Patrick Junior's Grand Entrance

I know a lot of people like to read other people's birth stories. Or maybe I'm the only one. If you don't like birth stories, then go ahead and skip this post! Ok, on with the story.

I had been getting weekly membrane sweeps since 38 weeks. We all thought I'd be having a big baby, so I was hoping for sooner rather than later. Fast forward to February 2. I was 40 weeks and 5 days pregnant. I had been sick for a week, and also had been in prodromal (or false) labor for a week. Slightly uncomfortable contractions every 7-10 minutes. For a WEEK. With no progress. I was GBS+ this time, so the goal was to get to the hospital with enough time to get some antibiotics. This made it tough to know when to go in, and we had 2 false alarms where we decided to go ahead and drop Abigail off with our friends and go to the hospital. But each time I was only 4cm dilated, which meant that I wasn't progressing even though my contractions would get to be 1-3 minutes apart.

Ok so I backed up a little after I fast forwarded. So February 2nd rolls around, and my contractions are starting to get closer and stronger again. I am really feeling like this is it, so around 5ish we leave for the hospital. We brought Abigail with us this time, so we didn't bother our friends for a third time in case it was another false alarm! Sure enough, I am still 4cm dilated. We ask if we can just go ahead and break my water since they had already offered that to us the second time we went in, and it seemed like that was the only thing keeping him from dilating my cervix all the way. They said they couldn't do it at that time because they were not staffed enough for an "elective induction." So we decided to go home. Again. My midwife offered me some morphine to help with the contraction pain so I could get some sleep since the pain appeared to be futile (as in, not doing any work to open my cervix.) While pretty uncomfortable, the contractions weren't unbearable at the time, so I turned down the morphine. I also didn't like the idea of taking something like that when I didn't really need it since, you know, I'm growing a person in my belly and sharing my blood with him.

On the way home, my contractions started getting a little stronger, and I was so annoyed that I was having all these contractions and no progress! I got home and bounced around a while on my exercise ball while watching Grey's Anatomy, but decided I was tired and needed these contractions to stop so I could get some sleep. I took a warm bath in hopes that relaxing would get them to stop, or at least be less strong. I always think baths are a good idea, until I get in my tub and remember how stupid it is because the water turns luke warm after like 5 minutes. Not cool. Anyway, I start not loving my bath, and I feel like my contractions might have let up a bit, so I get out and get in bed.

As soon as I laid down I got the longest, most intense contraction ever (for this labor, anyway...). Then another one. I would classify these as "fairly excruciating" because I actually had to "breathe" through them, or make noise or anything else to cope. I get out of bed and call the L&D to see if they can call in the prescription for Morphine for me. No dice, turns out Morphine is a shot, not pills. Duh, Amy. I am in so much pain I can barely talk so while the girl on the phone was talking to me, I just blurted out "I'm just going to come in" and hung up. I was a little hesitant to go out of our room and tell Patrick we needed to go BACK to the hospital after just coming from there, but I was really hurting so I figured something had to be going on. My contractions were coming one on top of the other, so I just barely managed to load myself into the car while Patrick got Abigail out of bed and buckled in her carseat. Patrick asked me to call our friends who were watching Abigail and let them know we were coming. I said no way, Jose...So he had to call them as we were leaving.

We pulled up at their house after like 15 or 20 minutes. I am just writhing in the front seat of the car. (Ever tried going through transition in the front seat of a car? Not fun) Patrick ran Abigail, still buckled in her carseat (!) to our friend's front porch. Lindsey met him out there and grabbed her overnight bag and we were back on the road.

After another 15 or 20 minutes, we pull up at the Emergency Room. Now, let me take a minute to explain the procedure for when you're in labor with my hospital. You are supposed to enter through the ER. You fill out some paperwork at the first window, then someone takes you back into a hallway and you fill out some more paperwork in a little room, then wait for someone from L&D to come down and get you. L&D is on the 14th floor. (It's really the 13th, but there is no "13" on the elevator buttons) So this is why I came in through the ER. Back to the story...

We park illegally right in front of the entrance. I couldn't even move and had to wait for my contraction to end before I could get out of the car. I finally managed to climb out of my seemingly enormous, gargantuan, Mt. Everest-sized vehicle (really just an Expedition) and waddle my way into the first window at the ER. I tell the girl I am about to have a baby. I am very clearly in extreme pain. She says OK let me just ask you a few questions, and I say no that's ok I need to go up to L&D, we can do the paperwork later. Then she says "hehe, I'm afraid that's not how it works :-)" (smiley face added to indicate her silly, cheery tone while saying this to a laboring woman who is in so much pain that she has dropped to her hands and knees in a nasty inner city ER) My poor husband answered all her questions for me while someone else came out with a wheelchair to wheel me into the next paperwork prison. The wheelchair felt terrible so I walked/crawled/hitched a ride on Patrick to make my way down the hall to fill out more papers.

Once we get to that room, I hit the floor again. This time I feel some stuff going on down there, and I yell out "I'M PUSHING!" Someone runs at me with a wheelchair, and I try to sit down, but I could feel the baby's HEAD so I jumped right back up and freaked out. Patrick was right in front of me and when I jumped up, I flung my arms around his neck and pretty much started climbing him like a tree. I felt like I was trying to climb away from the baby's head. I'm not sure what I thought that would accomplish, but it just happened.

Next, they brought me a gurney since the wheelchair was a no-go. Someone asked me if I wanted to go up to L&D, or if I had time to make it up there, or something like that. I said NO! So they wheeled my gurney into some room and pulled the curtain shut after like a hundred people came in the room. I was group B strep positive this time around, which means you need to have antibiotics during labor, preferably for four hours prior to giving birth. I told the nurses this so they would know that I hadn't been able to get the medicine, and they put the heplock in my hand anyway to start administering it. Turns out having a baby is a great way to distract from the pain of getting a needle stuck in your hand, because I didn't feel a thing. I was too busy using every ounce of strength I could muster to fight through the pain of a contraction and lift my butt off the gurney so they could remove my sweatpants.

Two pushes later, Patrick Jr's head was out. (That's right, I was about 2 minutes from having a baby in my pants.) His head was out and my water STILL had not broken! My midwife later told me that my "bag of waters" was one of the strongest she's ever seen. It finally broke when I pushed again to get the rest of his body out. It exploded everywhere, and was really gross. And he pooped right as the water exploded, so there was just this huge mess of baby funk everywhere. But anyway, he was out and it was such a relief to not be pregnant! They handed him to me, and I hiked up my {Patrick's} sweatshirt to feed him a little while all the people were running around cleaning and doing whatever else they needed to do.

Everyone was like "He's SO big!" and "Oh he has red hair!" They did his apgars and he got a 9 and a 10! It is really rare to get a 10, even for full term healthy babies, my little man is such a champ at life! After all that, they wheeled us up to the maternity floor where you stay after you've had your baby. I got all stitched up, and they weighed Little Patrick and confirmed that he was indeed a huge baby. 9lb 11.5oz and 21inches long. Then they got all concerned about him being "macrosomic" (which just means "big" or larger than 4000grams to be exact. I don't know how many pounds that is, feel free to do the math if you're curious) and started throwing around words like "diabetes." I was not diabetic during my pregnancy, so I wasn't very worried about it. They did a blood test to make sure he didn't have high blood sugar, and it turned out his blood sugar was actually too low. So then they are like, "we will have to test his sugar every 4 hours for a while to make sure it stabilizes, and if it doesn't, he will have to have some formula." I just continued to feed him whenever he wanted to eat, and his blood sugar continued to be completely normal for every test after that first one.

We ended up having to stay in the hospital until Saturday afternoon (I gave birth Thursday night) due to his blood sugar and GBS+ issues. But he was perfectly healthy. My giant perfectly healthy baby boy! Patrick had gone to pick up Abigail from our friends' house on Friday and hung out with her at home for a while before bringing her to meet her Bubba. It was love at first sight for her, and she has loved her Bubba ever since! We think he's pretty cool, too.

Voilà!

Yesterday I left y'all with an almost finished picture frame. I had spray painted it white with just one coat. After applying the second coat,  I liked how it looked kind of white washed and I could still see the wood grain through the paint, BUT the look I was going for was a pretty solid white. I got out my handy dandy Kilz spray primer and did a quick coat to get more coverage. Two more coats of white satin spray paint and I was high as a kite and my frame was good to go! (Just kidding about the high part, but I spray paint in my garage so I could definitely smell it a bit in our living area...woops.)

After all my paint was dry, I set the glass in the frame, then laid the matte and photo down on top of it. Then I used some trusty duct tape to secure the glass. It might not sound very safe, but with the notch in the wood, the glass was flush with outside of the frame (if that makes sense?) So the duct tape has a pretty easy job.

With everything secured, I slapped three 3M picture hanging strips on the back (two on top, one of bottom...this sucker is a little heavy!). Then I took down the mess of a gallery wall above my sofa, and popped this guy up using a small level and my best guess as to the center of our sofa!

Here is a close up of the finished product:

And here is a somewhat zoomed out view. Please ignore my shelf disaster in the corner!

Soon the other two will go up on either side. I am waiting for my photos from MPIX to arrive. Snapfish threw a bog ol' wrench in my plans for an 8x10 close up of each kid on either side when they sent the close-up of Bubba with like an inch of his head cut off. I was able to adjust the cropping on MPIX though, so I am crossing my fingers for frame-worthy prints this time!

Speaking of my adorable babies, here they are out running errands yesterday: 

Abigail has really been loving her Bubba lately.She has always liked asking to hold him, but usually would try to push him off saying "all done!" as soon as he hit her lap. Well the last couple days she has actually held him for minutes  at a time! And she loves giving him kisses! Whenever  I pick her up from daycare (she goes twice a week to get some little kid play-time) she looks for him in his carseat and says BUBBA!!! If Patrick happens to be home and able to keep him, she gets very concerned and asks where he is, it's so cute! 

A Quickie Frame

I love quick projects that I can actually get done after the kids go to sleep, but don't require me to stay up way too late! So tonight I made myself a frame for our family photos from the slats that were originally supposed to support my bed. Might as well use them for something, right? So I now have three free photo frames. Well, technically I paid for these materials at some point, but today they were all free!

I really want some big white frames from Ikea, but I don't feel like driving an hour and spending like $20x3, plus all 10 (I think?) 5x7 frames I need. {I am hoping those will be a late birthday present from my parents when they visit in a couple weeks.} Anyway, in another timely blog post, I saw younghouselove post about some easy frames they made for a recent pinterest project. I didn't really need to see how to make frames, but the timing was great to spark the idea and head to the garage.

I started with an old black 11x14 (I think?) frame and stole the glass and the paper matte. Using the glass, I measured how long each side needed to be. I didn't take any pictures of this step, but hopefully I can explain it clearly...I planned to use the table saw to make notches on the inside of the frame for the glass to set in, like in "real" frames, so when I measured the length, I slid the glass about 1/4 inch onto the board. Maybe it will make better sense when you see what I did to make the notches. Here is a close up of the board pretending to go through the saw: 

See the notch cut out? That's how far in I had the glass setting when I measured how long the inside length needed to be. Here's another shot just for fun:

When I measured the inside length, I marked a small line where the corner of my 45 degree angle cut needed to be. I marked it 1/4inch shorter than the glass on both the top and the bottom, to account for the 1/4inch notch that would also be on the top and bottom boards. Then I clamped the two side boards together to ensure that they would be exactly the same size and got to work on my miter saw. 

Clamp:

I did the same steps with the two top and bottom boards. Then I busted out the Kreg Jig and drilled a hole in each end of the two side boards. It doesn't matter where you drill the pocket hole, as long as you have one hole in each corner. I just found it to be easiest to only drill on two pieces instead of four. 

Got a picture of the hole for you this time! It looks exactly like the photo from the bed post, only it's mine.

Next I put some wood glue along each corner and assembled the frame. After I applied the glue, I screwed in all four pocket screws to hold it extra tight. This wood is super soft pine, so I could have also used my staple gun just as easily. I am just excited about my Kreg right now and want to use it for everything! Even just wood glue alone would probably be enough to hold it together if you were able to clamp it tight while it was drying. 

Here she is after the first coat of white spray paint:

Check back tomorrow (hopefully) for an update on the finished product hanging on my wall! 

Oops...

Ok I am not the best carpenter in the world, and maybe next time I shouldn't be rushing around making secret beds before my husband gets home from work. My pretty bed started to get a little not so pretty after two nights of sleeping on it. My flush joints started to become un-flush as the weight of our super heavy tempurpedic and boxes pushed the bottoms of the 2x6s out of the soft pine legs. Woops.

But never fear, I have a new plan! I learned some things while putting this bed together. Things like, I need a very long drill bit for drilling pilot holes through the pocket holes. And that I might need a new phillips drill bit, that is also longer because my current one keeps stripping all my screws. Or maybe it's just me. 

Anyway, I came across a blogpost yesterday where someone else built a super cute bed, and said they would be posting a very detailed how-to the next day (today). What a coincidence! It must be fate, I tell you because I love this bed frame and it looks so nice and simple! So here is my new plan. It looks much more sturdy than my original plan. I am so mad at the guy from Lowes who talked me into getting only 5 1x4s for the slats. Those things are so weak! I had gone in asking for 7 2x4s, and he was all "oh no, that's overkill, just use these, and you probably only need like four." I will definitely be getting 2x4s, and lots more of them this time around.

I don't know when I will get started yet, but sometime this week I'm sure. Patrick's work is really going to slow down starting today so I am hoping to get my friend Lindsey's curtains finished then get to work on this bed frame! 

A Bed Tutorial

I should probably say this is less like a tutorial, and more like a "here's what I did, copy at your own risk" sort of thing.

I knew I wanted something very simple with clean lines. I'm picturing 1x6 sides, flush with the top of 14" square or tapered square legs. I buy my stuff, and even spring for the spendy oak furniture grade 1x6 because they were so pretty! I had everything cut to size at Lowes. Here is what I got:

2 1x6x77" oak boards
2 1x6x81" oak boards
5 1x4x77" pine boards (for slates across the bed)
2 1x2x77" pine boards to run along the sides and hold up the planks
2 2x2x28in oak table legs

First I busted out the Kreg Jig to test drive it. Then I drove two holes into each side of the 1x6 boards. I didn't take a picture, but the holes turn out to look something like this:

(photo from centsational girl)

Next I tried to screw the boards into the side of the legs. Note the use of the word "tried." It didn't work so well, even when I drilled pilot holes. So I devise a genius plan to use the pine 1x2's as legs because they are softer. Works like a charm, screws go right in. Here is a photo of my laundry hamper supporting one side so it doesn't fall over while I was working on something else:

The joints are strong enough, but not as strong as I was hoping for. They would be stonger it I had been able to use the more substantial oak legs I think, but I just could not get the screws to go in all the way. This is kind of a theme in my life. Whenever I try to build something, or work with power tools in any way, something inevitably goes wrong, even if it is just a simple, straightforward project. I run into stupid road blocks, like not being able to screw the screws in all the way and stripping out the screw head in the process. Sigh. Nothing can ever be easy!

After lots of craziness, balancing acts, and careful maneuvering, I ended up with this:

The hardest part was screwing the legs to the boards without my upright boards falling over! Hence the laundry hamper support above. Anyway, you can see in this picture the small 1x2s running along the side. Because I improvised the legs, it added a little width to the bed, making my 77in slats too short to be supported by the 1x2. Womp womp. I had some remnants of the 1x4s so I decided to cut 3/4in pieces and screw them into the ends of each slat to elongate them. Worked ok, but will not be a permanent solution! Then I screwed 2x4 pieces to each slat, perpendicular to the floor to support the middle of our bed. The man at Lowes said the 1x4s would be fine and 2x4s would be overkill. I think he was wrong. Our bed is HEAVY. And my husband sleeps like he is being stung by a bunch of bees, flopping all over the place. A solid 230lb man throwing his weight around in his sleep is serious business for a bed frame to handle. 

So that set up will be temporary. I have plans for a platform made out of 2x4s and plywood to just set inside this frame, and be covered with a bed skirt. I also have some sanding to do where my joints didn't stay exactly flush. :-( But overall, I am happy with it. It is much more my style, and the room already feels bigger without our big giant bed. I can't wait to get the headboard up!!

A New Bed!

Patrick built our bed a few months ago, right before T Patrick was born. It was a good first attempt, but it was a little sloppy, albiet the sturdiest bed you have ever seen! It was all 2x4s and 2x6s screwed together with huge screws and 3in bolts...heavy stuff. We had made panels to go around three sides, with big plans to make hinges on the top so they could be lifted for storage under the bed. They might be visible in the pictures in the "House Tour" page. Anyway, they were just leaning up against the bed for the last 6 months, pretending to be attached. And they were magnets for stubbing toes, knocking them over, exposing the particle board on the other side, just kind of a pain in general. One we hadn't been able to come up with a solution for. Also the sides of the headboard were unfinished, and our plan for finishing them wasn't making much progress and I didn't really have a lot of confidence that it would do the trick. So after six months, I decided we needed a change. Something lighter, sleeker, less of a big deal.

Here is what I ended up with after a few hours last night:

I love how it looks, even though it's still raw wood. I couldn't decide on a finish so I just made it and I can do something to it later. It definitely needs some more support too. But for now it's ok. And at least it's pretty! Up next is a headboard in this fabric:

I saw this on younghouselove and fell in LOVE with it. It is SO pretty! And incorporates both of the colors I have going on in my bedroom so nicely! I can't wait til it gets here! 

Abigail is waking up so this is going to be a quick post. I did take some photos of the bed-making process and will post more later!

Gallery Wall, Take Two

I LOVE gallery walls. The only reason I had a big wedding, and had babies is so I could have tons of lovely photos to fill up gallery walls all over my house! Ok, that is not the only reason, but it is a happy by-product of those life events! Anyway, I thought the wall about my sofa in the the living room would be a great place for a gallery wall. Original, I know. I really liked the idea of this project from Iheart Organizing:

I like how the clips add some interest, and allow you to change the artwork/photos on a whim, without the work of picking those little tabs and taking out the old photos, getting the frame back in the right spot, etc. 

Then there is this cute wall, from younghouselove:

And also from younghouselove, the ultimate gallery wall, it's like picture frame wallpaper! 

Now that I've shared with you my inspiration, let me show you my first attempt at a gallery wall:

Not very pretty, is it? I bought a bunch of these frames from Ikea a long time ago in anticipation of some great family photos after Tee Patrick was born. (That's cajun for Little Patrick, and it's what we decided to call him after nobody in either of our families was thrilled about calling him PJ.) Oh, and there used to be a vertical white 8x10 frame hanging in that blank spot, but I stole it for some art in Abigail's room because this wall was stupid anyway. 

I used that photo hanging thing, I forget what it's called, but it has an infomercial, it's like a little thumbtack gun you hit with a hammer and it puts an angled tack into the wall...anyway, not worth it, if you are considering getting one, don't waste your time! The other big problems with this wall are, in no particular order: the black thing that makes the frame able to stand on a table skews the frame and makes them all look wonky and slanted, I do not exactly have the most artistic eye when it comes to making "random" arrangements like this, and I didn't measure. Woops. However, I did at least lay them out on my kitchen table in an arrangement I was fairly happy with. I guess something got lost in translation from the table to the wall! 

All that to say, I have new plans for a different arrangement with different frames. I am going to get some flat white frames from Ikea soon and use those. I think I will still keep my eye out at our local ReStore (habitat for humanity) for some plain cabinet doors for a future project though! 

I don't have an after photo yet, but I did get my prints in the mail, and I think this is the arrangement I have settled on:

What do you all think? Yay or nay? Also, does anyone know of a REALLY GOOD photo printing site? I have been really unhappy with Riteaid lately, and ordered these prints from snapfish.com, and they are very grainy. Anyone have any better luck with another company? Please let me know! thanks :-)