on why to ignore the nesting urge sometimes…

I so frequently hear women say, “Childbirth is what our bodies are designed for. Just sit back and let your body take over – you don’t need no stinkin’ doctors or drugs.” I agree that childbirth is one of the things that our bodies are designed for, but I also believe that we are living after the Fall. God cursed childbirth and gave us much pain and hardship in it, just as he cursed the ground and gave our husbands pain and hardship in their duty to tend the earth and provide for us.

So I am not one of those women who likes to “just listen to my body” all the time. Sometimes I need to ignore my body. For example, on Saturday I got the urge to get down on my hands and knees and scrub my kitchen floor and then polish it. This was undeniably the result of some unwelcome pregnancy hormone because as any close friends or family can attest, this is not a normal urge for Betsy. My kitchen floor usually has a random coffee bean and probably a bit of dried spaghetti somewhere in the corner under a cupboard. But I gave in to the urge on Saturday. Now my floor is very pretty, but I am in pre-term labor. I’ve had multiple ridiculous nesting urges over the past two weeks that have brought me to this point. And now here we are, fighting what my body is trying to do in order to keep my baby inside so she can be born healthy and closer to term. I do need my doctor and I do need my drugs because my body is very confused.

I imagine that before the Fall there wouldn’t have been such a thing as pre-term labor (someone please correct me if my theology is off). But here we are, laboring away under the curse. But God is kind and this labor is not in vain, nor are we doing it without His guidance and strength. Sometime in the next two weeks our Evangeline will be in our arms rather than in my belly and we can laugh heartily in the face of the serpent. God is good, and He does not abandon us.

contraction master

I’ll preface this by saying that when I first heard of this site, I laughed. Who uses a website to help time their contractions, I mean really? How hard can it be? A contraction at 6:45, another at 6:51, another at 6:57 and 7:03, and your contractions are coming every six minutes. That’s all you need, right?

Well, a few weeks ago when I started having regular braxton hicks contractions I decided to try this thing out, and it landed me in the hospital. Without it, I wouldn’t have noticed that my contractions (which came every 8-10 minutes) were lasting more than a minute, and that’s the part that worried my OB (I got some terbutaline and everything was/is fine).

So as silly as it may seem, maybe bookmark contractionmaster.com for the next time you’re nearing the end of a pregnancy because you never know when it might come in handy! Oh, and you can get it for your iPhone or iTouch as well (which would be super handy!).

review: Fisher Price Papasan Cradle Swing

This is the Fisher Price Papasan Cradle Swing.

Background.
This swing was given to me about 3 1/2 years ago by the wonderful ladies who I worked with at Crossroads Nursery. I hadn’t originally planned on getting a baby swing (all I knew of were those wind up ratchety things that creak and sway in old church nurseries), but I was more than willing to take this one as a gift! My boss said that her niece swore by this thing, so I figured why not give it a try. After all, it looks pretty cool and cozy and I know I sure wouldn’t mind curling up in one if they made it in my size!

The good stuff.
We started using this swing for B the day after we brought her home. She loved the gentle rocking motion, and it really does cradle babies oh-so-cozily. We could swaddle her up and tuck her in between the cushy headrests and not even bother with the buckles (but we would leave it on the lowest setting, just to be safe). So for the first week we kind of thought of it as a fun place to put her. After the first week, when Andrew went back to work, I began to see it as The-Most-Important-Thing-I-Owned. As an infant, B insisted upon behind held all the time, and greatly preferred it if we held her while we were walking around. As you can imagine (and as some of you probably know from experience), this can be a bit problematic especially when one wants to take a shower and is the only adult home. So for those times when I simply had to put her down (usually just for my shower and the putting on of make-up) this swing came to my rescue. She could lie here contented for a good half hour and that was just enough time to get done what I needed to.

The speed settings worked well, although we really just left it on the lowest one for the first few months because she was so light that that would get it going fast enough. As she got bigger we probably bumped it up a notch or two.

The music isn’t bad, but B never really got into it.

The mirror on top for the kiddos to look at was a hit, as were the spinning birds, butterflies, and leaves (we had the Nature’s Touch version). B loved to stare at herself in the mirror as she’d swing side to side…I think we even got some fun videos of that when she was little.

The not-so-good stuff.
I have two complaints with this swing. First, it runs on batteries. It would be so much nicer if one could just plug it into the wall (they may have remedied this in the past 3 years). That said, in the 8 or so months that we used it I think we only replaced the batteries once or twice and as you may have gathered from what I wrote above, we used it a lot. Secondly, the base is a bit large. The legs spread out quite far in order to steady the swing and this makes it a bit difficult to tuck the swing into a corner. So if you live in a smallish apartment (or a house of a smaller scale), be prepared for the swing to make quite a dent in your floor space.

Final thoughts.
For me, the pros waaaayyyy out weigh the cons. I would have this thing sitting in the middle of my kitchen if that was the only way I could fit it into my house, and I would give up my Starbucks for a week (yes! even as a new mother!) to buy the batteries. Fortunately, these are so popular now that they can be fairly easily found on Craigslist or other resale places for about half of what they cost new. But even with a price tag of anywhere from $110 to $280 (depending on which design you get), it’s a fantastic investment in my opinion. I can’t wait to pull ours out in a few weeks and get it all set up for Baby E!

baking things

I’ll start off with this slightly misshapen loaf of banana bread that was oh-so yummy. I got into a little baking spree last week and this was the first of my endeavors. The recipe is courtesy of Dani Callihan in Hot Providence.

Best Banana Bread

1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
3 ripe bananas
3/4 cup milk (I substituted a little buttermilk for fun)
1 teaspoon lemon juice
2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup chopped walnuts

Cream the butter, sugar, eggs and bananas well. Combine the milk and lemon juice. Add this to your creamed mixture, alternating with the flour, baking soda and salt. Pour into a well greased loaf baking pan and bake at 350 for 45 to 50 minutes (mine took more like 60-70 minutes). Do the toothpick test to make sure it’s done. Slather it up with some butter and enjoy!

In other news, here’s my other ‘baking’ project. Little Eva is growing steadily and quickly, and I can’t believe we’re down to two and a half months!

makes me want to squeal!

I am in love again. Well, again and again. First, we found out yesterday that we’re having another little girl, Miss Evangeline Audrey (Eva). So first of all I’m in love with her, and the idea of two girls. I am, however, a little scared of the idea of “sisters” because I never had sisters and the whole relationship just kind of freaks me out. I have no experience with the “sister dynamic” and all sorts of scenarios are running through my head along with a bunch of preggo emotions and making me want to faint. But hey, all that is a long way off and I’m sure that God will equip me for it when it shows up. So that’s taken care of. Sisters. Check.

Second, I just checked out Anna Maria Horner’s new fabric line, and it just makes me all giddy inside! This fabric, combined with a little girl due at the beginning of summer just brings to mind all sorts of lovely cheery things to be made. I want blankets, dresses, sheets, curtains (for our new house up in Spokane, have I mentioned that yet?), and tablecloths galore out of this stuff. These prints are just plain cheerful. Now I just have to get my hands on some….

“mocktails”

I’m not usually a huge fan of cocktails. I’ll enjoy an occasional cosmo and a really good dirty martini (with blue cheese stuffed olives…yummmmm), but beyond that I’m more likely to stick with a glass of wine or champagne. But I am human, and when there is something that I can’t have, I am naturally inclined to want it more. This applies to cocktails, and I’ve been craving cosmos, margaritas, and mojitos lately. I bought a mojito mix and added club soda and it was okay, but not good. I tried a “gentle sea breeze” that was just cranberry and grapefruit juice mixed with club soda, and that was also okay but not good. So I made up my own recipe involving lots of cranberry juice, a little lemon lime soda, and the pulp/juice from half a lime shaken well in a cocktail shaker. I put it in a margarita glass and garnished it with a lime and it hit the spot. Very tasty with a good balance of flavors that didn’t leave me thinking that it just wanted for a bit of alcohol.

review: IO wrap top

I’ve given up on trying to find non-maternity related things to post about here and I’m just going to start writing about all that is on my mind lately – maternity and babies! The first thing that I’m going to do is start a new category for the ol’ blog, and that is the “review” category. I plan to review things (probably mostly maternity/baby things) in an effort to smarten up all your buying for baby!

This is the Isabella Oliver Wrap Around top.

Background.
I first fell in love with these shirts when I was pregnant with B, but I couldn’t afford to splurge on them then. In fact, I still can’t afford to splurge on them, but eBay seems to be bursting with some IO products and I was able to get this shirt in the lovely red color at a nice discount, so it was doable. Nothing like indulging in a pricey but beautiful piece of clothing to make you really excited about that new baby bump!
The shirt is basically a little cropped top with really long ties that you end up wrapping all the way around and down your belly. Once you get the hang of wrapping it, it’s not too hard. The deep V neck necessitates a camisole for most occasions, but having the camisole underneath kind of helps hold the shirt in place so it’s not really a bad thing.

First, the good stuff.
This shirt is absolutely perfect for those first “tween” months when your normal shirts may be a bit small but the maternity shirts (unless you get an XS) look like potato sacks. You actually wrap it around your body to fit snugly and so it does a great job of showing off the beginnings of your baby bump. It’s basically made to fit. They come in beautiful colors that will go with just about anything, and it’s the sort of style that you can dress up with a black pencil skirt and stilettos or dress down with a pair of jeans and boots.

Now, the not good stuff.
For a regular retail price of $125, I expected this shirt to be made of some really fantastic fabric. I was a bit disappointed to see that it was a pretty run of the mill knit, and the stitching around the hems wasn’t very well done (but I did buy this shirt slightly used, so it could be a result of laundering and I’ll try not to hold that against the company).

I’m not a particularly long torso-ed person, but the wrap around ties on this shirt are barely long enough to cover my 4-month belly. The ties need to be at least 2′ longer to fully cover the belly and get any kind of nicely hanging bow at the side.

I’m not a fan of having to constantly ask my husband if “there are any holes”. Since the shirt is just wrapped around, you have to keep an eye out for gaps between the wraps, which can happen fairly easily if you do a lot of bending or turning. Wearing the camisole helps to lessen the gapping, but it’s still a little unnerving.

Final thoughts.
If I’d ordered this from the company, I probably would’ve sent it back because in my opinion it’s just not worth $125. But having gotten it at a decent price, I’m relatively satisfied and wear it maybe once every two weeks, mostly for occasions where I really want to look pregnant. So if you can get it on eBay for a good price (or make your own – wouldn’t be hard at all), I recommend it, but otherwise, use your $125 to buy 5 tops on sale at the Gap.

plans

I want to expand a bit on something that I mentioned in my post announcing our pregnancy. I mentioned that we’ve been praying for this baby since B was about 7 months old, and I want to tell the whole story on that one.

Our plan was to have two kids close together (18 months apart or so), wait two or three years, and then have another one or two (again, close together). We didn’t see any problems with this plan because we had a really easy time getting pregnant with B, so we figured that any subsequent babies would be just as easy to conceive. But as they say, if you want to hear God laugh tell Him your plans.

I thought about telling the whole medical side of the story, but it gets a little technical. Suffice it to say that there was obviously something not right with the way my body was working and so we sought the help of a local OB who specializes a bit in infertility. After being diagnosed with PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome) I went on a couple of different medications, namely clomid and metformin. The clomid wasn’t fun and ended up not being the wonder drug that most women claim it is, and we were glad to switch off of it and to the metformin. After 8 months of treatment and OPKs and 18 months of charting my temperature every morning, we found out we were expecting!

“Testing Day” had become a bit of a big deal to me (and my husband). But after months and months of negative results, the excitement and expectations started to wear down a bit. Friday, September 19th came around with surprisingly little anticipation for being T-day. The only thing I really remember leading up to it was lying in bed the night before and commenting to Andrew that if the test came out positive the next morning, we’d have a hard time not telling our friends who we were getting together with for dinner that night. So Friday morning came, and Andrew headed off to work around 5:30 or 6:30 (I don’t remember which). I got up at 7 and almost forgot to grab the test on my way to the bathroom. After taking the test, I set it on the counter and came out to check email and dink around online for the 5 minute wait. I went back into the bathroom and looked down and there were two pink lines. I started crying and went and grabbed my phone and speed dialed Andrew. His initial reaction was that someone must be dying for me to be calling him that early in the morning, and when he answered all he heard was sobbing and blubbering (which made him think even more that someone was dead), but then he heard something about two pink lines and understood what it was all about. We both walked around for the next hour or so (him at work, me at home) saying, “Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh.” We’d been planning this and trying for it for more than two years, and it was such a wonderful surprise.

While our struggle with infertility is over for now, we hope to deal with it again in a few years. I’d like to do a few posts on infertility here on Scarlet Lillies, but I’m very nervous about taking on any sort of “this is how to deal with infertility” type tone. So I might do some posts, and I might not. I probably will post some quotes and verses that were of great blessing to me though. And, if anyone has any questions, particularly about the treatments that I had or PCOS, or the cheapest place to get pregnancy tests (it’s not the dollar store!), feel free to email me (my address is on our “about” page I believe). I’d be happy to answer any questions that I can and I know that it’s always nice to know when there’s someone out there who is going through/gone through the same struggles that you are. And last but not least, rejoice in God’s plans for you. Our plans were apparently off by about two years, but God’s knowledge surpasses ours and I’m much happier having a baby in my belly according to the wisdom of God than an 18 month old according to my own.

injections

Since Bella was born, we discovered that I have a genetic blood clotting disorder known as Factor Five Leiden deficiency. This can be particularly dangerous for pregnant women and tends to cause 2nd and 3rd trimester miscarriages because a blood clot will develop in the placenta and cut off oxygen to the baby, or a number of other clotting problems can develop to harm the baby. Pregnancy also makes it more likely for me to get a clot that would cause a pulmonary embolism or deep vein thrombosis for me, which I’ve heard are not fun (not to mention life threatening).

So while I’ve never had any symptoms from this genetic disease, we decided with the input of our doctor that I should be put on a prophylactic dose of blood thinners for my 10th through 38th weeks of pregnancy. This means that twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening, I get to fill up a little syringe with heparin and inject myself in my belly. Last night as I was preparing to inject myself I was thinking of the Friends episode where Ross has an allergic reaction to the kiwi lime pie and has to get a shot, and he’s asking the doctor if there’s any way to avoid the needle and just “thquirt it in my mouth, like a thquirt gun?”. After 7 months of doing this though, I figure I’ll be a pro (after all, it’ll come to nearly four hundred injections).

I started injections a few weeks ago, and Andrew was a big help at first. After the first few times I decided it was just easier to do it myself though, so it’s been a one person deal for a while now. Initially, they stung a lot and I was bruising to the point where nothing could touch the injection sites (tight shirts were too painful!). This made holding Bella and being hugged by my husband difficult tasks. Fortunately the sites have been less painful lately and I can even handle lying on them a bit when I sleep.

While this is a trial, I’m thankful every time I have a chance to inject myself because of two things. First, it means that God has blessed us greatly by sustaining the life of this little one inside of me and we still have a reason to be taking the medication. And secondly, I’m so thankful for the hope that God has offered to us through modern medicine. While being on blood thinners during a pregnancy is a bit scary (since bleeding is really the last thing a pregnant woman wants to do), we know that the benefits outweigh the risks and this is the best thing that we can do (medically) to ensure the health of our baby.

So while this twice-a-day ritual is becoming a pretty mundane, daily task, we ask that you would pray for its effectiveness and that God would use it to protect me and our baby from any complications stemming from this genetic disease. There are pregnant women with clotting disorders who take heparin and still have devastating complications in their pregnancies, and it is our prayer that God would bless our use of this medication and use it to bless us with a wonderfully healthy baby in May.

a little announcement

Andrew and I are delighted to announce that we are expecting our second baby! We’ve been praying for this little one since B was about 7 months old, and we are very thankful that God has, in His perfect timing, chosen to bless us with another little one now. Our baby is due June 1st, but we’re expecting him/her to arrive closer to the middle of May.

Today was my 12 week ultrasound and everything looks great!

The baby is measuring right on schedule and was rolling around for us, stretching its little legs (see the bottom right picture), and even hiccuping! We are very pleased to see that everything is going so well.

I had another ultrasound at 8 weeks, and everything was looking spot on then too, but we wanted to wait and verify everything today before letting everyone know. I have two diseases/disorders that make my pregnancies high risk – PCOS which puts me at a higher risk for first trimester miscarriages, and then I have a Factor V Leiden deficiency which is a blood clotting problem that puts me at risk for miscarrying in the second and third trimesters. I’m on a prophylactic dose of blood thinners for the rest of this pregnancy, but more on that in a few days.

Please join us in rejoicing in the miracle of this little one, and pray with us that the next six months go smoothly and quickly!