The First Day of Maternity Leave

I've had a secret almost throughout the year - we're having a baby! The due date is October 18th 2019 so in exactly five weeks today. In other words, today marks 35 weeks of pregnancy.

Unlike I had always imagined, I haven't actually wanted to talk about the pregnancy online at all up until now. To be honest, I wouldn't have wanted to talk about it with anyone in real life, either. The main reason for this is that I've spent the vast majority of this pregnancy panicking and worrying about all the things that could go wrong. Will everything go okay for sure? Will we really get to have this baby? Will both me and the baby survive the labour alive? This child is such a big dream that my fear of things going wrong is massive.

However, avoiding talking about the pregnancy has led to me having felt quite dishonest for several months now, so now that the due date is so close, I might as well be brave and spill the beans. After all, we're getting prepared for a whole new phase in our lives! Basically everything will change!

With the maternity leave starting today, I've also decided to start blogging actively both here and on my Finnish blog to document it all, so welcome aboard to follow the life of a Finnish-Hungarian rainbow family and two first-time mums!

For anyone that doesn't know us yet, we are a two-mum rainbow family - Emilia, 37, a secondary school English and Swedish subject teacher and my wife Julcsi (pronounced as Yul-chee), 33, a class teacher of an English class (and an English and Italian subject teacher). We also have a 12-year-old tomcat Nessu, who's very talkative and very fluffy. Our home is in Hämeenlinna, Finland but I'm from Tampere and Julcsi from Gyula, Hungary. We speak English with each other but both of us will speak our mother tongue to the baby. Like I already mentioned, this baby is our first child.

So yes, today is the first day of my maternity leave. I survived my six weeks back at work after the summer holiday surprisingly well and didn't need to go on sick leave or anything even if I've had back pain and essentially walked like a duck for many months now. It's all thanks to my lovely language teacher colleagues as well as team teaching as this is what's enabled me to take it easy in our learning space, and I've got to sit as much as possible during all the lessons. On the summer break, I was quite worried about how safe or unsafe it would be for me to go back to work for these six weeks because I work in a school with all open learning spaces and desks and chairs with wheels so someone bumping into me was a real possibility. Thankfully everything went well and the only one who got knocked down was the Queen of England standing on the teacher's desk, waving at the students.

It was so strange to go on maternity leave after my last day of work yesterday! I somehow wasn't prepared for these feelings of nostalgia at all, but they really struck me when my dear colleagues gave us a baby present and some wise words about me worrying too much about everything. I had never realised just how important these people are to me and just how much I've taken it for granted that I have got to spend my days specifically with them for almost 10 years now. I will miss them SO MUCH!

I was also so surprised to receive baby presents from four girls in my class - baby clothes, mittens and socks they'd knitted themselves, chocolate...I can't take it! Just how thoughtful and lovely are these teens?! Not to mention the number of hugs and beautiful words I received from so many students...I really appreciate it! How can anyone think secondary school students are horrible?! I mean obviously there are all kinds of students but most of them are so adorable I don't have the words to describe them.

28 weeks and 1 day pregnant in July

Today I've felt a little bit puzzled as to what I'm supposed to do. I'm always happy to go on holiday, but this time the school year has only just begun so it feels strange that I can suddenly just stay at home again with nowhere to go. I kicked the day off by writing a massive To Do list and I've already managed to tick off dishes, laundry, taking the bins out, sorting out the study (we've just moved - more about that in a separate post), recycling cardboard and some old clothes and bed linen, writing to my Swedish friend, as well as writing this blog post in both Finnish and English. On the list I still have stuff like mowing the overgrown lawn, signing slams, reading, a couple of IG posts...Luckily it's only 2:45 pm!

So yeah, this is where it begins! Wish me luck! And by the way, if you're on IG, come and follow me over on helloemiliax!