Tag Archives: baby

Waking Up

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Sounds coming from a small person wake me up in the morning.  I look over at Cameron lying in the Pack ‘N Play.  Other times he’s just inches from me, snuggled in between my right shoulder and Jon’s left.  His eyes are still closed, but he’s squirming.  The fleece swaddle sack keeps his arms and hands glued to his sides so he pumps his legs in and out, trying to escape the tightly wrapped fleece.  His delicate features are beginning to twist up into deep wrinkles and lines, which means he’s just seconds from crying.

I roll to my side and grab my cell phone from the bedside table to check the time.  Jon still has thirty-two more minutes of precious sleep before his alarm goes off,  so I rush to grab a pillow to stick between my back and the headboard.  Then I reach for my nursing pillow.

Cameron is now flinging his head from side to side, so I swoop my hands under his body and pick him up just as the first squak of the morning escapes his mouth.

I’m still only half awake as I plop him down on the nursing pillow and pull my sleep tank to the side.  He lets out a sequence of tiny grunts and squeaks as he finds his way to the right position.

As he nurses, I let my chin fall to my chest so I can admire all the miniature parts of his body that aren’t hidden beneath the swaddle.  His eye lashes seem to look a bit longer and when I look closely, I think I can tell that his eye brows are just the slightest shade darker than they were yesterday.  His reddish-blonde hair is sticking up in every direction, so i smooth it down gently with the pads of my fingers.  Every piece of his face has been perfectly designed.

My mind wanders about as I slowly become more alert to my surroundings.  I try to remember what items are on my to-do list for today.  Then I study Cam’s posture to try and guess whether he is going to fall back asleep after his feeding or whether I will be throwing on a sweater and slippers and beginning my morning routine.  My hope is for the first option.

Cam’s pace begins to slow.  I watch as his strong, intentional pulls turn into tiny quivers.  So I prop him up on my shoulder and pat his back, waiting to hear the cutest kind of burping that there is.

It seems that his eyes are wide open and he’s ready to take on the day, so I kiss his cheeks again and again and whisper to him “good morning” as I slip out of the room.

Top 10 Checklist: Preparing For Baby

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Okay, so I am by no means an expert on babies or motherhood.  And since I’ve only birthed one child so far, maybe someone who’s had two or three should be writing this.

However, I still wanted to share some of the things I did to prepare for having a baby that proved to be really helpful.  Of course, there’s a lot more than ten things you’ll want to do to prepare, but these are the things that I didn’t necessarily find on the other checklists I came across. So here ya go:

10.  Go to Costco or some other bulk item store and buy a bunch of paper plates, paper bowls and plastic cups.  Maybe even some plastic utensils if you want to go all out.  Normally I’m all for going green, but in the first few weeks after having a baby you’ll want to spend all your extra time staring at your new baby, not doing the dishes.

9.  Get your hair cut/colored/whatever you do, a few weeks before your due date.  You’re not going to have the time after having a baby to go spend a few hours at the hair salon for a while without having to organize a babysitter and getting a bottle together.  Plus, who doesn’t want to look good in all those pictures!

8.  Get a pedicure or give yourself a home pedicure as close to your due date as possible.  Similar to #9, after having a baby you’re not going to have time to think about this for a while and sometimes it’s the little things that make you feel pretty even when you’re exhausted.

7.  Make it cozy.  If you’re giving birth in the hospital it’s nice to make the room feel as home-like as possible, especially since you might be there a while.  We strung white Christmas lights along one wall and brought four of those flameless candles that you can buy for $20 at Costco. Our room had a nice warm glow instead of those bright intense fluorescent lights.

6.  Make sure you pack swim shorts for your husband if you plan to use a birthing tub at any point in your labor.  Jon forgot to pack his and ended up wearing jeans for four hours while in the tub.  Not the most comfortable thing according to him.

5.  Bake something for the nurses.  This advice was given to me by my doula who has been present at hundreds of hospital births.  Nurses are people too and sometimes they aren’t having the best day even though you may be going through one of the most significant experiences in your life.  So, do something nice for them to win them over.  Bake some cookies or something else yummy!  As soon as I thought my labor was starting I headed to the kitchen and whipped up some banana bread muffins (Trader Joe’s mix).  It helped pass the time early on and the nurses did appreciate the gesture.

4.  Snacks, snacks, snacks!  Snacks for the hospital, snacks for when you arrive home, snacks next to your bed.  During the first couple weeks after arriving home it felt like I was always needing something small to munch on.  I know having a bag of goldfish and honey roasted peanuts on your bedside table might sound strange, but when you’re not used to being awake at 3am, you might just want to snack when your baby does.

3.  At some point towards the end of your pregnancy, find a mom who is willing to share with you all the interesting, gross and rarely talked about details of childbirth.  At least for me, it was really helpful to have heard some other people’s stories beforehand so that when it happened to me I wasn’t so freaked out or shocked.

2.  Learn about breastfeeding before your baby arrives.  It’s easy to focus on the labor side of things, but since breastfeeding begins as soon as your baby arrives, it’s really helpful to know what to expect.  I read The Breastfeeding Book by Dr. Sears and I know a lot of people like to take a breastfeeding class while pregnant.  Also, during the first three months there are quite a few foods that may upset baby’s tummy: like oranges (orange juice), tomatoes (tomato sauce), strawberries, cucumbers and chocolate, just to name a few.  So look up what foods to avoid in those first three months before you go buying a bunch of chocolate bars as snacks.

1.  Meals. Jon and I were very blessed and we had friends from church bringing us meals every other night for the first month.  We also had friends and family who visited help with the cooking too.  This was hands down, the biggest help we had during that first month.  So if you don’t have friends or family in the area who are willing to help with this, plan ahead by making some freezer meals and buying some easy dinner options that you can prepare very quickly.  If you do have family and friends around, ask one of them to make a meal calendar so people can sign up to help you out.

Bonus Tip (Because Top 10 list sounds better than Top 11 list): Get a donut pillow.  If you don’t know what this is, it’s a donut-shaped thing you sit on that helps take pressure off the areas that may be sore from labor.  I knew nothing about this, but a friend sent me one in a care package and I was forever grateful.  You do a lot of sitting in the weeks after having a baby and this is worth getting.

 

26 Weeks

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26 weeks feels pretty good for the most part.  Except as soon as I said goodbye to queasy, sleepless showed up.  Oh well.

Cameron moves around a lot now and one of my favorite things to do in the evenings is just sit on the couch and watch my tummy, waiting to see his next move.

The top 3 things I’ve craved recently:

  1. Orange juice with lots of pulp
  2. Lucky Charms cereal
  3. Aloe juice with pulp
  4. And corn dogs comes in a close fourth
Number 1 thing I used to love but can’t stand since getting pregnant:
  1. Eggs
In the past few weeks the desire to meet this little guy has also kicked in big time, but I still have three-ish months to go.  Maybe it’s because I’m more aware of him since I can feel him more?  Whatever it is, it’s a really great feeling.

Felt the baby move for the first time…

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Tonight I felt the baby move for the first time!  We had just sat down on the living room floor to enjoy a late night pizza dinner and one of the last episodes of Lost.  I had my hand on my abdomen and I felt a quick flutter as if it was kicking it’s legs back and forth a few times.  Then there were a few pops that felt like popcorn popping in my belly.  Incredible!  A few seconds later Jon tried to feel it too, but after about ten minutes of waiting we decided to try again another day.

Crazy, it’s all becoming so real now!  I’m at 17 weeks today and my baby is the size of a nice Hass avocado.

14 Weeks

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Well, I made it to the second trimester!!!  Unless I’m wearing skin tight tan tops like this one I still don’t look all that pregnant.  Jon and I took a class last Saturday that taught us the basics about using our camera (I highly recommend investing in a class if you’re going to buy a nice camera).  So after about 45 minutes of tweaking the settings we finally got the picture right.  I still need to take a few hours and practice what I learned so I don’t forget it.  There’s so much to know about the inner workings of that little device!

Anyway, yay for preggo pictures!

Why Do Men Wait?

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The other night I was watching The Bachelorette.  Yes, I do in fact still like that show.  Whether it’s realistic or not, it’s exciting to watch people experience the thrills of falling in love.  Of course, it would be better if the relationships tended to work out and turned into strong, healthy marriages – most times they do not – but nonetheless the mysterious, unscripted, romantic feelings that cause people cast all fear aside in the hopes of attaining lifelong love is good TV if you ask me!  Ever notice how love always has a way of getting you to root for it?  It’s impossible to watch a show like The Bachelorette, or any romantic comedy for that matter, without hoping that in the end, love will find a way.  Okay, so this is not a plug for The Bachelorette, I’m getting to my point…

The other night as I was watching this show I noticed something peculiar.  I’m sure I wasn’t the first person to make this observation, but I noticed that almost all of the men who went on this show were between 27 and 35 years old, accomplished in whatever field or industry they worked in and surprisingly, most of them had only very recently opened up to the idea of pursuing a future and a family with someone.  Throughout the show, many of the guys made references to how they’d spent most of their 20′s in meaningless, shallow relationships or in relationships that turned out to be dead ends.  And now, as they transitioned into their 30′s, their desire to settle down finally seemed to kick in.  They finally got serious about taking on the role and responsibility of being a one-woman family man.

The funny thing: these days in our culture, this late-blooming for men seems normal.  I mean, who would want to marry a man before he’s proven to be successful in his career, right?  Wrong!  My friend Christina Hutchison wrote a very insightful blog post about her  thoughts and experience as a 30 year old single, Christian woman who desires to be married.  I thought her perspective was well-spoken and it made me think about my own experience as a married woman as well.

Currently, I am 24, married and scheduled to have a baby sometime in January of 2012… and I feel really young!  At the doctors office I look younger than most of the other pregnant women I see and I don’t know a ton of other women my age who are having babies yet.  Many, in fact, are still waiting to be married.  I don’t feel like I’m too young to start a family, but according to most of what I see around me in the culture and in the media, I’m practically throwing away the best years of my life!  Halle Berry had her first child at age 41.  Selma Hayek, same age.  Julianne Moore, 41.  Nicole Kidman, yep, you guessed it,  41.  Susan Sarandon, 43.  Madonna 38.  Of course there are lots of examples of female celebrities having babies at a younger age too…but examples like Britney Spears and Jamie Lynn Spears make it look so…well, traumatic and uncool.  And the young moms that still manage to appear sleek and stylish have nannies, so of course they are still able to continue triumphing in their careers with a few soccer games on the side.  Of course, there’s nothing wrong with women having babies at an older age, it’s just that the trend in Hollywood seems to lean so far in that direction.  It’s the “live your life, then start a family” mentality versus the “family is life” mentality.

Here are the stats:

Fewer people are getting married.  For the last 40 years, marriage rates have been gradually decreasing.  Some of this is attributed to people waiting longer to get married.  The average age of marriage in the United States is currently around 26 and 28 for women and men respectively.  Another factor is that more people are choosing to live together, some instead of getting married, and some as a prelude to marriage.  In fact, 60% of Americans in first marriages now live together with their partner before getting married. (source: eharmony labs)

The average age of first-time mothers in the United States has been rising steadily over the past four decades — up from 21.4 in 1970 to a little over 25 in 2005, the National Center for Health Statistics reports.  According to the study, more than a third of first-time moms in the U.S. are over 30 when they have their first child.  (These are the numbers from a 2006 study.  After snooping around online, it seems that the 2006 study provides the most recent statistics on this topic.  As you can imagine, the average age of first time mothers has likely risen since then as well).

My friend Christina proposed that this delay in marriage may be due to a culture shift where men simply do not take the initiative to pursue women until they find themselves financially stable and able to provide.  While this reason may amount to part of the delay in marriages, quite possibly the other side of the story is that many women also do not consider marriage as a feasible option while they themselves are in school or trying to get their careers off the ground.  The feminist, “independence rules!” mentality may have scared men off.  Maybe men backed off because so many women kept telling them that the last thing they wanted was to settle down and become a housewife before they’d had their chance to live a little.  What came first, the chicken or the egg?

Especially for people who pursue undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, marriage during college usually means that mom and dad stop paying for tuition.  Ouch!  Tens of thousands of dollars of debt seems like a pretty good reason to postpone getting hitched I suppose.

So while I think the cultural shift may hold both men and women responsible for this delay in marriage, I very much appreciated Christina’s insightful take on the whole issue.  She’s awesome!  Check out her blog, He makes all things new, to see what she had to say.

As for those who are willing to make a change in geographic location in hopes of finding marital bliss, Idaho has the lowest median age for first marriages, followed by Kansas, Arkansas, Utah and Oklahoma.  Potatoes, corn and long skirts anyone?

Top Ten List: Why Being Pregnant is Awesome

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Photo credit:  Free To Live Photography –  

Pictured: The adorable Jessica and Ted Stuhlmiller a few weeks before baby Daniel was born. 

Being pregnant could be described as a lot of different things.  Many descriptions revolve around the many (usually unpleasant) side effects that someone can experience including nausea, mood swings, fatigue, etc.  And yes, sometimes those things happen.  But today, my good friend Mendy sent me a nice message on Facebook saying she was thinking about all the wonderful benefits of pregnancy.  Mendy is the mother of two adorable children: Judah 2 years and Eden 9 weeks.  She is a great mom and not only that, she is very passionate about mothers, babies and children in general.  She is also someone who claims she LOVES being pregnant!

So thanks to Mendy’s inspiration, here are the top 10 reasons why being pregnant is AWESOME:

10.  There’s so much to dream and pray about.  Having a baby is the most important long term investment you can make!  So naturally there are so many great things you can do to prepare and build your excitement.  The Bible is full of amazing promises for families, women and children so that’s a great place to start finding hope for your little one’s amazing future.

9.  You lower your chances of breast cancer and cervical cancer.

8.  Longer, stronger hair and nails thanks to those fancy prenatal vitamins and increased nutrition!

7.  You might need to buy a bigger bra for the first time since high school.

6.  You take your body less seriously.  Especially in our culture where there is so much emphasis on a woman’s body looking a certain “ideal” way.  Women deal with pressure all the time to tone up and slim down.  But when you’re pregnant, you learn to take your body less seriously.  You learn to laugh a little bit more about all the strange and unsual things changing – because you can’t control them anyway!!  (And some of the changes are actually kind of cool!)

5.  You get to rest.  Sometimes in life we get used to being so productive and busy that we forget it’s important to take time to slow down and rest.  Being pregnant is a great motivation to actually take the time to listen to your body and give yourself some extra grace in how much you really need to get done in a day.

4.  You get to eat WHATEVER YOU “FEEL” LIKE!  Enough said.

3.  Compliments!  In fact, nine months of compliments!  I don’t think anyone (maybe other than a bride) gets more compliments than a pregnant woman.  “You look great!”  “You’re glowing!”  “You are the cutest pregnant lady!”  “Gosh, your baby is going to be cute!”  “You’re pregnant!?!? Congratulations!!!”  Who doesn’t love receiving compliments where ever they go?

2.  You become a friend-magnet.  For some reason everyone (family, friends and even strangers) become very interested in what is going on inside your belly.  Suddenly everyone wants to know how you’re feeling and what kinds of decisions you’ve been making recently.  Being pregnant is an instant conversation starter!

1.  At the end of the pregnancy you get to have your very own, one-of-a-kind BABY!!!  Wow!  And once you do, according to Mendy you get to enjoy acting like a kid again yourself as you spend time making funny faces, sound effects and running around with your little ones.  And of course, like mothers everywhere say, you learn that you can love someone more than you ever thought possible.  [happy sigh!]

Packages On My Doorstep

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Yesterday when I got home from work I had two mysterious packages on my doorstep.  There are few things I like more than unexpected packages.  I LOVE opening them!  And I LOVED what was inside!  I’ve only known that I’m going to have a baby for a week now and there are already people in the world who want to bless this little one and my growing family.  I’m so thankful to the Lord for the people in my life.

The first package contained an adorable card and outfit from the amazing Jessica and Matt Carroll up in Spokane, Washington!  Jessica and Matt are the couple that I oh so wish lived next door to me!  Jessica was the Maid of Honor in my wedding and although our friendship has been long distance since high school, our relationship has continued to grow and get sweeter and we sneek in visits when we can.

The Carrolls have a great photography business called Free To Live Photography and are planning on taking some newborn pictures for us!  They also specialize in weddings, maternity, newborns, senior portraits, family portraits and the recently added category of sports photography.

The second package was from another amazing couple in Washington State:  Andrea and Grant Devries!  This package nearly made me cry because Andrea and Grant were good friends throughout my time at WSU, but after not seeing them for a while, the fact that they sent me a package blew me away.  Andrea and I got to travel to East Asia together on a Campus Crusade for Christ Summer Project and during that time I often looked to Andrea as a big sister because she was always so encouraging and full of godly wisdom and compassion.

She got married a few years before me and had her first son, Noah, earlier this year.  So I’ve been learning about her experience as a mom through her blog.

So, basically I can’t wait to read this book to my little duck!

Oh my gosh, that’s right, I’m having a baby!!!!!!

In the Past 50 Hours

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Well, I’ve only known that I’m pregnant for about 50ish hours now.  It’s crazy how so much can happen in 50 hours when something important is going on.

Since I found out, I’ve bought some great Prenatal Vitamins from the natural food store in town.

I’ve talked on the phone with so many significant people in my life.  Feels a lot like getting engaged – everyone explodes with excitement as if I’ve won the lottery.  My friend Hannah told me that actually, I did.

I’ve avoided looking in my guest room – soon to be turned nursery.  After so many attempts to organize that space, it’s still a ridiculous mess where all our spare stuff gets tossed.  I have NO idea how I am going to create a nice space to put a crib, rocking chair and the essentials amongst our other stuff.  Maybe Jon will need to build a few more wall shelves or we will get a plastic storage shed for the back patio.  Or maybe I will just throw everything away.  That keeps crossing my mind.

Jon said that maybe he can build a cradle like the one that Locke built Claire on Lost.  We still love Lost and we are now on Season 3.  Season 3 is insane!

I have been reading every article on The Mommypotamus blog.  I actually started reading this about two weeks ago – go figure!  And every time I read something and begin to share with Jon his eyebrows practically scrape the ceiling.  Why?  Because Mommypotamus is very “natural” in her thinking.  But I like it!  So I continue to bring up interesting topics like home birth, natural foods, circumcision, and ultrasound practices to Jon and since he doesn’t have time to read all the articles right now, he just has to trust me and probably think that I’m a little bit crazy or hormonal.

I’m sure I’ll be posting a lot more on these key decisions I have to make as I go.  Probably because so many of my preconceived ideas are changing and it’s shocking, even to me.  I’ve always been a “take a pill to fix it” girl  whenever I experience any kind of ailment.  But not anymore!  I’m suddenly extremely aware of everything I’m putting into my body.  It’s pretty weird.  Beautiful and wonderful, but still kind of weird.

And I’ve been making sure to carve out time to have a REAL relationship with God.  I think I got very routine over the past couple months with everything going on and as a result stuff started to feel a little lousy, heavy and boring, and …blah!  So I’m taking this opportunity to get back on track because I can etiher go through this whole experience with God, or without.  And I’d rather go with God.

Last night I crawled into bed at 9:30pm - something I’ve done maybe a handful of times since elementary school.  Jon had to stay up late to study, but he came upstairs about twenty minutes later to “tuck me in.”  I’ve never heard him say he wants to “tuck me in” before, but last night as I was walking up the stairs on my way to bed he told me he’d be up in a while to do just that.  I guess he’s already feeling fatherly.  It’s really sweet.

And as he tucked me in, he said I looked so peaceful.  And honestly, I felt so peaceful.  I couldn’t really explain it, but I just felt so safe, so sure, so…peaceful.  I guess I still don’t really know how to explain it, but it’s just the sense that whatever is happening to me is so right and lovely in God’s eyes.  And I’m pretty sure that I had a little smile on my face all night as I layed there.  I didn’t really sleep all that much, but even just laying there awake felt great.  That never happens.  Ha, I’m so full of ooey-gooey emotions right now that I hardley recognize myself!

So hey, If you have any advice, tips, blog recommendations, product recommendations, etc. please send them my way!  Just leave me a comment because I can use all the help I can get!

Oh and by the way, I’m having a baby!

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Welp, let it be known to the entire virtual world that I am having a baby!!!!!

I found out yesterday morning.

Jon found out a few hours later.

I couldn’t tell him right away because he woke up early to study for a big midterm that he needed to do well on.  I assumed that the news might send him into shock and he would flop his test.

So I picked him up from school at 11am and with my video camera in hand, I told him the news.

I might be sharing the reaction video if Jon will let me, but I need to check with him first.

It was not planned, but after a couple hours of the news settling in, we couldn’t be more thrilled!!!

We spent our free time yesterday calling our parents, family and some close friends to share the news.

And I can already say that my baby is blessed, we are blessed and there’s so much support and love surrounding this whole process.

I read Psalm 139 with a whole new perspective this morning.

And at least for a few days I’m just going to soak in this news before I try and figure out all of the things up ahead.

Wow.

Crazy how everything can change in a day!