I Pinned It...And I Did It, Too!

I am sorry to disappoint you, but it seems I must go along with the masses and include a post about Pinterest. There is some symbiotic relationship between blogs and Pinterest, as of late, where blogs inspire pins on Pinterest and Pinterest inspires posts on various blogs. There are a few projects (out of the massive amount of possibilities on the site) that I have undertaken, and I would like to share them with you.

Freezer Meals

I started out by pinning this post from Mama and Baby Love. After seeing her take on the idea, I did some research and found recipes on other sites, as well. With the upcoming addition to our family, I thought it might be a good idea to try my hand at readying meals in advance. My friend, Bekah, and I went on a good-sized shopping trip and spent most of a Saturday making freezer meals. What we ended up deciding on, since it was our first attempt, was to make several slow cooker meals, one casserole, and several quarts of spaghetti sauce with meatballs. We had so much fun!

Here are the results of our shopping excursion.

Half of this will make it to my mouth, eventually! :)

Bekah and I were feeling pretty accomplished at this point.

I am not quite sure that I would do this again in the same way. It was fun and helpful cooking with someone else, but doubling and sometimes quadrupling everything turned out to be complicated at times--especially when it came to countertop space, mixing bowls, and the like. But it was a good learning experience, for sure, and a fun time of just hanging out. Since then, I have doubled some of the meals I make in the evening and frozen the second batch. In the future, I think it would be fun to start a freeze-and-share group with several other girls! In case you are wondering what we have made, here are the majority of the recipes we used. We also used a couple of brisket recipes Bekah had, but I do not have those in my file, yet.

Homemade Laundry Detergent

When I saw this, I just had to try it! We had made homemade liquid detergent before and did not like the results. This was a powdered version, and it piqued my interest.

Recipe and photo are courtesy of Being Creative (to keep my sanity).

We have been using it for a couple of months now, and we love it! Our landlord had to replace our old washer and dryer with a new, front-loader high-efficiency unit, and it still works well. When friends of mine threw me a baby shower, I thought it would be cute to surprise them with samples of this laundry soap as a thank you.

Cupcakes in a Jar

My church also threw me a baby shower, and I was looking for another homemade thank-you gift I could make for the ladies. I stumbled upon (no, actually, I searched within Pinterest) this little number from Cakies.

Red velvet cupcakes in a jar! 

I found the printables for this and the laundry soap on various sites.

It was such a fun idea, and I had a blast--although I stayed up way too late layering cupcake and frosting!

What Do You Think?

I am pretty sure that I have the most adorable baby. Ever.

Then again, I am biased. :)

You know that moment when the usher comes to seat you at a wedding and asks, "Are you on the bride's side or the groom's?"? Well, when you have a baby, everyone wants to inspect him or her and see if Baby prefers its mother or father. We have had a lot of "He looks like his mommy!" And we have had plenty of "He takes after his daddy," too. So, I was thinking that perhaps I should let you all decide. What do you think? Dad?

Or Mom?

Check out the poll on the right-hand side of my blog, and let me know what you think. The poll will close next Saturday; I look forward to seeing what you all think!

UPDATE:  The poll resulted in one person voting for Jordan, about half for me, and the rest for Kieran looking like a blend of the two of us! Thanks for voting!! :D

Two Weeks

How crazy it is to think that two weeks have passed since my little man came into this world! Even crazier is how much and how fast they change.

This was Kieran at one day:

This was Kieran at one week:

This was taken during his newborn photo shoot.

And this was Kieran on Saturday, at two weeks:

I'm just hangin' out, Mom.

It's so much fun to see him as he becomes more alert! Of course, he still sleeps a lot, but (and I say this hesitantly) I think he is starting to get into a good routine. I will admit that there were some baby blues the first several days, but most of that was related to the frustrations of learning how and trying to teach a newborn how to feed. Feeding is going SO much better! At his two-week check-up, Kieran was right back to his birth weight at 8 pounds 2.5 ounces (but he was in his diaper, so he probably was just at two ounces) and 21 inches long--though I don't think that they tried very hard to straighten out his legs. :)

When he left the hospital, Kieran was fairly jaundiced, falling into the very bottom of the "high intermediate risk zone".

When he went back for a follow-up the day after we left the hospital, he had dropped down into the low intermediate risk zone. And on Friday he had fallen into the low risk zone, so he is doing well! God is so good, and I look forward to seeing his little personality come to life. We have been so blessed by friends and family with their support and encouragement and their gifts and meals. It has made the transition so much easier--I can't imagine how difficult it is for families with no family or friends nearby...or for single moms or dads!

Jordan has done a fabulous job of patiently learning how to care for our son.

I am so thankful for his patience with me, as well, as I slowly grow into this new role I have forever adopted. I simply love God's design for family, and can so clearly see that when we do things according to His plan, He blesses us with exactly what we need.

A Labor of Love

Okay, there might just be a baby sleeping next to me, and I might just attempt to blog the whole story before feeding time. Let's see how this goes! This will, by the way, be in real time. :)

Thursday, March 29th

A fairly normal day, at 39 weeks and...oh, four days, I woke up at 6:30 a.m. to go to work. Work was just fine, I felt some pressure in my back and the tinsiest bit of cramping. But I had been so tired of thinking maybe this would be the day that I thought nothing of it. After work, I went for a walk with my friend, Lindsay, while a fairly nice storm was brewing up. Jordan and I were going to grill out, but because of the storm we went to Dairy Queen, instead (because, if you know us, all things seem to start out at Dairy Queen :D ). Jordan and I had some good talks about the future, then we went home and he played some X-Box while I played on Pinterest instead of organizing all the tax info we had pulled out and spread out over our table (oops!). We joked about how storms can cause women to go into labor (I even posted a link about an article I read on facebook), then decided to go to bed a little after 11:00. 

Well, with no warning at all, at about 11:30, my water broke! And, I mean broke. None of this "Did it, or didn't it?" stuff. I called the first nurse while Jordan stood there with his hands shaking from the adrenaline flowing through him (how cute is he?). I made him sit down on the floor next to me while I talked to the nurse, and she told us to come on in.

Friday, March 30th

We arrived at the hospital a little after midnight. They checked to see where things were at and, I'll spare you all the numbers because some people just think it's creepy, but let's just say that the baby was still really, really high, and I was showing no signs of being in labor except my water breaking. To our disappointment, they also said that Baby was facing the wrong direction, so it was going to be very difficult to push the head out. Our goal was to try to keep moving my body in such a way as to make the baby rotate into the correct position.

We need to speed this story up. Feel free to skip to the last subheading if you'd like. I just want to make sure that I remember everything that happened, since it happened so fast!

• 2:30 a.m.--My contractions started; I tried sleeping through them--to no avail--since I hadn't slept at all, yet.
• 4:00 a.m.--My contractions got stronger, so I got out of bed and did the timeless (and extremely boring) walking of the halls while Jordan slept.
• 6:00 a.m.--I finally woke Jordan up because I felt like my contractions were strong enough that I couldn't handle them on my own any longer.
• 8:00 a.m.--They checked me and said that there was no change. :( Many more contractions ensued.
• 1:00 p.m.--My contractions almost skidded to a stop. We decided to take a nap while we could, then reassess afterwards.
• 2:00 p.m.--During my nap, I'd only had four or five contractions, so I reluctantly decided to go on Petosin (the fake hormone they use to speed up contractions). That seemed to help a lot.
• 6:00 p.m.--They checked me again, and the baby had moved down a tad, but I had only progressed one centimeter since arriving at the hospital. That's 16 hours of contractions already on one hour of sleep!
• 6:30 p.m.--I decided to take the plunge and get the epidural, since my contractions were pretty strong, and I was getting nervous that I would have no energy left to push this baby out at the rate I was going. This part sucked a lot. I'm sure others will tell you; it's very difficult to curl your body into a ball so they can stick a giant needle into your back when you're in the middle of a contraction! I most definitely cried through this part.
• 8:00 p.m.--I was finally able to sleep! The medication helped a lot, and I finally got a break from all of those contractions. Unfortunately, this was when the Pitosin decided to start working against me. It kicked me into a weird contraction pattern, where I would have two or three in a row, then nothing. Baby's heartbeat was staying consistent, so they weren't worried about that. They just said that that kind of pattern was not conducive to actually pushing the baby out. So, they adjusted the dosage a million and a half times during the night until they found an amount that gave me consistent contractions.

Saturday, March 31st

• 8:00 a.m.--They checked me again and saw that I had progressed sometime during the night to what should be the second stage of labor; however, my contractions, while consistent were now not as strong as they should be.
• 10:00 a.m.--Once again, I was checked, and I had not progressed at all. Now I was starting to feel terrible, as I could feel contractions, as well as other unexplained pain between contractions. I was so confused. They told me that there was no pressure on me to make any quick decisions. I had somewhat of a fever, so they gave me antibiotics for that. 
  
  
  When you pass the 24-hour mark from your water breaking, they are worried that you and/or baby will get an infection. What they did say was that baby was still in the wrong position and trying to come out cockeyed. The head was trying to come out with the back corner first, instead of forehead first. They thought that maybe my slow progression and maybe even the pain I was feeling was my body's way of telling me that this baby was too big and in the wrong position for me to be able to push it out.
  
  
  We had been praying through this whole situation that we would make the right decisions every step of the way. It was disheartening to me to have to keep taking more medication, but my world started spinning when they told me I might want to consider surgery after all the labor I had been through (30 hours at this point!). I cried again when they told me that they do not do natural deliveries for women after they have had a cesarean at this hospital. But we felt like God was telling us that we had done the right things--been leaning on him--and that we needed to keep trusting him as we took the plunge. We decided to schedule the c-section, and at this point, I was so exhausted and in so much pain, I had no idea how I was going to wait for them to get everything set up
• 11:58 a.m.--But they did! At 11:58 in the morning, a very healthy baby was born to us. I was brought through surgery by an amazing doctor and anesthesiologist, and we are very, very thankful for God's provision!!

Kieran James

As I said, at 11:58 a.m., on March 31st, 2012, Kieran James was born to us at 8 pounds and 2 ounces and 21 inches long. He has dark hair, blue-gray eyes for now, a cute button nose, an even cuter little bow-tie set of lips, and these long toes that like to curl up against his feet. We have a son! How crazy is that? God is so, so, so good, and I can't stop thanking him for bringing us through all of this. I know people have much more traumatic stories that don't always end like ours, but it was an experience that brought Jordan and I closer. We love our little boy and, of course, think that he is absolutely perfect in every way. He is starting to become a good feeder, he loves to be swaddled, but he also loves skin-to-skin time, and loves his papa! Jordan was so good with him that first day, as I was confined to bed. I am scared and excited to take our family home tomorrow!