A Baby Story

Oh my, what a crazy few days!

Our baby boy, Ayden Nishant Desai, came on Thursday, September 26th at 38 weeks, 3 days, so about 10 days early. I was scheduled to have an OBGYN appointment at 9:30 and just had a funny feeling that they would tell me to go ahead and go to the hospital. I just felt a little off. 

We went to bed and I woke up around 1:15 with some severe cramping. I went through a few and then started tracking them and they were lasting around a minute and were around 5 minutes apart. My mom had a very short labor when she had me so I was very conscious of paying attention to what was going on. I let the contractions go for about an hour and then woke up Nishant and told him I was going to call the doctor. He bolted out of bed, washed his face, brushed his teeth and went to let the dogs out. He was almost dressed before I even got in touch with anyone at the doctor's office. Since it was the middle of the night, I spoke to someone with the answering service and it took about an hour to get them to call me back. At that point, I was dressed and ready to go to the hospital, regardless of what they told me. The midwife I talked to told me it was up to me but that since I wasn't very far along the week before, I probably had plenty of time. Again, due to family history, I told her that I was coming in. 

By the time I got to the hospital around 3:30 in the morning, the same midwife I talked to was surprised to tell me that I was indeed in active labor and already 7 cm dialated. I gave up any idea of a natural birth and requested the epidural immediately. It was a little bit of a waiting game and I even got in a little nap, but by around 10 we were ready to go and Ayden came into the world with a little cry at 10:21!

He had a very adventurous day 1 and wasn't really feeling the whole breast feeding thing by day 2 and got a little jaundice. He had to spend about 12 hours as a little glow worm. 

After supplementing with some formula, and getting some assistance from at least 3 nurses, he was doing a lot better and got to come off the light blankets!

By 6 pm on Saturday, we were all set and ready to go home. 

Of course we are all adjusting but we are so in love with our sweet boy, even if he wants to eat every hour in the middle of the night and sleep all day! It's a good thing he's cute!

Does this require real pants?

That's the main question I find myself thinking each day when I think about all the things I have to do.  And I have to say, at 37 weeks, 4 days pregnant, almost always, the answer is no.

I have these old baggy sweat pants that I bought in college - I've always been swimming in them - I'm not going to say that they're tight, now, but they're not nearly as loose as they used to be.  They are grey and I have to say that they go pretty nicely with all of my colored maternity shirts from Target.  They also just about flood over my shoes so that you can't tell I'm wearing my beat up J. Crew flip flops that, besides tennis shoes, are the only shoes I really want to wear, right now.  And even those flip flops make lines on my swollen sausage feet.  And I do have a few dresses that I could wear, but then I have to worry about being judged for having my flip flops in full view...right, because I'm not already being judged for wearing these pants out in public.  At least I draw on my eyebrows and touch my lashes with a bit of mascara.  Could be worse and way scarier, if we're being honest.

Ha, what an awful picture - look at that giant belly and those poor little feet.  Ah, pregnancy. :)

For instance, today, my main goal was to make it to the dry cleaners to do wife duties and drop off and pick up some shirts for the husband.  Definitely did not require real pants.  Even if I had added on a trip to the grocery store, still wouldn't have been reason enough for real pants.  In fact, had I gone to the grocery store, I would have made a point to buy some ice cream (and hey, maybe pickles, even though that's not something I'm craving) just to look more desperate in my pregnant state to be able to get away with such things as not wearing real pants.  Everyone loves a pregnant lady, right?

These are what I have found as reasons to wear real pants:
1. Doctor's appointments - so that they don't think I've given up on life
2. Out to dinner - not that we're going to fancy places but I think even Panera would frown on sweat pants - at least I used to frown at people in sweat pants at Panera, but hey, maybe I'm a little judgmental
3. Errands - I know that I didn't feel as though the dry cleaners and the grocery store required real pants but if I've got a list of places I need to go, I at least try and look like I have it together.  I am well aware of "the people of Wal-Mart" websites and emails going around but just because I'm pregnant, doesn't mean I should appear on that list (not that my sweat pants alone would warrant such a thing, but still). 

While we're making rules here, I do have to say that I've been out a few times without makeup and as someone who hardly EVER does that, to all you other pregnant ladies and moms with young children that do such a thing on a regular basis, I get it, now.  However, I would also like to say that the times I was out without makeup, one of those times I was in work out clothes (and probably showing my belly to strangers which surely distracted from my face) and the other time, I was wearing real pants.  Sometimes you have to sacrifice one for the other. 

I already know tomorrow will be a real pants day because I'll be out with Nishant and I don't want him to be embarrassed.  Might as well savor today for all it's worth and revel in the sweat pants!

The Nursery - chevron and alphabet project

I feel like I was missing the "baby gene" for at least the first 6 months that I was pregnant.  I was working hard and trying to get my at home business off the ground and frankly just couldn't be bothered to really think about all that it meant to be pregnant.  I didn't have the perfect nursery in mind and I hadn't been daydreaming about decorating it.  I was sort of dreading it, if we're being honest.  But, I did have a few ideas in mind.  I knew I wanted an alphabet wall, something like this:

 

I was overwhelmed with finding all of those different sized and styled letters and finally got the bright idea to try Etsy and found my savior!  It's a shop called simplysawdust and this was the product:

 

It was also very reasonably priced compared to what I was coming up with by trying to purchase the letters individually. 

I also knew I wanted a more gender neutral nursery - nothing that screamed boy or girl (it's a boy) and I've loved all the grey and white that I've seen around, lately, so I decided on a simple chevron wall.  I'm a little crafty and have done wall treatments similar to this before so I figured I'd give it a go myself.  My husband wasn't quite so sure about the whole ordeal but he was a good sport and our marriage survived it.

We also love elephants so I figured that could be a good way to sort of pick a theme and come up with some colors that would mix with the white and grey and give it some life.  I found this super cute set on Amazon, from Zutano.  At first, I wasn't sure about mixing the brown with the grey but it all ended up working out nicely.

So basically, we started with an all grey room (Agreeable Grey from Sherwin Williams to be exact) so I just picked up the pint size (I think) of a true white to add in the chevron.  I found a good tutorial online and with a yardstick, a laser level and some chalk, we started by chalking vertical lines on the wall, 10" apart from each other. 

 

The next step was to chalk horizontal lines, but that sounded like too much work and also just sounded like more chalk we would have to wipe away later on.  Instead, we just made tick marks down every 10 inches and then zig zagged them with our painters tape.  We had about 3 extra inches at the bottom so that last chevron is a little wonky but I think it adds character.

 

 

After that, you just figure out which ones you want to paint white.  I started with the second one from the bottom so that there would be some relief from the white base boards.  I trimmed up the corners in the lines that were being painted with an exacto knife so that I would get good, clean lines and stuck the extra tape pieces in the ones that weren't being painted so that I would remember.

 

A clue to this, which I didn't know the first time I tried a project like this, is to remove the blue tape while the paint is still wet.  Otherwise, if you give the paint the opportunity to dry, you may end up peeling some of the paint off with your blue tape.  We ended up pulling some of our paint off the walls in this case as well, but that was mostly because our base was builder grade and maybe wasn't the best place to start in the first place.

After the paint dried, I took a damp washcloth and wiped away the chalk lines.  I had to go over it twice and if you look at an angle, you can see the wipe marks, but again, I think this is mostly due to the fact that we didn't have the best wall surface to start with. 

I took my elephant pillow with me to Michaels and picked up some craft paint to paint the letters.  I used 5 different colors - white, brown, orange (as close a match as I could get), teal and lime green.  I didn't use a primer or anything (though maybe I should have) but just gave all the letters two coats of paint and called it a day.  I mixed up the color order a little bit so that it would be less predictable but who knows if that really made a difference in the final product or not. 

Initially, I had visions of stripes and polka dots and argyle but when it came down to it, I was 30+ weeks pregnant and tired and solid letters was all I could muster up the creativity to do.  I still may go back and add some additional colors in the form of stripes or polka dots to the white letters since some of them ended up in unfortunate places, but for now. I do love it and I'm so happy with how it came out.

When he's old enough to have an opinion, I hope our little boy loves it as much as I do and at least wants to keep the chevron wall and the alphabet in his room, but either way, we're ready for him!

 

The Belly Toucher

My first mistake was putting on my old, not maternity, workout pants that I used to wear all the time early in my pregnancy, with no problem. My second mistake was squeezing my 9 months pregnant belly into one of my own t-shirts, pre-pregnancy size medium, instead of opting for one of my husband's extra large alternatives. I thought it would be cute, however I can tell you it was not cute when I found myself constantly pulling the pants up or the shirt down. I just avoided eye contact instead of trying to apologize for unsolicited belly showings. 

My third mistake was taking our two dogs for a walk at a new park, at 9 months pregnant, in the above described outfit. They're good dogs but have poor leash training and there are way too many things to smell at a new park. I married into them and blame my husband for all lack of training. More unsolicited belly showings. Even less chance of an apology for it while trying to control two dogs. 

After dropping the dogs off at home, I ran some errands and ended up at Target to pick up some essentials. While checking out, my cashier asked me something about the obvious baby in my belly, I don't remember what anymore, but then she asked me if he was kicking. My response to her was, "no, not at the moment," and I could do nothing but stand there as she reached a hand out and put it squarely on the side of my belly. Oh, ok. Now I can understand it if I had said that he was moving but I just told you that he was not moving. What would possess you to, uninvited, just reach out and touch my belly?!  Do you want me to touch your belly?

As a general rule, I feel as though I can be a pretty flexible person, if you just ask. I probably would have said ok, had you asked if you could touch my belly, even as a complete stranger. But to just do it on your own without a request or any kind of warning, well, that was my first experience with that. I'll be fine with it if it's also my last. Less than 4 weeks to go. Here's hoping!