In the coming months, I am going to share some of my favorite Summer recipes with you...
... there are some foods I eat a lot more in Summer (since I try to eat mostly those veggies which are in season) and I have some favorite Summer foods. These, I am going to present here :)
Lets begin with one of my favorite May foods: GREEN ASPARAGUS!
I LOVE green asparagus! Do you like it?
My favorite way to prepare green asparagus is to cut it into small pieces, put it in a pan and fry with fresh garlic and a soy sauce. Thats it! Super easy, and so so soooo good :)
I love to eat green asparagus with quinoa. I boil the quinoa with some herbs (chives, parsley, etc.) and I also add some soysauce in the end. I like it that simple and I think you should give it a try too :)
What are your favorite Summer dishes? I would love to know! And how do you prepare green asparagus? Please share your recipes with me!
I wish you all a wonderful sunny weekend!
The other day we found this couch...
... and even though my outfit is really a basic one, I thought I better take some pictures there :)
I am wearing a second hand blouse and an Old Navy Jeans - actually we have been on our way to a construction market that day, to buy seeds and pots for our windowsill. I will share the results of this small project with you sometime soon :)
I hope you are all doing well! This week, my brother is here and we are busy going for walks with the baby and having a good time outside. The weather is really good and sunny and its wonderful to have lots of time to enjoy the baby and this Spring weather.
Sending you all much love!
Today I want to share with you some thoughts on the whole topic of giving birth...
...there is a reason for why I am doing this post - I was not able to give birth the way I wanted to and it was not easy for me in the beginning to accept this. In the end I think its all good the way it went and maybe there are women out there who will experience the same as I did (or who already did) and for whom it will be helpful to read my thoughts on this. And since today is mothers day, I thought its a good day to share this story of mine :)
For me it was always very very important to give birth naturally. It was THE MOST important for me. There was nothing I was more afraid of than a c-section! My pregnancy went really well, as some of you know, so there was no reason to believe that I will need a c-section in the end. The baby was healthy, I was healthy and so I was getting all prepared to give natural birth - I took yoga classes to train the body parts I would need during delivery, I drank lots of rasberry leaf tea to prepare the uterus, I learned how to breath during delivery and I tried some meditation. I was all ready.
And then I got to know that my baby did not want to turn its head downwards. It was in breech presentation since week 26 of my pregnancy and around week 34 the doctor told me that I should prepare myself for a possible c-section. I thought "NO WAY!" and I began a marathon to different mid wifes, hospitals and doctors... the midwifes tried to make my baby turn downwards with alternative methods, such as homeopathy and acupuncture, the doctors tried to turn my baby around from the outside and in the hospital I made a MRI scan to check if my basin was wide enough to deliver from breech presentation (it was not). It was stressful and exhausting and nothing helped!
Some days I thought its stupid to make all of these efforts, because if my baby wants to turn, it will and if it does not want to it will not, and I should accept and respect her decision. But I also thought that if I would not try everything I could, I would regret it afterwards and I would reproach myself.
Two weeks before the actual birth of my baby, there was no more doubt about that I would need a c-section - and I was frustrated! But in the end it turned out that this c-section was excatly what my baby wanted and that there was a reason for why it did not turn its head downwards; its umbilical cord was very short so it wasnt able to turn. If I would have tried to give natural birth, terrible things could have happend...I do not even want to think about all of what could have happend! So in the end it turned out that it was just right the way it went and there was a good reason for everything.
This whole story made me realize once again that we should trust in how things goes and that we should just accept things the way they go, instead of trying to make everything work the way WE think is the best.
Today, I am fine with the fact that I got a c-section and my baby is so happy, quiet and wonderful that I feel like she is okay with it too. I wrote about the whole process about how we tried to make her turn around and all the thoughts we had during this time, in her baby-diary (which I write for her since the beginning of pregnancy) so that later, when she is older and she asks why she was not born naturally, she will be able to understand.
How do you think about the whole story of how to give birth? Can you understand that it was difficult for me to accept a c-section or do you think its fine to give birth this way?
Happy Friday!
I hope you all had a wonderful week so far! Here, the weather is perfect and I went out on lots of walks with my baby girl.
Today my husband joined me and we took some pictures of me in my floral blazer from sheinside. Besides the blazer I am wearing my H&M chino pants and a denim shirt from my husband. My belly is still pretty big and I feel more comfortable in looser shirts so I just borrow his.
Even
though I feel more comfortable in looser shirts, I am somehow really
okay with my bigger belly. I am so grateful for what my body did during
the last nine months so I think its completely fine to give it time to
recover - I do not need my old body back in a few weeks and I will
certainly not be one of these women who is restricting herself from
anything (especially now that I am breastfeeding) just to get my former shape back.
My body did so much for me and it still is now- its feeding my baby, so
how come I can be anything but grateful!?
Still I need to get used to style my bigger belly and also my bigger boobs - I never had a belly (nor boobs) before so its still a little weird to me. But its just another styling challenge I am willing to tackle :)
How do you like this look? I am pretty much in love with the blazer - you can find it here - and I think I will get another pair (in brown) of these H&M ballerinas; they are so comfy and I think they are perfect for Spring.
I wish all of you a wonderful weekend and sending you much love!
It's so absolutely awesome that I am able to go outside again...
... it was really difficult for me to stay inside for almost two weeks. However, I felt so weak and tired that I just wasnt able to go out. Since a week now, I feel a lot better and I am able to go for long walks every day. My husband and I try to go for walks together with our baby as often as we can - and when we do so, I take my camera with me to make some pictures for the blog :)
I am actually still wearing my maternity jeans here. My belly is still not gone completely since it takes some time until all the skin and the uterus forms back. I am wearing a rather old second hand blouse on top of my H&M maternity jeans.The bag I am caring with me here is one that I bought in Tanzania back in 2009. I dont use it much but that day I thought its time to give it a try again :)
The white flower that you can see in the background on these pictures, is actually wild garlic! We have soooo much of it in the woods around here. When you walk in the woods, it smells really strong but somehow good :)
In early April you will find a lot of people collecting the leaves to make pesto or salads with them. As soon as they start blooming you should no longer eat them but until then it tastes really good! I make a wild garlic pesto every year at least once :)
I hope you are having a wonderful week so far!? Enjoy the Spring weather!
Sending you all much love!
Here is a last post about my pregnancy...
The last three months of pregnancy are quite intense for most women - the belly is getting really heavy, its more and more difficult to breathe and many women experience problems with heartburn, nausea and fatigue.
For me it was first in the really end of my pregnancy that I began feeling very tired. I felt great in the 7th and 8th month and I had much more energy than I had in the beginning of my pregnancy. I drove my bicycle every day, I went to my yoga classes and I had the energy to go grocery shopping, going for long walks and to spend lots of time in the kitchen, cooking and baking :)
The last four weeks then became a little more tiring. I could no longer walk for more than maybe 30 minutes because the pressure on the pelvis got really strong in the last four weeks of pregnancy. Some days it was that painful that I could not walk at all (towards the last few days...). In the last four weeks I also had to throw up for the first time during the entire pregnancy (most women have these kind of problems in the first trimester but there I did not experience anything like this). It had severe heartburn every night and I found it more and more difficult to get a good rest at night, because of the huge belly, the heartburn and the baby moving around in the belly.
I spent a lot of time just sitting with friends (or with my husband) drinking tea, enjoying the Spring weather or staying on the sofa, reading or studying. I enjoyed these last weeks, even though it was a little difficult sometimes with all these small aches and pains.
However, I also had to go to lots of doctors appointments, I had to go to the hospital several times and I was visiting different midwifes... in some sense the last few weeks were rather stressful, but I will make a post about all of this soon!
During the third trimester, we also bought lots of stuff for the baby, we bought a beautiful prams, my husband made a baby changer, we bought lots of small things, such as woolen blankets, a lambskin to sleep on during the day and things for the bathroom. We changed around in the appartment and slowly everything got ready for the arrival of our little girl. Since we prepared the apartment step by step, our baby became more and more present step by step.
In the end we felt sooooo ready for her to arrive and it was difficult to wait :)
Here I am, with a first no-more-belly outfit :)
Well actually, there is still some belly left... since it takes a little until everything is gone - but yet, there is no more baby belly in this outfit and it somehow feels good to wear clothes again which did not fit in the last couple of months.
So how do you like my first after-pregnancy look? The blouse/dress I am wearing is from sheinside and you can find it here. I really like it beacuse I am able to wear it as a dress or as a blouse. This time I am wearing it as a dress but I think it will also look really cool when I tuck into a pair of jeans.
So do you think I look different, now that I am a mom? I have to say that I feel different - somehow a little more confident actually!
Those of you who are a mom too, did you feel different after giving birth to your first child? In which way? Did you also experience feeling more confident?
I really would love to know!
I will share more about how I feel now and also about my third trimester as soon as I find some time. The days are just passing way too fast since the little one arrived. So I do not really find that much time to prepare longer blog posts. But lets see, maybe next week I will be able to write a little more :)
Until then, I hope you enjoyed this post and I wish you all a most wonderful weekend!
Sending you much love!
