Dear Koalabear,

Yesterday you were one week old. Your mama wanted to post then but she was feeling very unwell and is now back in hospital with mastitis. Moo! Your mama has changed in the last week, she is a milking machine.

This was a very big week for you, so much to be done. Firstly, there was the tricky business of being born, which you came through with flying colours. You arrived open eyed and quietly alert. You looked around at what was happening and met your Papa and your midwife and the doctors. Then you met me. You were placed on my chest. You smelled like straw and your head was shaped like a cone after being squeezed through the narrow passage!

For the first few days you were very sleepy. You were not very hungry either but you helped me by waking up when I rubbed different parts of you, and despite being so sleepy you scored ten out of ten for latching on and you are now drinking like a pro. You had even started to gain back your birth weight by the time we left hospital.

When we got home, you adjusted very well to yet another strange new environment. You don’t seen to mind sleeping in your cot or your pram or on Mutti or Papa.

Speaking of Papa, you love listening to him talking to you and you watch him very carefully and listen to him. Your Papa has been great this week looking after us and cooking for me and being my gofor especially when I was feeling so weak and ill from the mastitis. We would have been lost without him.

You went to the park this week and the university campus nearby and also on a shopping expedition to get paint to make footprints. You also went in a few trams and had your first trip in a car. You are not a huge fan of your car seat but once the car moves, you become quiet and try to figure out what is going on.

You are generally a very chilled baby, just eating and sleeping and watching things quietly, but sometimes you get into a tizzzy and cry unconsolably. Your papa discovered that what you want then is a walk in the sling so you can be reassured by the movement. You love your sling.

You have changed my world KB and I love and adore you. Of course I am a biased mama, but you are just too cute not to adore.

love,
Mutti

So here I sit in my hospital bed with my new daughter (whom shall be referred to as KB or koala bear as she likes to sleep). What a ride. A switch has flicked in my head and the fact that I have sore lady bits after my drug free labour and have spent the past few days getting to grips with breastfeeding is the most satisfying thing ever. It is so strange - now that she is here, I ask myself “what took me so long?”. I wonder why we didn’t make this sweet creature ages ago. Seeing your baby girl fall off your boob in to a blissed out milk coma in the milky way that only new borns can changes your world. It makes it spectacular. I’m on her time now. She is the boss.

I’ve just realised that it is a month since I came to live in Wien. I am gradually settling in. German aside. I have long held the opinion that to improve my German, I actually need to go back to the beginning and start again. It’s not much use knowing that coffee is kaffee if you can’t remember whether the gender of the word is masculine, feminine or neuter. The der, die, das articles drive me crazy, because so many of the German rules of Grammar that you apply do strange things to the nominative der, die, das and ein, eine, ein. So, if you don’t learn whether the word for something is der, die, das, then you can never speak German correctly. Part of me would love to pretend all the words are “der” but that would not be useful to improving my German. Kaffee incidentally is masculine. So is tea. Tee. der Kaffee. der Tee. Kaffee and Tee are made with water. Water is neuter. das Wasser. Into Kaffee and Tee you put Milch. Milch is feminine. die Milch. Not sure what the logic of that is, maybe it’s because die Milch comes from a moo cow of type female. I have had a few German lessons, but I don’t think much of my teacher. I think so little of her in fact, that I don’t want to go to her lessons anymore, I’d much rather attend a language course in the university of wien during the summer. I have enrolled on it. The other thing about Austrian German is it is quite different to the German I learned in school. I think the German I learned in school is probably the equivalent of the Queen’s English. None of the regional words and certainly no dialects! Cream in my school German is Sahne. Here it is Schlagobers. Bread rolls in my school German are little breads or Brotchen, here they are Semmels. My German teacher mocked me when I told her I asked for Brotchen in bakeries. “Did you get a funny look?”. No was my response. The Austrians probably don’t feel the need to be nasty to me and mock my use of Brotchen, cos it’s pretty obvious I am not Austrian. Don’t ask me the genders for those, my start at the beginning and relearn everything hasn’t got to those words yet. The huzband says that going back to the start is a waste of time. I totally disagree. Last night, I took out a level A1 book and started “Basic German in 30 days” and I relearned lots of stuff that I had completely forgotten, which isn’t surprising, considering my last German lesson was in 1994. I relearned that certain verbs take the accusative form. A coffee is ein Kaffee. I would like a coffee is Ich mochte einen Kaffee. Unless you remembered your lesson about accusative verbs from secondary school, you would look very pigeon German speaking in a coffee shop stating that you would mochten ein Kaffee. Ah, the quirks of language. Back to the beginning is the only way to correct stuff once and for all. That said, I understand lots of German, but I draw complete blanks when trying to put sentences together myself. Things can only improve I suppose. Especially if I continue with the books I have that teach you how to ask for stuff in shops, restaurants at the train station, at the post office etc. Basic stuff. Back to the beginning. No shame in that.