The past five weeks have been consumed by all things baby in the Vastrap household with the festive season passing by largely unnoticed. It’s been a long time since I blogged because I was hospitalised in Bloemfontein in mid-December at 35 weeks pregnant. The doctor wouldn’t let me go back to the farm and I held out for another three weeks at a friend’s house close to the hospital until our precious angel, Livia Lerato de Bruyn was born on 29 December 2013. We’ve been home for a week and a half and I’ve immersed myself in the wonderful world of being a mommy for the first time and learning all about this new little person in our lives. She is tiny – only 2.7kg at birth – but perfect in every way!
We found the name Livia in a book that Quentin was reading early in my pregnancy called I Dreamed of Africa, a memoir by Kuki Gallmann an Italian-born Kenyan woman. Lerato means love in seSotho and I will now be known on the farm as ma’Lerato, mother-of-Lerato.
My mother and sister were with us in the first week after we got back from hospital. What an amazing thing to have such supportive family to help with the transition. They immediately got to work organising the kitchen, cooking non-stop delicious meals and filling the house with flowers from the garden, something I had really missed in my time away from home. I haven’t had the energy to be too adventurous on the farm yet, but we’ve been out for a few walks with our new 4×4 pram and we even managed to take Livia with us for sundowners one night. She was warmly bundled up and slept through the whole thing! The dogs have taken a while to figure out who this new little being is taking up so much of my time, but little Hope wasted no time making herself comfortable on the bed with us!
That’s all I have time for now. Things will be quite slow on the blog front for a while, but I will try my best to keep you updated. A very belated happy new year to everyone. I hope 2014 holds many pleasant surprises and happy memories.
Vastrap Farm 