Saturday, December 26, 2009
Sunday, November 29, 2009
WTF????
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Wife/ Mother
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
T & A
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Returning home after "Expat Life"!
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Vote for us today!
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Pettiskirts!
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Monday, August 3, 2009
“A LOW PROBABILITY”
“I have been able to laugh and see the funny side of things:
• As much as I always could
• Not quite so much now
• Definitely not quite so much now
• No, not at all”
I just had my third child two months ago. I am jiggly all over, my older kids often freely comment on how much their lives suck because I am ALWAYS FEEDING THE BABY, my husband has been working a lot, and we just hosted 60 people for brunch for my husband’s parents’ 50th anniversary. I thought I was a champ for choosing the “Not quite so much now” option.
I answered the remaining nine questions as honestly as I could. No, I never feel scared or panicky for no very good reason, but yes, I have felt sad and miserable sometimes. I only occasionally have cried, but the thought of harming myself has never occurred. Yes, sometimes I felt things have been getting on top of me, but no, I haven’t been so unhappy that I have trouble sleeping.
I scored a 7 (out of 24) on the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, which was on the high end of the 0 – 8 score, indicating “a low probability of postnatal depression.” The nurse felt it was enough of a concern to follow up and ask some more questions, including “Do you ever feel like shaking the baby”!
“My husband, yes, but the baby, no,” I replied. She didn’t laugh. I then felt the need to explain that I had two older kids, and my life has changed vastly in the last six months-- at this time last year I was living the life of my dreams in Vietnam (kids in school all day, household staff, lunching with friends, manicures, great shopping, etc.) She still didn’t seem convinced that I wasn’t about to pack everyone into a minivan and drive them into the river. I sighed.
“Look, even before I had the baby I think I would have scored the same. I am Type A and impatient and anal at the best of times. And if it helps at all, I love this baby with the fire of a thousand suns. It’s everyone else that bugs me.”
Oddly, that reassured the nurse. She wrapped up by telling me I should expect moodiness for up to a year due to hormonal swings. As I was driving home, I felt like a weight had lifted. It was no longer my fault that I was a first class bitch on mornings that I got puked on three times before I’d had a coffee or that I was tremendously terse on the phone when my husband called to say he’d be 45 minutes late for dinner. I was well within the normal range.
ABOUT THE BLOGGER
Dona Johnson is a 40-year-old mother of three who has recently returned to Canada after spending much of the past ten years in Russia, Indonesia and Vietnam. It bears mentioning that this would be a much more positive blog about motherhood if she still enjoyed the services of the maid, nanny, gardener and driver she regretfully left behind in Ho Chi Minh City.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Spring 2010
Thursday, July 16, 2009
The business
Monday, July 13, 2009
Motherhood
We have officially joined the blogging world! schatzi inc. is proud to announce that Dona Johnson will be blogging for us and discussing motherhood, fashion, travel and day to day life with kids. I first met Dona overseas. We were both expats, I was living in Oman and she was in Vietnam. Our husbands had worked together in Canada, so when we were traveling through Vietnam we had a great dinner at their beautiful villa. I have enclosed a picture of my kids in Vietnam. Now we have both relocated back to Canada! We hope you enjoy her witty and creative writing style. She will be guest blogging for us every couple of weeks.
Just a side note... We are hard at work at the head office of schatzi inc.! Linesheets, catalogues, patterns, and sample are all being designed and coming to life! Our Spring 2010 line is almost ready. We are excited to share our "green" line with you.
July 14, 2009
When my friend Tanja emailed me to ask if I’d be interested in writing a blog about motherhood for the Schatzi web site, I was one week postpartum. I’d just delivered our third (and final) child, Zoe, and all was pretty much well with the world. Zoe was adorable with her big, crazy mop of strawberry blond hair. Our son and daughter loved her muchly and my husband and I were well pleased with ourselves for having another baby. My mom was staying with us and doing every earthly duty save for breast-feeding the baby. This general feeling of contentment was a welcome change from the general feeling of resentment, which characterized the previous six months. In mid December, we’d moved back to Calgary from Vietnam, and then dealt with a long renovation, a longer winter, and the longest third trimester imaginable.
Since then, the other shoe has dropped. My mom left the building five weeks ago, the kids now think the baby is fine except when her needs come before their wants, which is most of the time. And I’m regularly barely civil to my husband, mainly because he gets to leave the house every day and I don’t.
In addition to guilt and exhaustion, I’ve been wearing a pad for six straight weeks, there are a good two inches between button and buttonhole on all last summer’s shorts, my boobs hurt, the laundry is relentless, and it’s troubling how often I fantasize about getting hammered. I had concerns my blog about motherhood would be the world’s best case for birth control.
But thankfully, every single day, my postpartum hormones do me a solid and the pendulum swings in the other direction. Countering all the negatives is one huge positive: I am deeply and madly in love. I completely forget about the size of my ass when I look down and see Zoe earnestly sucking away, all the while gazing steadily up at me with clear, blue eyes. Then, she pauses with mouth full, to bust out a grin. Later, when she’s dozing in my arms, eyes lolling to the back of her head, she does a run-through of all her faces—smile, ‘ohhh’ mouth, grimace, lop-sided grin, furrowed brow, yawn, sigh, sleep. At those moments, it doesn’t matter that my kids were fighting outside the baby’s room while I tried to put her to sleep or my husband never, ever washes the coffee press in the morning. I am content. For now.
ABOUT THE BLOGGER
Dona Johnson is a 40-year-old mother of three who has recently returned to Canada after spending much of the past ten years in Russia, Indonesia and Vietnam. It bears mentioning that this would be a much more positive blog about motherhood if she still enjoyed the services of the maid, nanny, gardener and driver she regretfully left behind in Ho Chi Minh City.