Flashing my boobs on Australia Day.....

I am so glad to be able to write that things are well and truely on the improve and we have a much happier and settled little baby!!! We have had a lovely week with trips out, mothers group and lots of cuddles! The most exciting thing is that Charlie has started to smile and even though it is not all the time it is worth the world! One day last week she was having a huge sleep but it was in the afternoon and it got to 5pm and she had slept way past a feed and I decided to wake her up so that she would still sleep later that night. So instead of her usually waking up crying because she wants some food....I got to unwrap her and let her wake naturally. She slowly woke up, stretching out her lovely long arms and legs and then look straight at me and gave me a big gummy grin! I could have cried but instead cheered and encouraged her for more....hahaha the grin was replaced with a look of " what is wrong with this woman???". And we have had a few smiles here and there....but I am not quick enough to get it on the camera! She has started to work out her hand are hers and not just random things at the ends of her arms....so she now quite likes to suck on her hand. She follows you around when you walk and has started to play and react to things like the play mat. She is making cute little cooing noises and lets you know if she wants something! You can tell I am so excited.....it is such a huge change from a week and a bit ago!

This morning we headed to the Australia Day run that the Canterbury council put on. I decided on this run as my " post baby race" for a few reasons......
1. It was free....yes I am of the fregan belief
2. It was put on by our local council and was only 15 mins from home
3. Last year was the first year and it is important to support new runs
4. It was meant to start at 10:30am.....perfect for me to get a 7 week old up and breast fed- it was then changed to 9:15am, still much more decent than the 7am start for the other runs.

It all went really well. My wonderful sister had agreed to come down to look after Charlie so I could run with Ray....read my sister agreed to have Charlie all on her own for lots of cuddles!! Ray and I are so grateful that she can do this for us....it means for some runs we can both race and Aunty Bec gets some quality time with Charlie :-) So she arrived at 8am and we were up, fed and dressed and ready to go. I had timed it so that we would arrive in time for me to feed Charlie again and then line up to run. There is nothing like having to breast feed to take your mind of a race and put it all into perspective :-) We found a bench near the start finish line and I politely asked a family if I could use some of the seat to feed on....they cleared off quickly~ they must not have seen a boob popped out at the start of a race before :-) so I was finished and had put on my super duper, my boobs are not going to move in this crop top on and was on the start line by 9:10....all good!

The gun went off and we started to run. I had told Ray I wanted to just do under 6mins pace and I would be happy. So we took off and then I spied a lady I have seen at other runs....I I changed my race goal to " I just want to finish in front of her"! We set off and it was a little fast but I felt ok and we decided to just keep running and if it all fell apart who cares I had a perfect little girl waiting at the end of the run. The run went along the Cooks river cycle way and back....it was actually a really lovely run. There are yucky parts of the cooks river, but this part was clean and there were lots of parks and trees along the way. So we slowly reeled this woman in and we passed her at the 3km mark....she had started too fast and was struggling so we made our move. Haha nice to see the competitiveness stays! Ray was great and just chatted the whole way, checking if I was doing ok and encouraged me to just keep going.

I loved it and was so excited to be running again. I was even more excited that I was feeling ok and not coughing up a lung and I was running faster than planned :-) I did get cranky at one point when some guy was yelling at me to sprint and I yelled " I just gave birth 7 weeks ago I am kind of happy to be just running"....Ray reminded me he was jut trying to be friendly....ooops! The finish line suddenly appeared and I picked up the pace and finished with a really good hard run at the line. Woo Hoo! first run back completed and I was still in one piece and Charlie had slept like a log the whole time! I wanted to do anything under 36mins and I finished in 30:21. I think the course was about 200m short so it was probably more like 31:30 mins. BUT my average pace was 5:18/km......quicker than I thought I could do :-) It also felt comfortable and I certainly did not feel like I was pushing it too hard at any time :-) I had a great time and loved every minute of it! I felt fantastic when I finished and it gave me spurt of excitement for my next goal which is the 10km in Canberra.

6km: 5:17, 5:25, 5:11, 5:16, 5:26, 3:43 (800m) (average 5:18)