Nursery Reveal & Roman Shades!

Want to see what I have been up to the last few weeks?

the Nursery is finally (almost) done! I am sooo happy with how it turned out!!!

The changing table is on the far right corner of the room. I have all of the diaper changing supplies in a neat little basket next to the changing pad. The dresser belonged to my Nonni (grandma) and I think she would like that it's getting good use still (and it's a strong workhorse of a dresser!) The dresser drawers are divided by type of clothes all newborn and 0-3 month. Top drawer is sleep shirts and white onsies, second drawer is printed onsies and pants, third drawer is more shirts and crib sheets and the bottom drawer is where all of the disposable (and eventually cloth) diapers will go. I have space in the back of the basket on top of the dresser big enough to hold about 10 diapers so I will only have to fill up from the drawer one a day (hopefully!) I don't know how functional my organizational system is yet and I am totally open to suggestions for ways it worked for you. I'm trying to keep things as streamlined as possible so i'm not ducking and bending over every time I need to change him.

You can also see a peek of my curtains in this pic, so here's a shot of them full on...

Those curtains are my pride and joy of my DIY projects for this nursery. I used a pattern I found on Shanty 2 Chic.com, check it out here. I fell in love with the pattern which I found at fabric.com, my friend Alex suggested an ikat pattern and i'm so glad she did! I lined the shades with a light block fabric which really darkens the room even during the middle of the day (makes it great for naps!). It took me about two days to sew them and one frustrating hour of me and kyle mounting them but the finished product is worth it! I forgot to take a picture of the ugly yellow mini blinds that were there before but trust me this looks so much better!

Here's what it looks like with one shade down and one up. I also strung them in the center of the window so baby can't reach the cords.

Wall decal: Etsy.com

The crib has my mother's crocheted baby blanket and my mother in law's quilt in it, both grandma's represented! The pooh sepia tone print was a gift from Kyle for our 4 year anniversary (about a month into my pregnancy). At that time he didn't even know that I wanted to do Winnie the Pooh in the nursery!

This armoire is right next to the changing table and holds most of his toys and extra blankets. The carriers (moby wraps and ergo) are in the lower drawers. The framed print is actually a jigsaw puzzle I put together about a month ago and glued together. 

  

Right next to this bookshelf is a large closet that has another dresser inside of it for his larger clothes and other supplies. 

I hope you guys enjoyed seeing the pictures of my nursery as much as we enjoyed putting it together!

It's done, instant nursery just add baby! 

Bump it: 34 Weeks

Hey Everyone! I'm 34 Weeks Along!

This week was very productive in terms of preparing for this baby. For all practical purposes the nursery is completed and ready for use whenever this little one want to make his debut. There are only a few things left to do which will be done in the next few days (get the carseat bases installed in the car, pack the hospital bag etc...) and yes I will be posting pictures of the nursery soon!

Friday we went back to the hospital for our pre-admission interview. I filled out all of the paperwork for my registration and got all the paperwork for the hospital squared away so they don't bombard me with questions durning my birthing time (labor). Saturday Kyle and I had our child birthing preparation class which went really well. I am glad we had an opportunity to attend a live class since the hospital I am going to deliver at only offers an online class. This wasn't my first experience attending such a class since I was required to go to one for my Labor and Maternity Nursing class back in college but at that time I was only half paying attention (well maybe only a quarter...). Since now I am on deck to go into labor anytime starting at the end of this month (or earlier) I made sure to pay better attention this time!

I think the best part of the whole day was seeing Kyle really pay attention to what the doula was saying. I loved looking over and seeing him focusing, it looked like he was really processing the information (or at the very least faking it incredibly well haha) It was a long day chocked full of information but I think we both really got a lot out of it. She spent a lot of time talking about the appropriate time to go to the hospital which I appreciated since I want to stay home for as long as is safe (possible). We went over the stages of labor, pain medication options and steps for coping with contractions (hello hip squeeze for back labor!) I hope I remember the information when my birthing waves (contractions) kick in!

3 more weeks until I'm full term, YIKES!!!

Until next time I remain a happy (and excited!) mama to be!

DIY Nursery: Adjustable Crib Skirt with Box Pleat

I am really happy with how this crib skirt came out. It was a coordinating fabric that was grouped in with the fabric I chose for the Roman Shades I sewed for his window. I liked the pattern because instead of one complete skirt it is 4 separate pieces which are secured to the spring base for the mattress with velcro. It will make it very easy to adjust when I move the mattress lower when the little man starts trying to sit up and escape.

Here is the "naked" crib

and here it is with the skirt attached...

I do think it looks soooo much nicer don't you??

I am a little regretful that I spent the extra time sewing the box pleat into the front because the crib slats totally hide it, oh well...

Check out the pattern brought to us by {adorkable}duo here! 

DIY Nursery: Car Seat Cover

 There is a lady in my neighborhood who goes on walks past my unit several times a week with her little one and she had the cutest car cover for her car seat. When I see her walking past as I am sitting feet up on the coffee table watching Mistresses on my DVR with a bowl of cherries balanced on my ever growing belly I wonder "hmm that is so cute! I want one for my carseat! I wonder how much those cost?" Ya like 50 bucks.....WHA???????? Not only are there about 1 million things I can think of to spend 50 bucks on that don't include a glorified blanket but I knew I could sew one myself without spending oodles of $$.

I did a google search and found a fairly simple pattern for the cover and sewed it in about 4 hours over a few days. The pattern I found used a rounded corner style with frilled trim but I thought that was a little feminine so I decided to go with a mitered corner border in a lime green to match the inside of the carseat. The mitered corners were the hardest part of the whole thing so if I had skipped that I bet this project would have only taken me about 2.5 hours. I lined it on the inside with a nice fleecy fabric so it can work as a nice blanket in a pinch

I ended up purchasing the fabric online to save a few bucks and I was so happy to see that the lime green I picked matched the inside of the carseat perfectly! 

For those of you who are interested I used the pattern that was lovingly supplied by the ladies over at DIY Divas. Check it out here

I used this YouTube Video to learn how to sew the mitered corners for the border.

Now I can be strutting my stuff around the neighborhood with my nifty car seat cover when we go on walks together!

Bump it: 33 Weeks

Hey Everyone! I'm 33 Weeks Along!

I can't believe it, I'm over 8 months pregnant! When did that happen!?

This week we had another doctors appointment and everything seems to be checking out normally. My belly is measuring within the normal range and the baby's heartbeat usually is dialed in at around 140 BPM every time the doc checks it. Way back when I was thinking about getting a doppler so I could listen to it at home but most of them were about $75 and I just couldn't justify the expense; especially since now the baby moves so much that I don't even need to hear his heartbeat to know he's in there!

I got a giggle out of my doctor this week too when he asked me how I was sleeping:

Doc: So how are you sleeping?

Me: HORRIBLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

::doc laughs::

He told me that one theory behind the lack of sleep is that your body is preparing for being up with a newborn. If you ask me I think my lack of sleep has more to do with the fact that I have a 4 lb little person River-Dancing on my bladder all night long, but I'm no expert ;-) He is sticking with my original due date of September 6th so we'll see what happens! I do have a feeling that he will be late but that's just a hunch. I asked him about going past 40 weeks and he said he has no problem going to 41 (good to hear) and he doesn't induce unless there is a strong medical reason to (even better to hear)

I finished my carseat cover this week and i'm really happy with how it came out! Watch for a post! I'm continuing my Hypnobabies training and starting next week I will start my maintenance therapy with a different hypnosis track each day until I go into labor. Or as hypnobabies puts it "until my birthing time begins!" Very zen-positive way of looking at it huh?

Until next time I remain a happy (but sleep deprived) mama to be!

Bump it: 32 Weeks

Hey Everyone! I'm 32 Weeks Along!

Sorry I have been MIA for the past couple of weeks I was buried alive under a pile of toxicology emergency flash cards in preparation for my Certified Emergency Nursing Exam which I took this week and PASSED!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thank GOD that is over with! I am so happy to have that done with but even more happy that I decided to go ahead and get certified. I know that having that credential will come in handy when I decide to go back to work again. 

Pregnancy wise this week has gone by pretty easily. Except for the fact that a full night sleep; well sleep for more than 3 hours at a time, is becoming more and more of a rarity I'm still feeling pretty good. I've been keeping up with my exercising but have found that I need to work out literally as soon as I wake up in the morning. The likelihood of me working out goes down exponentially in relation to the time of day. If I make it to 12 noon or later the chances of my exercising are pretty much absolutely zero! Oh well. I guess I can afford to take a few days off to let my body rest right?

Next MD appointment is next week. The nursery is still in shambles but I have been hard at work sewing some projects for the nursery and I hope to have most of them completed in the next three weeks. It will give me something to do since I didn't die of suffocation under all of those index cards :-)

Until next time I remain a happy mama to be!

Hypnobabies Week 3

This post is a review of my third class using the Hypnobabies at home study course for hypnosis in labor. I finished class three a while ago but haven't had a chance to blog about it yet. The theme of this week's class was "birthing choices" mostly revolving around interventions typically used in hospital birth. They lay out most of the interventions that you typically see in a hospital setting and explain the risks and benefits of each. Since this is a course which is meant for women who are seeking a natural birth it is a somewhat biased approach against the interventions. Having said that I do think the way they present the information is a little more tolerable than other "pro-natural delivery" people I have talked to or things I have read. I have come into contact with people and literature that literally try to scare women into following their advice on natural labor and advocate for women to "demand" and "refuse" and "don't trust the hospital staff." Scare tactics like that really leave a bad taste in my mouth.

Speaking as a medical professional myself I have a different perspective on hospital birth than the average person. I understand that a medical focused model is what I am going to get in a hospital. I understand the rationale for many of the things that they do and why they do it. All that being said I do still want as natural a labor as possible with as little interventions as possible. That is the best choice for me but that doesn't mean that I don't want access to advanced care should something change (which it does). When you walk in the door not wanting to work with the staff and your doctor you are setting yourself up for difficulty. To be honest these women who honestly don't want ANYTHING and are not willing to compromise shouldn't be giving birth in a hospital. You have the option of a birthing center or a home birth, both of which are viable options if you do it the right way and keep it as safe as possible. Ok i'll get off my soapbox now....

I am planning on having a written birth plan for the nurses and my OB (we have already talked about this) but I understand that birth is a dynamic and constantly changing experience and I am willing to bend and flex as need be. The readings of Class # 3 helped me start to think about how I want to word my birth plan and they stress working WITH the hospital team and that THEY ARE NOT THE ENEMY (Amen!)

The hypnosis tracks were

Creating Anesthesia
&
Deepening

I am loving the time out I take every day to listen to my tracks. It's 30 min of total relaxation and I think it's working, I'm feeling more and more relaxed each time I do it. Next week is when my "birth partner" a.k.a. Kyle will get integrated into the process. I have given him the head's up that it's coming; he seems skeptical but he knows it's important to me so he said he'll do whatever needs doing.

Good man!

I'll let you know how it's progressing in my next hypnobabies post!

for more information on hypnobabies check out their website here

Bump it: 31 Weeks

Hey Everyone! I'm 31 weeks along!

This week was a tough one. It kind of caught me off guard since I feel that I've been taking most of my pregnancy symptoms in stride. However I was introduced to a wonderful new (for me) side effect this week:

uncontrollable crying (ugh...)

It happened the first time when I had a setback while studying for my CEN (certified emergency nursing) exam. I scored lower than I thought on a practice exam and as soon as I graded it I started bawling and I couldn't stop for 15 minutes. By the time I finally got myself together I had even forgotten what I even was crying about. I remember thinking sometime during this event that I wanted to stop crying, but I seriously couldn't. When I told my mom about it she wisely told me "oh THAT'S the baby" to which I replied "ooohhhhhhhhhh." I honestly had forgotten that way back in my first trimester I read that this was a symptom of pregnancy but since It never was a problem for me before this week I had forgotten about it. 

There were a few instances during the week where I got really weepy for no reason which to be quite honest I'm finding really freaking annoying. I hope that this doesn't continue for the next 9 weeks otherwise I'm in trouble... However the good people at Kleenex will rejoice.

The rest of the week (besides all the crying) was very enjoyable. Kyle was off of school for his mid summer break so we had a  lot of time to spend together. We spent the 4th volunteering at our Church's hot dog booth at the downtown parade and festival then we BBQ'd with our neighbors. Next week we take our hospital tour!!! 9 weeks to go until we meet our little man!

Until next time I remain a happy (but sometimes weepy) mama to be!