Phoebe's blessing

We blessed Phoebe on August 12, 2012. She was only two weeks old so I was a little nervous about bringing her in public, but we really wanted my parents here for the blessing so it was the best time to do it. It turned out to be a great day and Tyson gave a wonderful blessing.

My mom brought my blessing dress from home which was made by my grandma and has my name and birthday stitched into the lining. Isn't it amazing!! The details on it are gorgeous.

So glad to have our little Phoebs in our home!

Phoebe's birthday

So, in case you haven't heard, I had my baby!

Phoebe Lynn was born July 29, at 1:30 p.m. and she was 6 lbs 11 oz, 19 1/4 in. long.

Naturally, since I've now had two kids I can't help but compare the two births. Phoebe's was easier than Logan's (Logan's birth part 1, Logan's birth part 2). In so many ways.

You can go back and read his story if you want, but for this post I'll keep it short with a picture demonstration.

Mari after Logan.

Mari after Phoebe.

 Really, there's nothing more to say about that.

Let's look at the full-term pregnancy pictures too, just for kicks.

Logan.

Phoebe. (we took this right before we left for the hospital)

So, her birth story needs to start the Friday before she was born. I went to a regular doctor visit to get checked out. We had decided to do an induction the next Wednesday and I was super excited to have a date for the baby. Logan was late and since her due date was that Wednesday I was thrilled that I wouldn't have to go overdue (which I accidentally just spelled overdie and is exactly what going overdue feels like) again. 

As I was putting my pants back on (don't think about that too much) my slightly sweaty toe got caught in the fabric. Being enormously pregnant and already off balance does not bode well for trying to stand on one foot for any period of time. 

I awkwardly hopped and tried to work my foot through the leg of my pants but to no avail. 

I was going down.

But I was worried about landing on the hard floor on my belly and there was nothing to grab onto so I jerked my foot down to break my fall. 

And somehow broke my toe. 

 It's really the best days that get TWO visits to a doctor.

So that hurt.

And, as a little more background to the story, Tyson got some sort of fevery flu on Friday night, and Tyson's family was in Utah for a reunion until Sunday night.

The weekend was not a good time to have a baby.

But alas, she had other plans.

Sunday morning at 4:30 am I rolled over in bed and felt a little trickle. My first thought was "huh, I didn't realize I had to pee that bad." Bladder control can be a bit of an issue at this point in pregnancy but I thought I had been doing pretty well until then. So I went to the bathroom and laid back down. Rolled over and felt another trickle.

Huh.

Now I was feeling suspicious.

So I got up again, put a pad on and limped around my bedroom for a few minutes to see if anything else would happen. Tyson was sleeping in the guest room since he didn't want to infect me with his fever and I didn't want to wake him up if I was really just wetting myself.

Well it didn't take long for me to decide that yes, my water broke (just like in the movies! but not) and I should probably let Tyson know.

"Hey babe? I'm pretty sure my water broke but I'm not having contractions or anything so there's no rush. In fact, I'm going to take a shower before we leave so you can just go back to sleep. No big deal."

I love that I thought he'd be able to sit back and relax after I told him that.

So I did take a shower and got ready while texting a few friends trying to work out child care for Logan. I was planning on waiting until he woke up to leave, but as I was trying to pick something up off the floor a gush of water came and soaked through my pants. Which made me suddenly nervous and I decided that we should go ahead and leave right then.

Poor Tyson, who had been obeying my instructions to take it easy, didn't even get breakfast before I rushed him out the door. My bad.

We got checked into the hospital around 6:30 and after blowing the first vein she tried, the nurse finally got me hooked up to an iv.

I was glad when that was over because I had lots of people to text that morning.

After being hooked up for a while and getting fluids going, we decided to start pitocin around 9:30 because my body wasn't contracting on its own.

As the contractions started getting going I really wanted to walk through them. It took forever for me to get hooked up to the monitors because my stomach was a weird shape (?) and they were sliding off but I finally got out of the room.

For about 10 minutes.

I only made one round through labor and delivery when my doctor called me back in. The baby's heart rate was dropping with each contraction and my doctor was worried that the cord was being pinched.

Back in bed :(

They couldn't find a place where the cord was being pinched but they wanted a better read on her heartbeat so they put an internal monitor on Phoebe's head. It took three tries and three separate monitors to finally get it hooked on there and the doctor got me all excited when she said it wasn't working very well because she must have lots of hair.

At this point I was dilated to a 5 and my doctor said if I wanted an epidural now would probably be a good time to do it. She thought the rest of my labor would go quickly and better now than never. I was happy to get one with her blessing.

Epidural went in easy around noon and 10 minutes later I was happily in no pain.

Bonus! Broken toe, also numb.

A couple minutes later the nurses handed me an oxygen mask to make sure the baby was getting what she needed even with her heart rate dropping. This was becoming eerily reminiscent of Logan's birth which ended painfully so I got a little freaked out at this point.

Since I was in labor for about 11 hours after I got the epidural for Logan, I was expecting several more hours of labor and settled down for the long haul.

About an hour after I had last gotten checked I was telling Tyson that I think I could feel some of that pressure that everyone talks about as the baby descends. I felt absolutely nothing with Logan and I was glad that I could feel a little bit this time.

Just a couple minutes after I told him that, the doctor came in because she wanted to check me one more time before lunch.

Good thing because I was at a 10 and ready to go!

Before I even started pushing the doctor told me that she could see her head and that she had tons of hair. I got excited again and she asked if I wanted a mirror.

Um. No.

We chatted as we waited for a contraction and I eyed the clock because I wanted to keep track of how long I was going to push for. Since I had a vacuum assisted delivery with Logan I wasn't really sure if I knew how to push or not.

One contraction and three pushes later she was out.

It took like 30 seconds.

Whoa.

I had to get an episiotomy because I had so much scar tissue from before and the doctor was worried I would tear really badly through that if she didn't control it a little. But it turns out a second degree tear is way better than a third degree and recovery has been so much easier.

They weren't lying about the hair. And apparently warm baths and having it brushed are totally her thing.

I have to admit that leaving the hospital was way harder this time. It was so nice to have some quiet bonding time with her without any interruptions. I missed my Logie boy, but I loved being able to focus on just her for a little while. Also, people would bring me cranberry juice mixed with sprite whenever I wanted.

Naturally I've tried on every headband she has and now I'm dying to get a million more just to see what they look like.

Before we knew it, it was time to take her home and start our life as a family of four!

Our first family picture :)

Don't worry, things got better.

Baby girl's room

So I'm pretty sure her room isn't finished, in fact, I have canvases set aside that I want to do something with, but I haven't quite figured that out yet so for now, most likely until she's born, it's done. 

I've never been very good at matching colors in my head so I have like 5 different pinks happening in here but oh well. 

My friend Lauren made this elephant (and she sells these adorable knitted creations in her etsy shop if you want one, btw) and Logan fell in love with it the second he grabbed it for a snuggle. It may end up being his...

 I found this little elephant at goodwill and it was a little creepy. White spray paint once again saves the day!

 I found a tutorial and modified it to make these curtains turn out the way I had them in my head. It would have been a great $20 project except that my sewing machine bit the dust halfway through so I bought a new one. $220 curtains just don't have quite the same appeal. 

This is going to be a guest bedroom for a little while still so the bed had to stay. Kinda made it easier for me to decorate since I decided to only commit to half the room :)

So here's what it looked like before... 

And after!

Spoon mirror

Have you guys seen this fabulous chrysanthemum mirror floating around the internets?

As soon as I saw it on Addicted 2 Decorating I pinned it and vowed that I would make it happen!

She's got a great tutorial on it so if you want to make one yourself you should go there first to see how it's done. 

There were a few things I did differently though, so I'll share in case you are in the same boat I'm in.

First, I bought 200 spoons which was not enough. I used 300. Second, even though I bought the cheapest ones I could find, I couldn't cut them with scissors so I sawed a notch just at the handle and snapped them by hand. When I tried breaking them without the notch they were really hard to snap, and didn't always break cleanly.

I also couldn't find the wreath forms she used (probably because I was too lazy to go to Michael's and they didn't have them at Joann's) so I cut up a cardboard box we had laying around. I traced our Christmas tree stand to get my large circle and a plate for the small circle.

And then there was much gluing. I used a hot glue gun which was perfect. Just be sure to have PLENTY of glue sticks on hand. This was also the point where I realized I should have taken more care to cut off as much handle as possible. It gets in the way if it's too long, and I had to pull off several spoons that were messing me up.

Once I got my spoons glued on I took it outside and gave it a coat of primer. You should prime your cardboard first by the way. Just... do it. It'll save you time and contorting your body trying to cover the little cardboard bits peeking through. 

Once I primed, I got to work painting. I wanted the ombre look like my inspiration, so I chose one color and added more and more white to it for each row. After I got every petal done and dried I sprayed the whole thing with a shellac to make it shiny.

Once that was dry I glued the mirror and a ribbon for hanging on the back. I used both a hot glue gun and my trusty E-6000 to keep the mirror really stuck on there.

It looks like this :)

Then I hung it in my baby girl's room :)

Hooray! I love it when a craft delivers. Especially when it costs me less than $15.

Instagram Birthday

Told ya I was addicted. Oh well. 

So... I turned 29 a few weeks ago. I don't like thinking about this being the last year in my 20's so I try not to dwell on it too much. I love the 20's!!

Anyway, I woke up that morning and lounged in bed for a little while (wonderful!) until a little munchkin came to wish me a "happy". Guess he forgot the rest of his line. Then we headed to Krispy Kreme for some delicious doughnuts and ate them at home with two breakfast beverages. Sometimes the drinks are the best part of the meal. 

While we were eating Logan though he'd help me open a present, and then I went and got ready for the day.

Tyson sent me off for a solo shopping trip while he cleaned the house (prince!) and I had a great time trying on clothes and shoes. 

Sidenote about those pants I'm wearing: I hadn't worn them in weeks and when I put them on I discovered they still sorta fit! And by fit, I mean with a hair elastic keeping the button closed of course. But still! I was very impressed with myself. Anyway, when I took them off that night I discovered not one, but two holes in the bum/crotch area where my pants were being torn apart. So I guess I'm at the point where I can only get pre-pregnancy pants on if they are literally ripping at the seams. Sad. 

After shopping I went out to my car and... it wouldn't start. Oh no! I was just about to call Tyson when I thought I'd try one more time, and that's when it started and I made it home.

Prediction: Both cars will die right after the baby is born and we will spend more money in one month than our lifetimes to date.  

After lunch I opened the rest of my presents and the boys went for a bike ride while I worked on a project for young womens. Oh! And a sweet friend stopped by to bring me flowers on my special day.

Later that night we had family over for jimmy johns (I ususally like pizza on my birthday but the heartburn is just soooo bad. :( ) and then we had cheesecake for my birthday treat. 

It was a delicious and wonderful day, thanks to my fantastic family and friends. 

Here goes 29!