Pippi - tentatively related to St Andrew (born on his Feast Day)

Pippi

Pippi is my beautiful daughter, she is currently 20 and is beautiful in body and soul.  She was born on 30^th November 1999, 3 weeks late.  I wanted to give birth to her at home, but she was three weeks late, so I had to go into hospital to be induced.  She still took another 24 hours to arrive, during which I had every form of pain relief going but we got there although as she was born she managed to swallow her poo and ended up with a bilateral pneumothorax, meaning she was in intensive care for 4 days. 

I had not had much experience with babies and was not sure what to do when she had an exploding nappy or cried for no apparent reason, but like most first time mums, we survived.  It is incredible where the 20 years have gone and despite her falling out of the bedroom window – covered in a previous post, swallowing a plastic jewel, and nearly choking to death and her incident at birth, she is well.

She is called Pippi, as a name she called herself when she was young, she was named Philippa which we assumed would get shortened to Pippa but Pippi has stuck.

I was extremely proud of her at 14 when she joined the Devon Scouts on an adventure in Botswana, where they helped local Scouts with building work, she was the youngest by over 2 years, and then again when she went on an adventure to Borneo with an organised group at 17, and despite passing out while scuba diving – not a great move, and having to go to hospital with so many insect bites that she looked like she had chicken pox, she survived both experiences, which I am sure she will remember for the rest of her life.  She became the third generation to go to Borneo, my Father had worked and lived there for some while when he was young, I went on holiday to see the orangutans and Pippi followed suit.

I am of course proud of both my children with everything they do, being away for four years in Australia was not easy, and something I would not recommend to anyone, but the times we got to spend together in those four years were very special.  Pippi and I went to London for a weekend before I moved to Australia and had a fab time, which I will detail in a different post.

Of course, I have so many memories of Pippi including dancing, karate, playing the flute, loving animals – picking her up from her child minders with a baby snake across her face (yuk) … and so much more.

I look forward to seeing her continue to grow as a person, perhaps having her own children, and I am sure a house full of animals.  She has got my love of nature and travel for sure.