Babydom

Welcome to Mandy's Wonderful World of Babydom.


Let us tour the beginnings of the shrine.


On your left you will find the early stages of belly-growth art illustrating two weeks of growth (from week 14 to 16). This art will grow with the artist until it is a rainbow of lines with the growth shaded in.


Below is Mandy's perspective of her belly. (Do not note the mass of important papers strewn about the office floor.)





Next stop is the interior of the co-sleeper crib. Along the bottom is baby's first blanket, hand knit by myself. See where the balls of yarn changed - this was unintentional. Accompanying the blanket is a matching hat and booties as modelled by Bear. The blanket is my own design. The crocheted hat was a free online design.





Also featured is baby's first stuffed toy - the purple unicorn - who is modelling a knitted wool soaker (the first of two I've finished).


Following this are two knitted swirled hats using a free pattern found online. I asked Orin and Ericka to model these for us. I first asked Monkey, but she was unwilling to pose with a hat on.

Finally, here I am almost a year ago modelling a baby wrap I made. Inside is a 7 month old child happily sleeping.










***Mark your calendars for October 25***
This is the date of our ultrasound and pictures will be posted ASAP.
You can now start your bidding on whether it is a boy or girl.

Baby's Heartbeat

Today I had my second midwife appointment.
Unfortunately, Robin was once again unable to attend because he had to work and couldn't make any of the available appointments this week. But I've scheduled the next appointment for his day off.
Since he missed hearing the baby's heartbeat last month, this time I recorded the session for him.
And we've decided to share it with you!
Here is a link to you tube where I have uploaded the sound clip with accompanying pictures.
(If you are on Facebook, it is also available there to our friends).

Enjoy.

Co-sleeper

After giving up hope of getting a co-sleeper (crib alternative) locally (the producer does not sell to Canada, though some small Canadian stores import them for a premiuim price) we'd made plans to find a convertible crib for co-sleeping.
Until yesterday when Robin spotted an ad in Kitchener selling a co-sleeper for only $65. Fortunately he responded immediately because the woman apparently had many inquiries. We got it home and set it up all by ourselves - without a manual. I laugh at all the reviews I've read that say it's so hard to assemble and disassemble. Pshah - we figured it out quickly all by ourselves! Of course, I'll check the instructions available on-line to make sure we did everything right.
I also want to find a different mattress for it. I don't like the board-like mattress that comes with it. As far as I'm concerned, it's just a padded mattress base. No baby should have to sleep on that! It's the same as the mattress base on a playpen - which is fine for once in a while. And of course, this is not surprising since the Co-Sleeper by Arm's Reach is really just a playpen with a full bassinet on top. The difference from other pen-bassinets is that one side drops lower for co-sleeping.
Anyhow - we're happy with our deal. And this gives us time to figure out the long-term sleeping plan for baby after s/he is born.
In the meantime - Fenwick likes it :)
And having an actual baby bed in the house is inspiring me to think of bedding. Since the co-sleeper does not share its dimensions with a standard crib, I'll have to make my own fitted sheets. The company does sell plain coloured fitted sets, but again, I'm looking at an American company and shipping. I'd much rather make my own. I can sew. And I can pick out my own fabrics! That's much more fun!! Some nice soft cotton flannels I'm thinking...
Also on the list of items for the bed is a lamb-friendly "lamb's skin" mattress pad. Made from shorn wool rather than an actual lamb's skin of course. I'm looking for a (preferably Canadian) alternative to the popular Snuggle Wool products because the latter backs their lambswool pads with polyester rather than organic cotton and they treat their wool rather extensively for easy washing.

Watch for new photos next week.

PS - Hello Aunt Joyce. It was you I was referring to :)

September Zips in

Where did August go? All of a sudden I'm looking at my calendar and it says September! Oh - and what's that? Classes start on Monday??!! The class I teach starts Monday... *gulp* Good thing there is an entire weekend in between to have fun!

Friday night is a girls campout in Waterloo. There will be smores. The other girls will be enjoying something alcoholic, but not me. S'more smores for me please. Next weekend I'm helping out at a garage sale for the Grand River All Breed animal rescue. That's the group I volunteer with now. This past weekend I helped transport 5 rescued dogs, 3 of which were coming into our foster care. One of the three found a forever home immediately (next day), which was great! The other two shouldn't be long behind. They're gorgeous lab crosses. I was so tempted to bring Cooper home - he's a handsome boxer-lab cross. Darla could use a canine companion... if only we had a large fenced yard. Yes, this is the danger of working with rescued animals. (Notice we have 3 cats...) It's probably just as well we don't have a fenced yard.

Well, that's about it for weekend fun. Unless you count housecleaning as fun (you weirdo). Robin's busy prepping to paint the front entrance. With the help of a friend who is a carpenter (okay, he did all the work, but it's because he wanted to!) we put a bench into the front closet and have changed it from a closet to a nook, which nicely opens up the entrance. Once the walls are painted (yellow) we can put in all the freakin' baseboards above the tiled floor in the kitchen and front entrance ... and then the renovations we started almost a year ago will be done! (On to the living room flooring...) I'll put up pictures of the finished product. It's going to look great.

Robin's dad arrives Wednesday for a visit. So I suppose I should clear out the spare closet - I mean, bedroom. You'd never know it was a bedroom right now - except for the bed - under the stuff. And once it's cleared I *suppose* I should endeavor to keep it clear... because it will be baby's room. Well, at least I need to leave space to put baby stuff. Baby will be sleeping in our room. And that's still many moons away.

The pregnancy is going well. I'm in month 3 now. My 24/7 nausea has pretty much gone - which is great! And I never once puked!! Still napping though, which is also great - except that it interrupts work, but I've always gotten tired around midday and needed to take a break. All in all I'd say this is a relatively easy pregnancy so far. I really can't complain. If all continues to go well I'll get to be one of those moms who can tell her child - you were great! I had such an easy time being pregnant with you that I was ready to have a whole clan. (Which is ***NOT*** the plan - two please. Hyperbole is important in storytelling.) And then, if all continues to go well I can rave about how baby slept through the night, and potty-trained in a week and was never fussy. LOL Hey, a woman can dream!

I went for my first midwife appointment a few weeks ago and was blessed to hear the baby's heartbeat. It was incredible. Unfortunately Robin wasn't there and he won't be able to make the next appointment (on the 17th) either. But there will be plenty of opportunities for him to listen. We (midwife and I) didn't really expect to be able to hear baby's heartbeat so early because of how far from the surface everything is at that point. Of course, that was then. Now baby is starting to show and giving me a belly to prove my pregnancy! I had to buy some new pants a size up to fit. I'm not ready for maternity pants yet!

And since people have been asking, here is a photo to show my little baby bump. It's not much, but it's something and I definitely notice it.
One of the things I've really noticed being pregnant is the physiological changes to my basic life activities. I've always been a powerwalker - but now I'm walking in second gear instead of fourth and I have to gear down to first to get up hills. It sucks! My breathing has also changed. I've trained to breath deeply, especially at night. Now I lay awake frustrated by my own shallow breaths and I just can't get them to go much deeper. It was bad enough having to listen to Robin's shallow breathing...

And here is my big fear... twins. I can't wait for my ultrasound in 6 or 7 weeks to tell me I don't have twins! And that it's a girl :P (Robin says boy, but I write the blogs!) Twins run in my maternal line and skipped the birth of my generation. I used to think twins would be great. Then I had a reality check!

In other news. Just today I received notification that my research has *finally* been approved by the human research ethics committee - after a long and bitter battle... But that's all water under the bridge (until a colleague asks me about the process and I give my bitter reply) now that I can start my research. Needless to say, I won't be graduating with others from my cohort next June. Of course, it was unlikely that was ever going to happen. Instead I'll be on maternity leave. I'm taking two terms of leave (8 months total, 2 months free to get as much work done as possible before baby is due) and a maternity bursary from the university. I'll be back to school next fall 2008 to wrap up this PhD and plan to graduate spring 2009.

We'd like to give a shout-out to Robin's aunt who apparently reads this. [Hi] Sorry I hadn't updated the blog in a while. I did post stuff on Facebook, but that's no excuse. I'll try to be better about keeping everyone updated about the pregnancy.

That about wraps up what's new in our household. I hope everyone had a great summer!