I’m not pregnant — woo hoo! 11 long days after her due date, Amelia Marie came charging into the world at approx. 6:45am on Tuesday, May 27. Here’s a recap of our wild 2.25 hour ride through labor.

I woke up and looked at the clock at 4:30am Tuesday morning, feeling some mild contractions, hopeful that this was it. I walked around a little bit, came back to bed. I would almost have myself convinced that the contractions were gone when one would come again. In retrospect I think they may have been as close as 5-6 minutes apart, but they seemed quite mild and tentative to me. At about 5:00, I nudged Kate and told him that today would probably be the day.

Soon after, I decided to go ahead and call our doula since I knew she might have to juggle her work schedule for the day. Kendra said she was so sorry but she suspected that she was coming down with the flu. I was disappointed, but we decided to play it by ear and I would check in with her later. Next I called my mom who would be staying with Josie (who was thankfully still sleeping at this point). I told her to bring an overnight bag to work and wait to hear from us. And then I called my dear friend Jeni so that she would know what was up, too.

During the phone calls, contractions continued coming, faster and harder — but still not a big deal. I was able to mostly talk through them just fine. Kate and I decided to time some contractions so that we would have some info to tell my doctor. Contractions were 30-50 seconds long, 2-3 minutes apart, getting harder but I wasn’t alarmed. Dr. S. said to get to the hospital pronto.

We only live about 10 minutes from the hospital (in light traffic), so the next thing was to get my mom to our house to be with Josie. She needs about 40 minutes to get to us. I called her again and asked her to come right over and then Kate and I worked on rounding up last-minute items for our bags. During this time, contractions became hard enough to stop me in my tracks. I had a thought that I would have many times that morning: that I wasn’t handling this labor as well as I could be. I started to really look forward to getting to the hospital so that I could just be still and focus.

Kate says that his inner voice was telling him that we should be leaving for the hospital now and having my mom meet us there. He suggested it, but I didn’t want to wake up Josie and have to tote her along with us. We timed some more contractions, Kate sent an e-mail to his boss. At 6:07am Josie started waking up, Kate shut the laptop, and said “we’re going now.” He changed Josie’s diaper, loaded her into the van (sans pants), and grabbed bags while I made one last bathroom stop.

Sitting on the toilet, I felt an enormous, involuntary, bearing down sensation, followed by a pop and the sound of my water breaking with a splash. For just a second my eyes landed on the bathtub and considered how nice it would be to just stay home. But with no doula, no childcare, and no birth supplies, that was only a fleeting thought. Plus, I thought again that this just seemed more intense because I wasn’t in a position to properly relax and focus.

In the van, I managed to call my mom and tell her to meet us at the hospital and then I just tried to keep my vocalizations in check (didn’t want to freak out Josie) by talking to myself. In my head, I was checking of signs of positive progress (we’re on the highway, I can see the exit, this contraction is almost over, etc). Out loud, I just kept mumbling, “that’s good, that’s good, that’s good.”

We left the van at the main entrance with four-ways flashing. Kate grabbed Josie and her diaper bag in one hand with me clutching the other. It took 4-5 very hard contractions to get across the big lobby and to the elevator, but we actually made it quite quickly. I’m sure we were quite a sight. I was not trying to be quiet anymore.

At the triage desk on L&D, the nurse said that Dr. S. had called in a direct admit but asked to see ID and insurance card. We’d left everything in the car, so she started to just lead us to room 4, our lovely natural-birth-friendly room with a tub. My composure was crumbling fast, especially at the thought of walking another long hallway. At some point between the van and L&D I’d stopped going with the flow of contractions and was now fighting the urge to push.

The nurse was not getting the picture of how quickly I was losing it. She was asking questions about my pre-pregnancy weight, etc, and walking too fast. Kate was trying to support me and cuddle Josie. Finally, I managed to say that I was feeling like pushing, and I could see in her eyes that she understood. She hollered for a wheelchair and said that we were now just going to try to make it to room 1.

My feet were taking root in the floor, but someone came up with a wheelchair and pushed me into the room at a run. I stood up from the chair at the side of the bed, leaned forward with my palms on the mattress, and couldn’t make my legs more another inch. “Can you get up onto the bed?” No. “Okay, just slip off your pants.” No. Again, someone asked me to get up onto the bed. Finally, Kate set Josie on the bed for a minute and yanked down my pants and underwear for me. I managed to kick off one shoe. And I could feel burning pressure. I was using every ounce of willpower to hold back because I knew that no one was in position to catch this baby yet.

The nurse from the hallway was calling for any doctor within earshot to get in here because we had a baby crowning. I couldn’t see what was going on because I was facing the far wall, but I heard someone behind me saying that it was okay to push. I didn’t so much push as give in and I felt the baby’s head coming out almost immediately. I gave one mighty push and felt shoulders and everything else come tumbling (quite literally) out. She came with such force — and because I was standing — that her cord broke. I had a ridiculous fleeting thought about how my shoes were probably ruined. (Incidentally, they’re not! LOL)

The next hour was tough because I didn’t get to see Amelia — at all — because she had inhaled a lot of fluid and meconium and needed to be observed in NICU, while I needed to deliver the placenta and get some stitches. In the end, everyone is well and we’re home now with our Amelia who flew into the world. Does this mean she’s going to be a drama queen?

Birth Day details coming soon… Labor was an action-packed 2.25 hours!

Josie and I went on a shopping extravaganza at Super Target today (last grocery shop while pregnant, I hope??). I felt like I needed a treat afterward, so we stopped at the in-store Starbucks for a strawberry frappuccino. The girl working offered to put the leftover little bit into a teeny tiny cup with a teeny tiny straw for Josie. Isn’t it cute?

Our two outdoor adventurers:

Here’s another once in a blue moon post. Our household has been very busy getting ready for Josie’s little sister to make an appearance mid May (wow!) — AND getting the house ready to sell soon. Hope your spring is full of wonderful things, too!

Our little cheerleader was ready to move and spread some Halloween cheer this year! She and I handed out oodles of candy to trick-or-treaters and admired all the costumes. Josie’s eyes lit up at every princess who came to our door, so I guess I know what kind of costume is in her future!

Oh dear, oh dear! How could I have waited so long to say how proud I am of my little baby who turned one year old on August 10? I assure you that the day was celebrated with gusto around here!

We packed our little bungalow with family and indulged in yummy cake and ice cream. The birthday girl was a bit clingy and unsure at first, but her cousins helped her tear open presents and get into the party mood. Aunt Karen even sent a special birthday outfit — so cute!

Happy Birthday, sweet Josie. We love you more every day!

I have crafty news to share! Yesterday, I participated in my very first craft fair as part of a local festival called the Feast of Lanterns. The event is a revival of a tradition that dates back to Victorian times when the neighborhood would decorate the local park with paper lanterns to celebrate the Chinese New Year. In addition to the craft fair booths and vendors there were lots of kids activities going on and a nice lineup of musical acts. At dusk all of the lanterns are lit, and it’s really quite magical. It was nice to sit back and watch the people milling around in the glow of the lanterns with the music and crickets in the background.

I brought some lined tote bags (pretty much my favorite thing to sew) and about a dozen silly little dish soap aprons. We called our booth Englewood Crafts, and I was joined by a few other friends. Their stuff ranged from cute pillow case dresses and knitted dish cloths to Mary’s awesome beeswax creams and lip balm. I’m already excited about next year!

If you are by chance reading this because you saw us at the feast, please feel free to drop me a line or leave a comment. If you need to get in touch with one of the other artists from our booth, I’ll be sure to pass along the message.

Here’s our little thrill seeker having a blast on her new swing out at Grandma’s farm.

And here’s my best attempt at getting a still shot of this cute little swing top that I knitted last spring. It’s from Minnow Knits (I’m pretty sure), using KnitPicks Shine (worsted?). The pattern does include bloomers, but she’s wearing a wool soaker (a slightly modified version of this free pattern) knit from Cascade 220.

This scene is becoming more and more common as Josie experiments with standing.

. . . at least, I hope it is.

I miss my feeble attempts at regular blogging, but I’ve been spending my time on other things these days (playing with baby, gardening, part-time working, a wee bit of crafting). So, until the inspiration and free time return, I’ll try to pop in and at least show you a peek at what’s going on at our house.

Here are Josie and Kate’s “hip hop” lounge pants in action. I know I’m lucky to have a husband who can appreciate silly homemade frog pants, not to mention dressing to match his daughter.

This photo also features Josie’s one-of-a-kind Mini Muffin t-shirt made by Dad for Christmas. So cute!

Whoops. Life has been full of baby swings, jumparoos, rice cereal, and story books, and somewhere along the way I dropped the ball on blogging.

Also I haven’t finished a craft project in ages. I am getting close to finishing a couple of tiny fairy dolls. I just haven’t snapped any progress photos yet.

Jocelyn is six months old this week. Officially 17 pounds, 27 inches. A bit of a stringbean. These days she’s into rolling over and trying to sit up on her own for more than 30 seconds at a time. She can be shy and wide-eyed one minute, squealing and banging her toys the next. Such a joy!

The sleeping thing? Eh, not so much. But the good nights are slowly, gradually starting to outnumber the tough ones, so that’s something.

Happy Holidays! Christmas 2006 was filled with wonderful visits with oodles of family members this year. We were so lucky to be able to see all members of both mine and Kate’s immediate family — plus several aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends besides.

I didn’t give many handmade gifts this year (for obvious reasons). That felt kind of strange, but I hope to find more time for crafting again as time goes on. I did sew a few pairs of flannel baby pants for Josie and her cousin Will and sewed a toddler-sized apron for our friend Miriam. I knit a quick pink sweater for Jocelyn and I have another sweater in progress for Kate, and that’s about it.

Oh yeah, and I made Josie’s Christmas dress that she’s wearing in the photos above, too.

I’m working on a list of craft projects to tackle in 2007. Not anything to stress myself over, just things that I don’t want to forget about — especially stuff that can be made with supplies on hand, for those times when I need a little inspiration. On the top of the list is an Aran Sampler blanket for my parents.

Sleep Update:
We’re about halfway through our first 10-day improvement plan with Josie, and I think it’s safe to say that she is doing better. Having a consistent bedtime routine has been the most helpful change. She’s also gotten better at resettling herself after I put her down, so now we’re moving on to try having her lay down when she’s drowsy to finish falling asleep on her own.

Hopefully, all of this will eventually help her to self-soothe some of the time when she wakes during the night. My goal isn’t necessarily for her to sleep completely through the night just yet (although that would be wonderful!) — I’d just like to see her have more nights with just a couple of wakings. She has nights like that sometimes already, so I’m optimistic that we’re on the right track.

That’s Josie showing off her new rolling over talents. She’s so proud of herself when she makes it over all by herself! She’s no pro quite yet, but she does occasionally manage to roll in either direction (back to tummy, or tummy to back). She’s an active baby, that’s for sure!

Unfortunately, she’s become restless during the night, too. It used to be that she would wake up a few times to nurse, but then fall right back asleep with little effort. Lately, she’s waking up more often than ever and really resists being put back down to sleep again after nursing. So… we’re embarking on a 10-day experiment to see if we can help everyone get better nighttime sleep by following some advice from Elizabeth Pantley’s book The No-Cry Sleep Solution.

I’ve browsed through several sleep books from the library including The Happiest Baby on the Block, The Baby Whisperer, Dr. Sears’ Sleep Book, and others. There are parts of each of them that seem like they would be helpful, but Pantley’s approach is where we’re going to start. I’m not really looking for lots of advice at this point, but I would like to hold myself accountable to check in after ten days of honest effort and see if we have any improvement.

Last night, she slept for 2-3 hours at a time, which is pretty good — but it took a whole lot of coaxing to get her back to sleep in her own bed each time. For starters, I’m working on lessening her need to suck in order to sleep and working on transitioning her into her own bed without waking up. Once she starts doing better with that, then we’ll move on to helping her fall asleep in her bed. The book gives a bunch of suggestions for gently weaning the baby from being as dependent on mom or dad to fall asleep and stay asleep.

It feels good to have some sort of plan, and ten days seems like a reasonable amount of time for a trial. I’m glad to be doing this now before the holidays are in full swing and before teething kicks in. Wish us luck!

My mom and I took Jocelyn to the department store yesterday to have some 3-month-old pictures taken. I was so excited about it. What I didn’t count on were all of the families there having Christmas pictures taken (duh), and that the crowds would be that much worse over the weekend (again, duh). So, it really shouldn’t have come as a shock when we found out that they were running over an hour behind schedule.

Thankfully, Josie spent most of the wait time asleep in her stroller, but eventually we had to deal with a messy diaper change and quick meal in the store. The portrait session itself went okay. She was a bit more bothered by the whole scene than I expected, but we captured some cute moments nevertheless. All’s well that ends well, I guess.

Tonight after we got home from going back to the store to look at proofs, Josie was up babbling and smiling at us for the better part of an hour. I love that she actually says “goo goo gaa gaa.” Besides being a lot more vocal, over the past week or two she has started being able to grab some of her toys (in order to put them in her mouth, of course). She even rolls over occasionally and insists on being held in a sitting position as much as possible.

I’m amazed at how active and expressive she is. I think I pictured us with a quiet, mellow baby — and I guess I equated mellow with “good” in my mind. Turns out that we love Josie’s wiggly, busy, chatty personality. She’s been a very good baby… although she’s anything but mellow.

Of course, we had to dress Miss Josie for Halloween. Nevermind that she was pretty much oblivious to the whole thing. One of her first nicknames was Josie-Mouse because of her little newborn squeaks, so here she is!

The pattern for the costume came from Ottobre Magazine (4/2006). Their version was as Piglet from Winnie the Pooh, but it was easy to adapt into a mouse. The first thing I’ve sewed since she was born!

And here’s one more picture showing you how she really celebrated the holiday:

Bridget is beating the odds and doing much better these days. We’re so relieved. The vet gave her some antibiotics, in case she was suffering from a liver infection. More likely is that she poisoned herself by getting into something around the house. We’ll probably never know for sure — but in any case, it looks like the worst is behind us. She’s eating and drinking on her own again and gradually getting back to her usual perky self.

Josie is so much fun these days. She smiles and coos and reaches for toys (her owl is a favorite) — she’s becoming a real “baby” now, not a little newborn anymore. Amazing.

Unfortunately, not everything is happy in the muffin household. Our sweet 2-year old cat, Bridget, is very sick. She’s normally a precocious and sociable kitty, so when she spent two days sleeping in the same spot we knew something was wrong. The vet says that her liver is failing, and no one can say exactly why. My hunch is that she ate something she shouldn’t have, but it’s hard to say.

We’re treating her with antibiotics in case she has an infection that can be cleared up. At this point we don’t know whether she’ll recover or not. So, if you have a healthy sweet kitty at your house, be sure to give him or her a kiss every day.

This is a picture from yesterday morning, when everything was right in our little world. Josie is wearing my favorite romper, she’s happy and well-rested and cooing at her two favorite images — a black-and-white heart drawing and a picture of her new cousin Will.

During her morning nap, I made up a big batch of pasta salad, leaving out the chunks of cheese that I would have normally included. Around noon, Josie finished nursing, I ate a bowl of the salad, and we headed out to the grocery store. By the time we got back, she was hungry again, so we sat down to nurse. And that’s when everything went very wrong.

Almost immediately, the squealing and back-arching and crying were back. She would take a few sips, scream and push away, while at the same time rooting around and crying out hungrily. This is the same sort of thing that I’d been hoping to cure. She followed up this stressful feeding by throwing up more than I’ve ever seen before.

When she eventually calmed down, my eye drifted over to the coffee table and settled on the bowl from lunch. The lightbulb went off and I went to check the label of the bottled vinegarette that I had used. Contains romano cheese. I totally didn’t realize. So I guess that pretty much puts to rest any lingering doubts I had about whether or not Josie is sensitive to dairy.

The rest of the evening was also pretty rough, but things are looking up this morning. She’s still spitty, but not in distress like yesterday. I just feel so awful about it — thank goodness she doesn’t hold a grudge.

Thank you to those of you who have sent tips and encouragement. This first week has been kinda tough, but it helps to be reminded that there are still lots of things that I can eat.

Josie has started smiling at us from time to time. Yesterday I stalked her with the camera all day, determined to capture one of them!

This is day 3 of my experiment to eliminate dairy from my diet. Already yesterday she seemed happier and more content throughout the day — most noticeably in the evening which is when she tends to have cranky spells. She does this thing sometimes while she’s nursing where she pulls off and screams and pushes at me with her hands. She acts hungry at the same time, so it’s been frustrating for us both.

I’ve heard that babies can sometimes have trouble digesting dairy foods for the first few months (could be something else… or perhaps not food-related at all, but dairy seems to be a common culprit). So, I’m trying to go without for 2 weeks to see if this happy trend continues. If so, then I’ll try adding dairy back in to see if the symptoms return. I guess I hope that this will make her more comfortable… but man, it’s really hard to give up chocolate and cheese.

In other news, I picked up my knitting needles for the first time yesterday. I started a little aviator-style hat for Josie using some stash yarn and a Zoe Miller pattern. I can only do a few rows at a time, but it feels good to be making something again.

by uffda2ya

My little brother returned from a year in Iraq last week. Welcome home Nate! We missed you SO much! Needless to say, we’re all breathing much easier now that he’s back in the U.S. safe and sound.

My other brother Ted is studying abroad in Australia this semester, but he’ll be home soon also. The holidays are going to be so wonderful this year with everyone back together again.

Look who’s one month old! We had her one month checkup today to confirm that she’s just as wonderful and healthy as her mom and dad think she is. She’s up to 9 pounds, 11 ounces, and 22.25 inches tall as of today.

Josie’s sleep patterns continue to be unpredictable, but we’re just going with the flow. The only times that I’m really bothered is when she gets herself worked up and agitated - but most times she just wakes up to nurse and then goes right back to sleep, and I’m okay with that. I’ve tried pumping a couple of times last week so that dad could feed her once in a while - they both loved it!

Showing off some more mommy knits…

This is my most favorite pattern to knit — I’ve made it for various babes at least 5 times now. It’s the cardigan from the Debbie Bliss Baby Knits book. I’m so delighted that it looks as cute and cozy on Jocelyn as I’d hoped, because I plan to make more.

Question of the day: How come Josie will sleep so carefree and easily like this during the day… only to become the world’s lightest sleeper by nightfall?

Only ten days old and Josie already has so much knitwear to testdrive - lucky girl! Here she’s demostrating the coziness of her pinwheel blanket made by Jeni from soft KnitPicks Shine cotton yarn. And below she’s also been trying out a Little Turtle Knits Ribby Wrap soaker knit by me from KnitPicks Merino Style. The fit on the soaker isn’t the best (kinda small overall and yet too loose at the waist), but we have high hopes for better results from some of the other (many) wool covers in her collection.

We’ve all been having a lovely babymoon with Kate home for two weeks and lots of family and friends stopping by to bring us food and cuddle with Jocelyn. Josie isn’t sleeping nonstop anymore like she was for the first couple of days — but she isn’t keeping us up all night either. With only a few exceptions, she has been tending to sleep for generous 3-hour (sometimes longer) stretches during the night, and when she wakes she nurses and goes right back down. So, overall, I’d say we’re pretty spoiled so far.

Here’s one more cute napping picture, just because.