an epidural, I feel great now, I
can have a rest!” lol thanks Bianca I’d just fallen asleep. “Oh well it’s good
to not sleep through the night” “yeah, cool its half hour till East Elevation
closes I’ll go grab a coffee and go see Laura at Red’s.”
I don’t think I was at Red’s too long before I decided to go
visit Mary and Shayne (Aunt and Uncle), I couldn’t tell them though that Bianca
was in Labour so Laura said “just say they need some alone time”… So that’s
what I did.
I waited for Christian and Shayne to come home from the
hospital. By now it was nearly tea time, so Mary was preparing dinner.
Christian came home, and was asking about Bianca. I’d told lies for so long, my
nose was as big as the Pinocchio I’d bought the bubba for a gift. So I wrote a
text “Bianca is in Labour, baby will be born in the next hour, don’t say
anything” to which he replied “congrats on the promotion, and whispered ‘same
day’.” Mary and Shayne were none the wiser when I took the first call from
Bianca and left the house to talk to her. Bianca “Do you want to know?” “Of
course YES”, “well, I’ll tell you, but I need to then call mum and dad so they
know first, and I’ll call back afterwards and tell them myself.” So I was told.
“We had a baby girl, her name is Sophia.” Then walked inside I then pretended
nothing had happened. It felt like a life time until Bianca called Shayne and
his face was priceless and worth every bit of secretive behavior.
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| With Aunty Mones |
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| With Aunty lell |
It would be remiss of me not to mention the events of the
following day- Tosh and B’s wedding. What an absolute event… when I finally got
there after a traumatic tram ride of 43 stops, needing the loo! Everything was
amazing, it was not only super to see those who flew over from afar, it was amazing
to see the original gang – Woosha, Crackles, Seektsy, Surge, Perfect Stef… and
Rents was in super form too. My second fav part to B walking down the aisle and
her massive smile was Seektsy telling his father in law- that Tosh as a son in
law is the worst trade since Fevola to Brisbane. Third was Nev mentioning his
aspirations to become a musician, surfer (cue short Indian Aussie).
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| Me, Perfect Stef and Groom Tosh |
Happy Place, Amazing new world for some.
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| First Day Home |
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| With Nan and Pop |
