The previous entry is a fairly detailed and lengthy description of Elisabeth’s birth. I’m happy for family and friends to read it, but because of the personal nature, have made it only viewable with a password. If you would like to read it, please contact me for the password via email, Twitter dm, mobile, Facebook… or leave a comment here (with your email address) and I will send it to you. Thanks!

Before I get too far into blogging about Elisabeth and how amazing and wonderful and clever she is and how lucky and awed we are as parents, I want to take a few moments to reflect a bit on my experience of pregnancy.

If I had to sum up how I felt about pregnancy in one sentence, it would simply be this: I loved being pregnant. As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, first trimester wasn’t brilliant. It could have been a lot worse, though. And it’s rather easy to forget the bad bits of it given how good I felt through the rest of the pregnancy.

A few of the things that I loved about pregnancy:

• The miracle of being able to grow a whole new person inside you is really astounding and something that you comprehend in a whole new way when you experience it. We were quite lucky to have four ultrasound scans (rather than the usual two) – at 10, 14, 21 and 34 weeks – and it was amazing to see this little person growing before our eyes.
• I felt really sexy. For the first time in years (decades?) I wasn’t embarrassed about my poochy tummy and actually felt really attractive in my body. I’m sure that was helped by the fact that I lost a lot of weight early on and didn’t gain it all back until the week Elisabeth was born (net weight gain for the pregnancy = 0) so while my tummy got nice and round, the rest of me got rather more svelte.
• Feeling a baby’s movement inside me and having those movements get stronger and stronger. Elisabeth was quite an active baby in utero, and I loved every kick and punch and scritch and squirm. James and I both revelled in the interaction with Elisabeth while she was in my womb. In a way it gave her a distinct personality before we knew who she was – or even that she was a she!
• The anticipation of it all! I am someone who often enjoys the anticipation of an experience as much as (and sometimes more than) the experience itself. I’m glad we decided not to find out in advance whether we were having a girl or boy because it just added to that sense of anticipation. By the time I reached 35 weeks I was feeling very psychologically ready to find out who the little person inside me was, so I’m quite happy not to have had to wait longer than I did, but that anticipation while it lasted was so enjoyable. Now we have a different sort of anticipation – what will Elisabeth learn to do next, what sort of person will she become, etc?

I was really very lucky to have had such an easy pregnancy. I had a few flare-ups of heartburn and intermittent sciatic pain but there are a whole lot of symptoms that many women experience late in pregnancy – swollen hands, ankles and feet; backaches; piles; nausea; insomnia; etc – that I never had to deal with. I kept waiting for the really uncomfortable stage of late pregnancy to set in and it never did. Maybe it would have if I carried Elisabeth to full term, but I was still feeling great when I reached 36 weeks. My body just seemed meant for growing a baby!

And now we have our precious little girl and our lives have been changed forever. I couldn’t be happier about this amazing Christmas present that we have received this year – the best one I’ve ever gotten!

Our beautiful daughter, Elisabeth Soraya Clare Stewart, made her unexpected arrival (unexpected both because she was 3 1/2 weeks early and because James and I were sure she would be a boy) into the world on Thursday, the 4th of December 2008. Following is the announcement email that we sent out to family and friends the day after she was born:

We’re very pleased to let you know that our daughter Elisabeth Soraya Clare Stewart was born last night, December 4th, at 7.13pm after an intense but relatively short labour, all beginning at 11pm on Wednesday evening when Kari’s water broke shortly after going to bed. We headed to the hospital to get checked out, and since she was still four days short of full term, they decided to keep Kari around. It’s just as well that they did, because once labour really got going early in the afternoon on Thursday, it wasn’t long at all before Elisabeth made her grand entrance. Kari didn’t even have time for any pain killer other than a couple of paracetemol (Tylenol)/codeine tablets. Pushing lasted all of about 20 minutes.

Although four weeks early she is in very good health and weighed in at a quite respectable 5lbs 3oz and is 46 cm long. Mum and dad are tired but very happy and very much looking forward to introducing her to the world outside the Whittington Hospital (in North London).

Since Elisabeth arrived as early and small as she did (and as long as she did after the water breaking), she’s having 48 hours of antibiotic treatment which involves having her arm wrapped up in a foam splint to keep the IV tube from getting knocked about too much. The premature birth also means that she hasn’t quite gotten the hang of sucking and feeding and has a feeding tube in her nose. These combined factors mean that Kari and Elisabeth are having an extra-long hospital stay and will probably not go home until Sunday at the earliest. (The extra-care treatment also means that they got a private room which is a great blessing!) We’re looking forward to – hopefully – taking a tube-free baby home with us.

Since we are on a mobile wireless connection at the hospital, we haven’t attempted to upload more than one photo of Elisabeth yet, but you can see her just a few minutes old at http://www.flickr.com/photos/jystewart/3083876687/. More photos will be on Flickr soon once James has a chance to get online with a faster connection.

A note about her names for those who are curious:

Elisabeth is a name we like partly because it has lots and lots of possible nicknames. She may end up being called Lizzie or Elsa or something else… or maybe just Elisabeth. We’ll see what she grows into. Kari had a great-grandmother Elizabeth who was known as Lizzie. Elisabeth also recalls one of Kari’s literary heroines, Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bennett. We just happened to prefer the spelling with an “s”.

Soraya is an name which is very popular in Iran. James’ mother had a very close friend named Soraya when she was growing up in Iran. We’ve heard a couple of different possible sources of the name. One is that it’s the Persian version of the Hebrew name Sarah and means “princess”. Another possibility is that it’s the Arabic name for the same star cluster that in Persian are called Parvin which is James’ mother’s name.

Clare is for our dear friend Clare Patterson who, along with her husband Matt, was the first person (besides us) to know that a baby was on the way. Clare also has the good fortune of having a name that we happened to really like. 🙂 [Addendum to the original email: when we were first discussing the name Clare, our intention was also that it be in honour of Kari’s grandmother, Clara Stoel, who died in June 2006.]

We can’t wait for you to meet her! We’re planning to be Stateside for most of March and the first week or so of April, at least spending time in Nashville, Indiana, Chicago and Grand Rapids. We look forward to seeing many of you and introducing you to our sweet baby girl then.

We are very much looking forward to spending the Christmas season basking in the arrival of our precious gift!

Pictures are constantly being added to Flickr, so go on over and have a look. We think she’s rather stunning – not that we’re at all biased or anything!

So this is the first entry on this blog in 4 1/2 months which is rather shameful. I’ve been meaning to put something up for about 3 months now. And I think there’s just been so much to say that I’ve been a bit paralysed… where to even begin? So I will just sum up.

First of all, as the five people who still pay any attention to this blog are already fully aware, we’re expecting our first child at the end of December. I knew this when I wrote the last entry way back in early May, but it was too early to be public news then. And now I’m 5 1/2 months pregnant, and my ever-growing bump makes it all too apparent.

First trimester wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but it was certainly no picnic. I didn’t experience all that much nausea – and when I did it was usually only late at night – but I just felt really blecch every evening. The most annoying symptom was that I felt ravenously hungry all the time but there were very few foods that I actually had any desire to eat with the result that I lost about eight pounds during the first trimester. (Here’s The Kid at 14 weeks.)

The day I started my second trimester it was like a switch flipped and suddenly I just felt normal again which was such a relief! And with just a week and a half left to go, second trimester has been great! I don’t have any basis for comparison, but this seems to be a very active baby. It’s not unusual for her/him (we’re not going to find out which until she/he comes out) to be kicking and wiggling most of the day whilst I’m sitting at my desk at work. The Kid seems to really like to kick its dad. Whenever it’s kicking in one place and I put my hand on my tummy it often stops. But when James puts his hand on my tummy, The Kid immediately kicks right in that spot. I’m sure those are kicks of affection rather than aggression. 🙂

So it seems inevitable that “one more voice in the human choir” will – at least to some degree – become a Baby Blog which may well mean that new content appears on it with greater regularity. We shall see.

August was a fun but slightly mad month with two weeks in the US (finally met my gorgeous niece, had a wonderful time with dear friends in Nashville, and celebrated my brother Jeffrey’s marriage to the delightful Courtney) and then five days at Greenbelt which, despite some heavy rain and rather too much time spent working, was once again a highlight of our year.

And then a week and a half after getting back from Greenbelt, we finally completed on our house! After 4 1/2 months of one delay after another, we got the keys on September 6. Two weeks on, we still have quite a lot of our stuff in boxes – mostly for lack of furniture to unpack things into – and I’m trying to be very zen about it all. It helps that we have a functional kitchen and that our living room is something of an oasis. (We got that set up within a couple of days of moving in so that we could at least go in one room, shut the door and forget about the huge pile of boxes just on the other side.) We also have a wonderful bed from Warren Evans (which we would highly recommend) and I have been sleeping remarkably well for 5 1/2 months pregnant. We still need a lot of furniture and there’s definitely work to be done in the house (the kitchen especially needs a lot of help) but it sure is wonderful to have our own place again!

I’m planning to post some house photos on Flickr soon. In the meantime, check out photos of my spectacularly adorable niece, Leah Marnae.

We’ve had so much going on in our lives lately and so much to pre-occupy us that it didn’t even occur to me to blog before today about the fact that we had an offer accepted on a house a week and a half ago. While this is happy news, it means something quite different than having an offer accepted on a house in US. In England, an accepted offer is not legally binding, and it’s only the beginning of a long, drawn-out, complicated process. The house survey was done on Friday (another thing different from the US – this is primarily for the bank’s benefit, not the buyer’s) and we’re just waiting to find out dates for exchange (exchanging contracts and paying the downpayment – at which point the agreement to purchase becomes legally binding) and completion (taking possession). It could take two or three months to get to the point where we can actually move in.

The house is South Tottenham, and is about 3/4 mile northeast of where we’re currently living. It has a lounge, dining room and kitchen downstairs and two bedrooms and a large bathroom upstairs. The garden (i.e. backyard) is fantastic – it’s the feature I’m most excited about. It’s not huge, but it has a little patio, veg and flower beds on either side, and a shed and tree at the end. I hope we get in the house early enough to be able to enjoy most of the summer in the garden.

The other big news is that I am an aunt! My sister Dana gave birth to a gorgeous baby girl, Leah Marnae, on Saturday, May 3. About a week before she was born, my siblings and parents and I all gave our predictions for what day the baby would be born and whether it would be a boy or girl. I was the only one to predict May 3, but I said it would be a boy. So I was half right. (And I think picking the right day gets more credit than picking the right gender because with gender, you get a 50/50 chance!) I won’t get to meet Leah until our trip to the US at the beginning of August (for my brother’s wedding) and am counting on getting lots and lots of pictures in the meantime (hint, hint).

Reading last week’s Observer Magazine, a climate change-themed issue edited by Thom Yorke, I was finally convinced to make a commitment that I’ve been pondering for a while: for the rest of 2008, I’m only going to buy a brand new item if a) I can’t get it used or b) I am buying it directly from the person who made it. That includes clothes, shoes, furniture, kitchen stuff, etc. Given that we’re planning to move house in 2008, that could end up being quite a challenge, but I’m going to do my best.

I didn’t have to work last Friday so I decided to use the day to explore some London charity shops and vintage clothing stores. Helpfully, the issue of Time Out that had arrived on our doorstop three days previous had a feature on where to shopping for used clothing bargains in London. I picked out six of them, plotted my route, grabbed my A to Z, and headed out on my thrift shop adventure.

I started at the Salvation Army store in Princes Street just behind Oxford Street. They pack a lot of clothes into a smallish space! The selection was decent and prices were dirt cheap. Most items I looked at fell in the £3-7 range. I had the delight of overhearing an older gentleman ask the clerk why a particular men’s suit was priced quite a bit higher than the others on the rack. She pointed out that it was Christian Dior. That didn’t seem to mean much to him! I didn’t buy anything at the Salvation Army this trip, but it’s definitely one that I will be returning to.

From there, I walked up to Marylebone where I stopped at Barnardo’s in George Street and Cancer Research UK in Marylebone High Street. Both of them were — as you would expect in Marylebone — quite posh and a good bit higher priced than the Salvation Army. Cancer Research UK in particular seemed to mostly be stocked with designer duds. I wasn’t really looking to spend more than £10 on any single item, but if I had wanted to get a pair of Carolina Herrera pumps for £30, that would have been the place to go! Most of the clothes were small and medium sizes, so not that much there for me anyway. It was fun to explore, but unless I’m specifically looking for designer frocks on the cheap, I’m unlikely to go back.

I walked up to Baker Street and jumped on the tube, exiting at Bayswater from which I walked up Queensway to Westbourne Grove, my destination being the Westbourne Grove branch of Traid (an acronym for Textile Recycling for Aid and International Development). Here, I hit the jackpot! They had a sale on: every item in the store was £2, the exception being coats and jackets which were all £6. This was another store that was absolutely packed with clothes and shoes — high street fashions, designer wear, and a good selection of vintage. I had a great time sifting through the racks and ended up taking quite a stack into the fitting room. I left the store with a couple of bags of clothes including: a short-sleeved heather grey cable knit jumper, a black cowl neck sleeveless jumper, chocolate brown corduroy jeans (Miss Selfridges label), a blue striped v-neck empire waist long t-shirt (also Miss Selfridges), a wooly rust-coloured scarf, navy blue yoga trousers, a bright pink knee-length lightweight coat with gorgeous floral lining, and a vintage sleeveless dress with a pleated skirt in a coral and white floral pattern. (I’m hoping to add to the dress a short-sleeved lightweight black cardigan, a wide black patent leather belt, black patent leather flats, and a black bead necklace — all second-hand of course — and wear it at my brother’s wedding in August.) The total bill at Traid? £20. Rock.

After a brief stop for lunch at a little Italian cafe, I walked down Pembridge Road to Retro Woman, part of a cluster of renowned Notting Hill second-hand stores. This is another store packed to the gills. I enjoyed perusing the masses of designer label shoes and accessories in locked cabinets, mostly priced around £20-£50. Tucked between Retro Woman and Retro Man is a store where everything is £2. If I wasn’t carrying two bags of clothes, I might have spent a little longer digging through the racks and would surely have been rewarded with some great finds. I will definitely be going back to those stores as well as Retro Home.

By the time I left the Retro group of stores, it was late afternoon. I took a quick look around Dolly Diamond vintage shop in Pembridge Road and Trinity Hospice in Notting Hill Gate before heading home, very satisfied with my day of shopping. I had been planning to stop at Marie Curie in Highbury but that will have to wait for another day.

A couple of weeks earlier, I had spent an afternoon sniffing around some great East End vintage shops including Absolutely Vintage, Beyond Retro, and Rokit Vintage. Absolutely Vintage is a treasure trove of vintage shoes and bags. And Beyond Retro is just enormous. Rokit Vintage has shelves and shelves of cowboy boots, and lots of seventies fashions. All of them are definitely worth future return visits. I’m also looking forward to checking out the East End Thrift Store.

Shopping for vintage and second-hand goods requires a lot more patience and persistence than shopping at high street and big box stores. But the thrill of landing a great bargain makes it worthwhile. And while only buying used goods isn’t going to save the planet, it’s a step in the right direction.

The last week has been great for getting out in London and taking advantage of the fact that we now live in a big city with lots of stuff going on all the time.

Last week Friday night, we tried to see a Brazilian parade around Covent Garden, but the parade never showed up. (Not sure if it was too cold or got delayed or we had the wrong date or what…) But since we were in that part of town anyway with our friends Matt & Clare, we went over to the National Portrait Gallery – which is open late on Friday nights with free entry – and browsed the Photographic Portrait Prize 2007 exhibit. From there we went back up to Stroud Green and had great Italian food at La Porchetta. Following dinner, we grabbed a late drink at The Larrik before calling it a night.

On Saturday afternoon, James and I headed over to Broadway Market in Hackney. There are so many great Saturday markets in London, and I’ve been wanting to check some of them out, but since Saturday is our only day of the week to sleep in and not hurry off anywhere, we tend to laze around most of the day until it’s too late to get to any markets. So last week we decided that come Saturday, we would actually get moving and get to a market. Broadway Market is easy for us to get to since we can take the 254 bus from Manor House to Westgate Road very close to the market. The ride itself was very entertaining as we went through Stamford Hill right when the synagogues were getting out and the place was swarming with Hasidic Jews in their fantastic costumes.

The market itself was well worth getting up for. Within about five minutes of arriving, I said to James, “I think I’m in love!” There are stalls selling artisanal cheeses, breads, chocolate, and olive oil; free range and organic meat and eggs; fish and game; organic produce; gourmet coffee, tea, hummus, curries and spreads; Ghanaian stew; crepes with all manner of fillings; “The best burgers in the world”; etc. It’s a foodie paradise! In addition, there are lots of stalls selling vintage clothes, handicrafts, etc. We came home with three different kinds of Italian cheese (cut and wrapped for us by a gal from Oregon whose mother and grandmother went to Grand Valley State University), pheasant & pear sausages and a whole pheasant, Vietnamese coffee and the little filter for making it the Vietnamese way, and amazing baked treats from Violet made with Valrhona chocolate. It’s a place I hope to go back to many Saturdays and will be a wonderful place to take friends who come visit us in London. (Hint, hint!) You can see my photos of the market here.

Sunday afternoon and evening were for resting as we had gotten up at 5:00 a.m. in order to be at church at 6 to help with the homeless Night Shelter breakfast shift. On Monday night we were out again seeing our friend David Bazan who played at 93 Feet East. Before the gig, James and I and our friend Matt took Dave for a curry in Brick Lane and had a great time catching up. The gig was terrific, and we were delighted to meet up with our friends Iain & Miriam, Phil & Gabi and Rachel at the gig too.

This afternoon James is headed out to Cheltenham for a Greenbelt strategy meeting. Since he’ll be there overnight, I’m joining my friend Clare and heading out to Staines to stay overnight on our friends Steve and Lorna’s houseboat. So far I’ve only seen photos of the boat and have been very eager to see it in person, so I’m glad the opportunity has finally come round. So I’ll be partying on the boat tonight. Sweet.

So I started an entry about our trip to the States just after Christmas but, frankly, it was boring. So rather than go into much detail, I’ll do a quick summary.

Spending time with my family in DeMotte was wonderful and weird and difficult and all those things that family are. It was treasured time together as “just us adults” before the first grandchild arrives in April. We’re still navigating the dynamics of having added brothers-in-law (and a sister-in-law to be) to the family, though. And one thing the time with them made me realise is that especially now that we live in London, I can be such a snob – I live in the big city and I’m so sophisticated and cosmopolitan. I need to watch out for that.

The three and a half days in Nashville were as wonderful as they could have been. Arriving at Trevor and Jenna’s felt like coming home. And being loved and cared for by the Hendersons and Darks was just what I needed. We had a totally rockin’ New Year’s Eve party at the Hendersons’ and a wonderfully chilled New Year’s Day at the Darks’. And adding Steve to the number of dear friends that we so eagerly anticipate seeing on visits to Nashville was a joy beyond words.

I could have stayed in Nashville much longer, but other friends in Grand Rapids were awaiting our arrival there. It was wonderful to see those friends, but being in Grand Rapids was weirder than weird. Even though we had been gone for seven months, it didn’t feel like it had been that long, but in the meantime, people’s lives had moved on and so much had changed. I’m glad that we got to see as many people as we did while we were there even if all the running around to see them got a bit mad. I hope that future visits will be more comfortable, when we’ve been away longer and we feel more like visitors than people who have just been away from home for longer than usual.

The last two and a half days of our trip to the States was spent in Chicago where we had the great delight of meeting up with our dear friends Kate and Nathan for lunch. They moved from Grand Rapids to Philadelphia in August of 2006, and we had debated whether to try to fit in a stop in Philly on this trip in order to visit them. In the end we decided that it was too much to squeeze in, so imagine our delight when we discovered that they were going to be in Chicago that weekend for a wedding. We rearranged our plans a bit in order to get to Chicago in time to meet up with them before their flight out. It was just a treat to see them. It was also delightful to spend a bit more time with my sister Dana (5 1/2 months pregnant at the time!) and her husband Pete. We’ve imposed on them frequently over the years since they live in the fabulous Chicago neighbourhood of Lincoln Square, and we’ve always appreciated their hospitality.

Perhaps the best part about the trip was coming home to London. I realised how much I have totally fallen in love with this city. I love living here, I love working here, I love being surrounded by tall buildings and big green parks and people – always so many people! – so many of whom don’t look like me or talk like me. The energy and the rich diversity and the incredibly history – all of it has completely captured my heart and imagination. My life in Grand Rapids was great and my time at Calvin shaped much of who I am today. But I’m so glad to be a London girl now.

My photos from our time in Nashville on Flickr.

James’ photos from our trip on Flickr.

Coming soon… a summary and review of our first trip to the U.S. since we moved to London.

For now, there’s this:

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