A Quick Birth Story on the Feast of St. Francis

I'm pretty sure this is the first baby I delivered before their due date, and also the first to not be born in the middle of the night.  Full of surprises this one.

I probably should have known that I'd deliver him on Tuesday being that I was both still completely mentally unprepared for having another child and that I spent Monday in a frenzied compulsion to accomplish and clean ALL THE THINGS--as best as a someone who can't actually bend down can accomplish and clean things anyway.  By evening I was coming to terms with the fact that the baby was on his way and I was up all night waiting for it to be time to head in to the hospital.  After all, my babies are always born in the middle of the night so clearly Christopher would be too.  Well by six in the morning I had had about thirty minutes of sleep but it was time to head in, if only just to make sure that we didn't get stuck in traffic trying to wait any longer.

An accidental home birth is one thing, an accidental side-of-the-road-birth is something else entirely.

We made it to the hospital and had a fairly quick and uneventful time of things, aside from the obligatory me telling the doctors that I was ready to push followed by them not listening, causing a bit of chaos as someone was forced to dive, gloveless and not suited up, to catch the baby.  This time when I tried to give ample warning that the baby was coming the doctor responded that actually she thought my labor had slowed and offered me some Pitocin to get things going again--literally five minutes before they all had to come running back in for the delivery.  They also had the gall to tell me not to push.  Now, I've delivered with epidurals and without and you can certainly tell someone with an epidural not to push and they can probably comply, but if someone does not have an epidural they certainly will not.  Christopher was making his entrance and I was laughing maniacally at the thought of trying to stop him. Probably not out loud, but on the inside--on the inside there was total maniacal laughter.  The doctors said that it was one of the fastest deliveries they'd ever seen.

That's probably true, it was pretty darn fast.

Chris scooted home after everything settled down to take care of the children and I was released twenty-four hours later.  I debated staying the extra allotted day but the beds in this hospital are apparently all designed to prevent bedsores by randomly and continuously inflating and deflating so that you feel like you're rolling around on a water bed.  And you can't turn it off.

I thought, all things considered, I'd rather be home resting on a non-vibrating mattress with my newborn than in the hospital, even with their excellent room service menu and the promise of relative quiet.  

Here everyone's doing well and the kids just love their new little brother.  The little ones love him a little too hard sometimes, but I suppose that's to be expected.  Chris will be home to take care of us for most of the month and I'm trying to fight the urge to clean things and just sit around and snuggle this precious little baby instead while I can.

Everything happened so quickly that I still haven't quite wrapped my mind around the fact that he's actually here.

On Finishing A Quilt And Not Being Ready For Baby

I think this might be my favorite baby quilt that I've ever made, and that is saying something because I really liked Margaret's flower garden quilt and I'm itching to start a twin sized one for her big girl bed.  I ended up hand piecing a bunch of nine-patch squares at random using scraps from John's baby quilt (as per his request so that they could match) with some bits of the boys' old shirts and daddy's old boxer shorts thrown in for good measure.  The boys like to pretend that this wanton use of undergarments horrifies them but I'm pretty sure they really think it's hilarious.   I say waste not, want not.  Am I right?  Then I laid them out on the floor to make sure the same fabrics weren't touching each other anywhere which I was not entirely successful at.  Unfortunately I'm a lazy quilter and was not about to pull it apart to fix it so the mistakes will just have to give the thing a bit more character.  I really like the way the perle cotton hand quilting turned out--especially on the back.  It totally makes up for the randomness of the front, don't you think?


Now, finishing up the baby's quilt probably should have been a clue that I might actually be having a baby soon.

It wasn't

Chris mentioned last week that it was just four weeks to go before the baby arrives to which I replied, "no, you're crazy" before checking the calendar and realizing that no, I'm the crazy one.  Now it's more like not quite three weeks until d-day and I still can't wrap my mind around the fact that I'm about to have another baby.

I did spend last weekend pretending this was actually happening and forcing myself to prepare basic baby necessities anyway.  I got all the 0-3 month baby boy clothes out and gave them a soak in ye old oxyclean to remove those pesky milk stains that like to manifest themselves sometime between when you laundered the clothes for the last time and whenever you opened back up the storage bin.  In this case that would be almost four years.  I also mended my favorite fancy muslin blankets which had become so worn with use that they had some pretty intense holes.  It was a rough job but what they lack in beauty they make up for in functionality.  Muslin is hard to mend.

My sister-in-laws also gifted us with two perfectly timed donations of cloth diapers, liners and other accouterments--one tiny baby sized and one giant baby sized which were exactly what I needed to resupply my sad, worn out diaper stash but didn't particularly want to spend the money on.  Which just goes to show that if you wait long enough to buy things that you need, something will eventually turn up.

So baby Christopher officially has milk-stain free clothes, some functional if obviously mended swaddling blankets, and plenty of diapers.  I suppose once I have Chris pull the infant car seat and my overnight bag down from the attic I'll be pretty much set to get to the hospital and care for basic baby needs.

Being mentally prepared to deliver and actually have another baby at home, that's another story.  At least he has a pretty adorable quilt.

My Sunday Best and a Summer Book Report

I've never done a Sunday link up before, mostly because I wear the same thing to mass each week switching only for the change in seasons which is not super interesting.  Also, I almost never remember to take pictures on the way out the door to early mass.  In an effort to document the latest addition to the family though, today I finally managed it.

"But you didn't even take a shower today" chimed in my darling husband.  No, no, I didn't, but these pictures do fairly accurately capture how tired I've been feeling the last few weeks.

Also, I really should have grabbed the lip gloss before we started.  Lip gloss makes everything look better, right?  I'll try to remember that for October when my outfit changes.

And since I've got you here, and these book reviews have been floundering in my drafts folder for way too long I'm just going to throw them in too.  You are welcome.

 I set aside my more challenging reading when summer officially hit and went on a couple of week bender with these.  It was pretty glorious.  I mean I had to read through them quickly.  They were library books.  Well except for the last one.  I've been unsuccessfully trying to finish that one since January.




The Guernsy Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Annie Barrows and Mary Ann Shaffer

This was my favorite of the bunch.  I was telling Chris all about it and he asked about the setting.  I replied that it took place in post WWII England to which he responded, "is there any other time period?"  I suppose it is my favorite time period--for both fiction reading and television specials.  The book is told through a series of letters from the main character (a journalist) to her family and friends and then to members of The Guernsy Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society through which she finds out about the Nazi occupation of the Guernsey Island and also finds her own place in the new post-war world.   This book was wonderful not only for the story, but also for the history of the island which I'm just going to go ahead and assume is accurate because I'm really good at source checking. So good.

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, by Helen Simonson

This book was perfectly fine but as the whole plot revolved around a widower and a widow finding love later in life I just couldn't fully appreciate the story.  I mean, if something should happen to me obviously Chris should spend the rest of his life in mourning--reminiscing about how wonderful I was and resting secure in the fact that no one could ever replace me.  If the children were grown he could maybe join a religious order of some sort.  Or take up one of those hobbies he never got to commit to because of family obligations--like golf.  He definitely should not pursue a relationship with the local shopkeeper no matter how exotic she was or how awful our children might turn out to be.  I of course would do likewise.

The Weird Sisters, by Eleanor Brown

Three sisters who've lost their ways in various ways return to their childhood home and find themselves again.  Growing up the eldest of two sisters I found the relationships between the sisters very relatable--if not quite as dramatic.  I loved the tag line on the cover, "See, we love each other.  We just don't happen to like each other very much."   What sibling couldn't relate to that, at least at one time or another.  Also, Shakespeare references abound so that's fun.  

The Awakening of Miss Prim, by Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera

I started out not enjoying this one very much because the story felt a bit...forced, but I ended up enjoying it and it has stuck with me after I finished it.   The main character, Miss Prim, finds herself in a town that I know I'm not the only one who fantasizes about.  One where everyone knows everyone and a real community exists to help each other and interfere in each other's lives--but you know, in a good way.  It's kind of a manifesto on the joys of living more simply and finding the things that truly bring a full life--which obviously include lots of time outside, time to think, time to read and of course time to drink tea and eat cakes.  I actually came away inspired.  

The Everlasting Man, by G.K. Chesterton

This is an outline of Christian history with sections comparing different world religions that I really wish I had read when I was younger.  It's Chesterton so obviously it's amazing but I picked it up and put it down so many times in the past six months that by the time I finished it I completely lost the thread of the thing.  I'll have to try again later and really it's worth reading several times anyway.  Luckily this one is not a library book so I can do what I like, although apparently I do better with library deadlines hanging over my head to give me that nudge I need to focus on one book at a time and finish the ones I've already begun in a timely fashion before moving on to other things.  

...

And going back to what I wore to mass, this maxi is slightly too short.  I tried to explain it to the husband but he really didn't understand at all.  Also, he didn't manage to get any pictures of the entirety of the thing so I could show you.  Do I hem it and make it more of a tea length dress or should I just leave it as is, chalk it up to giantess problems, and just be thankful I never have the problem of my dresses dragging on the ground?

dress // Old Navy on super sale a couple of weeks ago.  I'm talking $10 ladies :)
            (same dress, different pattern here)
shoulder covering wrap // I'm thinking from an airport somewhere round about fifteen years ago



Also, my Amazon links are affiliate but all others are certainly not.  I'm not that fancy :)  

On Being Afraid of Loving Things

"I don't dare go out," said Anne, in the tone of a martyr relinquishing all earthly joys.  "If I can't stay here there is no use in my loving Green Gables.  And if I go out there and get acquainted with all those trees and flowers and the orchard and the brook I'll not be able to help loving it.  It's hard enough now, so I won't make it any harder.   I want to go out so much--everything seems to be calling to me, "Anne, Anne, come out to us Anne, Anne, we want a playmate"--but it's better not.  There is no use in loving things if you have to be torn from them, is there?  And it's so hard to keep from loving things, isn't it?  That was why I was so glad when I thought I was going to live here.  I thought I'd have so many things to love and nothing to hinder me.  But that brief dream is over.  I am resigned to my to my fate now, so I don't think I'll go out for fear I'll get unresigned again."                                                                  

~L.M. Montgomery

I'm feeling very Anne-ish lately.

Being pregnant again after losing a baby is very emotional.  I think it's a natural reaction to feel distanced from the baby, afraid to really love them because you know they too might be torn from you.  But at the same time, it is really hard to keep from loving things, isn't it?  Especially wonderful things like babies.

I've noticed a marked uptick in October baby announcements this past week.  Everyone's reaching that second trimester milestone and feeling like it's "safe" to finally announce their big news to the world.  It probably goes without saying that I don't feel "safe" yet.  We actually take the opposite view of pregnancy announcements and tend to announce all of our babies almost as soon as we know about them ourselves in order to maximize the amount of people praying for us and for them.  After all, if I were to wait until I felt like it was really "safe" to announce each new child, I think I would have just recently announced Margaret to the world.  Now that she's pushing eighteen months I'm fairly confident she's going to make it and I hardly ever sneak into her room to make sure she's still breathing anymore.  She feels safe.  Not that any of them are ever actually safe.  Not really.

I've got another two months to go before I clear that twenty week hurdle that always looms so large during my pregnancies.  I'm longing for those little flutters that will give me a bit of reassurance before facing each meeting with the doppler and the forced look of calm on the doctor's face as they search for a heartbeat that may or may not ever be heard again.  At the same time though, I'm working on unresigning myself to the fear of losing this little one too and loving them despite all of the things that might be.  

Why I Won't Be Fasting This Lent

or alternately, Take That Pregnancy Test Out of Your Mouth!

Squint real hard* and you will notice a definite second line there which was confirmed by much cheaper and apparently more reliable tests of the dollar variety.  And yes, Margaret did decide to gnaw on this beauty while I attempted to photograph it in order to get a second opinion on whether the line was there or if I was hallucinating.  And no, I did not take a picture of that because, gross.  Super gross.  
Normally I don't find out I'm pregnant this early on but I decided to go ahead and take a test a couple of weeks ago because I had a dentist appointment and I knew they would ask and I really dislike being that woman who always gives the Catholic Shrug and replies, "I don't know?  Maybe? I mean you never know, right?" [insert awkward look here].  PS that awkward look belongs to both me and whomever just asked me about the state of my womb.  Awkwardness all around.  Well anyway, the test was negative so I said "no," and also, "bring on the radiation!"

Whoops.

I guess the CDC should add getting x-rays to the list of things we women of childbearing age should never ever do unless we're contracepting.  There was also wine involved in my post-negative-pregnancy-test-pity-party, sorry CDC.

Well, taking an early pregnancy test led to a compulsion to keep testing until I knew for sure I wasn't actually pregnant.  So last weekend I took another test and it was positive and then I made my darling husband buy me more tests so I could check again, and I still have more so I can check again and again if I want.

So, that's our big news.  I'm pregnant again and due late September and feeling all the feelings you feel when you've just lost a little one and you find yourself with another one on the way.  And I'm oversharing with the internet because I could really use your prayers.  They make such a difference.  They truly do.

...

Baby Katharine Louise and Baby Frances Cabrini pray for us.

*I've been ever so sweetly informed that I am unable to correctly read a pregnancy test and you don't in fact need to squint at all to see that this test is positive.  In my defense EPT has made a simple thing like seeing the control line and then the test line absurdly complicated by adding a third, completely unnecessary, and apparently non functioning line to make a super fun plus sign whose main purpose in life is to confuse already stressed out women.  Why EPT?  Why?  If you insist on a plus sign being your gimmick mightn't you at least make sure both lines of the plus sign react in the same way?   A nice, bright, all-one-shade-of-blue, plus sign.  Is that too much to ask?  

Margaret's Tiny, Perfect Nursery

With Margaret turning fifteen months, this room finally being painted after an unfortunate humidifier incident that left streaks all down the walls, and the fact that Christmas is over and I needed to clean all the things I thought it was the perfect time to finally take some pictures to document her nursery/soon to be big girl room.

The two things to know beforehand are, one, my house is not nearly as yellow as it appears in photographs and two, this room is tiny.  Like, the previous renters were using it as a walk-in closet tiny.   After much deliberation, we decided we would go ahead and sacrifice the extra closet space in favor of having sleeping quarters for all the children :)

I just love this room.  It's tiny but it's wonderful.  I know The Nester says that it doesn't have to be perfect to be beautiful, but I'll add that it doesn't have to be spacious, or expensive, to be adorable.

Margaret's room is full of special things--the sampler my grandmother made, the cross stitched pieces that were once pillows on my girlhood bed that I salvaged and framed, my old ballerina teddy bear, the "R" that hung over Chris' crib, the other teddy bears from his grandmother, the frames I found on the side of the road--okay I guess not everything is special.

Even if it isn't all special, everything in the room did come together very serendipitously.  Having a tiny nursery is kind of wonderful in the sense that it's easy to pull together.  It can really only hold the crib, dresser and rocker.  We already had the crib and the dresser, and the rocker was a gift from Grandma and Grandpa Reintjes.  It began its life wearing a shade of green that wasn't particularly the look I was going for so Chris, dutiful husband that he is, stripped, sanded and stained it for me.

Almost everything else was gathered from around the house.  I suppose the one perk of moving with a two week old is that you can shuffle things to new rooms with ease.  The only new things in her room were the crib sheet and rug which were gifted to us as well and the new wet bags that we clearly needed since the old ones clashed horrifically.  Chris didn't understand, but I'm sure you do--the effect of the sad old navy blue ones hanging on the closet door wasn't what you'd call pleasing to the eye.

I made the rest of the textiles myself; the curtains, the crib skirt and of course the quilt and pillow that took forever but were very cathartic when waiting out the second half of my pregnancy.  I had kind of a specific look I was going for--I'm not sure what you would call my decorating style, vintage? cottage? farmhouse? artistically hodgepodged from things we get for free?  (when I'm "decorating" I'm mostly just rearranging things we already have, although we have acquired some really nice freebies over the years which certainly helps)--anyway, I couldn't afford/find exactly what I wanted anyway, even if I did want to pay for it--which I didn't.

I had a lot of years to think about how I would decorate a little girl's nursery if I ever had one, but I didn't realize until I actually did have one what my thoughts on little girl nurseries were.  It turns out that I think they should be very similar to my childhood rooms.  That is, very Laura Ashley circa 1983 or so.  Sweet colors, vintage florals, lots of cross-stitch, ruffles, dolls and teddy bears.  I've tried to restrain myself--and the size of the room, my dislike of clutter and also my budget have certainly helped.  But if anyone catches me attempting to start a collection of Madame Alexander dolls you have my permission to stage an immediate intervention.

...

All the glorious details:

crib:  Amazon
crib skirt:  handmade by me
crib sheet:  Pottery Barn Kids, a gift from Aunt Courtney
curtains:  handmade by me
pillow:  handmade by me
quilt:  me again :)
dresser: second hand
rocking chair:  second hand, a gift from Grandma and Grandpa Reintjes
blue throw blanket:  vintage, from Grandma Reintjes
shelves:  Lowe's
rug:  Wayfair, a gift from Grandma Kazleman
ledge shelves:  Ana White plans built by Chris

~Amazon links are affiliate links~

On Having One More

Well as many of you already know, we are expecting a new addition this April.  We haven't been keeping secrets, it's just that I didn't realize I was pregnant right away.  Um, again.

Things that should have tipped me off had I not been in complete pregnancy denial:

• A sudden and complete coffee aversion.
• An equally sudden craving for instant Café Francais (?)
• A lack of migraines despite the severe decrease in caffeine consumption.
• A "cold" that lasted for weeks and weeks leaving me perpetually tired and nauseous.
• Being so sick with my "cold" that I didn't want to eat anything, ever. 
• Bursting into tears when switching out Margaret's clothes out because one day she was going to outgrow the new bigger ones too.
• Bursting into tears because the kids were behaving so badly.
• Bursting into tears because the kids were behaving so well.
• Bursting into tears.

The signs could no longer be ignored though after I found myself unable to floss one morning and had to face the fact that colds don't cause that particular variety of nausea, or as a normal person would recognize it, morning sickness.    I guess I'm just becoming the master of the ten week pregnancy realization.  

Of course by eleven weeks I wouldn't have been able to deny it anyway because I was clearly showing.  By twelve weeks a complete man-stranger at the park felt comfortable enough to comment on my obviously pregnant state.  And by thirteen weeks, well by thirteen weeks......

We are excited.  And overwhelmed.  After all, five children seven and under is kind of a lot of children.  But mostly we are excited.

This pregnancy does mark the first time our big new elicited an "oh, I'm sorry" acknowledgment.  The person in question did follow up with a "well, congratulations" but it didn't feel super sincere after the initial reaction of pity.  I believe the problem is that we have officially gone past the socially acceptable number of children to have.  Since we front loaded with so many boys I think I had a pass on previous pregnancies because I was obviously just trying for a girl.  Now that we "got our girl" though people are really confused.  The "so are you just going to keep going?" questions have begun rolling in.  And the answer to those questions is......we don't know.

We're just going to take care of this baby now and not waste time worrying about any future hypothetical children that we may or may not be able to conceive.  After all, today has enough trouble of its own and all that.  

So to recap:  We're having another baby, most likely in April.  I didn't notice at first, but then I did.  And once we're done with that we may or may not have another.

On Making the Most Fantastic Curtains You Have Ever Seen

Well, okay.  They might not be the most fantastic curtains you have ever seen but they are still pretty fantastic.  

First, the back story.  After we moved in I bemoaned the fact that in a fit of senseless frugality I hadn't bought the rest of the sheets at the thrift store that matched the pillow case that was the inspiration for Margaret's quilt because they would have made great coordinating curtains.  Then one night as I was looking at vintage sheets on Etsy (which I'm sure is a totally normal thing to be doing) I found a listing for a set of queen sized sheets in the exact same pattern.  I don't know what the odds are of finding another set of these old sheets but I took it as a sign and snatched them up--ironically for about ten dollars more than it would have cost me if I had just bought them originally.

I then spent a lot of time unnecessarily trying to decide if I should make long elegant curtains or short cute curtains before I just decided to make them as long as I could given my limited amount of fabric and then hem them up if they looked bad.  The length of the flat sheet ended up being perfect, which is lucky since, you know, that's all I had.  I also lined them with the old twin size white flat sheets that I confiscated from the boys when I decided that I wasn't going to make children's beds with flat sheets on them ever again so that's how wide the curtains are.

Clearly I am a very precise and professional seamstress.

It's really hard to take pictures of curtains with light shining through the windows but I did my best.

The men folk round these parts weren't super impressed, but aren't they sweet?   The curtains that is, not the men folk.  Clearly they're a bit grumpy.

Margaret loves them of course.  If she had words or was able to do more than flail her arms and legs while lying on her back I'm sure she'd be dancing around and singing about how amazing they are.

Once I finished the panels I realized that the one thing that would make them even more spectacular was pom pom trim.  I'm pretty sure pom pom trim makes everything better.  I got this trim from the same Etsy seller I used when I made the crib skirt so it would match.

On another note, pleating tape.  Where have you been all my life?  You just sew this stuff across the top of your curtain panels, pull the strings and congratulations, you've just made pleated curtains.  So easy!

See how nicely everything goes?  Note, don't try to stand on your rocking chair to take aerial pictures  of your nursery.  Your photographs will be blurry and you will probably fall off.  Just take the extra three seconds to grab a stool from the bathroom. You're welcome.

Now, make sure to tell me what you think!  Unless you don't like them, feel free to keep that to yourself :)

Linking up with Ana since it's still February and I need more affirmations than my menfolk can provide on all things crafty :)