Charlie's Birth

Charlie Rumer Watson came into this world on November 29th, 2016, at 5:02pm, weighing 6 pounds 13 ounces, measuring 19.5 inches long, and with a beautiful head of dark brown hair. Everything that anyone ever tells you about having a baby is so true; love at first sight. The type of love that's worn outside your chest, as it hovers over you like a rainbow of emotion. 

In sharing my birth experience, I hope it might give other mothers, and mothers-to-be, a glimpse into how child birth can be very different for every woman. As I've said, no matter how a child enters this world, the important point to take away is that they get here safe and healthy, no matter the route of entry. This was my birth experience:

I had to have a cervical catheter placed the morning of Monday, November 28th at 10:40am. This was because my cervix just hadn’t progressed or dilated like it should have the last four weeks of my pregnancy. I kept telling everyone that my cervix was just stubborn. At first I was a little apprehensive about the procedure but after thinking about the other outcomes if I didn’t do this, it made the most sense. (If you induce without cervical ripening, it can make labor more intense and/or prolong labor which can potentially lead to complications. Pitocin, which is a synthetic form of oxytocin, doesn’t cross the blood brain barrier like natural oxytocin does, which means the body won’t respond in the same way by sending out natural pain killer- endorphins. This means that a pitocin augmented labor can have the potential to be much more painful. It can also cause fetal distress since contractions are artificially regulated and baby can’t slow them down if labor becomes too stressful. This in turn can lead to an emergency c-section. The balloon catheter is used to “prep” your cervix to about 3-4 centimeters prior to induction. My doctor inserted the catheter, and then inflated 60cc of saline into the ballon. They sent me home, to then return at midnight for induction at the hospital. I started having contractions at home, which progressed to 5 minutes apart for 1 minute consistently from around 4pm until about 10pm, which at that point my contractions stalled. I did have one constant contraction for about 10 minutes with peaks of intensity, which felt pretty intense. After we got to the hospital, I was hooked up to all the necessary monitoring equipment, IV started, and pitocin drip administered. Prior to my doctor coming in to check on me at 7am, my water had broke with the catheter still in, which was around 3am. It felt like just a trickle, so my nurse swabbed me just to make sure it was amniotic fluid. It was. My doctor removed the catheter and broke a residual pocket of membrane/amniotic fluid. She informed me that my contractions will get more intense, as they slowly raised the amount of pitocin infused. I withstood contractions until I was 6cm dilated, naturally, with no pain medication or intervention. At this point the contractions were the most intense pain I had ever felt (In my opinion, I think it was due to the pitocin.

My whole body was tensing up, I was shaking, I could no longer breathe through the contractions properly. I also was hyperventilating through the rest periods, trying to catch my breath to relax and rest, which wasn’t easy when you only have a minute or two between contractions. This made Sky, and my family (Who were there in my room by then; My mom, dad, mother-in-law, and Sky’s Aunt) very uncomfortable seeing me in so much pain. My goal was to have a natural, vaginal child birth without any pain intervention, but at this point, I was crying through the contractions, writhing in pain, so I decided I needed the epidural. I whispered to Sky, "I want everyone out". In my mind, I was questioning my ability to withstand the worst pain I have ever felt for potentially hours ahead. I also had the aching feeling that my pelvis was being stretched apart, which is a sensation I can’t even begin to explain how it felt. I was shaking my head, telling Sky, "I can't, I just can't". I asked my nurse for pain medication, which I guess was misleading because I meant that I wanted an epidural but she came in with IV pain medication. Once we cleared the air on the matter, she called the anesthesiologist for the epidural. 

The epidural, was not as bad as I had envisioned it to be. I jumped a little with the initial poke of lidocaine. After that, it just felt like pressure. A couple of zingers ran down my left leg, so he adjusted the catheter and pushed another dose through. I went through about 3 contractions while I was hunched over, my arms draped around Sky's shoulders, our foreheads resting against one another, as I breathed fast and heavily- in-and-out through each of the contractions. I said sorry to Sky, worried that my breath smelled really bad, the nurse laughed a little and said "Awe".  Sky reassured me that he didn't care if my breath smelled bad. Haha. 

After getting the epidural, the calmness ran over me. I could think, and speak again. It was a night and day difference between how I felt just 10 minutes prior to the epidural when I was questioning my ability to even just sit up for the epidural- the pain was that bad. The stark contrast between pain and no pain was joyous. I could now enjoy the presence of our family there. I could feel their excitement, their joy for what was to come, and their relief from not seeing me in such a great deal of pain. At first I wasn't sure of how fast the epidural would work, so I asked "How do I know it's working?", Sky laughed and said, "Well you just talked through a contraction", as he watched the monitor. From this point on, I would say labor was pretty easy. I was just laying there, numb, waiting to get to 10cm. We visited with family and watched a couple of movies, as I tried to rest. At the point when I came close to having to push, my doctor came in to check on me. She told me that she was going to her office (across the street) to finish up about 15 minutes of paperwork but that she would be back once the nurse called her, when I started to crown. The nurse set up the room, raised my legs into the stirrups, and explained how to push. For each contraction, she said I would take a big breath in, holding onto the back of my upper thighs, pulling back as I tuck my chin in, as if I was doing an abdominal crunch, and I would push as I held my breath in. We would do 3 breaths, 3 pushes per contraction. After she explained everything to me, a rush of emotion came over me, mostly nervousness. This was the culmination of 9 months of pregnancy, and we were literally so close to meeting our Charlie. I asked the nurse if most first time moms are nervous to start pushing.  Kind of a dumb question, but legitimate in search for her reassurance, she said “Of course, but you’ll do great”. I asked Sky what his feelings were and he was kind and sweet the entire time, reassuring me that we prepared as much as we could and we were ready to meet her. We were ready to be a family. He was amazing just as I knew he would be, so supportive. I could not ask for a better partner in life and father to our daughter. He understands me, and I love him more than he'll ever know, more than I could ever be able to express to him. 

Here we go- time to start pushing. My nurse instructed me when to start, based off my contractions. "Ok, Big deep breath in…..PUSHHH!!! And again, breath in, and push. One more time, breath in and push!". "I can see her hair", she said. What can happen when you push is that after your done, the baby can actually retract back into the pelvic outlet, sometimes leading mothers to push for hours. I had asked how long first time moms usually push for and her response was that it ranges anywhere between 2 to 4 hours. So I was expecting to be pushing for at least, awhile. 

The nurse left the room to call my doctor. Sky could hear her tell my doctor in disbelief that I was already starting to crown, and she could see the top of her head. She apologized to her because she didn't expect me to push-to-crown so fast. My nurse came back in, had me do another round/contraction of pushing, thinking my doctor would be there within minutes, but my last push was too effective, and she said she was going to get the hospitalist just in case while my doctor came back to the hospital. I chuckled at something the nurse said, with everyone looking at my lady parts, they told me not to laugh or cough! A couple minutes later the hospitalist was in the room asking where my doctor was because she had just seen her, not realizing I was probably one laugh or cough away from her head popping out, she asked someone to get her gloves, but right at that moment, Charlie's head literally just popped out on its own, the hospitalist had to catch her bare handed!! My doctor got there one minute afterward. She said this was only the second birth she's ever missed!! My nurse said I should give classes on how to push. Rarely do they witness two contractions, six pushes all together, and baby is out type situation. Charlie basically birthed herself. We were overjoyed with emotion as they placed Charlie on my chest for skin-to-skin, and for her first latch of breastfeeding, while Sky got to cut the umbilical cord, and the my doctor and nurses did all the clean up work. 

Eventhough I wanted a natural birth, I feel that getting the epidural allowed me to enjoy the whole process, and the moment her actual birth happened, that much more. I could be present in that time, mentally allowing me to enjoy every aspect of it. I honestly do not think I could have done it without the epidural. I have to recognize those mothers out there that have given birth naturally. I’m not quite sure I’d want to know what it feels like now, after having an epidural, but I commend those that have given birth naturally. Unfortunately for me, because my cervix was so stubborn, that led me to the birth that was meant for me. There are so many situations that can transpire when giving birth and I am happy about my experience. Below are some pictures we took just after Charlie was born into our life, lighting up our hearts, and our homecoming with little miss sweet pea Charlie bean.  

We are a family, us three. Xoxo Angela + Sky + Charlie.

I love that her umbilical cord runs in-between her two toes. 

The neonatal nurse and my doctor, Dr. Mary Deka. 

                           

Her little kitty booties were so cute but she kicked them off right away and they wouldn't stay on.
She looked so cute in her go-home outfit, but did not like mama dressing her up in it.

A nice homecoming surprise from grandma Hillary.

The cute poster grandma Hillary printed and hung on our door when we arrived home.

Giving Thanks

This is one of my favorite quotes for this time of year, especially Thanksgiving.

As I sit here waiting in my doctor’s office for my 40 week appointment, I can't help thinking that's it's almost Thanksgiving, and I still haven't gone into labor. This year feels very different than last year. Last year we had hosted our first Thanksgiving at our home for our family & friends. It was a beautiful warm Arizona day as it usually is around this time of year, with it being in the mid seventies, sunny and warm outside. We had set up our dining room to fit everyone which was somewhat tricky, as we expected 13 adults and 2 kids. We angled our dining table in order to fit a card table at the end and an additional table for the kids. It was a day to pay thanks to everyone in our lives and was quite fitting that we have such a big family, being grateful for everyone to share that day with us. We had a mimosa + bloody Mary bar too! I baked the turkey, and everyone brought a dish they made. Brian made his famous deep fried stuffing balls, which I finally got to eat, and let me tell you, they are worth the wait! So delicious. The year before I didn’t get the chance to try them because I spent the day at my parents house, as Sky and I hadn’t moved in with each other yet. After last years successful Thanksgiving, we had told everyone that we would host Thanksgiving every year.  

Flash forward a year, and here I am 40 weeks pregnant, waiting to find out if I have progressed and if labor is eminently near. With my due date being two days before Thanksgiving, we told our family that we were not hosting this year as the possibility of having a new born or being in the hospital was quite possible. As much as we love being surrounded by our loved ones, we just couldn’t fathom having everyone over with a newborn baby, so we didn’t really make any plans. I jokingly told them to just bring us food. Haha. 

We found out yesterday that we will most likely need assistance with going into labor. My doctor went over induction options with us, and I am scheduled for a ballon catheter to be placed in my cervix Monday, with induction on Tuesday, November 29th, which happens to be Sky’s Mom’s birthday! The catheter is a manual technique to open my cervix, to hopefully have my body induce labor on its own, naturally. If that doesn’t happen, then inducing drugs will be administered to progress my labor. It wasn’t necessarily what I wanted, because a part me feels a bit awkward choosing the day of Charlie’s birth, which I feel is somewhat playing around with fate & time. I wanted everything to happen naturally. Going into labor on my own and delivering via a natural vaginal birth. Even with my preconceived choices of how I want things to go, I really feel comfortable with my doctor and with how she approaches chid birth. She understands my wants and needs, but at the same time, she explains the benefits verses risks in a way that makes doing the latter not seem so much as a compromise, but rather a way to have our precious Charlie here, safe and sound. With inducing drugs, sometimes they can make contractions more intense, so in terms of natural labor and childbirth, it could make it more likely that I may need to decide on pain medication but I am going to try to the best of my abilites to hold out for what I want, if all goes well. I am motivated and determined to have a natural birth as that was my main goal from the start. As much as this is my position on childbirth, I am still open to what may come, and what I may need to do to get through it. Our doctor reassured us that the catheter could put me into labor naturally, but if inducing medication is necessary, they start with the lowest possible dose of pitocin, and wait to see how my body responds to it. If needed, they dose slowly and accordingly to progress dilation and labor. My cervix is just being a bit stubborn is all. I have learned from other people and their experiences though, that labor can happen at any time and progress very fast, you just never know. 

Now, we will be able to spend Thanksgiving with our family and friends. As much as I would have liked for Charlie to be here already, I am happy and thankful that we can share the day with everyone we love before she is here. If she doesn’t come on her own before tomorrow that is! My Mom joked that she just wants to have Thanksgiving dinner, and my brother seems to think she’ll come on Thanksgiving day. We will see… 

Happy Thanksgiving to all… hope your day is filled with family, friends, love, and laughter. Oh, and of course, all that delicious food! 

xoxo Angela.

The Nursery

I think one of the more fun things to do, to prepare for a new baby is decorating a nursery. At least for me. I always tell people that if I hadn't gone to school to be a Sonographer, I probably would have gone into interior design. I think that's the libra side of me. I've always had an eye for interior design, and I have expensive taste, naturally. It's an ongoing joke between Sky and I. If I see something in a store, my eye gravitates towards the one thing that's most expensive. It's a gift. Haha. 

When it came time to create the nursery for Charlie, one of Sky's only requests was that the nursery have lots of color! I didn't want it to be blatantly girly, you know, pink everywhere, but I also, wanted a lot of different colors incorporated. I started looking at rugs first. With any design I think you have to find that one piece that inspires the rest of the space and gives you direction as far as a theme. This rug did that for me. 

I found it at The Land of Nod, which is a branch company of Crate & Barrel. They have a store in LA but unfortunately not here in Phoenix... yet. Hopefully one day they'll open a store here. They are like the wonderland of nursery & kid decor. Of course buying a rug online can be quite pricey, especially the shipping, so what I did was, I kept checking their Instagram, emails, and website for free shipping. They also offer 15% off your whole order if you give them your email address so I did that as well. Needless to say, I saved over $80 on my order just by being patient and waiting for those discounts. Most companies will do promotional discounts around holidays so my advice would be to check on those holiday weekends, follow their social media accounts, and look up promo codes online just by searching. You'd be surprised what you can save just by trying... if that's your goal. But hey, with a new baby on the way, every penny saved is better than not. That saved money can go to diapers, or other important things you may need. 

I started with the rug, and branched out from there. When friends would ask me what the colors and theme of the nursery was, it was hard to answer. I basically said, "A lot of different colors, and clouds". I knew I wanted to incorporate a cloud theme also. I had seen such cute cloud themes of nurseries on the Project Nursery Instagram page. It gave me tons of ideas and inspiration for her nursery, but also introduced me to some companies & small business owners who make the cutest things, like the baby jives cloud mobile I posted on my IG page (which they sell on the Land of Nod website, her webpage, and her Etsy account). 

I'm a big online shopper. Most of everything, I searched for and ordered online, while looking for discounts, and promo codes to save a little money. Below is the list of items I bought for the nursery: 

Land of Nod - Rug & Cactus Pillow (Not pictured - it's on backorder until December. It's a very popular pillow, I must say). Grey striped storage bins for the closet. 

IKEA - Cloud light on the wall. Wall Shelf. Kallax Cube organizer for the closet. Fuchsia planter & plant. Black and white cat pillow.

West Elm - Side table. Curtains (which I had already).

Target - Lets talk Pillowfort. It's the cutest line of nursery/kids decor they exclusively carry at Target. Most of which is whimsy, cute, and totally affordable. I bought the ball table lamp which I thought went perfect with the rug. Also, the turquoise dyed bed canopy, which even though it was a target Pillowfort item, I found it on Amazon as Target no longer carried it in stores or online. Fuchsia storage bins in the closet. Curtain rod. Panda pillow/nursing chair tassel pillow, which matched the colors from the rug perfectly.  

Amazon - Cloud wall shelves & cloud pillow (not in pictures). Pillowfort dip-dyed canopy.

Etsy - Nursery prints. BabyJives cascading hearts mobile. Wall decals. 

Anthropologie - Monogram "C". Gold bow closet knobs. 

PotteryBarn Kids - Anywhere chair in turquoise with white piping, embroidered with Charlie. 

Bannor Toys - Arizona state wooden baby rattle.

Crib - Babyletto Mercer 3-in-1 

Owlet Monitor - We got this as a very generous gift from our friends, and from people at Sky's work. If you haven't heard of it yet, click here. It's a pulse oximeter that's worn on the baby's foot, and works with the app on your phone in case oxygen or breathing patterns change at night. Greatly improving parents quality of sleep, while alerting them if something changes. I have a friend who's a pediatric ER nurse and I was first introduced to it at her baby shower. She highly recommend it, saying, "It saved her a lot of sleepless nights". 

While I was slowly ordering things to decorate the nursery, and waited for everything to come in the mail, I told Sky that he couldn't see it until it was completely finished. The nursery was going to be my gift to him. I felt bad because usually the mother gets all the attention, with the growing belly and questions, and of course the baby shower, getting to open up all those gifts. I wanted him to have a surprise, and the nursery was just that. I kept the door shut during the whole process. Sky was a trooper, he didn't peek, not even once! I had to wait until the nursing chair came in, as that was the last thing to come in (besides the cactus pillow). When I showed it to him he loved everything about it and gave me a big hug! He expressed to me that it really turned out amazing. Success!! When I walk by every morning/evening I still stop to take it all in. I wanted a room that was girly, but still somewhat neutral. I wanted little touches of whimsy and cuteness that would be just as a little girls room should be. A room she could grow into, not out of, and I think I accomplished just that. I hope you enjoy the eye candy of little miss Charlie's nursery room. :)

The black and white mobile was actually my mobile when I was a baby. My mom kept it all these years! Black and white nurseries are very popular right now. If you go to the Pottery Barn website, they have a whole collaboration line from Emily & Meritt, of black and white themed nursery decor. I actually bought this baby activity gym because I wanted something more elegant to go with the decor of Charlie's nursery. I wanted to incorporate my mobile into the nursery so I thought right above the changing station would be a good place for it. It will give Charlie something to look at while I'm changing her diaper. A little factoid of information is that babies actually only see black and white at first, and having some objects that are black and white actually help their eye development and vision. 

I made this nursery ribbon banner to match some of the colors and to have a focal point under the shelf. I've noticed a common theme with nurseries and that is having some sort of banner strung up, either above the crib, on an adjacent wall, or just as decoration to add a bit of extra interest and whimsy to the room. At some point in the future I am planning on making and selling these ribbon banners.   

Pink elephant hamper given to us by our very good friends Brian & Michelle - from BuyBuy Baby. As you can see, Charlie's closet is already full of clothes. As my mom said, "As a little girls closet should be!". 

Baby Jellycat rattler gifted by my Mom because she knows me (caption below about Jellycat). Bannor Toys Arizona state baby rattle. Personalized chalkboard made by Sky's Aunt Allison. Personalized book given as a gift from auntie Terry, from a company called Wondrous Ink. 

The nursing chair we bought from Buybuy Baby. We special ordered the Indigo leather fabric to match the dark navy colored dots in the rug and also the bright lab string lights along the window. I discovered this company through Instagram as well, and immediately thought they were genius! I special ordered the colors of the "balls" to match the colors of the "dots" on the rug, to tie everything together. 

A little onesie I picked up in a Flagstaff boutique. 

These plush stuffed animals are from a company called Jellycat. They are by far the softest stuffed animals ever and by saying I am slightly obsessed with them is an understatement. Two of these I bought up in Flagstaff at a little boutique store, and the other two were bought from a small bay town store in Door County, Wisconsin when I went there with Sky, his Mom, and Aunt. His Mom bought me the goat Jellycat, because I have, yet another obsession, with goats. I found the monkey later that day, after she had given me the goat as a gift while we were there.  I'm sure Charlie will be getting more of these Jellycat whimsies as she grows up. 

Thank you for stopping by to look at Charlie's nursery! I hope some of you can take away some inspiration to help with decorating your little ones space. xoxo Angela.