Craftiness returns!

Today Mary is twelve weeks old today!

We've started trying to get back into some of our old activities since Mary's settled into more of a routine. There are a couple of projects I really wanted to get done for Mary's nursery - one being a homemade pouf and the other is a hanger for the baby monitor to get it off the crib mattress.

Better Homes & Gardens had a DIY Pouf project that was all over Pinterest that I figured I would try. You can find instructions here.
It came out rather well, I think. Not an item you'd want to use during a pillow fight since it has a few pairs of Jamie's old jeans, lots of t-shirts, stuffing, scrap fabric, a full size lamp, the kitchen sink, and whatever else I could find to shove in there. They are not kidding when it says you'll need LOTS of stuffing.
It weighs a ton.

I had quite a bit of fabric left over and I've been wanting to make something to hang the monitor on to keep it off the crib mattress and get the cord out of baby reach. I had an idea in my head of how I wanted it to hang and just wasn't sure how it was going to work out. And you know how ideas in your head work out in practice....sometimes they don't always match.
So I went for it.


 I added a little flower stitch to give it something fun. Not that you can see it when the monitor is hanging on it, but I know it's there!

This is one example where what was in my head matched what happened in outside of my head. It hangs perfectly! I think it might be a new baby shower gift! I'm going to add another little 'pocket' to run the power cord through before plugging it into the monitor - this way once the baby gets older there isn't a chance for little fingers to grab the cord and pull on it.

Next I'm working on a car seat cover to keep Mary protected from the sun and wind. I pulled the pattern off Pinterest as well (found here). The 'instructions' are more like guidelines which I like because it leaves room for creativity.

 

I'm hoping to get back to knitting pretty soon!

 

Here's a photo from today to mark the twelfth week since Mary arrived!

 

 

A Stork Story

I originally started this post as a full disclosure of what happened the night Mary was born - play-by-play. It doesn't really seem like the way to go about telling the story though. At least not in this form....all out in the open. Telling the story of how Mary arrived touches very closely to the death of my mother (who she happens to be named after) and having those experiences looking back at me from the black and white text on a computer screen is slightly too exposed at the moment. I'll have to work up to that post. I'll keep working on it and hopefully be able to click 'Publish' once I get it all straightened out.

For now, I'll give a shortened version without so much of the first-hand narrative.

I went into labor naturally - starting around 12:30 am, building up to regular consistent contractions about four minutes apart around 2:30am, went to the hospital around 10:30am, decided at about noon that I was going to need an epidural, didn't get the epidural until about 2pm, didn't start pushing until about 8pm, we took a 20 minute break around 10pm or so, and three sets of pushes later Mary was born. It was a very LONG labor. Typically these 'breaks' don't work this way (with the baby arriving afterward), but given the fact I hadn't eaten since the evening before and was going on about four hours of sleep it worked for us. The issue was the hospital staff and my doctor were planning for a C-section, not a delivery ten minutes after our little break. So, once Mary was finally crowning, the doctor was about 10 minutes away and the nurses instructed me to stop pushing in order to wait for her arrival. The issue was that Mary's heartrate began to drop drastically during those very long mintues. There was some discussion over delivering or not that ended with my doctor arriving at the nick of time and immediately delivering. Mary was born with meconium present, the cord wrapped around her neck, and she was not breathing.
She was 'bagged' (I'm no doctor so you're going to have to just follow along) and within minutes was breathing. By the time they moved her to the nursery she was fighting the tubes so they removed them and she was breathing pressurized room air within minutes of being born. Shortly after, she was stablized and everything appeared fine. Jamie ran to grab me food. My doctor came into my room to tell me there might be an issue with Mary - it appeared she was having a seizure and she would need to be air lifted to San Antonio. I got to make the phone call to Jamie to inform him to come back to the hospital as soon as he could.
The neonatal specialist came in to explain the details of her condition. Jamie got back just in time for this update. The short version of what was explained to us was her posturing and movements could be a seizure - the equipment to verify this was not available at the hospital we were at - if she was having a seizure it could be a sign of something more seriously wrong (brain damage). The procedure for minimizing organ damage called 'cooling' must be performed within six hours after birth for the best results. Mary's test results for pH and other indicators were borderline to indicate potential damage. The neonatal specialist decided it would be best to transfer her to San Antonio in order to perform the cooling procedure and where an EEG could be performed. Mary was brought into my room for about five minutes by the airflight crew before being flown to San Antonio - this was the first time I was able to see her. Typically you're able to spend a bit more time, but the weather was deteriorating and they had a very small window to get her back to San Antonio. An ambulance came to transfer me to San Antonio - we arrived around 4 am.
The NICU was still getting Mary hooked up and performing tests and asked that I wait to come to see her. Jamie had driven home given the fact that he had also been up for over 24 hours and could not be driven (by helicopter or otherwise) to San Antonio - it was safer for him to get some sleep and head up to SA in the morning. My sister, Heather, who had been at the New Braunfels hospital with me until midnight or one in the morning drove up to SA to meet me there and stay with me. We met up with her, checked into my room, and we slept for a couple of hours.
The order of things gets fuzzy from here (probably due to the lack of sleep), but I went home Sunday night and the next seven days were spent driving back and forth to downtown San Antonio (a 45 minute drive one way). It was very hard but we kept receiving positive news from each test. Her EEGs all came back normal, her clavical that was broken was healing very quickly, she was gaining weight back, she was responsive. We could see her improvements each day.

I cannot express the relief we felt when we finally got to bring her home. I sat in the back seat of the truck with her and couldn't help but cry from the overwhelming happiness I was feeling just by being able to bring her home. We were a family.

Now, we're adjusting to the craziness that having a little person brings into a household. We are extremely lucky however in that she is sleeping 8-10 hours a night already and eats like a horse.

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Nesting my ass

Nesting....

This word offends me. It offends me so much that I almost feel it's wrong to be offended by it.

What exactly does this mean??

According to dictionary.com it has nothing to do with being pregnant:
verb (used with object)

8. to settle or place (something) in or as if in a nest: to nest dishes in straw. 

9. to fit or place one within another: to nest boxes for more compact storage.

According to articles about pregnancy nesting is: "Reorganizing the closets, alphabetizing the spice rack, and thwarting dust-bunny breeding efforts under the bed? Welcome to a pre-labor ritual that helps get your home ready for the baby, and helps you pass the time."

Here's my problem: that definition above is me....all the time. I always alaphabetize spice racks and cds and dvds and worry about dust bunnies under the bed. And lets not even get me started on closets....closets are my favorite rooms in a house and they deserve LOTS of attention.

So why, just because I'm pregnant do these household chores become a label?

I read another article (that I cannot find right now) that said nesting "was preparing a place for your baby to sleep". Who doesn't prepare a place for their baby to sleep? Better yet, who wouldn't? If I wasn't thinking about providing a place for the little thing to sleep, wouldn't I be unfit? So, how is a logical thought process for preparing for something as life changing as adding another human being into your household labelled as 'nesting'??

Have you ever watched a bird build a nest? I have. They carry it out with devotion and it happens rather quickly.

Perhaps I'm offended by this term because I am constantly trying to improve our house in everyway - organization, cleanliness, asthetically - and think it is completely outrageous that all that hard work to improve our household should not be watered down to one measly word: 'nesting'.

I'm not nesting. I'm preparing for a child. When you buy a dog, do you make sure it has a water bowl, food bowl, a place to sleep, and somewhere to be safe (like a kennel)? Yes, so why isn't that called nesting?

More irritating to me is when people apply the 'nesting' term to my knitting. No, I am not knitting because I am 'nesting'. I'm knitting because I like to knit gosh darn it. I've been knitting for almost three years and let me tell you, I have NOT been nesting for that long!

Anyway, I think this is why I haven't knitted the poor new little girl anything yet.

I hope she knows I love her anyway.

I still have a month.