This Texas Baby: The Birth Announcements

Alright, here is what everyone (everyone? haha, the whole 2 people who read this thing!) has been waiting for... the birth announcements!

So, here is what it looks like when it came in the mail:

 

The envelope is a shimmery pink.

Let's open it up:

 

 

Pull it out a little:

 

Look a little close:

Gah, could she be any more adorable?

Here are a few full shots:

 

The polk-a-dot paper is the back of the announcement. 

A few close ups:

 

The whole thing:

(Probably should of put the announcement on top of the envelope...) 

 

I had so much fun making these, I love doing this kind of stuff though. I was very happy when I was done with them! It's not that they were hard or even really time consuming, it was just finding the time to MAKE myself do them! After Sadie would go to bed I didn't want to do anything, so I had to force myself to finish them.

A few detail notes... the shimmery pink envelope is the same color as the piece that has all of Sadie's info on it, I inked the edges of that piece. The photos I actually had printed on photo paper and then just trimmed down to size. I cut the "S" out with my Silhouette and mounted it on to the piece with 1/8" thick tape, just to give it a little depth. Oh, and I also "made" the double sided paper.

I freaking love them. I have one sitting on my mantel and I find myself sometimes staring at it thing about how awesome I am!

(For reals, if anyone needs anything like this done for party invites, announcements, wedding invites, thank you notes, etc let me know! I love doing this stuff, so I'd love to give you a price.)

New look... for now!

Alright, I am calling the update done. I don't entirely love it, a little tooo shabby-chic for me, but I figure it was time for an update! Maybe it will just motivate me to update it sooner than the over a year it took me last time!

Work in Progress

I am slowly updating the look of my blog, please excuse the mess while it is happening. It will probably be a multi-day process, as I will mostly be working on it during lunch time!

My goal for the week is to finish this and post about the amazing birth announcements!

This Texas Baby: 2 months

Love her mouth in this one... and the cute little toes!

baby bubbles are the best!

Nicknames: Sadie-cakes (mom), doll (dad)

Temperament: Baby girl, you seem to be very adaptable! As long as you get fed when you request you don't really care what we are doing or where we are. In fact, I would say 90% of the time if you are crying it's because you are hungry.

Things I Could Do Without: How much you move/wiggle in your sleep. I think you travel your entire crib during the night, it drives me crazy when I click on the video part of the baby monitor and you are not in that little section and I have to pan the whole crib to find you! Good thing the monitor we got can pan and zoom, there is no way we would be able to use one that just focuses on one spot. All your moving also caused us to remove your crib bumpers, you like to press yourself up against the crib rails . So, we decided to remove the bumpers until you get a bit older and can move away from them by yourself. but then you decided to go get your legs stuck between the slats! That's how we ended up putting a breathable bumper on your crib! You are also able to wiggle your arms out of your swaddle which I think wakes you up sooner than should be. 

Item/Toy You Love The Most: Your play mat. Man you freaking love that thing. You can lay on it with the music and lights playing just smiling and talking forever, well about an hour, which is forever in baby time!

Item/Toy We Love The Most: Video baby monitor

Things I’m Loving Most Right Now: My cuddle time when I pick you up from daycare before putting you in your car seat to go home.

Things You’re Loving Most Right Now: Going to sleep/bed at night after only drinking 2 ounces at lot of nights, no matter how much we try and get you to wake up and eat more!


Stats: 10.5 pounds & 23 inches long

Monster

My little monster after bath time.

Look what I finished!

I have FINALLY finished Sadie's birth announcements! They are so super fantastic, I can't wait to show them off. Better get in line to ask me to make your announcements or invitations or any other paper products! Hopefully I'll get a post together next week on what the actually LOOK like but that will be right behind Sadie's two month post that I have already slacked on. What can I say, we have had house guests the past 3 weekends and this week more are coming and then next weekend we're going out of town for Easter and it's so stinking hard to do anything during the week.

I know, I am full of excuses, please forgive me.

Letting go

Hello, my name is Meredith and I am a control freak. I have to know what is happening, when it's happening and why it's happening, AT ALL TIMES. Anyone who knows me knows this, they also know that I am not a very relaxed person. Sure I can be calm, but just sitting on the couch doing nothing is not not my favorite thing to do. Pretty sure Robert thought I was going to force myself into an early labor with my inability to stay off my feet and relax during the last few months of my pregnancy. And why in the world I thought I could have a natural childbirth, when a MAJOR factor in that is the ability to RELAX still baffles me. (Side note, if I decide to do this whole baby making thing again, I would still like to try going natural just hopefully sans pitocin and with a lot more pre-birth planning on my part.) I am telling you all of this as a preface to this next statement... as of yesterday I have quit breastfeeding and pumping, more appropriately I have quit my pathetic excuse of breastfeeding and pumping. Can I tell you how hard this decision was to make? It sucked. But remember back in this post I said I was going to do whatever I thought was best for me and Sadie? Well, I have decided that stopping is what is best.

There are several things that have happened over the past three weeks that lead me to this decision. The major factor is that my milk supply plummeted after we started supplementing Sadie with formula. I would say within a week of introducing a bottle, Sadie pretty much wanted nothing to do with breastfeeding. She would nurse for a few minutes and then start screaming and banging her head against my boobs out of frustration and hunger. That killed me. I chose to give her a bottle at that point instead of stressing both of us out with trying to get her to nurse. This quickly turned into Sadie only wanting to eat from a bottle, which any breastfeeding book, class or lactation consultant will tell you will happen, so it's not like I wasn't prepared for it. So, I decided ok, no more nursing, but I was still going to pump to get breastmilk down her! Well, as any book, class or lactation consultant will tell you, a pump does not work the same as a baby. I started with being able to pump around 3.5 ounces total in the morning with it diminishing during the day. My last "big" pump was 1 ounce after 30 minutes and it would just go down from there during the rest of the day. I kept trying everything to amp up my supply, I even started talking herbal supplements. It just wasn't working for me. I am fully aware that I got wrapped up in how much I pumped and sitting there while pumping and watching that little bottle go from empty to almost empty. But, like I said above, I could not just sit there and relax enough for anything to get better. It took me a week to pump enough for Sadie's first day of daycare. How in the world was I going to keep up with that for months to come if my supply was falling by the day!?

Going back to work was something else that led to my decision. My first few days back I sat at my desk and pumped while working one handed. My doctor told me to stop that and to remove myself from work, sit somewhere other than my desk and think of nothing but Sadie. Yeah, that did not work out so well for me. I would go sit in another chair in my office with my cellphone and flip through my Flickr pictures of Sadie and even though I was thinking about her I was also thinking about how many emails I would have when I got done, speaking of emails did I just hear my computer ding to let me know I have a new one, oh crap I forgot about that project I sent to the printer, I need to check on that when I am done, argh, I bet my boss is looking at his iChat and seeing that I have been idle for over 20 minutes and is annoyed that I am not working, oh yeah, pumping, I am supposed to be thinking about Sadie, man, I have so much laundry to do for her when I get home. As you can see my mind if a fun place to be! And I would have to do that at least twice a day once I started back at work full time!

I finally sat down and thought long and hard about what I was doing to myself. I could not remember the last day that I made it through without wanting to cry over the whole situation. I was pumping MAYBE 4 ounces a day and was stressed out for the 30 minutes leading up to the pumping, the 30 minutes of pumping and for a good hour after. Were those 4 ounces worth it? I know some people might label me and my decision selfish, but that's just it, it's MY decision. I finally decided my sanity was more important to me and my family that the stress and frustration pumping was causing me.

I know I touched on this in my previous post, but I can't tell you how often I have thought that maybe I should of kept trying with the breastfeeding, that maybe I started supplementing too soon, maybe I should of stuck to my guns and listened to my daughter cry from hunger until she decided to breastfeed more to increase demand on my milk supply. But then I think about her last doctors visit, she is up to 10 pounds 5 ounces. According to the baby growth percentile calculator on Baby Center Sadie is in the 10-25% for weight, that means 80-75% of all other babies are bigger than her! 80-75%! That's a lot! I can only imagine how might higher that would be if I had not started supplementing her! She can still wear newborn clothes and diapers! I know of babies 3 weeks to a month older than her that have close to 2 pounds on her! That stresses me out, to think of how little she might weigh if I had not started supplementing. I am sure some people would say that my milk supply could of started getting better and she would be fine but that is not a chance I was willing to take. My baby's life is not worth my want to breastfeed no matter what sort of benefit she would of received from breastmilk.

Wow, sorry about that, did not mean to go off there in that last paragraph. I suppose I am still a little touchy on the subject and still feel the need to justify my decision.

I suppose the whole reason I am putting this out there is for other control freak, non-relaxed mammas out there to read and for me to go back and read through if I decide to have another baby. After 9 weeks of breastfeeding hell I am letting it go, I am telling myself it is ok to let it go, I love my baby just as much as any breastfeeding mamma out there, I am giving myself permission to be 100% happy with all things baby related now and I am happy with that.

Back to Work

Today marks my first full day back at work. In fact I am writing this during my lunch time! I have been working half-days for the past two weeks, just to kind of ease myself back into work and ease myself into daycare. I say myself because who am I kidding, Sadie is a pretty adaptable baby, as long as she is getting fed at regular intervals I'm pretty sure she could care less where it is coming from or who is feeding her.

Here is where you are going to think I am a terrible mother... I couldn't wait to get back to work and stick my kid in daycare. Now that you are done frowning on me let me explain more. I figured out early on that I was not cut out for the sahm role. While I loved being able to stay home and have that bonding time with Sadie I really think six weeks was about my limit. You see, my brain, it was turning to mush. I missed having adult interaction with people other than Robert. I missed working on work projects, even those projects I used to complain about, projects that I am sure I will still complain about it. But for all my complaining about projects, clients, boss etc I still really like my job!

I am also a huge believer in daycare. I think it is great for kids. I think it does great things for them socially and mentally. Yes, I know that Sadie is just a baby and she is not very interactive at the moment but when she does get to that stage, I think it will be great for her to be around a group of kids her age. I think it will help her be more outgoing and confident than if she was staying home with me. I also think that daycare, or being exposed to so many other kids, is great for a little one's immune system. I mean think of everything they are being exposed to now that they are building up an immunity to vs having to build immunity to once they start kindergarten!  I am sure that there are tons of people out there who disagree with me, but that's what I believe.

Now, I am not saying that having such a little one in daycare doesn't have it's sucky points, because it does. Sadie loves her vibrating seat and swing at home, I am pretty sure she could hang out in both for hours if I let her. The week before we took her to daycare I freaked out to Robert about how she loves those and what if she doesn't get to sit in a vibrating seat at daycare and how that's not fair and can I bring a seat just for her to use all the time and no one else! Needless to say I was a little nutty and Robert laughed at me. I was also worried about how it would be if the ladies were occupied with other babies and Sadie started crying and they couldn't get to her right away. But then I thought about it and when Sadie cries at home neither Robert or I immediately run over to her to make her stop. We will look and make sure she is not hurt or anything like that and then give her a few minutes to quickly finish what we are doing, heat up her bottle, let her try and soothe herself before we pick her up. That whole time we are talking to her to let her know that we are there and she is not alone. If she is still crying after a few minutes, and I'm talking 1-2 minutes here people, not 15, we will go pick her up and soothe her. So, I don't see how what we do at home will be any different than what she gets at daycare. Another thing that will be sucky about daycare is how little time Robert and I will have with her during the week. While I was home Sadie would sleep until about 8:30/9am and then we would put her to bed between 7:30 and 8pm. The past week and a half while she has been in daycare I have been getting her up around 6:30am and she has been going to bed between 6:30 and 7pm. Now that I am back at work I wont be picking her up until about 5:15pm and we wont get home until close to 6pm. So, that means we will get around 30 minutes to an hour with her. That's not a lot of time and it sucks. But you know what, I will cherish everyone of those minutes I have at night. I will give her extra cuddles and kisses, I will look forward to our 2am feeding just because I get to spend 30 more minutes with her. And I know as she gets older and needs to sleep less we will be able to extend that bedtime. For as sucky as all that is, the benefits of daycare far outweigh them, at least for me.

Another HUGE factor in Sadie going to daycare is a money one. Other than the fact I did not want to, it just did not make sense financially for me to quit working. Daycare is only a fraction of my monthly paycheck. The fact that I am able to still contribute to our household income is a big one for me. We would of had to cut back on a lot of things if I had decided to stay home. I know a lot of people can not say that, and I do feel blessed that I can.

Perhaps the biggest reason I am glad to be back at work is that my feelings of jealousy towards Robert will go away. Yes, that is right, I was jealous of my husband working. Actually, I wasn't really jealous of him having to work but I was jealous that he had "me-time". As any new mom will probably tell you it's darn near impossible to get any alone time, especially a breastfeeding mom. In my head I was viewing Robert going to work as a break from, changing diapers, feeding, entertaining a little person that doesn't give you much feedback as to whether they like what you are doing or not. By the end of the day I was so ready for Robert to be home, and if he ever decided to go run an errand after work, it took all I had not to flip out. I know he did not view working as a break from Sadie, I know he viewed it as being away from his family. I also know he felt like as soon as he got home I would just pass baby duty over to him. Which I am not denying I did, I tried not to because I knew he had worked all day and he needed to come home and relax just as much as I needed a break from baby duty. But now we will be back to an even playing field, we will both be coming home from work tired but we will both be on baby duty, together.

I have a feeling I was all over the place with this post, but I have no time to go back and edit it as I need to get back to work! I just wanted to take a few minutes and express my thoughts and views on daycare and why I was happy to be going back to work.