3pm – Those are the words of my nurse. Contractions are definitely on the pain scale now. Last check was still 2-3cm though, so still quite a ways to go.
“Officially In Labor”
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Category Archives: Waiting for Bob
Here We Go
9:25am. Just starting Pitocin. Not really anything to report. Really like my nurses. Really hate being hooked up to machines.
And because this would be a rather boring update otherwise, here’s a couple pictures of the girls taken at the beginning of April. Hard to believe that less than two months ago we still had snow on the ground.
Can’t wait to share pictures of Baby Boy too!
On Our Way
Hospital says there’s room, so we’ll be checking in around 7:30am and see what happens after that! Thanks in advance for all the prayers, love and support!
Here’s the Plan…
Went and saw the midwife this morning. They checked my vitals and ran a non-stress test for the baby. “Everything is fine,” she said, “Baby’s fine, blood pressure is fine, weight gain is fine.”
So I just had to remind her that they said the exact same thing with Alethea and I ended up being induced anyway and giving birth to a 10lb baby, 17 days after her due date.
We mutually agreed to schedule an induction for tomorrow morning. So we have to call the hospital at 6am to make sure they have a bed available, but assuming I don’t get bumped, we at least get to try to get this baby out tomorrow. We’ll start with Pitocin and hope that gets things moving. If that doesn’t work though, my midwife has already warned me that she’s not going to try anything further tomorrow, so there is also a chance I’ll get sent home without a baby.
So we have a plan, but it’s an it-all-depends kind of plan. I’d appreciate any and all prayers that things go smoothly tomorrow. And I haven’t given up hope that Baby Boy will decide to come on his own in the next 12 hours. His big sister Lydia pulled off a just-before-inducement arrival and I’m praying it’ll happen again.
So tonight will be a nice long brisk-as-I-can-manage walk around the neighborhood, followed by hanging up the art I’ve finished and framed for the nursery.
After that, I think I might scrub down the bathroom, since I’m pretty sure that’s what put me into labor with Lydia. Yup, walking, art hanging, and bathroom cleaning. I know how to party, what can I say.
June Baby
Third baby. Third pregnancy going past my due date. But I am glad about one thing. I’m glad that I’ve gone far enough overdue that I’m going to have a June baby. It’s not really that important, but I grew up in a family where everyone had their own birth month, and I kind of liked it that way. So since Peter already had a corner on May in our family, I thought it would be nice if Baby Boy arrived in June. And with 12 minutes left until midnight, it appears that he will.
And bonus, the longer our little guy takes, the more things get checked off my to-do list. Today I finished planting my pepper plants, so “Plant Veggie Garden” is officially crossed off. I even started a perennial bed with strawberries and asparagus this year. The strawberry plants are looking healthy, but no sign of any asparagus yet. This is my first attempt though, so I’m not 100% confident I planted it correctly.
In the front yard, I’ve finished planting my pots of annuals.
And I also did a spring cleaning in the bean and added a few new perennials. It’s still not “done” (not sure a garden ever is done), but it’s definitely at a point when I can leave it for a few weeks to focus on Baby.
On the nursery prep front, my mom and I finished sewing the curtains and we also added a fun green patterned panel to the bottom of the existing crib skirt so that it hits the floor even when the mattress is up in the infant position.
The girls and I have been out hitting up some garage sales. In addition to finding a great deal on the newborn sleepers we needed (Baby wardrobe complete!), I found these six 12×15 inch frames, including mats, at a sale for the lovely price of $2 each.
As you can see from the nursery progress pic, the art wall isn’t done, but you’ll notice the beginnings of the art I’m working on photoshopping to go in the garage sale frames. (It’s not finalized and yes, the train is missing.)
So admittedly, the nursery isn’t quite done, but the good news is that today we finally sold our extra vehicle that has been sitting around since we bought the Pilot a few months ago. Nice to have a clear driveway again.
To summarize… plants are planted, nursery is (almost) done, and we are down to the two vehicles we are keeping. And I get my June baby. There’s really nothing left. You can come any time, Baby Boy. Any time…
Due Date
T-minus one hour until the end of Baby Bob’s due date and so far he’s a no show. So in the absence of newborn photos, here are a few recent favorites of the girls.
Alethea had her first piano recital a few weeks ago. She was really nervous and expressed a lot of concerns ranging from playing the wrong notes to, “What if I forget how to sit at the piano and I sit on my knees and my legs fall asleep?!!” However, her fears turned out to be unnecessary, since she played wonderfully and amused everyone with her enthusiastic bowing and adjusting of the bench.
Lydia has been learning new skills too. She knows how to spell her name, likes to draw pictures of princesses, and can put on clothes and shoes by herself, although the shoes don’t always end up on the right feet. We might need to do a little work on measurements with both girls though. The other day, Alethea and Lydia were playing with my tape measure, checking out the kitchen wall when Alethea asked, “How many inches does this weigh?” Very seriously, Lydia replied, “That inches is three dollars.”
Both girls continue to be good eaters, although Lydia is the more adventurous of the two. Alethea adores raw fruits and vegetables though. In fact, tonight she ate her whole dinner and then asked for some watermelon and proceeded to devour 10 slices!
Alethea’s favorite activities currently include drawing, singing, dancing, and playing princesses. She sometimes combines the the singing, dancing and princesses by belting out tunes from “Frozen” with great gusto. I’m thinking she might end up on Broadway someday. Although the weather has taken a major turn for the better lately, she’s not a huge fan of being outside now since she doesn’t like the mosquitoes and is absolutely terrified of bees and wasps.
Lydia also enjoys drawing, singing, and princesses to some degree, but she loves being outside and has an affinity for nearly every living creature. She enjoys helping me in my garden, most especially if we dig up earthworms. You should hear her giggle in delight whenever we discover one. You’d think we were unearthing kittens. She always insists on holding and talking to them.
My favorite part about being mom to these two beautiful girls is that they are truly the best of friends. I know having a baby brother around is going to shake things up, but I hope nothing will ever change the fact that, despite the occasional squabble, these two would rather be with each other than with anyone else.
We are all excited to become a family of five. Alethea and Lydia agreed today that they want their brother to come so they can see what he looks like. I promised them that he’s coming soon. You hear that, Baby Boy? Soon!
Will be updating as soon as there is anything to report. Stay tuned!
Three Weeks and Counting
Today I am 37 weeks pregnant. Just three weeks left until my due date, May 29th. Of course, I can’t know if Baby Boy will show up early or not. I’m 1-2cm dilated, but my midwife says that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. In any case, I’m physically ready to be done, but my to-do list is still quite long, so I’ve been trying to knock out as many things as I can before returning to those sleep deprived newborn days.
Of course, it’s harder to knock things off a to-do list when you’re nine months pregnant and your belly closely resembles that of a giant teddy bear…
I shouldn’t complain. I feel very blessed to be expecting a healthy full-term baby boy. I’ve gained less than thirty pounds and can still wear my wedding ring, which was not the case at this point with either of the girls. This pregnancy still feels harder to me though. I don’t know if it’s because I’m over 30 now, because it’s the third time around, or because I’ve got two other kids to keep up with, but yeah, I’m exhausted.
Alethea and Lydia seem more or less ready to make the transition to a family of five. They enjoy giving my belly kisses, and telling perfect strangers about their baby brother who is coming. Alethea has really been on board from the start. I think she’s so confident in managing her sister that she figures it can’t be much more work to be in charge of two. She seems very eager to be Mommy’s helper.
Lydia on the other hand, up until about a month ago, kept telling me that she did not in fact want a baby brother, she wanted another sister. Fortunately, that has ended and more recently she has started saying things about helping her brother walk and discussing where his car seat will go in our new-to-us larger vehicle that we purchased to accommodate three car seats.
Besides the new vehicle, we’ve also managed to acquire a fairly complete first year’s wardrobe for our little guy. We have a couple wonderful neighbors who were getting rid of their baby boy clothes and gave me first dibs on them. Between that, the things we already owned that were gender neutral, some gifts, and a few Target clearance finds, other than getting a few more 0-3 month sleepers, I’m about done with the “Find Boy Clothes” item on my to-do list. And everything is even washed and put away! Sweet little hats that probably will never fit my baby’s head… awwww…
As far as the nursery update goes, I’m not as far along as I’d hoped I’d be, but we have made some progress. I bought the airplane fabric I was eyeing and my mom came over and helped me turn it into drapes, or rather, I helped her turn it into drapes. (Let’s just be honest about who did more of the work.) I also went to Home Depot and bought galvanized pipe to make a curtain rod, which I spray painted last weekend (never fear, while wearing an OSHA approved respirator). Now we just need to get the rod and curtains up, then pin the curtains at the correct length, take them down to do the hem and put them back up again. Sounds fun, right?
So not too much has changed in the nursery. I have gotten most of the girly accessories out, although I still haven’t made any decisions on the artwork situation, hence the continued presence of that bit of pink.
I did find bookends on eBay to fit the new theme. I love them, but I just can’t decide if I leave the current paint job or do something else. Spray paint them a solid color, perhaps bronze? Paint just the red parts with a color that better matches the rest of the room? Maybe go bold with a fun green to liven things up?
So that’s where things stand at 37 weeks. Just for fun, and because I’m running out of mental decision making energy, leave me a comment and let me know whether I should paint the bookends and if so, what color. Opinions please!
A Nursery Facelift
Having a “Where in the world does the time go?” moment here. I was just trying to figure out when I last posted pictures of the nursery. Turns out it was my second ever post, back on April 5, 2009, a few days before Alethea’s due date and three weeks before she was actually born. Back then the nursery looked like this:
The starting point for the room was the globe mobile over the crib. The color scheme (Nomadic Desert and Composed by Sherwin Williams) seemed cute enough for a nursery, while not being gender specific. My thought being that we might have a boy someday and it would be nice not to have to re-do the whole nursery when and if that happened.
Of course, our second baby was a girl, so not much changed for Lydia other than a new paint job on the dresser and a few new accessories:
This time though, it’s a boy, which means this nursery needs a few more changes. Although part of me would love to toss everything out the window and start over from scratch (I’d definitely pick a different crib if I could go back and do it all over again), there is no way the frugal part of me is going to spend the money, and if I’m honest with myself, I know I really have a million more important things to do than repaint the whole room.
So with that in mind, we will be keeping all the major pieces in the room (the crib, chair, dresser, bookshelf, changing table, lamp, mobile, and wall colors are all staying), and I’ll be making the look a little more “boy” with a touch of navy blue, olive green, and some new accessories. Here’s the mood board I cooked up:
And here’s the to-do list that goes with it:
1) Buy/Make Art
I’m totally in love with these prints from PaperLlamas on etsy. You get to pick your four colors and four vehicles and they custom print them for you. I think they are completely and utterly perfect for the room, but given that we have to buy a new-to-us car before the baby arrives (one that can accommodate three car seats), budget is going to play major role in whether I go with these prints or try to DIY something similar by painting over the canvases that are already in the room. I guess we’ll see how much we end up spending on the car.
2) Paint Dresser
I think this will be the fourth time in my life I’ve painted this particular piece of furniture, but I’m really excited about the idea of an olive green dresser in the room like the one pictured above. Current color I’m leaning towards is SW Rural Green (bottom right on the mood board).
3) Paint Bookshelf
There is a small bookshelf next to the rocking chair (you can see the top of it in the bottom right corner of the first photo). The paint job has gotten really beat up over the last two children, so I’m planning on painting it again. Maybe olive green too, or perhaps SW Commodore, which is the navy blue color on the mood board.
4) Make Curtains
The nursery has a blackout roller shade and a valance over the window, but it has never had curtains. I go back and forth on whether or not I think curtains are okay in a nursery, since I do worry about them getting pulled down on someone’s head, but we’ve got floor length curtains in almost every other room in the house and none of them have come down yet. That and the fact that I found the adorable airplane fabric on the bottom left of the mood board means that this time around, there will be curtains!
5) Accessorize!
I don’t have plans for too many accessories, but I do know that I will be buying and painting paper mache letters to spell out Bob’s name over the changing table. And maybe some other car/train/plane/truck/map items will work their way in if I get inspired. Oh and Peter’s mom and I are already making plans for the quilt that she’s going to make!
So there you go, that’s what I’ve been working on lately. What have you been up to?
On Sharing a Room
Now that Bobble Head Baby #3 (Bob for short) is on the way, I’ve gotten a lot of questions on what the room situation is going to look like for all the kiddos, how many bedrooms we have, and whether the girls are going to share a room. And the answer is, we have four bedrooms in our house, but only three of them are on the upper level, so yes the girls will be sharing a room and Bob 3.0 is going to have the nursery all to himself.
As to some ways we are trying to make the transition to sharing a room easier for the girls, here’s what we’ve done so far:
You may recall that back in January of 2013 we investigated different bunk bed options and ended up choosing a bunk bed that had a trundle underneath. Since we didn’t think Alethea was ready for navigating a top bunk, we assembled just the bottom bunk and the trundle and let the girls try sleeping in the same room.
Despite the adorable sleeping kids picture, I’ll be the first to admit that Room Sharing Attempt #1 was an unmitigated disaster. The girls kept each other up until 10:30 or 11:00 every night and were unbelievably cranky the next day, every single day, for two weeks, until we abruptly ended the experiment and Lydia resumed sleeping in the crib. We tried again in the spring with similar results and after calling round #2 a failure, we agreed to shelve the whole rooming together idea until the possible future Bob 3.0 was in the works.
Fast forward a few months to after we found out Bob 3.0 was on his way, when Peter said to me, “We need to try moving the girls in together again.” To which I replied in a somewhat whiny voice, “Do we really have to?”
After discussing the pros and cons of bottom-bunk-and-trundle vs. top-bunk-and-bottom-bunk, and consulting with Alethea on whether she was interested in sleeping in a top bunk (she was… VERY) and whether she thought she would fall out (after confirming that there would be a railing on the edge, she observed, “If I’m rolling on my pillow and I roll up to the railing, I just won’t roll and further”), we decided to give the green light to the top bunk option.
One of my preconditions about putting up bunk beds, was that we had to change out the ceiling fan for a non-moving light fixture. Fortunately, I’d bought a fantastic pink chandelier at a second-hand sale months ago, planning on using it in the guest bedroom.
I still think it would have looked great in the guest room, but it’s very cute in the girls’ room too, and I’m pretty sure it’s safer than a fan they can reach from the top bunk. Admittedly, Alethea has asked on more than one occasion if she can swing on it, so there is the possibility that she may one day bring it crashing down in the middle of a trapeze performance, but thus far she has heeded our warnings and refrained from any acts of daring.
The girls began Room Sharing Experiment #3 in November, and it has been the most successful try thus far. Not completely without bumps, but it seems to have helped Alethea to have a space of her own, since Lydia is not allowed to climb up to the top bunk. Lydia herself is quite pleased to be a Big Girl who sleeps in a Big Girl Bed and will happily inform anyone who will listen that, “I don’t sleep in a crib, because cribs are for babies. I’m not a baby anymore.” She shows no inclination to return to the nursery and seems unbothered by the fact that another little occupant will shortly be residing there.
Having successfully arranged a bed solution, last week I moved on to the clothes. Fortunately the closet was big enough to handle both of the girls’ hanging wardrobes without any adjustments. For the dresser I found these nifty extra-deep spring-loaded drawer dividers on Amazon.
Installation was a breeze. I think it took me longer to get them out of the packaging than it did to get them into the drawers. And when I was finished each girl ended up with two dresser drawers, each divided in half, which is how I managed to condense the contents of two four-drawer dressers into just one.
We have a few other orders of business to attend to, like getting the lamp on the bookcase fixed, moving some of the girly accessories in from the nursery, and come summer, finding some sort of solution to the lack of fan since the room does get a bit warm, even with the air conditioning on, during the warmer months.
But the good news is, I can cross off “Get Girls’ Room Organized” from my before baby arrives to-do list and move on to “Revamp Nursery Decor”. Goodbye pink… hello planes, trains and other things that go! Should be fun!
It’s a ….
Also happy to report that all signs are indicating a perfectly healthy little one arriving in late May!