Christine's
Story |
My life took an unexpected turn about 7 and a half years ago when I met my husband online in a chat room.
I grew up in Queensland and I was living in a country town teaching primary school. He grew up in Adelaide, a place that his parents settled after immigrating from South America.
We met in Brisbane for a week and I decided to move down to Adelaide to be with him (yes I was scared it wouldn't work out but we had spent hundreds of hours talking online and on the phone and I guess I took an educated guess that it would work out - which I'm pleased to say it did).
We were married 15 months later. I always wanted four children so we went to work on it and had three beautiful children, each 12 months apart. We went back for the fourth and ended up with twins! A beautiful way to finish any family. So I had a 3 year old, 2 year old, 11 month old and newborn prem twins (34 weeks). They spent a week in the NICU with some breathing issues but were released after a month and life really began.
Within three months of them being born I went back to my studies (I was working on my Graduate Diploma of Information Studies). They were sleeping through at this time and it seemed a reasonable time to get back into it (yes, in retrospect I was quite mad). Soon after this we applied for and received assistance in the form of a full time Nanny and I went back to full time study.
There were moments when I wondered how we would survive this last year - especially since Marco was working on his MBA, doing half of the night feeds and working full time. There were often times before the Nanny started when I would have three or four children crying at once, four nappies to change, an assignment deadline and a mountain of washing. GRRRRR....The Nanny was a life saver and she helped to save my sanity. Though to be really fair I must also mention my gorgeous In Laws who were amazing. They cared for some of the children, ran my eldest to day care, and a million other little things. I can't express how lucky I am to be surrounded by these people who've made this last year possible.
We worked together to find a routine, I gave the Nanny nappies and washing and she gave me the freedom for 8 hours a day to attend lectures, libraries and write assignments. I'm not implying my life was easy after she started - far from it, I was still the one getting up to sick children, balancing study commitments so that I could cuddle my babies, play with the older ones, shop for groceries, 9 hours of driving to lectures, 30 hours minimum of readings (each week), assignments, well you get the idea. Life was still busy and hard. The driving to attend lectures making me tired and grumpy in itself. But doing assignments was soooooo much easier then spending the entire year at home so I'm not really complaining. I loved the mental challenge.
Now the year is over and I'm a qualified Librarian, my children have grown up a little and life is a wee bit easier. I'm looking forward to working (definitely easier then being a Stay at Home Mum) but I will miss being able to see them throughout the day.
As part of my studies I created this website and I believe that everyone has a story to tell. So please email me with yours so that others can breathe a sigh of relief when they read something they relate to. My email address is SAMBAwebmaster@icqmail.com
I look forward to hearing from you.
Cheers Chris.
PS This is a photo of my munchkin's on Christmas Day. Hope you had a good one. Ours was full of presents, laughter and the children were still spoiled (part of the reason I wanted so many was so they would learn to be grateful for everything, i.e. we couldn't spoil that many. Guess you can though).
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Nana with the kids |
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