On the 5th of October at 1:49 pm J was born. I was assisted by a midwife and a student at the RBWH. H was with me at the birthing suite. The labour was much shorter this time around. About 3 hrs, that's because we didn't go to the hospital till late (when it was to painful to bear and that the contractions are 5 minutes apart lasting for a minute each).  Earlier in the day I had mild contractions, like period pain, but I opted to stay home and do my chores. Waiting for a baby to come can take a long time, it's much better being at home where one can relax. At about 9 pm when I had a bigger bloody show then everything just happened. We were lucky that D agreed to babysit P for us, even though it was late in the evening. I just wanted him to be at home in his own bed. If we had brought him with us, he might have become distressed because I was in soo much pain, plus H was preoccupied by moi screaming at him and anything I can think of...

Overall the birth went smoothly (morphine did not kick in for J came out right after they gave me the needle) my midwife let me screamed my head off, she was not pushy (being in your face "yey push push, now stop" kind). Just like our previous birthing experience H cut the cord (he said it felt odd, cutting through flesh) and he was able to go home at 4 am and be there when P woke up. My boys took the day off (work and school) and they visited us later in the day. It was more than I can ask for...

According to Wikipedia a muffin is somewhat like a small cake, and though it does resemble a cupcake, in that they both have cylindrical bases and rounded conical tops, they usually are not as sweet as cupcakes and generally lack frosting.

Once September kicks in it's strawberry season. I love buying them for they are cheap as chips and P loves them too. You do have make sure you get the really red ones as they are naturally sweeter and you wouldn't need to add sugar when you eat it.

What do you do when you have far too much strawberries? Bake them, puree them, make fruit salads and anything else you can think of. In this case I decided to try a new recipe that I found from the container of strawberries.

Strawberry Ricotta Muffins

Ingredients:

• 250 g strawberries, hulled and roughly chopped
• 2 1/2 cups self raising flour
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 2/3 cup of castor sugar
• 2 eggs
• 3 tsp melted butter
• 1 cup milk
• 1 cup ricotta
• demerara sugar (to sprinkle)
  

Preheat oven to 180 C. Sift flour and cinnamon into large bowl, add castor sugar and stir to combine. Place eggs, butter and milk in a bowl, whisk to combine. Add liquid ingredients to dry ingredients and stir till just combined. Add 3/4 ricotta and strawberries into mix, stir lightly. Fill 12 muffin cases and top with strawberry and a dollop of ricotta, sprinkle with sugar, bake 20-25 minutes.