Happy Birthday Olivia Wynne Blakeley!

I'm writing this quite a bit later than planned, but I guess that's par for the course when you have a newborn! I guess the best place to start is my due date, Friday, October 11...I had an appointment scheduled first thing that morning in case Dr. Brannon decided to induce us that day. They hooked me up to the fetal monitors for a while to make sure her heartbeat still sounded good and then did an ultrasound. The ultrasound showed that my fluid levels were still decent, but my placenta was definitely showing some age. As a result, we scheduled an induction for Sunday night (10/13) at 9pm. 

Well, it turns out Dr. Brannon hates wasting time just as much as I do, because I got this phone call on Sunday morning: 

Dr. Brannon: "Hey it's your doctor. I want to induce you earlier today if it's okay with you. I have surgery first thing tomorrow morning and I'm just hanging out and cleaning the house today. Can you come earlier?"
Me: "Sure! What time?!"
Dr. Brannon: "Can you be here at noon?"
Me: "Yep! See you then!"


Ha! Who wouldn't want to possibly avoid being in labor at all hours of the night?! Duh! So we got ready, packed up the car and headed off to meet my mom at our usual meeting spot to give her Louie. Here's my last "bump" picture and our last picture as a "family of three": 

Totally didn't realize how HUGE I was at the end! Yikes.

By the time we got to Cary, we were starving and I knew that I wouldn't be eating again for forever a while. So, we flew through the Wendy's drive thru right before we got to the hospital. Funny story - my mom was at Wendy's when her water broke with me, except it was 5 weeks early! Anyway - we got to the hospital right at noon, checked in, and headed to our labor and delivery room. The next hour or so consisted of hooking up IVs, asking me a million health questions, hooking up the fetal monitor, etc. 

They started the pitocin around 1:30 (I think) and Dr. Brannon came in around 2:30 to check me and break my water. I was dilated 2cm and 70% effaced at that time.  I had only barely felt my contractions prior to this time, so I hadn't asked for an epidural yet. Within about 15 minutes, I started to feel them and decided it was time to ask for the drugs. They finished my epidural around 4:30 or so and increased the pitocin. I had about 10 minutes of bliss before my contractions reached a whole new level. It quickly started to feel like I needed to be pushing out a baby (funny how you all of a sudden know that feeling)! They checked me again at 5pm and I was still at 2cm. The contractions continued to get worse and worse - to the point that I was crying and about to break Scott's hand through each of them. No amount of meds were helping and I literally felt like I was trying to hold her in. Finally, they checked me around 6pm and I was already at 9cm..holy cow! They called Dr. Brannon and told him to start heading that way. He showed up around 6:45 and I started pushing around 6:50pm. 


Let me just say that labor and delivery was NOTHING like I expected. I had all intentions of having enough drugs to barely feel anything. I certainly didn't expect my epidural to not work and to dilate so quickly! I won't repeat what I kept yelling in the delivery room...but let's just say it was not a pleasant process. I remember apologizing for "being so vocal" while pushing and also thinking a C-section sounded really nice right about then (I know, I'm far better off without a C-section). Anyway, I finally got the hang of pushing and got it in my head that it was up to me to get this over with. About 20 minutes into it, the nurse finally saw her head and yelled for Dr. Brannon. Dr. Brannon strolls in ever so casually, looks at me and says "oh crap! Hold on one second!" Really? I have a baby half way out of me and you want me to hang out while you get ready?! 


After about what seemed like 3 days 30 minutes of pushing, Olivia Wynne Blakeley arrived at 7:22pm! She weighed 7lbs 5oz and was 20.75 inches long. They handed her to me and it was the most surreal moment. If I'm being honest, I can't say that I heard angels singing or saw hearts flying around her head (sorry, Olivia). I think the majority of people probably don't experience that since it's such an exhausting and overwhelming experience. At that moment, I just couldn't believe it was real and that I was actually holding MY baby. MY child. It wasn't sinking in that I had just become a mother. 

Everything else happened very quickly - Scott cut the cord and they took her to clean her off and get all of her measurements. After they finished stitching me up - another extremely unpleasant process (I thought there were more meds for that too?!) - they let the grandparents in. I don't even have to tell you how excited they were. I believe there were some tears, but honestly, my head was still spinning after that whole process. 

After a few minutes of visiting with the grandparents and Aunt Amanda, everyone left so that I could try to nurse her for the first time. Considering I (like any other new mother) had no idea what I was doing, I think it went pretty well. What shocked me the most during this whole time was how clueless I suddenly felt about caring for a baby. I even asked the nurse if I was supposed to burp Olivia when she finished feeding. Really Erin? Isn't that like Baby 101?

We were moved to our postpartum room within an hour or so and got settled in for the night. So many of our friends told us to send her to the nursery while we were in the hospital so that we could get some sleep, but I had no desire to be away from her just a few hours after delivery. And honestly, between meds, getting vitals checked, and feeding her every 2 hours..I think we would have gotten the same amount of sleep with or without her in our room. She slept really well between feedings that night and got her first bath around 3:00AM or so. After her bath we had our skin-to-skin time..and this is when I heard the angels and saw the hearts. It was by far the best moment of my life.

I think that wraps up Olivia's birthday. I'll dedicate another post to all the wonderful visitors and gifts we received during our hospital stay.

-Erin

The Nursery Reveal

As soon as we found out the gender, I was itching to start decorating the nursery (isn't that the same with every pregnant woman?!). Unfortunately, our house was for sale and we had hoped we wouldn't be in our current home once Baby B arrived. So for the time being I could only plan out in my head what the nursery would look like. Luckily, we sold our house relatively quickly and were able to get started on the nursery in our new home about halfway through the pregnancy.

First, let me say that as much as I love pink, I did not want a nursery covered in pink. In fact, I wanted to stay so far away from pink that Scott had to force me to register for other pink items (as in, items that weren't nursery related...clothes, blankets, towels, etc.). I knew I wanted to decorate her room (and most importantly - paint the walls) in colors that she would still enjoy as she got older. Additionally - I wanted it to be a room that I enjoyed, seeing as she's not going to really have an opinion on it for a while. I knew immediately that I wanted to do some shade of gray on the walls. Picking that shade of gray proved a little tricky though, when we considered the fact that our trim and doors were all off-white, and you usually see gray walls paired with bright white trim/doors. After throwing several paint samples on the walls, we settled on Benjamin Moore's Rockport Gray with 50% color reduction. I should add here that this is the only time I have ever spent this much time deciding on a paint color - pregnancy has either made me much more patient or much more indecisive. I haven't figured out which one yet. 

After the wall color was settled, I spent many evenings browsing bedding sets online. Can I just say that there are WAY too many crib bedding sets with animals, cartoons, and gigantic flowers that are just not appealing to most adults?! I absolutely did not want her room to look like a cartoon character lived there (no offense to anyone who likes that style) because, again, I wanted to enjoy this room as well. I finally found the perfect bedding set on Overstock.com and even better - the stock photo had it paired with a white crib and gray walls! My parents were sweet enough to offer to buy the bedding and our crib. Once we found out we were having a girl, I knew I wanted a white crib but I did not want an entire matching white furniture set. This was mostly because new complete furniture sets for babies are EXPENSIVE these days, and I knew I wouldn't want her to have white furniture for the next 18 years.

Moving on...since we didn't purchase a complete furniture set, it meant I needed to hit up some consignment stores to find furniture pieces for the rest of the room. My mom and I spent one long Saturday stopping at a variety of stores I had found online. We finally found the perfect small dresser that would also work as her changing table at a consignment store called The Perfect Piece in Cary (check them out...LOTS of cute stuff there!). I can't remember how, but I somehow found the person who painted this dresser on Facebook. I contacted her and let her know what piece I had purchased and that I was in search of a chest of drawers of a similar style. She quickly sent me a picture of a pink dresser she had that she thought would match perfectly and said that she could paint it another color for me. I took her a couple of paint swatches and we picked one that was the closest to a periwinkle color. It turned out perfect! I will say that now that we have more purple items in the room, the dresser has more of a baby blue look to it..but I still love it! 

Last but certainly not least - I have to address two other special items in the nursery: the chandelier and the bookshelves. I'm sure many of you have noticed the new trend of hanging chandeliers in nurseries. I ran across a blog of a photographer who made a DIY chandelier for her baby girl's nursery and I LOVED it. I immediately headed to the Habitat ReStore in Sanford a couple weeks later and found an ugly, old, rusted brass chandelier for around $20. I told Scott my ideas for it and he ended up surprising me about a week later when he snuck it over to his dad's to start the paint job. A coat of primer and a few coats of white spray paint, and it looked like a totally different light fixture! Sadly, I don't have a picture of it before the paint job, but I do have one of it before the "bedazzling," during, and after:

The process of picking out what beads to decorate the chandelier with was much more difficult then it probably should have been (which probably supports the indecisiveness versus patience theory). Anyway, after much searching I settled on some beads from the jewelry section in Michaels, and I absolutely love it! PS. Baby B - your daddy has quite the talent for bedazzling things - for future reference ;-) 

Lastly - the bookshelves. I knew I wanted some sort of bookshelves that would allow her books to display face forward. There are so many pinterest ideas out there for book slings and book racks that you can mount to the wall, but none of them appealed to me. I finally found a book rack at Pottery Barn Kids that was perfect - but it was also $120 for one small book rack. Luckily, Scott's dad is really good at making things like this. I showed him a picture of it and wrote down the dimensions and he made a perfect replica! However, after our Chapel Hill Shower, we realized we were going to need another...so he quickly whipped up a second one! I absolutely love them and they are the perfect addition to her room! 

Without further ado and after much more nursery information than anyone probably cared to know..I reveal to you our sweet girl's nursery! Enjoy!

Baby Showers!

So I had planned to do a separate post after each one of our baby showers..but now they have all come and gone and I had yet to finish the post on our first one. Guess what that means? You get one GIANT post on all of them! 

We have been so blessed to have so many wonderful family and friends who wanted to celebrate Baby Blakeley with us. We had a total of four showers, however one of them was an impromptu shower given by my work at our seminar and I don't have any pictures from it (sad!).  I will also admit that I did a horrible job at documenting these showers - I seem to have steadily gotten worse about taking pictures over the last couple years. Before we begin, let me just give one HUGE thank you to everyone involved in these showers. We are so overwhelmed and touched by all the time, work, effort and money you all put into helping us celebrate our sweet girl and helping us prepare for parenthood! We love you all!

BaBy-Q
We had our first baby shower on August 24, which was our largest shower and included our family on both sides and some of our closest friends.  For our "main" shower, Scott and I both wanted it to be coed and pig-pickin' style. My sister-in-law, Amanda, told me early on that she wanted to throw us a shower and was sweet enough to take our wants/desires into consideration (i.e. the pig-pickin' idea). After much conversation, we realized the guest list would be quite long and I certainly didn't want her to take on planning/preparing such a big event by herself.  Fortunately, we had several friends who had already mentioned helping with a shower, so they all jumped in to help her with this one. Together they made our dream baby shower become a reality! Check out the SUPER cute invitation!

How cute is that?! Amanda wanted the colors to be similar to the nursery and I think it turned out perfect (the nursery walls are gray and most of the decor is purple)!! Everyone was a little worried about holding the shower at our go-to party place, H.T.'s barn, in late August. We were all certain I would be the most miserable of all in the humidity and ridiculous heat. HOWEVER - God was looking out for us and provided the MOST beautiful summer evening imaginable. Hardly any humidity and high seventies that evening - it actually got a little chilly later on into the night! We seriously couldn't have asked for a more perfect night.

My brother cooked a delicious pig and all the ladies divided up the sides/drinks to bring. All of the decor was in purples and greens (again - right on target with the nursery decor) and it was absolutely perfect. As mentioned previously, we didn't do the best job with taking pictures - mainly because it seemed that the evening FLEW by, but I was able to get a picture with all of the fabulous ladies that hosted the shower (minus Traci, who unfortunately got called into work that evening)!

Nicole, Ashton, Me, Ashley, Amanda, and Aunt Flo!

Back to the food - of course, Amanda made the fabulous cake and it was delicious as always!

We were and still are overwhelmed by all the amazing gifts we received. This little girl is already loved (and spoiled!) so much. We cannot thank our family and friends enough who came out to help celebrate with us and brought all of our amazing gifts. Here's a snapshot of the gift table at some point in the evening...

To sum it up - it was the perfect way to celebrate our baby girl. We couldn't have imagined a more enjoyable and fun evening with all of our family and closest friends. We can't thank our wonderful hostesses enough for all the time, work, and money they put into this shower. We love each and  everyone of you very much and we can't wait for our baby girl to meet all of you! 

To wrap up the BaBy-Q, here are a few more pictures from the evening...

"LCSO Shower"

Our second shower was on September 7 and was hosted by our wonderful friends Jennifer Babb, Jessica Himsel, and Kassia Stubbs. The majority of the guest list consisted of Scott's former coworkers at the Lee County Sheriff's Office and a few other close friends. Again, we wanted the shower to be coed and a relaxing evening with friends. Jennifer and her husband, Clint, were kind enough to open their home to everyone for the shower. Jessica and her husband, Ben, drove in from Charlotte that afternoon to help get everything setup and Kassia and her husband, Bryan, came up from Pinehurst. These ladies put together a DELICIOUS meal for everyone consisting of lasagna, salads, and bread and two delicious desserts: cupcakes and some of Jennifer's mom's heavenly oreo/whip cream dessert thing that I don't know the name of..but it is GOOD. We won't mention how many cupcakes or oreo dessert servings I had. 

Once again, we were blessed with absolutely perfect weather that evening. The guys spent the majority of the evening outside playing cornhole, while the women did what we do best - munched on desserts and ran our mouths, of course! It was so nice to catch up with our friends and have a low-key evening to celebrate this baby girl. I must also mention that this shower was the day after my fall seminar concluded - so these ladies knew my energy level had taken a beating that week, and this was exactly what we needed! 

Baby B was spoiled even MORE at this shower with tons of super cute gifts! We got several gift bags full of items that were favorites of our friends when their children were babies. I absolutely love gifts like this - so thoughtful and SO helpful! We can't wait to start using these items when she makes her appearance! 

We cannot thank Jennifer, Jessica, and Kassia enough for the wonderful shower that evening! Baby Blakeley (and us, of course) is so blessed to have these wonderful women in her life. I'll conclude this with a few pictures from the evening..

The lovely hostesses! LtR: Kassia, Jessica, and Jennifer

35 weeks and 2 days!

"Chapel Hill" Shower

As many of you know, Scott has another "family" that we refer to as the "Chapel Hill Crew." I refer to them as family because this group of friends have consistently been there for each other for over 15 years now. I think it's safe to say they know each other better than anyone else and I have never seen a group of friends of this size with a bond as strong as they have had for this long. Although they are scattered all across the state (with a few in other states, too), are all very successful people, and all have children of their own..they never let life get in the way of maintaining this relationship they have formed over the years. I have been fortunate enough to join this "family" and they have accepted me with open arms. With that said, I'm sure you can imagine how overjoyed I was when Courtney, Jennifer, and Lorraine told me they wanted to throw me a shower. Since our other two had been coed, we decided to make this one just the girls. It was a perfect afternoon spent with some amazing women. Even better - my mom, mother-in-law, and aunts on Scott's side all joined us too!

For our BaBy-Q, the invitation asked that everyone bring a children's book instead of a card for Baby Blakeley. We have always loved this idea when done at other showers, and we really wanted Baby B to have a good collection of books for us to read to her for years to come. I never shared this information with Court, Jen, or Lo, but they surprised me and asked everyone at this shower to do the same! Needless to say, I was so excited to show up and see that Baby B's library had been expanded even more! The children's books ended up being the "theme" of the shower. All the food was labeled with library cards and stickers of the different books we got at the shower, and they made these super cute bookmarks as party favors: 

A few of the books Baby B got at this shower..displayed on the adorable decoupage table Courtney made for her with pages from children's books! How cute is that!

Another surprise that I didn't really notice until the next morning when putting up the books - they made these stickers for everyone to put in their books. It had a space to write who it was from and what they wish for Baby B (yes, I realize her name is on them, but I will refer to her as 'Baby B' until I do the post about her name). I have to admit, I got a little emotional Sunday morning while reading all of these sweet notes and "wishes" for our baby girl. It continues to overwhelm me how much she is already loved not only by us, but all of our family and friends. Sidenote: the first piece of wall decor we purchased for the nursery is a wooden sign that says "I love you to the moon and back." 

As with everything these ladies do - there was a ton of delicious food and drinks, and everything was so perfectly decorated. This was also the only shower where all the guests knew Baby B's name, so we got a few monogrammed items for her and her name was incorporated into some of the decor, making it all the more special! To conclude, I'll leave you with an awesome group shot of all the ladies at the shower:

Executive Board Shower

Last but certainly not least (and although none of them will read this), I must give a big thank you to my Executive Board for the surprise shower they through me during our meeting in Wilmington in September. As we began the executive business session of our Executive Board meeting on Wednesday, they said they had one item to add to the agenda and asked me to come sit in a seat at the front of the room. All of a sudden, Lyn, Kaye, and Julie start pulling gifts out from under a table and handing them to me! Apparently they had been sneaking them in all afternoon while I was running around like a crazy person (as usual during our seminars). Since we were pushed for time, it was a very quick gift opening process but we got lots of wonderful items - including a Petunia Pickle Bottom diaper bag (exactly what I wanted!)! Since I'm such a "snoop," I honestly couldn't believe that they got this past me with me having NO idea. It made it all the more special though, and we are so thankful for all the wonderful gifts we received!