The most epic birth announcement EVER!

My daughter is pretty epic.  Of course, I am bias, but that is besides the point.  She is now 5 weeks old and does a lot.  Holds her head up, smiles and laughs (more so of a grunt or squeak), actually interacts with you, she is just so awesome. Oh! And the fact that she usually sleeps between 6-8 hours per night!

So with my awesome baby, I thought it would only be appropriate for her to have an awesome birth announcement.  Here it is!

Yes, her middle name really is Adventure

3 weeks and counting

As of yesterday Charlotte is now 3 weeks old.  I will say, for a three week old she is pretty awesome.  She already lets us sleep about 4-5 hours a night.  She is very alert and active, and does cute things.  Not much to update as life with a baby is full of poopy diapers, crying, and feeding, but as we get closer to ren faire and halloween and such, I am sure I will post more.  Here are some more pictures of the awesome kids!

Here is another picture for you. I swear one day, I will have a picture of the two of us together.

12 days and counting.

Charlotte is 12 days old today.  Still little, and cute, and still makes squeaking noises when she is excited or hungry.  Everyone talks about this sleep deprivation thing when the baby comes home, to be honest...we haven't experienced it at all.  We are night owls anyway, so we are always awake at night.  My husband is part robot, so he works on about 4-6 hours of sleep per night on a daily basis.  As for me, having fibromyalgia means that I never really get comfortable enough to fall into a deep sleep, so I am always waking up every two to three hours or so to try to find a more comfortable position.

Now, onto the fun things that have happened within the first 12 days.  I've been pooped and peed on. My husband, lucky him, has only been peed on.  The baby loves to spit up at the most convienent times.  Today she spit up on my touch screen phone.  The whole screen was covered in baby spit up.  And then she smiled at me, as if her little adorable smile was going to make things better,

It did.

She loves to listen to music and have us sing to her.  She is a very musical child.  Her alert time, she coos and squeaks and smiles and is just awesome.

Here are some pictures of her from today!

My baby likes to play the air guitar.

The Meaning of Life (yes, a Monthy Python reference)

My little bean is here!!! Charlotte Adventure was born on Wednesday, August 24th at 5:21pm. :) 7.7lbs and 19inches long.

I started having contractions on Tuesday, August 23rd, 10 minutes before the earthquake that hit the east coast (yay my first earth quake!).  I thought nothing of it, mainly because the next day we were going into the hospital to be induced since I was "late" and we were concerned because of my gastric bypass.

The contractions got stronger throughout the day, and by 9:30pm when I had to go pick up my husband, I knew they were real contractions.  But since my water didn't break, I still waited it out.  My husband then decided to "talk" to my vagina (he literally placed his head at my vagina and talked to it, and told the baby to come on out.  At midnight, I stood up, felt a gush of liquid, and it was blood, so off to the hospital we went.

Contractions were definitely getting stronger, but still tolerable.  I was admitted, and from there we waited.  I wasn't dilating properly (my inner cervix was dilated more than the outer), so I had a foley bulb placed, and after a short time it fell out on it's own.  Then started the real fun!


I started progressing fairly quickly. I went from 4cm to 8cm in about an hour. During this time, I had an epidural, which ended up wearing off. That made me sad.  Funny thing is, I wasn't crying or screaming. I would just close my eyes, and breathe through it, and occasionally moan or make a joke with my husband.  The doc came in, gave me an extra dose, but it didn't work. So they redid the epidural, and I was ok for a while.  All of a sudden I felt the most intense pain on my left side, turns out the epidural failed again.  So they gave me MORE medicine and by that time I was ready to push. Even though I could totally feel everything (at this point I had wanted a natural child birth, but boy was I glad that I was flexible with what I wanted)

I only pushed for 23 minutes, the midwife said I pushed like a rock star, I had a first degree tear that required two stitches (woot!) and that was that.  When the baby came out and they placed her on my chest, I was in shock, then me being me I said, "holy shit! we have a baby!"

They checked her out and she was perfect.  She actually fought the nurse who was cleaning her up and such, so she is quite strong.  My husband was the first to hold her.  She was wide awake and alert, and about 5 minutes after, she started to suckle on her own, so she was ready for breastfeeding!

My sister in law and nurses kept commenting on how good I looked right after childbirth.  Apparently I jumped back to being my normal self once they had me cleaned up and such.

I am so glad my little bean is here. We are home and doing great. She feeds like a champ!

And then there were three...

Our duo is now a trio, as we have introduced a new life into this world.  My husband and I welcomed our daughter, Charlotte Adventure into this world on Wednesday August 24th at 5:21 p.m.  Now, I will tell you this, birth is not all sunshine and rainbows that Lifetime movies make it out to be.  Our birthing experience, was quite amusing actually.  Between the random blurting of obscene things during contractions, to the naps, the Facebook games, the poo (oh my, there was poo), the commentary that I pushed like a rock star, my birth was anything but the lovely moment that is portrayed on t.v.

For goodness sake, when they handed her to me as soon as she was born, what was my response?  "Holy shit, we have a baby!"

So for now, I just wanted to let you all know that the little bean is here, and perhaps sometime this week or next I will post the full (and funny) birth story to share. 

Earthquakes and Contractions

About 10 minutes ago, there was an earthquake.  Apparently it was felt all the way from Virginia up into New York. We felt it here in Delaware.  At first I thought i was going crazy. Then I thought my neighbors were wrestling an elephant upstairs (which they seem to do quite often), but no.  Thanks to the awesomeness of Facebook, it was confirmed that it was indeed an earthquake.  Now, about 10-15 minutes BEFORE the earthquake, I started having contractions.  We are now joking that my contractions brought on the earthquake and the baby is all powerful!

That is all for today, unless of course we have another earthquake or my contractions get stronger and we go to the hospital.

Crafting Craze: Rosettes

One of the things I love to do is to sew/craft.  I'm one of those people where if I see something in the store my mind automatically goes, "I can make that".  And 9 times out of 10 I usually end up making it.  Now in rare cases do I see something at such a good price I just have to buy it.  Or sometimes, I don't have the fabrics/materials on hand to make the item that I love, so I end up buying it.

Anywho, one of the things that I have fallen in love with this summer is fabric rosettes.  I LOVE them.  I'm not even a big flower person to be honest.  A few months into the pregnancy, I got bored and made a dress using an old shirt (that didn't fit over my belly anymore) and some fabric.  The belt I made for it, had some rosettes on it, and since then I have been hooked on making fabric flowers!

 

Now, don't ask me where this dress is because honestly I have no idea.  I made it when I was bored and I was only 25 weeks.  It since then disappeared into the abyss known as our walk in closet.

There are a bunch of tutorials out there, but here are some for you to check out. I used the tutorial from the first one listed.

http://littlebirdiesecrets.blogspot.com/2010/09/fabric-rosette-tutorial-extravaganza.html
http://www.freckledlaundry.com/2010/07/fabric-rosette-tutorial.html
http://www.tipjunkie.com/fabric-flower-tutorials/
http://mommagetsreal-nicky.blogspot.com/2011/04/fabric-rosette-tutorial.html

Since I am typically a night owl, and can't really get comfortable enough to sleep in a hospital, I know that once I do go into labor I am going to need something to do to keep my mind off of the crazy womb pain and then to calm me while the baby sleeps and I still can't get sleep. 

Planning...Or so you thought

I suppose one thing (among the MANY) that I have learned about pregnancy and impending parenthood is that plans go out the freaking window.  Now I am not totally anal retentive on planning things, but I am a planner.  I enjoy planning things out, and sticking to them.  I usually have plans in case my first set of plans fall through.  But as the title of the post indicates, planning is one of those things that you plan for (lots of use of the world plan here) but it may not always happen.  So let's start with how the plans in my life went to the wayside.

1-I was born and raised in New York. Planned to go to college there, my friends and I were going to be the next Sex and the City (yay for life expectations!).  I was going to go to college, get an amazing job, and be all city life.  How did those plans go?

Well...at 18 we moved from New York to Delaware. I ended up meeting my now husband at 18 (we were married when I was 23).  I started going to renaissance faires. I started my own business.  And I met a lot of amazingly nerdy people. 

2-A while ago, right after we were married, I was having some "womb issues".  Without getting into detail, I was told that I would not be able to conceive naturally.  My husband and I talked about it, and being the planner that he is, we both decided that if the world doesn't end in 2012 (according to the Mayan calendar-he is really into that sort of stuff) then we would try for a baby. Until then, we would just live life and have fun doing the things we do.

So, how did that go? Well I am now pregnant!  I conceived in November of 2010 and baby is due any day now.  She apparently decided that she wanted to make her mark early.  This, we are both very excited about.

And a side note, my husband saw me blogging, and wants to say "Hello" to all of you.

Now that we are pregnant, let's get into my pregnancy plans!

Plan A, we were going to have an all natural birth.  Go to a birthing center, do a water birth and all that jazz.  We started out on that route, and it was all fine and dandy and I was excited.  After a few weeks and health check, it was decided that because of my previous gastric bypass (only 1 year before I became pregnant) and other past health issues, it would be best for me to go to our hospital.  So yeah, that plan...out the window!  Now admittedly, I was a bit sad to not be able to do it "my way", but the ultimate goal was that we were having a baby, and as long as she and I were healthy (which we are), then I'd give birth on an airplane if I had to.

Plan B, ok so we move our prenatal care to the hospital.  Not bad at all. The doctors and nurses love them (as my husband makes everyone laugh), and everything is going well.  We write out our birthing plan, and as the days get closer to the due date, which was August 18, we wait. 

We continue to wait.

Due date comes, and we have an appointment scheduled.  I get checked, membranes stripped, we discussed our birth plan with our doctor, and realize that more than likely it is going to go out of the window.  Which is not a bad thing, because we are still healthy and happy, it's just a waiting game right about now. 

And by Wednesday, August 24th, we have another appointment scheduled to see what happens with the little bean that is baking.

In the end, plans are just that, plans.  They don't guarantee an event is going to go as you want it, and the most important thing is to be flexible and open to changes.  Which we don't have a problem with.  So here's to all you parents that plan, see those plans fall through, and still keep on going!

The waiting game

And here I wait. It's one day past the due date, and my cervix is like Fort Knox.  So now it is all up to the baby to finish cooking and pop out when she is ready.  Will it be at home or when I am out and about?  I have no idea.  In the meantime, I have been cleaning and cleaning and watching crime shows and blogging (well what do ya know!) and such.

Here is a picture of the little beans bassinet.

 

Yes, she has a pink Sock Monkey.  I squealed when we saw it in the store. She will be too young to recognize what it is, so I will be keeping it safe until she is older and can actually play with it.

I'm still trying to figure out how to get some of the blog features set up.  For some reason I can't get the followers or "follow this blog" to show up, and that is annoying. But then again, everything is annoying right now.

Here is a comic that should make you laugh. My husband sends me a comic every day, and the storyline has pretty much been paralleling our life (coincidence?). 

www.RealLifeComics.com

And with that, I shall be hopping off. Till next time!

And then it began

Hello all!  This is my first blog post here.  The first blog post is always the weirdest.  Sort of like going on a date that was set up by your friend only to realize that you and said date have absolutely nothing in common.  Then, you are stuck with the inevitably awkward "So, tell me about yourself" conversation.  Well, I hope that this post is not that awkward and to start I will tell you a little story that I read a few years back from some random place on the web...

A guy and a girl go on a date.  The date is heading for disaster as both are terribly shy.  There is a couple with their three year old daughter sitting at the next table who just happened to learn the differences between boys and girls.  (Need I say more?).  The adorable little girl, looks over and sees the couple.  Not knowing the boundaries of social conversation the little girl says hello and then proceeds to say. 

"You are a boy. You have a penis."  The guy looks mortified.  Before the dad can grab his angelic little daughter, she then looks at the girl and says, "You are a girl, NO PENIS FOR YOU!". 

Quite a story to tell their grandchildren 40 or so years down the line.

Now, that we have broken the ice, we can now move on past that weird stage!  So, what is this blog about?  Well it's about everything!  But mainly parenting and life and everything that comes in between.  There are a lot of funny parenting blogs that I read on a semi daily basis, and I too wanted to get in on this as I find myself to be funny and weird and sarcastic.  And if I haven't mentioned it before...nerdy.  Sometimes, with the events that happen in our life, I swear I am surprised to learn that we are not on a hidden camera reality show.  But being that that is not the case, this blog will be our outlet for our parenting stories and tips and tricks and all that jazz.  In this blog you can find crafting tutorials, stories, reviews, random ramblings and all that good stuff. 

If we make at least one parent smile while their child is bashing them over the head with a teething ring and drooling on the keyboard, then we are happy to share!