Barely two weeks old, my little yuppy son got to go out for dinner at the Italian place next door. Not much impressed, he slept through practically the whole thing.
Not like his mom, who never had such a stressed out canneloni meal in her entire life! Check out the fake grin....
The food WAS very good though....
Grandma is great for sleeping!
But I can sleep in Henni's arms as well.
Or Ralf''s....
And Sally's of course! 
One of the first few stops.....coffee!
Daphne & Liam lounging.
Visitors all the way from Brabant!
Juliette & Tess from Check5.
Tillon 
The big eye-catcher of the nursery – I decided – should be a mural. And not just a Winnie-the-Pooh-mural (though the bear is adorable), but something drawn by hand and New York-themed. And since I’m a sketching disaster myself (always have been – apparently the artistic gene skips a generation), I asked my friend Janine to make one for me. 
Making the sketch itself took her days of doodling – painting it on my wall took about a day, with Janine en Martje painting, and me looking after Noah.
And this is the end result!
Manifesto by the Alliance of Mothers Supporting Truthful Pregnancy Stories
Concerning women about to get pregnant
Hi there! You are planning to embark on an adventure that is probably one of the greatest ones you’ll ever experience. Congratulations! The next nine months will prepare you for that adventure. In 2010, the Alliance of Mothers Supporting Truthful Pregnancy Stories was founded, which mission is to truthfully inform women on what to expect while the Miracle of Life unfolds.
If you’re not one of those women who appreciate bluntness, stop reading this manifesto!
First the most important news, which also happens to be very good: having a baby is an amazing experience. There’s nothing like it. You’ll find that you’re able to love someone you never even met; you can talk to sheer movement, and you will worry about someone else’s well-being more than you ever worried about your own. You will be a key witness to a person coming into existence, into your existence, in every sense of the word.
While this probably is one of the best things to ever happen to you, a lot of side effects will keep you pretty busy. Contrary to custom until now, we feel you have a right to know about them. Attached is a – non-comprehensive - list of things to expect:
· You will feel sick for a period ranging from about a week to a maximum of 42 weeks. You may be forced to eat dry cereal, sit on the floor of a supermarket, and eat when your body tells you not to.
· You will feel sleepier than you ever felt before. Enjoy sleeping for the first 13 weeks; after that, you might not sleep an entire night for a long, long time.
· Your boobs will double in size. Some of you will like it; some of you won’t. It’s a double-edged sword anyway.
· Many people will tell you to watch out for stress. Their constant reminders of this are huge stress factors. What ís stress, anyway?
· You will start crying at the oddest moments for the oddest reasons. Within nano seconds after your breakdown, however, you will be able to be elated, furious or totally numb.
· Expect a bloody nose every now and then.
· You will not be able to eat the things you used to love, and crave stuff you used to hate. You will be forced to go into the supermarket to let your instincts lead you to the right foods for you at that precise moments. You will buy stuff you won’t be able to eat anymore the day after. You will get food obsessions. You will force friends to prepare you dinner.
· You will forget the simplest things. You will not be able to conduct a decent discussions, because you won’t remember your perspective.
· You will gain weight. You will not be able to fit into your own clothes and you will be forced to get a new wardrobe of maternity clothes. You will learn that the maternity industry caters only for a select group of women, thereby accomplishing what you spent your whole life to avoid: blending in with a very specific, very girly, flowery, pink-colored group.
· You will be faced with something they absurdly call ‘minor ailments’, such as restless legs, stomach acid, hemorrhoids, varicose veins, and Braxton-Hicks contractions.
· In the middle of your pregnancy, people will smile at you when they see you walking on the street. Enjoy these moments. By the end of your pregnancy, they will be shocked instead.
· Your world will become smaller and smaller; the things you used to find important will start to matter less and less. This might seem frightening to you right now, but it’s actually quite a nice sensation.
· You will feel overwhelmed, not up for it at times, exhausted, panicked, and daunted.
· After all of it is over, a very smart and helpful hormone will make you forget about all of the above and make you not tell anyone else.
And then, finally, D-day! I find a house full of friends who come to paint the nursery. The only thing I have to do, is get the paint and prepare lunch. J
29 wks Holidays!
One week off and I am prepared. First, I visit family and friends up north. The train ride is very relaxing; the humming sound of the engine works as some kind of lullaby, because I have trouble staying awake. In Eindhoven I hop on a bus to Steensel, where my brother lives. I’ve been on the bus many times before and spot my exit far ahead, but I’m still dumbfounded when the bus whizzes by my stop and I realize that I forgot to push the I-want-out-button. There is only one busstop in the whole village, so I rush to tell the bus driver that I should’ve gotten off the bus. He looks at me like I’m either very stupid or very drunk, gives me a sermon for all passengers to hear, then drops me off at the edge of the village.
In The Hague I visit Sytske, who takes me to a Liberation Day concert. Some kind of loud band and we are standing right in front. The baby hears the drums and starts kicking like a maniac. I don’t know if this is approval kicking or disapproval, so I can’t make any predictions as to whether my boy will be a punk rocker or not. Personally, I found the music a bit nauseating somehow, so we headed home.
After my mini-tour of Holland it’s Home Improvement Day. I rent a polishing machine for four hours. The nursery has a wooden floor that needs a makeover. And when my brother-in-law can’t make it last minute, my mother steps in to help. My mother is a 72-year-old tough woman! The only problem is that we are both barely strong enough to carry the machine up the two flights of stairs to the room. By the time we finally reach the right floor, one out of the four hours has already passed. The ensuing two are hectic; mum in the middle of a cloud of dust, because the dustbag keeps falling off the machine, me bringing coffee upon coffee to keep her going. A couple of times the machine manages to pry itself loose from my mother’s hands and goes on a polishing spree in all the wrong places. Then we have to go through the ordeal of carrying the monster back down the stairs The result of one day of struggling: a very creatively polished floor!
My last holiday highlight is a trip to Antwerp with Maarten. We shop, we eat, we sightsee, I pee. I pee A LOT! And the thing about public toilets in Belgium, I found out, is that they charge insane amounts of money. Some toilets cost me € 0,50 to pee! By the time we head back to Maastricht I’ve sponsored Antwerp for about 5 euros in urinal expenses.
30 wks
The nursery floor quickly develops into a small disaster. The wood-dye I bought turns out to be too light, the second can too red. Either way, it looks like someone burnt the floor or something. My mom puts on a new layer every day while I’m at work and every night I get home to see a bit of improvement, but not a lot. The floor stresses me out immensely. I want to do something myself to better the situation, but apart from dragging more and more cans of dye to the house, I’m stuck.
The lady from the maternity care agency announced her upcoming visit a few weeks ago. But now, the day before she actually arrives, I’m getting nervous. Does this woman want to see my entire house? Because the nursery is far from finished. The floor is a wreck, there are boxes everywhere and I need to clean the bathroom. I have laundry lying around and didn’t pay my bills yet – they’re in a big pile on the table. I’m starting to fear some kind of reprimand by the agency. If they are supposed to take over my household for a week, I better make some changes quickly! – something like that.
I couldn’t have been more wrong. The lady comes in, sits down and shows me the fabric she just bought at the market. Delfts Blauw – totally the fashion these days. Cosy small talk from the get-go. I like her immediately. She doesn’t want to see the whole house either. She just wants to tell me the general procedure of the agency, the stuff I need to get ready and she wants to know if I plan to breastfeed or not. When she leaves, I tell myself to stop worrying and to start enjoying the unexpectedness of whatever is to come. I plan to succeed in this effort by week 35…
