Burp Cloth Craft Day

Craft day! DH's boss is about to burst with her 4th boy so this morning got off on the right foot with some baby blanket crafting. I have been meaning to get back to it all summer and it feels good to have some little things accomplished. I tried a new craft today in burp cloths that match swaddle blankets I had ready to sew. It's a good matching gift to make because it uses all of the fabric that you buy. I think I bought a yard of each fabric (yard and a half to be safe) to make both.

1. Burp cloth required one Gerber pre-fold cloth diaper. I love cloth diapers but do not be fooled. The only thing these diapers are good for is as burp rags. Now you can use anything as a burp rag. With our last we used the swaddle blankets a lot as double duty with burp rags, but then we would have to wash them more often. So I cut a rectangle of fabric 4.5 inches x 13.5 inches, folded down the edges, pinned them on the rag and sewed them down. I quickly realized how fun it might be to embellish these:) I followed these directions pretty closely.

2. Extra large swaddle blankets: After you cut off your 4.5 inches of fabric along the rough edge of the fabric, fold your remaining fabric into a large triangle. Folding it into a triangle will be helpful in making  a pretty good square. Swaddle blankets really need to be square, with a little edge to them, and bigger then what they sell in the Target isle. (I use those as matching fabric for baby quilts). I'll do a tutorial of this next time I am crafting with detailed pictures but for now, here are my finished products for the day.

Everything but the curtains

It's nice to feel well two days in a row! Husband has been wonderful indulging all my handyman requests. The baby room is done, more or less. Ikea had to be saved for after church today. It worked out perfectly. Logan ran around, got some lunch, and then crashed on the way home. He slept the whole time we were putting the room together. I even got some baby clothes put away. Husband's boss gave us some hand-me-downs so we at least have a couple outfits in various sizes and some pajamas.

This is the dresser from craigslist with the updates. (see previous post) The dress form is from Ross and I love it and justified it as a great place for hair ribbons. The little jewelry box is pier1 as is the picture frame. I think I want a mirror still. There is one at Ikea that I kind of like so maybe I will go back for that later.

The bedframe is from Ikea and purple sheets were from TJ Maxx which I used as a bed skirt and then pillow cases only. The purple pillow is from Ross as well as the 2 turquoise "goblets" and the painting. The turquoise pillow is from Pier1. The little purple light is from Ikea. Our curtains from pier1 should be in next week and then I will post another picture of the crib. They are the same shade of turquoise as the pillow and goblets. I love the room. It's very functional and pretty to walk into. I also think everything will last this little girl until college :) Well, one can hope right?

Distressing Baby Girls new dresser!

So the baby room is not going to be done today. Raise of hands, how many are telling me I told you so? Here is an update of where we are. First, the room is now cleaned out of everything except the closet which I am going to save for another day. I have been using it as a storage space for craft stuff and random house junk. You know how it goes. The bed has it's new sheets and old bedding. My mom tried talking me out of this white bedspread in college but it's held up pretty well! We still have yet to make our trip to Ikea but I see that on the agenda for this evening. I decided to get rid of our $5 end table. It wasn't worth the effort to paint. It's got too many issues. The curtains have also not come in the mail yet BUT the dresser it almost finished.

Ah, the dresser. I have learned how to antique! Cross your fingers that it looks good in the end. I had a lot of help from the blogosphere on this one and it's helped that I have painted furniture before. So, here is the run down.

How to Distress and Antique a Dresser

1. Sand your furniture. You do not need to strip it, just rough it up. I sanded enough to get most of the shiny finish off with a medium grit paper. This took about 2 hours with the help of the husband.

2. Prime your pieces. We used the Rustoleum spray primer. I LOVE spray. We needed 2 cans. The key is to lightly apply the primer in even strokes. We have no garage so we set up the drawers on a big box in the yard and used a card board strip to keep the primer from flying. I bought masks to wear but husband decided pregnant wife should NOT be painting. It's very frusterating to do a DIY when I can't do much of it.

3. Apply a second coat of primer

4. Apply 2 coats of paint waiting 20-30 minutes between each coat. Again, I used a spray paint in satin white. NOT FLAT. Someone mentioned it would absorb too much stain and with the amount of stain the satin absorbed, I would agree. Now, I waited only 30 minutes before putting the stain on but I would give the paint at least another hour to dry a little more.

5. Distress the wood. This was way easier then I thought it would be. I took some leftover sand paper and scuffed up the corners and edges of each drawer and around the top of my cabinet. I didn't want the whole thing to look beat up, just lightly aged so I only did most corners and edges in various degrees. It took a total of 10 minutes.

Notice how I only distressed a little bit on the corners and edges

6. Stain and wipe. We are not painting experts but I think the product turned out ok. I think some of the blotchiness we got was due more to the paint not being 100% dry first than any staining technique. We chose a very small can of walnut wood stain. Brush it on very lightly, it's runny! Then wipe it off. We did this on a warm day so we gave it almost no time to sit and it still turned out a little darker than I want. So literally brush on and wipe off. Wipe EVERYTHING off that you can. We needed a lot of rags for this part. I had 6 and we still needed to run and rip up a shirt but that didn't work nearly as well as the rags. I stepped in at this point because the stain really stands out and I wanted a very even look. It says to let the stain dry for 8 hours which is why the dresser will not be finished tonight.

This is the difference between stained and not stained.

7. Wax on - Wax off. Husband took full control of this one. The wax is pretty toxic which is another reason the dresser will not be done tonight. This needs to be very dry before we bring it into the house. We decided to go with the wax instead of a polyurethane finish mainly because of a beautiful example of this project I found. They used a wax and it gave it just a beautiful finish. I am reserving the polyurethane just in case I need it on the top. I've never used wax so I don't know how it holds up. We did find a useful clip about waxing here. She reminded me (ok, I had no idea) that while it doesn't take a long time for it to dry, it does take 21 days to cure. So I will post some staging pix tomorrow, but then I will let the dresser be for a few weeks before I set anything on it. Glad we are doing this way ahead of time! I saw that you can get some waxes tinted and I wonder if you could skip the staining step if you had a tinted wax?

8. Hardware. I love our hardware so I am not changing a thing about them. Just screw them back in when finished. Voila! Finished.

I'm a little peeved with the staining part of the process. The stain went on much darker than I wanted and we had almost no wait time. The top is especially blotchy. I recommend to wipe on and off at the same time.


Here are the products we used:

Shopping Spree Success... finally

I have been absent from blogging lately so here is a recap from the last month: Surprise! It's a girl. She looks very healthy. Mama started feeling pretty good, then Mama watched the 2 year old boy 4 days in a row and started contracting. Doc says to take it easy. Lots of fluids and 2 UTIs that weren't UTIs later followed with lots of rest, a trip to Michigan to visit the grandparents and the 2 year old back in day care and I am feeling pretty good. My energy has been way down so I went back on vitamins which seem to help. It's very uncomfortable to sleep but that's pretty normal and I am still contracting maybe once or twice a day but I think now they are braxton hix. They feel a lot like the contractions that put me in to labor last time, but they don't seem to be an all over tightening, just mainly the front of the belly so I am still taking it easy.

In my spare time I have been doing a lot of reading! So far this summer I have read the 50 shades of gray series twice and the first 6 books of the Outlander series. That has to be close to 8,000 pages? I'll have to count at the end of the summer. I'm taking a break from reading to get some school work done and some nursery decorating done. The decorating has been SO HARD! I finally decided on what I wanted to do and could not find the appropriate matching curtains anywhere. Apparently shiny grey curtains are not in style. Let me qualify: I did find 1 that I liked but they would have cost almost $200. So, I then decided that I would just need to take a trip to some stores to find some unique things I liked and decorate around them... as long as I can find matching curtains. One reason this is hard is because DH doesn't want the nursery painted. We are renting so he wants to keep it the way it is. Otherwise I would just paint and get white curtains. Oh well. Today I finally had some success. I hope to get the nursery done tomorrow, but here is a sneak peak:

 

I am not much into princesses and while I'm not really into little girl pink, I was looking for magenta and could not find it anywhere. So, I have no pink going into the room only because I really wanted to stay with jewel tones.I found some great inspiration at TJ Maxx and especially Ross and Pier 1.

Ok so I am starting with a room with a bed with no frame, no working dresser, an inconvenient diaper changer (from my 2 year old) and a hand-me-down crib. I found a bed frame I like from Ikea that we will pick up tomorrow. We found a beautiful big dresser on craigslist that just needs some paint. Here is the dresser as it looks like now. (currently it is being stored in my car until we are ready to paint - go Vibe!)

The dresser has 8 drawers and is the perfect size to function as a diaper changing station as well. The hardware is fantastic - very dark, almost black. I'm going to keep the hardware the same. I've been vacillating over what color to paint it though! I was going to paint it dark grey to match the curtains... but alas, no grey curtains. I want my colors to pop so I don't want to paint it a crazy color. That left me with white. Now, our bed frame will also be white but I am thinking of distressing the final product a little bit so I thought maybe an antique white... but in the end went with a satin white to match the bed. I bought a gloss to maybe go over it when finished depending on how I feel. Tonight I am going to spend some quality time on the web figuring out how best to do the distressing. Anyone done this before? Hopefully DH can help me get the yucky dressers out onto the curb tonight and help me sand this dresser. I am still pregnant after all. I feel great today, but don't want to push it. Oh, and yes, I did buy some masks for when I paint tomorrow.

How some doctors are idiots

Two blogs in one week you ask? Why yes! Lots has happened in 24 hours. Namely a trip to the ER yet again. All of the events lead me to reflect on all of the bad doctor advice out there to women with HG. Today was a prime example.

Let me take you back to 2.5 years ago when I was in the throws of my first pregnancy. I was so excited and looking forward to be a happy pregnant mama preparing for her first little one and ready to start obsessing on all the little things I was unsure if I needed. When my morning sickness hit, I was ready for it. I sort of expected to get the same morning sickness that so many other women get. Vomiting every morning became a regular occurrence and the nausea just never seemed to go away. At my first appointment my midwife assured me that I would be fine to just eat small meals and often and not to worry too much about nutrition. I didn't know to ask about fluids. Not yet.

Fast forward 2 weeks. I was privileged enough to have 3 pre-interns help to teach my class. This allowed me to curl up in a ball behind my desk all day in just short of tears. I had tried crackers, ginger ale, ginger pops, ginger gum, small meals, and then just trying to survive. I remember in tears calling my midwife in defeat. "I just can't make it through this." I had said. "I guess I have to try the meds or quit my job." I felt like such a failure for not having been able to make it through morning sickness without the aid of drugs. My friends and family were in part also a little dissapointed to find out I was on meds. No one thought it was healthy and that I was going to harm the baby in some way. I was so torn. I tried to take the meds as little as possible and hence began to waste away. At my next appointment my urine was brown. Not kind of brown, but DARK brown. No one said anything. The midwife seemed to radiate calm and just assured me that everything would be fine and to keep doing the best I could at eating and drinking. At this point I was concerned with the dehydration. "How do I know when I am having an emergency?" I remember asking. She told me if I was so dizzy I could barely stand then I should come in for fluids but she was sure I wasn't that bad. She of course had seen much worse. This by the way is all advice NOT to give a women in HG. Very bad things can happen to women who get this dehydrated. The meds are suppose to prevent more radical intervention later.

Finally, 20 weeks into this agony of day after day of literally wanting to die or terminate or knock myself out for the rest of the pregnancy. I found myself crying on the phone to my grandma. One person who I trusted to tell me like it is and who I know has had enough experience with incompetent doctors on her own. She and my SIL talked me into going in for fluids. The best decision I could have made. It wasn't until later when I was actually feeling a little better that I learned what I have is called Hyperemesis Gravidarum. It is NOT normal morning sickness and there is support out there for women with this disorder. No one knows what causes it. It's sort of like waking up every day with that kind of hangover that keeps you swearing to your toilet that you will never drink again. Every day. For MONTHS. It's horrible.

I was so traumatized from this first experience being pregnant that just the thought of getting pregnant got me binge eating because I could. I felt entitled to food free of guilt and I gained a lot of weight. I had an absolute breakdown in an eye doctor office when I felt my doc was writing me off and not listening and I had nightmares. But looking at my child grow supported our families need for another child. So I risked it again but I did it as educated as possible this time. My husband called it obsessing over the internet.

Ok, fast forward to last night. I woke up thirsty last night so drank a glass of water. Harmless, right? Wrong. I spent the next 5 hours vomiting. Every time I lay down and rolled over, I would throw up. I tried sleeping sitting up but would find myself fallen over and thus throwing up. By 5 am it was clear that I was not going in to work. I called the on-call doctor who told me if I couldn't keep fluids down this morning then I should go to the ER. The office confirmed later as did my grandma. When I asked them about reflux they told me they were not responsible for my reflux and if I had reflux then I would need to see another doctor. Thanks. Jerks.

 The nurses in the ER were nice. I didn't get as nice of a room this time and had to share one with 6 others. My doctor this time was also too cheery for my liking. He did listen to what I had to say and came to the conclusion that I had a touch of the stomach bug based on my new found lack of constipation (thank you Jesus). I got 2 liters of fluids and a dose of zofran. Later he came back and wanted me to drink an apple juice to prove the meds were working. What!? Are you kidding me? I think I must have looked at him like he had just grown a third eye because he laughed and asked if I was afraid of the apple juice. I told him that well yes I was and I haven't had juice in months because it makes me sick - with or without zofran! I was polite and took a few sips. I informed the nurse that a few crackers would be nice to absorb the apple juice that did go down. He agreed that I shouldn't drink the juice.  Then the doctor came back and told me to eat bland foods like apple sauce and rice. Doc, I got this. If it is one thing I can do, I can care for my vomiting body. And this body throws up apple sauce and rice. When I told him I was doing fine on cereal he started talking about how the oils might be bad etc. etc. dude, I have HG. I know when you have HG, you eat what you can and just don't worry about the rest of it. When you start ranting that non-sense you freak women out and get them all worried. Or you just make them think your a true idiot. He also let me leave with my blood pressure really low. The nurses were shaking their heads at that one. So I left in a wheel chair with bp 98/47. We are well and home though.

There are nightmares and then there are nightmares

Welcome to the second trimester! It's been lovely to have you along. This wonderful ride of pregnancy is not for the faint at heart and no, crackers do not cure HG. Let me clear things up a little. HG is sever morning sickness. After having met so many wonderful moms who suffer from true HG, I almost don't even want to lump myself in that category with this one. Certainly my 2 year old fits the bill, but this one is somewhere between just bad morning sickness and not so bad HG. The line however has to be drawn somewhere. I have lost more than 20 lbs and crackers still do not cure what ails me and I have been in to the ER for fluids so I will continue to lump myself in with not as bad HG. Many prayers to the women who are bed ridden for 9 months vomiting constantly and with PICC lines in to help them survive the worst of this disorder. Me? I don't have enough of an excuse to not get up at 6:30 on a Monday morning and shower and put clothes on a body that would rather not be clothed in anything but jammies. It's like some kind of mommy torture.

Here is a week in review:
Monday - back to work bra torture in a fog after a night of nightmares. Logan's Birthday, daycare did an amazing job of throwing him a party. I just couldn't get it together for him.
Tuesday - House keeper day and day 1 of second trimester. Relive Monday, nightmare #2 - decide the phenergan is to blame and time to stop taking phenergan. Constipated all day. Magic Saline worked it's magic.
Wednesday - Night of no drugs and felt MUCH better. I had pep in my step and got to teach a great lesson. Didn't even need the zofran today:) Decided to throw Logan a mini party at home. He frosted his own cake that he had helped make on Monday and blew out his own candles. It was precious.
Thursday - Tired but still feeling ok. Oh wait, that is until I eat my breakfast. My body decided I needed to go to the bathroom immediately but could not get anything to exit the system. Nightmare #3 - having to go ask a coworker to cover your 3rd period so you can drive 30 minutes home for your enima so you can go potty. BOOO. Felt much better afterwards! Again, no zofran today.

*sigh. I dream of staying at home again and lunching with friends who understand the woes of being a mom and trying to take care of toddlers. At school lunch all I get is GROSS! No one wants to know about your fiber! We have some real mature men on our team. This morning before I left for work Logan was awake and came and sat on my lap to snuggle for a few minutes. I love that kid. Every day I think how amazing he is and am reminded how worth it our next one is too. I feel so blessed to even be able to conceive. This may have to be our last natural one but I am so grateful for the opportunity. Here's to a better second trimester!

I am not broken!

I am so excited! Please read past to the second paragraph if you are easily disturbed. My poor hiney is not broken after all! I was so afraid. I've only been able to go with the aid of enimas for the last 2 months but today I went all on my own! It is a victory people and I am so happy my fiber cereals were able to cure what the colace that I couldn't keep down could not.

It's been an up and down kind of month. My days have gone from on and off barely survival and not survivable to mostly good mixed with icky/blah. So an upswing for sure and better then I had hoped for. Monday we will be 14 weeks along, finally the second trimester and Logan's second birthday! We are not throwing a party this year as I just do not have the energy. We might try to take him to the zoo tomorrow. I took him to the pet store today in search of flea/tick medicine and he went NUTS for every animal there. He would stop, point and talk their ear off in complete babble. So I think he might like the zoo. Thanks to all our wonderful family who have sent cards. I am so terrible at celebrating birthdays so I am always so surprised and grateful at how others remember and take the time to celebrate by sending a card. In fact I think the only event I am currently keeping track of are babies and I am not doing so well with that this month either. Sorry to all my family and friends whom I neglect. I love you all! As I get older I hope to get better at the birthday thing...

Monday we will be taking cupcakes and balloons in to daycare. I will try to get out of work a little early so I can go take pictures. We got Logan a plasma car just like his cousin's and a talking digital piggy bank for his birthday.  They haven't come in yet so I hope they get here soon! Our post office is amazing about timely delivery. I sent out a package on Wednesday at 5 and it got to Michigan today, Friday early afternoon. Can't believe it but I love it.