My thoughts on food, fitness and life in Houston, TX
Hope you are having a good start to your weekend! Our weekdays and weekends are pretty much the same, except we have dad around more on the weekends! Makes it nice for mommy to get out of the house for a few minutes, even if the errands are all for the baby!
Just a quick post to share an article I wrote for the Huffington Post Parents blog that went up yesterday.
Enjoy!
Hello there! Man, have the days all mushed together and boy are they long. Logan celebrated his two week birthday on Tuesday. We’ve had a fun two weeks of getting into a routine, learning what to do, and perfecting the art of diapering and swaying and shhing. Actually, we are both not good at diapering yet.
Everyday is indeed different. So far, we’ve had a few good mornings of long naps, followed by a morning of no naps! We’ve had loud afternoons continuously, we can count on that. And we’ve figured out a few tricks to quiet him, like going outside for a stroll or car rides.
Logan is a great eater, although we are working on gaining him some weight. We aren’t real sure why he is eating so well but not gaining, but we’ll figure it out! He is back to his birth weight, which is good, but needs to bulk up some more! Sounds like an ok problem to me…just kidding.
Hopefully the blog will go back to food one day, but for now, I don’t have time to cook! Especially in the afternoons when Logan is wide awake and cranky.
Any questions or post ideas you’d like to see?
Hello! It’s a new week! All our days are blending together, except on the weekends, I have more people around to help me! Caring for a newborn and a high maintenance dog princess is tough with only two arms. I haven’t figured out how to walk the dog while the baby is napping in the house yet.
Anyway, toward the end of last week, I started feeling so much better on the way to full recovery from childbirth and even ventured out of the house for the first time since the baby came home. I actually drove a car twice, which I hadn’t done since the day we moved over two weeks before! It’s funny how the little things become so big.
My parents visited again, and on Friday, my mom, Logan and I went to Nordstrom. It took two adults and a valet person to help us unload our gear and get into the store for a short 90 minutes before we had to get home for the next feeding.
Logan was a perfect baby on his first outing and slept the whole time! However, I don’t think I could do that outing alone right now. So much gear to carry, need more hands to actually shop.
I have decided I am absolutely done wearing maternity clothes and can’t look at them anymore. I moved them out of my closet and bought t-shirts from the Gap and Banana Republic in every color in the rainbow. Logan and I go through a few outfit changes a day, and plain fitted t-shirts with Lululemon pants are my new wardrobe. You can also see above that I even did my hair for the outing, meaning no ponytail and some time with the flat iron. The little things!
Also over the weekend, Lily showed a little more interest in her brother. She loves to sit on our ottoman in the baby’s room while I feed him. I think she thinks it’s a family nap time.
And on Saturday morning, this picture was too funny to not take. Our Saturdays used to be for the gym and errands and watching television in the afternoons, and yesterday it was hurrying to get things done between feedings and then feeding Logan, or shhing, swaying and rocking a hungry and cranky baby.
We are getting the hang of things! But as people tell us, right when you get comfortable, it all changes.
So I left off with our birth story…that was last Tuesday in the middle of the night. Then we went home on Wednesday around 6 p.m. Here are some pictures from our first few days at home.
Coming home from the hospital. A trunk full, just from the hospital stay!
We came home to a surprise stork in our yard!
First morning at home, getting some sunshine in the bouncer.
Family photo.
Four generations–grandmother, mom, me, baby.
First whole family photo.
My parents with their grandbabies.
Hello, I am making a slow return to the blog, but it’s going to be baby-centered for a while. There’s no cooking going on in this house. No interest, and we have a fridge full of dinners from friends.
I thought I’d do a few posts about welcoming Logan to the world to include our hospital stay and bringing him home. Today he is one week old (picture above is from yesterday)! I’d say that time is flying, but really, it’s been a long few weeks that have blended together! I also have barely been outside. I looked at my phone and couldn’t believe today is March 20. March has been a whirlwind for sure!
For this post, we’ll focus on some pictures leading up to birth and the birth story. I’ll be general and rated PG.
We went to the hospital on Sunday, March 11 at 7 p.m. The picture above was the final pregnancy picture at 39 weeks and 3 days. We had a busy few days leading up to that weekend–we moved into our new house and got settled before going to the hospital!
I was scheduled to be induced, but really had hoped to go into labor myself. Inductions can be very long and have a higher risk of ending in c-section. My body hadn’t done anything on its own, so we started from ground zero in the hospital.
Picture above is a still happy Marci, getting hooked up to monitors, unpacked, and settled in my hospital bed for what would be a long few days. The nurse started an IV, hooked me up to a contraction monitor and heart rate monitor for the baby, and we got ready for bed. This was the last shared picture before baby!
Fast forwarding to Tuesday at 3:46 a.m., we had a healthy baby boy weighing 8 pounds and measuring 20 inches long.
Here is a brief timeline of what happened between Sunday night and Tuesday morning:
Sunday 7 p.m.: Check into hospital, get settled and hooked up to IV and monitors
Sunday 9 p.m.: Start an IV drip to put my body into labor and start contractions. I also took 5 mg of Ambien to help me sleep to be rested for labor. I slept 90 minutes all night.
Monday 2 am.: First check and I progressed to 1 cm dilated. Hooray, that’s something! I had hoped to keep that going the rest of the night and have more progress by morning.
Sunday-Monday until 8 a.m.: A lot of dull pain all night, no pain meds to help.
Monday 8 a.m.: New nurse comes on duty to stay in our room all day long. Doctor comes by to check me. Still at 1 cm. Bummer. Pitocin starts in IV drip. Planned to go until 4 p.m. and then re-assess.
Monday 11 a.m.: Pretty bad pain, I asked for meds. They helped for about two hours and let me rest and relax some.
Monday 1 p.m.: Doctor comes by again, still at 1 cm. Major bummer. Going to be a long rest of the day, night and Tuesday. Realize we’re going to be here a long, long time. Doctor says we will turn off Pitocin at 4 p.m., I can rest, eat, shower and sleep. We’ll start up again in middle of the night.
Monday 3 p.m.: Jeffrey goes in hall to order dinner for his mom to bring us. My water breaks unexpectedly. Hooray! Best news. I’m in real labor now!
Monday 3 p.m. – 6 p.m.: Worst pain I have ever felt, lots of tears, no pain meds for part of that. I don’t remember when the pain meds went in. It was the worst few hours of labor. To those who think they can breathe through all of labor without drugs–good luck to you.
Monday 5 p.m.: Doctor comes back, says I can get epidural earlier than she had previously allowed. She wanted me to wait until 4 cm, but didn’t want to check again (you risk more infection the more you get checked). She said the epidural would relax me and let labor progress. Plan was still to turn off Pitocin, but no shower or food. Just rest. Said she’d be back the next morning.
Monday 6:30 p.m.: Epidural! Apparently I have a tight back, and it took the doctor 3 tries. That was fun, but I was a trooper through having a tube put in my spine, still having contractions, and being hooked up to a blood pressure cuff and baby monitors.
Monday 7:30 p.m.: Finally relief, can’t feel the pain but can feel my legs. Not allowed to get out of bed until after baby arrives.
Monday 8 p.m.: I was allowed to eat broth, apple juice and a grape popsicle.
Monday 8:30 p.m.: More Ambien, night night.
Tuesday 12 a.m.: Nurse turned on Pitocin, I slept through that.
Tuesday 2 a.m.: I woke up feeling pressure and dull pain, asked Jeffrey to call the nurse. She checked me, I was 8 cm! Party is starting!
Tuesday 2:15 or something: More pain and pressure, feeling very strange. Nurse checks again–9 cm!
Tuesday 3 a.m.: Doctor arrives. Time to push!
Tuesday 3:46 a.m.: Baby arrives, it’s a boy!
Our parents were in the waiting room and came in our room around 5 a.m. I think. It was an exciting morning!
Picture below is baby at one day old in his first t-shirt.
That’s it for now! Coming up soon–bringing baby home.
Logan Gilbert
Born March 13, 2012
3:46 a.m.
8 pounds
20 inches long
Houston, TX
Can’t wait to share more pictures and stories! We are home and doing great!
This past week has been a busy one! We moved houses on Wednesday and have been doing house things and baby things at the same time to get ready. I feel like a ticking time bomb and we don’t know when something will happen. Our house looks great and we had so many speedy helpers to help us get moved in and settled before baby! And I’m not much myself help with moving or unpacking carrying around a 30 pound medicine ball on my stomach.
On Thursday, I hit 39 weeks and had another doctor’s appointment with an ultrasound. I ended up with two ultrasounds to check the baby’s weight. The tech couldn’t get an accurate weight the first time because the baby’s head was too low. While I thought that’s good and a sign it’s on its way out, it really isn’t making progress. A second ultrasound after I saw the doctor revealed an 8.5 pound baby (estimated, sometimes they are very wrong).
So anyway, just in case you’re wondering what is going on and if you’re on baby watch like my family, it will probably be soon!
And since I have no pictures of myself to show you, how about the crib that I finally got to put in the room with its bedding? Come on baby, you’re room and bed are waiting! It’s way prettier than the inside of my stomach!
I am approaching Week 39, and tomorrow we move houses! Baby is still happy inside and growing and rolling around. When we planned our move in January and found out the timeline, we were all skeptical that it would work out. My doctor included! Really, most people thought we were crazy and doubted it would work out in order. I did too. But now it’s March 6, packing day, and we move tomorrow and we’re still hanging on!
I have a long list of to-dos and things that need to be done for me to relax and just wait for baby, but hopefully most should be complete by Friday.
I will be really happy when the baby’s furniture arrives and is assembled, and even more relaxed when the bedding is put on the bed and all of the necessary items we need for the very beginning are unpacked. Waiting until the very last minute isn’t usually something I do, but you wouldn’t imagine the planning lists I have going! We also have “things” spread between about four houses and furniture in warehouses waiting to be delivered from three different places.
Cooking is pretty much on hold for a while, and the focus is going to be house and baby and settling into a lot of new things!
Because of that, I’m not expecting regular blog posts until we get settled, but I will pick it back up soon and plan to share more of the same about food, fitness after baby, pictures of Lily, and life with a newborn. I hope you’ll continue to check back, subscribe to my blog so you get updates via email (right sidebar), or follow me on Facebook so you see new posts automatically when they go up.
Check back soon!
It’s still been important for me to keep cooking as long as we feel like it, even just a couple days each week. I have a feeling that with the move, hospital stay, and first while at home after the baby that there won’t be many home cooked meals. So might as well keep at it while we can! I do hope to get back into cooking dinner and maybe planning some meals in advance eventually.
(pardon the iPhone photos on this post)
For Oscar Sunday, we always cook dinner in and always watch the show. It’s Jeffrey’s favorite awards show! We picked another Ina Garten recipe from one of her cookbooks and made a couple of substitutions–we used ground turkey instead of ground sirloin, and we used 2% milk instead of buying cream just to throw the rest out. We also used a box of fusilli pasta I had in the pantry instead of buying another new box.
And served with a simple salad of fresh vegetables.
We reallly liked this recipe–Jeffrey especially. It was basically pasta with meat sauce, but the sauce was very flavorful and rich from the red wine used. It was also pretty simple–the meat and sauce cook in the same pan, and the noodles are added in when cooked.
And Jeffrey came up with a funny rhyme I wanted to share–”Tomato paste, what a waste.” The recipe called for 2T and then the rest of the can is wasted. I need to find a squeeze tube and see how long those will last.
Don’t let the “bolognese” name scare you, it was just pasta with meat sauce.
Recipe by Ina Garten
Ingredients:
How about a little fun this Friday with some baby themed e-cards. It is also my last day of work for the school year, which is why I like the second card here.
Share a fun link in the comments. Have a good weekend!
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