Living room redo

Heading into 2012 I had three things I wanted to accomplish, or rather three rooms: finish the major parts of the kitchen, paint the living room and install the ceiling there and redo our guest room for the baby. My plan was to do the kitchen in January, the living room in February and the baby's room in March. Like usual, my plans didn't pan out, but as of April the majority of those things have happened. Andrew made a little more progress in the kitchen (we still need trim, a couple of outlets, knobs/pulls and eventually a backsplash), he painted the baby's room while I was in Alabama over President's Day weekend and we did make progress in the living room, though that didn't happen until a few weeks ago.

While I was at my baby shower here in Mass, Andrew and Brett got started on installing the ceiling for the living room. A couple of the other husbands came over to help, so by the time I came home from my shower, the sheetrock was all in place.

We decided we'd rent a lift this time around--putting up the ceiling in the kitchen was definitely a test for our marriage! The lift seemed to work really well for the guys, and I got a couple of pictures before I left for my shower.

Then the following Saturday of Easter weekend, we had a few friends over to help us paint the living room and the hallway. We chose a color called "driftwood" from Ben Moore's low VOC line (so I could help). It has brown in it, but it's sort of different. Under certain lighting it has a purple-ish tint--this is usually seen more at night. It goes well with the blue in the kitchen, too.

Painting went really fast--we started around 10 and were done in time for a late lunch. It helped that Andrew tore down all the trim and crown molding--we'll eventually replace that, but Baby Floyd will have made an appearance by then.

 I mostly painted near door trim and around our bar supports, 

then went to pick up lunch for everyone :)

 Our friend Dan was amazing--he did most of the painting around windows and door trim, 

and we saved time by not having to tape

 We just moved everything to the center of the room and knocked it out!

After lunch, Andrew and I ran a couple of errands, then came back to quickly touch up a few spots. We had enough paint to redo the dresser we bought to use as a changing table in the baby's room--so not only did we finish painting the living room and hallway, we also finished up our final piece of furniture for Baby Floyd!

Many many thanks to our friends Brett, Jim, Ryan (ceiling crew), Laura, Kristin and Dan (painting crew) for giving up their Saturday mornings to help us get this project done. I feel a lot better knowing that the major work is complete. We still need to tape, mud, sand and paint the ceiling, but I can help Andrew with that after the baby is born. Then we'll also finish painting the trim around the windows and install new base trim and crown molding. Just the little things! And now, should our child decide to suck on the wall, the lead paint has been encapsulated. Threat level = majorly diminished!

Another plus: I can finally get curtains in the living room! (Many of you are thinking...why did you wait? Now I can get something to match the colors in the living room and kitchen, and had I done this a year ago, I totally would've changed my mind on colors by now!)

Easy pillow covers

I found some great fabric I wanted to use in the nursery so I decided to make a couple of pillows for our glider. My friend Kate taught me how to do this, and it's super easy--no zippers involved! (Though I do plan to learn how to sew a zipper...eventually.)

Here's what one of the finished pillows looks like:

Gather these materials:

• fabric
• pillow
• pins
• iron
• scissors/rotary cutter

I was making two pillows, both sized 14x14. You need three pieces of fabric for this type of pillowcase--one for the front and two that overlap on the back. I planned to sew with a 1/2 inch seam allowance so I cut my front piece to be 15x15. The size of the back pieces depends on how fluffy your pillow is. I've made these before where my pieces just barely met in the back, so now I cut them larger than I initially think I'll need. I cut two 15x10 pieces, and those worked out perfectly. I had one pillow that was fluffier than the other, and both turned out great.

You should probably iron your fabric before you start, but since my ironing board is finicky--sometimes it just collapses in on itself--I iron on a towel on the table. Because of this and being so pregnant, I'd rather iron less fabric, so I did my cutting first, then ironed the pieces before sewing.

Next, you'll want to turn under one edge of each back piece, pin it in place and sew it. This will give you finished edges where you put the pillow in. Do this with one of the longer edges, for me a 15-inch edge.

I sew these pieces as close to the edge as I can.

After you have one finished edge for each back piece, you'll put the three pieces together and pin them all the way around. You want right sides together for this (see progression):

top piece, right side up

 one back piece, right side down

add the second back piece, right side down, overlapping the first back piece

Pin and sew all the way around--again, I did a 1/2-inch seam allowance. Trim the corners for a neater "inside-out flip."

Finally, flip the fabric inside out and stuff your pillow in!

 See the gap?

I made one polka-dotted pillow and another using brown houndstooth. Because we're Alabama fans (think houndstooth and elephants), I wanted to add elephants to the houndstooth fabric. Though Bama colors are crimson and white, our nursery is green, brown and teal. Here's what I came up with:

 I cut a rectangle of this green elephant fabric...

 then turned the edges under and ironed them down...

 then pinned the elephants onto the top piece of houndstooth fabric...

 then sewed the elephants on!

(You would do this before putting all three pieces together, btw.)

Finished pillows!

Project Update:

Remember the shutter I cleaned up for our travel wall project? I finally got all the letters I needed from Michael's, stained them with leftover floor stain from last year, finished the shutter and Andrew hung the beginnings of our wall on Sunday:

Tie-dying onesies

This is my friend Lauren.

Lauren is also pregnant, due Aug. 31. She and her husband have decided, like us, they will wait until the baby is born to find out boy or girl. We're not alone!

When you aren't finding out what you're having, you tend to acquire fewer clothes than people who know the baby's gender. Andrew and I are fine with this--we've stocked up on a few essential gender-neutral outfits in newborn and 0-3 months to get us through the first few days. Neither of us has a problem with our baby wearing basic white onesies either.

However, I decided it would be fun to tie-dye some onesies so my baby has a few things with color. Lauren was game because she'll be in the same boat very soon.

After checking the Internet on how to actually tie-dye things (pretty sure I haven't done this since Girl Scouts), we decided buying a kit would be the best plan. We wouldn't have eight pots of different colors, and onesies are so tiny, dipping the separate sections might be difficult. We picked up a Tulip kit at Walmart with five colors of dye, five squeeze bottles, instructions, lots of gloves and rubber bands for $20, so $10 each. We made around 12 onesies and have extra dye packets for a rainy day.

We used the guide to pick out the different "techniques" we wanted to try, then banded up our bright white onesies indoors.

We moved outside to do the actual tie-dying. Here are some pics of the wet, dyed onesies:

I definitely don't remember this part from whenever I last tie-dyed, but apparently you should wrap whatever you dyed in cling wrap to keep everything damper longer. After a certain amount of time (I got busy and didn't do this for 24 hours....woops) you unbind the material and rinse it in warm water until the water runs clear. I guess I used a TON of dye because this step took me forever. I would get all of the outfits rinsed, then go back and start again only to find more color in the tub! The purple was the worst. I finally finished, then threw them in the washing machine and hung them up to dry.

A few of my finished onesies! We'll definitely have one colorful baby!

**A question for those of you in Western Mass: can you get snow cones in New England? Lauren's from Texas, and I'm from Alabama--we both grew up with snow cone shacks all over the place, and when dying these outfits, we realized squeezing dye onto fabric reminded us of how snow cones are made. We then realized we've not had a snow cone since moving up here! Do these delicious treats exist in this part of the country? If you know, comment so I can no longer be deprived!

Strep B Saga continued…

Since my first post on my strep B positive result (if you need a catch up, click here), I had another midwife appointment, and I’m feeling a little better about things. I think I’ll backtrack a bit though to continue the story.

In my last post I wrote that I tested positive for GBS, and I explained why this result might change how things go for labor and delivery. Here’s the rest of the story:

Alternative treatment to antibiotics

At my 35-week appointment (when I tested for strep B) the midwife was telling me that in Europe practitioners have been studying a type of wash they feel can reduce mother to newborn transmission of the bacteria. Instead of giving a mother penicillin or some other antibiotic, they use a wash in the time leading up to a vaginal delivery to reduce the possibility of the bacteria being picked up by the newborn.

She said they’ve seen very good results with this alternative, but unfortunately, the studies have yet to be replicated in the U.S.

Fast forward to the following week when I had my appointment to discuss my strep B result. I left that appointment somewhat discouraged, knowing I would have to have antibiotics with the birth and all of that. I headed to Cradle, a baby store in Northampton that has tons of resources and offers workshops and classes during pregnancy and for the postpartum period. They also sell cloth diapering items, baby carriers, etc. I was headed to purchase some final things on my registry, and I mentioned to one of the women behind the counter that I had tested positive for GBS. She immediately went to a file and handed me some information on an alternative treatment, then encouraged me to ask about being retested at my next appointment.

Turns out, the info she gave me was from one of the European studies I’d been told about. The method uses Chlorhexidine (sold under the name Hibiclens) and water. It can be applied in one of two ways, and according to the study, researchers found washing or “flushing” with this mixture to have the same efficacy as using an antibiotic.

I wasn’t sure if you could buy Hibiclens around here, and I first wanted to run the study by my midwives. At my appointment on Friday I asked about being retested and mentioned the information I was given. The midwife I saw attended a conference last year on this very treatment, and she also said there are herbs you can take that some find to help rid a person of the bacteria. Unfortunately, I’m a little too close to my due date to try these alternatives, and even if I were to retest and have a negative result, the first positive on my chart will stay with me. Apparently, once I’m at the hospital, the pediatricians there would see the first positive and still insist I have the antibiotic, regardless of a second negative test. If I opted out, they would run tons of tests on the baby following birth and keep it under close watch for at least 48 hours. So basically, at this point, I may as well accept the positive and proceed.

For the next pregnancy, though, the midwife suggested I try the treatment a few weeks before I would be tested, get a negative and then be done with it. I’m definitely going to hold onto it for that reason. She also said their office gave thought to running their own study for the moms who test positive and choose to opt out of antibiotics. They were going to offer the wash and herbs and track the results; however, they decided it probably wouldn’t be well accepted at this time by the medical field. As she put it, the U.S. isn’t “edgy” enough for this type of research!

She did encourage me that it is still entirely possible for me to deliver without pain medication, and that even if I have to be induced with Pitocin, it is entirely possible for me to get through the birth without an epidural. I said something about being afraid the contractions would come so fast I couldn’t stay on top of them, and it would be more painful since Pitocin doesn’t offer the release the natural hormone it imitates does. She replied, “Well, we won’t make them come so fast.” (I figured out this meant they won’t turn the dial up so much!) So I left more encouraged that I could still deliver naturally, even with a GBS positive result.

A word on the mental/spiritual effect of the result

 I mentioned the result upset me a lot initially. I’ve figured out why, and I thought I may as well share that, too. I’m well aware that birth is an unpredictable event. You can write the best birth plan, prep for months and months and still end up having an emergency c-section. Things happen. Birth is just one of those things that cannot be controlled.

But I like control. It’s something that has consistently hindered my relationship with God—I could probably find something I have trouble giving up control of daily. At least weekly. I knew before this GBS test that if things were to end in a c-section, I would have a real possibility of being depressed and feeling like I failed. Knowing that, Andrew and I (and friends who know) have been praying that I’ll remember who is in control of this birth and trust that regardless of how it turns out, things went the way the Lord had planned.

That’s why the positive result hit me the way it did. It was one more roadblock to remind me that I’m not in control. “Doing this my way” is prideful and sinful, and I need to not only continue to confess that but keep praying that my faith and trust will be bigger than the outcome of this birth. AND that if I do end up having a natural birth, the glory doesn’t go to me—it goes to God because he’s the one with the plan and the one who got me through it.

Strep B Disappointment

Easter Sunday was a great day other than the fact I was dealt a bit of an emotional blow to my pregnancy hopes. My new midwifery office has an online portal that sends email reminders for appointments, and it also loads your test results there for you to check if you need to. I got an email that the results for my strep B test were in. Obviously by my saying I was dealt a blow, one can assume the results were positive, which they were, but I’ll stop here and give you some background on what the heck strep B is, how it affects a pregnancy and why my positive result may cause some problems for me in labor.

Between 35-37 weeks of pregnancy, moms are tested for something called Group B Streptococcus, or GBS. This is not strep throat. That is apparently a bacteria called strep A. Strep B is a bacteria that approximately 30% of women carry—I apologize for suddenly throwing these terms out, but it’s all medical—in their vagina or rectum. Apparently it can also be in your lower intestine, but since your baby doesn’t come in contact with that area, the test is performed by swabbing the other two areas mentioned.

I felt like this wordy post needed a picture. This is what I got when I Googled strep B. This and screaming baby pictures. (From I-am-pregnant.com)

(I believe, from the quick Google searches I’ve done, that men can also carry this bacteria, but since they don’t give birth, I haven’t really looked into how it affects them. Sorry if you're a dude and hoping for that information.)

The reason women aren’t tested until 35-37 weeks is because this bacteria can come and go. The carrier may never know she has it unless she becomes pregnant and is tested for it. Even then, she could’ve carried it at one point but not be carrying it at the time of the test, resulting in a negative result. Basically—I tested positive this time, but with my next pregnancy, or even if I were tested again in two months, I might not have it.

So how does this affect pregnancy?

When a baby is born and passes through the birth canal, there is the possibility it can pick up the strep B bacteria if the mother is a carrier. There is no way of knowing which babies will contract it and which ones won’t. The most common illnesses/diseases the bacteria causes in newborns are sepsis, pneumonia and meningitis—all very bad things for a newborn to have. There is some commentary on the bacteria also affecting the mother, but from the majority of what I’ve read and been told by medical professionals, the concern is for the baby, not the mother.

In order to prevent the baby from catching the bacteria, mothers are given penicillin intravenously every 4-6 hours during labor. Administering the antibiotic significantly reduces the chance a baby will get strep B. The most common stats I’ve read say 1 in 200 babies will pick up the bacteria if no antibiotics are given whereas 1 in 4000 pick it up with the antibiotic. So it’s a really good thing to let them give you antibiotics, though some women opt out. At that point, pediatricians watch the baby very closely for signs of illness.

[I should probably also mention that this bacteria hasn’t always been tested for—I’m fairly certain my mother wasn’t.]

Now, why did me finding out I tested positive make me so upset? It’s just a little IV, and I don’t even have to be attached to the pole. I can get the drug, have it plugged and continue to labor as I please—even giving birth in the birthing tub if I so choose.

Well, it just complicates some other hopes a bit more. Two main things will change. Number one: if my water breaks before labor starts (happens in fewer than 10% of women) I will have to get to the hospital for the antibiotic. If this happened and I had tested negative, I might be given up to 24 hours for labor to begin on its own (totally dependent upon practitioner). Because I tested positive, I’ll only have maybe 12 hours before they’ll want to induce.

Number two: I won’t be able to labor at home as long as I wanted. Because pediatricians like to see the dose given at least four hours before the baby is delivered (like you can technically plan these things), I will need to head to the hospital and arrive hopefully at 5-6 cm dilated as opposed to maybe showing up at 8-9. My midwife told me today that most docs like to get two doses in, but since some women progress quickly, that isn’t always possible. If for some reason I were to get there and give birth in less than four hours or even so quickly the meds can’t be given, they will just watch the baby very closely. But ultimately, they’re going to want me there sooner than if I had tested negative.

I’ve decided I’m going to end my post here and tell you the rest of the story with my next post. I was presented with some research of alternate ways to deal with a GBS positive result that I want to share, and I also think it’s important to talk about why I finally determined this upset me so much. All that to come…stay tuned!

Maaronthon Monday!

For those of you not living in Massachusetts, you may not know that Monday was a holiday for most people in the state. It's called Patriots' Day, and it happens on the third Monday in April. (It apparently also occurs in Maine, you can see Wikipedia if you want to know why. They put the apostrophe before the 's.') Three major things happen on this day:

1. The reenactments of the Battles of Lexington and Concord (why we observe the day in the first place)
2. The Red Sox play at  home.
3. The Boston Marathon is run, and the day is known to many as Marathon Monday.

Andrew and I still haven't been to a reenactment, though it is on my mental list of things to do in Mass. This year, though, we did watch the Boston Marathon because our good friend Aaron qualified, thus making Monday "mAARONthon monday." (I can't take credit for the fun name--accolades should be attributed to his wife Amanda.)

We headed to Boston on Sunday afternoon to have dinner and stay with Aaron and Amanda. I wasn't sure how I would do being 37 weeks pregnant and all, but we managed! Temps rose above 80, probably near 90 or so, causing race officials to offer participants a chance to not run this year and compete next year. Even with a leg injury, Aaron took his chances and left early to catch his bus out to the starting line.

We watched for him around mile 21 (Newton) near the "Haunted Mile" where runners are descending from "Heartbreak Hill." Another friend from Western Mass, Cindy, cheered Aaron on near the finish line in downtown Boston. Here a few pictures from the day, and despite what a few in the crowds joked about, I did not go into labor due to the heat or trekking around Boston. Baby Floyd is still enjoying the warmth of the womb.

The wheelchair athletes came first--they go insanely fast down some of the hills.

The elite women are next, followed by the elite men.

Minnie Mouse made an appearance as the men ran through...

As did "USA Man"...a little warm for this outfit, but whatever!

Amanda, the nervous wife

Aaron, the husband, spots us and runs over to kiss his wife. 

We failed on getting that picture :(

Continuing the race...

Western Mass crew with the Kings

Mass Baby Shower!

Saturday, March 31 finally came! My awesome friends Jenna, Laura, Kristin and Christie threw me a fabulous baby shower here in South Hadley. It was full of great friends, yummy brunch foods, beautiful decor, delicious cupcakes and one giant cake made by our friend Lauren. Other friends pitched in with food/drink, too, which was so awesome of them.

We ate said yummy food, played some games and I got to open gifts this time instead of envelopes (my first shower in Bama was a gift card shower--super great, but not much wrapping paper to throw around!). We did a baby version of Catchphrase in two separate groups due to numbers, and apparently there are lots of terms associated with birth/babies that don't translate well as determined by the international college students in attendance. Duly noted :)

I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story (with some captions, of course!).

My chair! Christie's daughters helped out and painted the sign above the rocking chair.

 The spread...so much food! And all of it was amazing!

 Fun friends!

The entry tables: one with my book and another with an encouragement station and this awesome tree print I found for people to sign with their thumb or fingerprints.

 Super cute pansies were everywhere, and guests took them home as favors

Gifts!

 Laura, Kristin, me, Jenna and Christie

 Opening prefolds for my journey into cloth diapering

 The tree--it looks awesome with all the prints on it and will hang in the baby's room

My friend Sarah's mom, Cheryl, made this quilt with fabric from

The Very Hungry Caterpillar--super cute!!

Erica and Adeline--I had to post this, Adeline's faces are priceless!

Thanks to everyone who made my shower so much fun!!