after Annabelle’s arrival

Apr 9, 2014 | Sesame, Uncategorized | 10 comments

Allow me to give you a brief rundown of what’s been going on since we left the hospital:



I change the baby
I feed the baby
I change the baby again because she lets everyone know when she’s messy
I go downstairs to get breakfast/lunch
I hear the baby cry
I change the baby
I feed the baby
I change the baby
Wash, rinse, repeat

But enough about me and the fact that I seldom eat breakfast before 11 o’clock. I sleep in four hour stretches at night so I can’t complain too much. On to the pictures!

The paparazzi was out in full force at the hospital.
Grandma and Carol just happened to be visiting Nashville the weekend the baby was born.
I’m so glad Grandma got to meet her!
Oh look! Photographic proof that there are three people in this family.

She held my hand the entire way home from the hospital.
She’s counting the number of pictures we took of her in the same exact position.
Clearly, she’s a child prodigy.
Girlfriend is very delicate and ladylike at all times.
I’m good at making people.

Ignore how I look and focus on the baby in the sweatshirt.
This is a game called Find the Baby.
She’s so little she doesn’t fit in most of the clothes I already had. A mom I babysit for gave us a bunch of preemie and newborn clothes from her baby girl. I showed each outfit to Sesame as I took it out of the box but she wasn’t too interested. 
Please see the above remark about my people making skilz.
Fun fact: she was crying when I took this picture. She didn’t get cute crier genes from me.

Annabelle’s Arrival

Apr 5, 2014 | Sesame, Uncategorized | 12 comments

I wasn’t going to write a whole birth story because they usually creep me out with all the unnecessary details. If you have to start a story with a disclaimer of “If you’d rather not hear about my_________” than consider me gone.

But I need somewhere to put these pictures so here you go. I apologize in advance for the length. Brevity has never been a strong character trait.

We were scheduled to go to the hospital at 8:30 Friday morning for the procedure (external cephalic version for those who like medical terminology) to turn the still-breech baby. I know. You probably thought I rushed to the hospital last minute. I like to keep a little mystery and surprise around here. My ribs hurt terribly the night before so I was only able to get about two hours sleep. I was so bright-eye and bushy tailed in the morning!
They got us settled in and while the nurse was getting my iv ready Christopher asked her the weirdest thing she’s heard in the delivery room. That question lead to a whole discussion on placenta encapsulation. So that was very pleasant.
Greg the anesthesiologist came in to prepare me for the epidural. Under normal circumstances I would have wanted to avoid an epidural but they don’t like trying to turn the baby without the patient having one. People. Speaking from experience, NEVER EVER have that procedure done without pain medication. You will thank you later. I liked Greg despite the fact that when the nurse couldn’t get the iv needle in he said he’d help even though “I don’t know how to use this kind of needle.” So reassuring.
(Here is where I skip the unpleasant/boring parts of the story.)

(And the part where I threw up.)

(That probably falls under unpleasant.)
A few hours after we arrived the doctors all crowded around to attempt the flip. They pushed on my stomach VERY hard and succeeded in turning the baby into the right position. Everyone rejoiced too soon because the baby immediately flipped back to it’s favorite room in Hotel Womb. The doctor said we could try again or go straight to a csection. I said they could try again since everyone was already there and it wouldn’t do any harm, but the baby refused to cooperate. 

They wheeled me off to the operating room and while I’d like to say I was perfectly calm, I was not. One of the medicines left me shaking like a very small leaf in a tornado and it WOULD NOT stop. The shaking made me more nervous which made the shaking worse which made the nerves worse, etc. etc. etc. I couldn’t stop crying.


When Christopher came into the room he looked like this. His outfit was way cooler than mine.
The csection was my first surgery so the fact that not only were they going to be cutting me open but also removing a person from inside me made me nervous. Christopher held my hand and Greg the anesthesiologist alternated between manning the drugs and putting his face 5” from mine and asking if I was ok. A few minutes after they started I began to feel something on my stomach. I said I could feel them pushing and was told I would be able to feel some pressure. It started getting worse and worse until (and you know this is serious because I’m breaking out the caps and I never do that) I COULD FEEL THEM DOING THE SURGERY. I may never recover from the trauma. It was awful. I tried pulling away because HELLO, PAIN but didn’t want to move too much and mess anything up. I didn’t occur to me I couldn’t move thanks to the epidural.
They opened a little window in the curtain so I could see Annabelle being born, but beyond knowing she was a girl and hearing her cry I didn’t think too much about her. I was much more concerned with my present issues. They gave me more medicine and things got a little loopy. I do remember Christopher telling me she was a girl. Every since I can remember I wanted my husband to be the one who told me the gender of our babies so for everything that didn’t go as I would have like, I’m so glad that did. I remember telling Christopher he could go see the baby and asking if she had hair. I think I remember him bringing her over to say hi but I couldn’t focus on her. I was too busy crying from pain. I continued to cry for what seemed like hours. I wasn’t even interested in holding her, I was so upset and in pain.
 
I really wanted as many pictures as possible from the day but trying to take pictures while delivering a baby is like trying to photograph your own wedding. It’s very difficult. I didn’t know until hours later that the doctor and Christopher had gotten some and they’re really special to me.
Shortly after the baby was born I made it clear to anyone who would listen that I don’t want to have another baby for a very long time. For now I am perfectly content with my one little munchkin.
Girlfriend in her going home outfit. The lion was not part of the original ensemble.

And my one big munchkin.

(Prepare to be bombarded with 7,000 Sesame pictures over the next few days. I’d say I’m sorry but I’m not. Rest assured I have no plans of turning into a mom blog where you can read diaper ointment reviews.)

Sesame’s Suite

Mar 31, 2014 | Sesame, Uncategorized | 10 comments

We went with an elephants with a side of rabbit theme. 
We’ll add more boy or girl things later on when we’ve somewhat recovered from sleep deprivation.
View from the door.
Grandpa sang You Are My Sunshine to me growing up so it’s always been a special song. Mom gave me this print the Christmas after he died.
I wish someone would make a pretty diaper pail.
I LOVE these pictures. I found them years ago and was so glad they were still around when I needed them.
The blanket on the back of the rocking chair was Christopher’s when he was a baby.
I made the owl when I taught Anna and Jillian’s sewing class.
A few things on the shelf:
It only took me eight months to replace the picture frame baby with a picture of our baby.
Oh look! I made something for the baby!
99% of the baby’s belongings say ‘I love Daddy’. I had to document the one item that says mommy on it.
My hair bow basket.
I call this our Peter Rabbit shrine.
Andrew gave me this bunny years ago.
Do you know how hard it is to find gender neutral bedding? I found you a little lacking in that area, baby companies of America.
I made this mobile a few days ago.
 Each elephant has a solid color on one side and a pattern on the other.
Christopher gave me the Paddington Bear when we were dating.
We painted the Yertle the Turtle bank on our date last week.

Watch Sesame Grow, week 38

Mar 23, 2014 | Sesame, Uncategorized | 8 comments

Edition: I had a needle sticking OUT OF MY HEAD

Size of baby: 5.5ish pounds and supposedly the size of a leek. I thought a leek was similar in size to an onion so I did some indepth research into to the subject. It seems the people over at The Bump are running out of vegetables to compare the child to because a leek is basically an onion, a vegetable we’ve already used. Now they’re getting leaves and stems involved which is really complicating things. Why can’t we compare the baby to candy bars? 
Fun fact: The baby started out smaller than a sesame seed and now we can put one finger on my stomach and feel it wiggle. Things are getting large around here.
Size of mother: At this point I have gained 18 el bees. I don’t like proclaiming my weight but these things must be recorded for posterity.
What’s on the menu: I bought blueberries to make blueberry coffee cake but ate them all before I got around to making the cake.
Other things I have to say: Sesame is still breech so today we had an acupuncture appointment in hopes it might help the baby turn. I’m not holding my breath that it will work but I don’t want to sit around doing nothing. It was my first time getting acupuncture done and I have never felt so hippie in all my life. At one point I had a needle sticking out of my head (I’m sure it gave me a nice alien with an antenna look) while she burned something down by my toes. I can’t even. All this was happening while she told me how her husband works at The Turnip Truck. 


So we had a perfectly normal Saturday afternoon.