Getting ready for baby!!

We were adamant (it only took me four tries to spell that word right) OK, wait, I was adamant not to know the gender before she was born. Everyone and their sister gave me a hard time about it, I mean, not a horrible nasty hard time. But even my mom, who was surprised for all three of her kids, at one point said accusingly "I could shop better if I knew what you were having!"

There are so few surprises, and seriously, in hindsight, I am not at all sorry about the colors we chose for her room or her clothes. Hello, newborn clothes are all soft colors anyway, and trust me, the baby does not care; she pooped on them and peed on them and puked on them just the same :)

ANYWAY, I say this because when we decided not to find out what she was going to be a she, we still had to paint its room and such. So what did we do? What any selfish people would do, painted her room our favorite colors:

That's right, Kyle loves green and I love orange. Yes, they go together quite well, thank you. Especially when you accessorize with cool rugs:

And cool bedding:

I give my child the orange room I never got!! Embarrassingly, the walls are still almost as bear as they are in that first picture. I keep saying I'm going to make some paintings for her to look at, but so far I'm adding that to the pile of projects that I haven't gotten around to... yet...

She never got a mobile:

I made the monkey... *hangs head in shame*

She never got a knit hat made by her Mama...

 



But I'm holding out for when she's a little older and can also wear this stylish pea coat and these awesome little boots, that I will somehow find the time to make...


Oh, and she got plenty of knit hats from relatives and friends. She had her first photo shoot (at about a month and a half) in a hat made by my cousin Dani:

(she was so good!!!! I did it one day after a bottle, she had no objections to being nakey OR being man-handled by her own mother OR flashes in her face)

And family and friends just kept shoveling on the awesome stuff:

With a few personal touches thrown in from one scientist to another:

("When I grow up I want to be a mad scientist, mwah ha ha")

So now that I have a girl, I spend half my time shopping for her, since she must have the best, and I'm totally living vicariously through her awesome little outfits from Tea Collection:

 

I am seriously addicted to Tea Collection. I thought that all mothers of baby girls had to dress their little girls up like princesses. Well they don't, but what surprised me even more was I still love dressing her up, just not in pink :)

So anyway, I hope to post some things that I actually make, but for now, this is what was going on shortly before and after she was born, I mean, clothing and accessory-wise.

Next up, BABY STUFF!!

Because I'm having a hard time getting my act together

I will imbed the code for her photo books as I make them, along the right hand side of the blog. And as I get the chance, I will post her videos. I promise I'm trying to get this rolling, but of course, she's seven months old (!), so I'm back tracking, and of course I've got a lot of material! So thanks for your patience!!

April 28th, 2012

The seventh consecutive morning waking up with severe cramps, after seven sleepless nights...

I peed on a stick... Gross... It glowed bright red plus sign, I was already a week late, so, that and the bright red, blazing plus sign, made it pretty obvious. Looooootta hCG... in the peeeeeee

Sorry, I won't talk about pee anymore...

We moved to our new house on May 31st, 2012. Kyle's best friend Dan surprised us by taking the whole week off work to come help us pack up our townhouse and unpack into our new house. I wanted so badly to tell him he was probably saving our unborn child's life... Don't lift heavy stuff! Because of Dan, I didn't have to.

June 13th, 2012
Here's her first picture:

While my mom was the first to know, everyone else knew soon after this ultrasound was taken. She was very strong, I was able to hear her heartbeat at 8 weeks! Of course, right now she was just Peanut, an it.

No morning sickness, just sleepy, but I broke out like crazy, and ate massive amounts of WAFFLES!

July 4th, 2012
I felt a flutter for the first time. I assumed I was imagining it because I thought it was too early. But as it got stronger, I realized that what felt like little muscle twitches was really a little monster inside me, getting bigger and bigger and KICKIER AND KICKIER!!!

6 months and 50 pounds later...

I get a PhD:

My mom and sister throw me a shower.

At my 39 week appointment, my blood pressure was high, and they decided to induce me. So I don't have a panicked labor story, water breaking in the middle of the night stuff. I went home, Kyle and I ate dinner, had a leisurely drive to the hospital...

I won't go into nitty gritty details about how many centimeters and water breaking grossness.

I labored for 8 hours before asking for an epidural just so I could get some sleep... then slept for 3 hours, and started pushing at 6 AM. The whole process, while not a fun picnic in the park, was not nearly as devastatingly terrifying as I thought it would be, just uncomfortable (the hospital gown, the bed, the dragging around my IV bags to go to the bathroom), jarring (the contractions), stinging (IV insertion, epidural insertion, stitches). And I don't know if my brain erased it due to adrenaline or trauma, but I don't think pushing hurt that bad either... I'm going to say this one gross thing, I apologize ahead of time... ever been really constipated? That's all it feels like, then it feels all better after about 15 minutes of really good grunting.

6 PM December 17th, 2012 - 7 AM December 18th, 2012... that's where I was.

My reward:

Wynne Bennet James
7 lb 7 oz
20.25 in

She didn't cry, her Apgar scores were awesome, 7 (1 minute old) then 9 (5 minutes old)

We laid together for over an hour, just chillin' out together, that was the best

(except for I had to get some stitches, to my memory, the most painful part of the whole experience)

So that's where we start!! And off we go!!!

Good genes

I mean come on!

Shouldn't these two reproduce??












(we're not really that conceited)