Taylor's Birth Story Part 1: All the False Starts

Finally, here's Taylor Grace's birth story! Well, the first part of it. The rest will be up next week. It only took 10 weeks :) 

My due date was April 13th, and since the hospital we used was a 2 hour drive from our house we decided that James would drive me down on Sunday, April 10th so I could stay with my parents. They live about 10 minutes from the hospital. The plan was for James to have dinner with us and then head back home. Before we left our house that day, I asked James to pack a bag for himself, just in case. 

Well, I started having contractions on the drive down. Nothing strong or consistent, but they were definitely there. They came and went throughout the day, and around dinner I thought maybe my water had broken. I'd listened to and read a lot of birth stories, and I knew it wasn't always a gush. Since I wasn't sure, James suggested I call one of the midwives and ask. He didn't want to leave if things were getting started. 

The nurse I spoke to suggested we come in and get checked. Since it was a Sunday night we had to go through the ER, which meant I was put in a wheelchair and wheeled back to the Labor & Delivery Triage. They hooked me up to all the machines and checked things out. I was having pretty regular contractions, but they weren't painful. It turned out my water hadn't broken either. The nurse who checked me informed that I was 90% effaced, 2 centimeters dilated, and the baby was at -1 station. She assured us we would have a baby soon, maybe within hours, but that we should go back to my parents' house and wait.

Note to all medical professionals: please don't tell a first time mom she will have her baby within hours unless you are positive she will. That tiny little sentence that the nurse probably never thought twice about definitely changed my birth experience. More on that later. 

That being said, I know L&D nurses work super hard and I'm so thankful for them. I'm sure this woman had no idea how much her words would affect me.

Thanks to the over excited nurse, James decided to stay the night. I started tracking contractions, but I was able to sleep because they still weren't terribly painful. We woke up Monday morning pretty sure we would have a baby that day. We went on a walk, I bounced on the yoga ball we'd brought, and we just hung out with my mom who had stayed home with us. By mid-afternoon the contractions were coming close together and getting strong, so we headed back to the hospital. Again I went to triage and they hooked me back up and checked me. I was 100% effaced and the baby was still at -1 station, but I hadn't dilated much more. The midwife suggested we go have dinner and walk around for a few hours, then come back. So we went to my favorite Mexican restaurant and walked up and down Main Street. We bought a red headband for the baby and a Melissa & Doug fire truck, then headed back to the hospital. Nothing had changed. I was still having pretty regular contractions, but they weren't strong or consistent enough. We went back to my parents' house and went back to walking up and down their long driveway.

Thankfully it was a pretty rainy week, so James ended up staying with me on Tuesday as well. At that point I gave up tracking the contractions and just went with it. I was trying various natural induction techniques (clary sage oil, eating pineapple, chugging pineapple juice, etc), but Tuesday came and went with little change.  I had my 40 week appointment on Wednesday, so we decided I'd just hold off until then. We also decided that James would get up early on Wednesday and go back to our house to check on our pets and get some more clothes. The bag he packed on Sunday wasn't meant to last this long. But he was going to try to make it back for my appointment. Meanwhile I kept trying things like chugging pineapple juice. (The plus side to all those visits to triage? I ended up with several of those hospital cups.)

Contractions started to pick up throughout Wednesday morning. They were getting closer together and I was really starting to feel them. James made it back just before my appointment, so we went in for my regularly scheduled appointment. However, when I was getting checked into my appointment they noticed that I was having contractions and sent me back to triage. 

Yes, that was my third time going to the triage area. 

They checked me yet again. I swear, there's something about that room that just shuts down my labor, because the contractions that were coming minutes apart nearly stopped completely. The midwife said I was a little more dilated than the previous visit, but not much. At this point the midwife started talking me into an induction. 

Here's part of the reason I ended up agreeing. One of my dear friends, whose baby was due three days after mine, had given birth earlier that day at the same hospital. She knew which midwife was on duty and who was coming up, and shared that knowledge with me. The midwife working that Wednesday was my least favorite one, and she would also be the midwife on call all weekend. The midwife scheduled to work on Thursday, the day they suggested I come in for an induction, was one of my favorites - she's also probably the crunchiest :)

That Wednesday afternoon, facing the prospect of being sent home yet again, I agreed to an induction the following morning after being assured that we could try several things before using Pitocin. This entire pregnancy I swore I wouldn't be induced, but there I was signing the papers. In addition to the midwife issue, I also think I was feeling pressure by family and James's work schedule. None of that pressure was intentional at all, but I was feeling it either way. And everything was magnified because we'd been so sure the baby was on her way on Sunday night!

I'm going to break here for now, and next time I'll share the actual story of her birth. I've already written most of that part, so it will be up next week. I promise! 

6 Weeks of Mommyhood

It's been 6 weeks since this little girl entered my life: 

I've been meaning to share our story (and I will! I've been working on it) but honestly I've just been learning how to be a work-at-home mom. I took exactly zero maternity leave (I talked to a client from the hospital the day after she was born), and it's been more of a challenge than I realized. Most days look something like this:

I naively assumed I'd work when the baby napped. But my darling little girl fights naps like a champion. She'll fall asleep just fine, but if try to lay her down she's wide awake within minutes. So I've learned to work one handed while I feed her or while she sleeps. Though I've started wearing her more, thanks to my investment in a couple wraps and carriers. (Definitely will be writing about this in detail eventually.) So sometimes work looks like this:

Basically I'm exhausted! She does sleep pretty well at night, only waking to eat. But I don't go to sleep when she does...I usually stay up too late trying to catch up on laundry or do dishes or make the house look less of a disaster. If I don't, then I lie in bed thinking about all the things I should be doing.

But we're figuring things out. I sleep when I can, I work when I can, and when I can't I'm trying to just soak in the newness of mommyhood. It involves dirty hair, spit up covered clothes, nursing pads, and lots of diapers (and not just for her...)

I'll be back to share her birth story, how the whole cloth diaper thing is going (spoiler alert: we're still working on it), and maybe some other things besides baby (like my Hamilton obsession).

Nursery Reveal: Rustic, Feminine, and Budget Friendly

It's finished! The nursery, that is. The rest of the house is still pretty much a disaster, but the nursery is light and airy and clean, and sometimes I go sit in there just because it is so peaceful. 

See what I mean? So calming! Even Coco loves to curl up on the changing table and sleep. I'm so excited about how everything turned out. I think it's a nice mix of style: a little rustic (real deer antlers definitely make an appearance) while also feeling feminine without being super girly. And definitely budget-friendly, since so many things were thrifted, hand-me-downs, or total DIY projects. But I think that makes me love our nursery so much more.

One of my favorite DIY projects is the ceiling fan. It used to be pastel, with each fan blade a different color. A few weeks ago I took the blades off and had James spray paint them gold. (He insisted, since it was too windy to paint outside and it probably wasn't wise for me to spray paint in the garage.) 

The blades could probably use another coat of paint, but I was impatient and wanted to get them back up there. With the leftover paint, I spray painted the little corner shelf. That little thing has led quite a life. My sister rescued it from the trash when she moved into her first apartment, and passed it on to me when she was done with it. It was black and had been shoved in a closet for awhile, but now that it has a fresh coat of paint it has a whole new life in the nursery.

The dresser and rocking chair were actually projects I started before getting pregnant. The dresser was a steal at our local thrift shop for $20, and I was super drawn to the chair at the same store so I snagged it too. I painted both of them with chalk paint, and I spray painted the hardware for the dresser. Well, I did for the bottom two drawers. The top drawer has new-to-me pulls. When I worked on the dresser I didn't really plan on it going in a nursery, but it's so perfect in here.

The old mirror was also from the local thrift store (The Old Store), as was the gold side table. The lamp is part of a pair I bought at the Salvation Army a couple years ago, and I love it so much. The barnwood frame came from an event The Old Store hosted last year, and the map in the frame is an awesome map of the history of America and the buffalo (from the local Bison Shop, appropriately enough). The diaper pail is really just a plain trash can from Wal-Mart that I put gold polk dot decals on. Nothing special, but it will get the job done and also look pretty! 

James mounted the apple crates that we'd used at our wedding, and I love them there. The top one holds the stuffed animals James and I used as babies, and the other one my stash of aden + anais swaddle blankets. The canvas in the corner is from Lindsay Letters and is just temporary - after we get newborn photos done, we'll be putting them there and moving that canvas back into our living room. 

We used the Hello Love banner at our wedding so I couldn't resist including it here. The crib was my Christmas present from my parents and one of the few new things in here! James prepped the cedar branch. I'd initially wanted to mount it on the wall over the crib, but I like it better just off to the side. Plus it seems a bit safer over there!

We're less than a month away from the due date now, and things are feeling very real. We have one more shower to go, and then we'll stock up on everything we are missing off our registries. But at this point we have all the important things. The only other big item we want/need is the bassinet, but we have the pack n play set up in our room right now, so that would work if we needed it too! But we have a good starter set of bottles (sterilized and ready to go), plenty of clothes (that are already washed and put away), car seats (installed and waiting baby), and diaper stash (cloth, anyway). 

I guess the waiting game starts now! I'll spend the next few weeks trying to get the rest of the house clean and ready, not to mention working my tail off on client work. Plus I'm in the process of rebranding and starting a collaboration with a web designer, so there's a lot going on right now. At least staying busy should keep me from fretting too much about when she's going to come :)

Previously on Mrs Robbins Sparkles...