Oh God, I Have a Virus

June 21, 2016Leave a comment

So, last Friday morning I woke up and had what I thought was a zit smack dab in the middle of my forehead. “How annoying!” I thought to myself but then thought nothing of it going through my day. It wasn’t until around 6:00 that night when I was washing my hands in the bathroom that I looked up in the mirror and saw something scary. The tiny red bump had turned into a dime sized rash with tiny bumps inside. I wish I would have gotten some pictures of it but in the moment it was too freaky.

It was a Friday so my husband told me for peace of mind that I should go to Urgent Care before the weekend when I would have to go to the Emergency Room. I left, both of us expecting them to say it was a spider bite or something. The Urgent Care was fairly empty and I was called in after being there for 20 minutes. When the Doctor came in she looked at my rash and simultaneously said “You have shingles sweetie.” My mind was a blur, I almost immediately burst into tears because all I knew about shingles was that it was contagious. All I could think about was causing pain and sickness to my baby. She could tell that I was nervous and told me, “this is nothing to worry about we are catching it early and it should not spread.” She proceeded to explain to me that I could not transmit shingles to Edie, just chicken pox, and even that is very rare as long as she didn’t directly touch the rash.

For those of you that don’t know shingles is a mutated form of the chicken pox virus. It attacks the nerves and can be horribly painful internally as well as itchy from the rash. When you contract chicken pox it is in your body for life, typically you become immune to the virus after you have had it once. I contracted chicken pox twice in my childhood so the Doctor explained that this left me more vulnerable to get shingles. She also said that stress from having a new baby paired with a compromised immune system from a recent cold I had was what made me exhibit symptoms of the mutated chicken pox virus. She prescribed me anti-viral medicine, told me to keep it covered, and to stay away from pregnant women and infants (as a precaution). Of course, Edie was a worry for me at only 4 months but she assured that as long as I kept it covered she should be fine but told me to call my pediatrician to let her know. She also checked the anti-virals to make sure they were fine for breast feeding (they totally were) and that made me feel so much better since I had to take 500 mg 5 times A DAY!

When I left the Doctor I felt a little better but was still really upset, I felt like my body had failed me and was so confused because normally only older people get shingles. Also, I was worried that if my baby got chicken pox so early it would be more dangerous. Of course, I spent the rest of the night doing exactly what everyone does, Googling. Now, Googling an illness usually makes you feel much MUCH worse about your situation. Normally, you Google anything and it means you will die. In my case the Googling actually made me feel so much better. Many young people get shingles in stressful moments of their lives and many young babies get chicken pox. Many moms even reported that it was easier when the babies had chicken pox at younger ages cause they couldn’t scratch, which calmed me down so much. Also, chicken pox is actually more dangerous for older people to get than for babies. I called my pediatrician Monday and they said the same thing; keep it covered, wash your hands, look for pox signs. After 7 days the rash was completely gone and didn’t spread at all, it actually began shrinking 2 days after starting the medicine. I am so incredibly lucky that we thought the rash looked kind of weird and were playing it safe because shingles can be terrible. I talked to my aunt who had it about 13 years ago and she had horrible back pain for months after it was gone. So, as you can see this situation could have been much worse if I had waited to go to the Doctor. We are still in the waiting period for Edie to show signs of chicken pox but by this Friday we should be in the clear. So far she seems 100% healthy and isn’t showing any illness signs so our fingers are crossed.

Lazy Man’s Chair ReUpholstery

June 9, 2016June 9, 2016Leave a comment

I have had my dining room table set since I moved out of my house at 19 years old. This set was built in 1929 and was my Great-great grandmothers. It was passed down to my grandmother, my mother, and now I have it. The chairs to this set have been reupholstered so many times that I’m not even sure what the original fabric was…I think they were leather? Anyway, when I received the table they were covered with a white-flower-textured fabric that had been damaged in an unfortunate fire incident so I decided they must be reupholstered. Being incredibly poor at the time I picked the cheapest (not hideous) fabric I could find, and came up with this yellow striped pattern.

(sorry for these awful pics, didn’t know I would be using them for this post)

This pattern was fine at the time because we had this awesome-ly hideous old 70’s yellow (thrift store find) couch which they actually matched perfectly. As time went on the ugly yellow became less and less complimentary to our apartment but with little time (and extra money) I didn’t really care much. This brings us to yesterday when I’m walking through the red tag aisle at JoAnn’s Fabrics and I see this beautiful eclectic upholstery fabric. I stop and stare in amazement as I think to myself ‘This is IT!’ I had no intention of reupholstering these chairs anytime soon but this Nate Berkus fabric was too good to pass up. Now, this isn’t a tutorial because I couldn’t in good conscience call it that. The way I reupholster these chairs is in the laziest way possible so if you want a professional tutorial look elsewhere. This is basically just a story but if you want to do it the incredibly lazy way I did go right ahead and follow these steps.

Supplies:

Scissors
Staple gun
Fabric
Tape measure

Remove the cushion, if it looks like the above picture underneath then we are good to go! Then remove all these staples with pliers.
Measure the old fabric and cut your new piece of fabric like 2 inches longer and wider, so that you have extra to staple and pull tight.
Now set your seat on the fabric and staple one side, I like to do a staple every 1/2 inch. Don’t staple all the way to the edge, do your last staple like an inch from the edge.
Repeat step 3 BUT make sure to pull super tight before each staple so that your seat is tight and not all loose and gross looking.
Once you’ve done this you will just have the corners left to do, this is wear I get creative i just maneuver it so that it has a decorative little fold and is super tight. The corner usually has like 3 staples, it should look like the pictures below. Its easy once you start messing with it.
Cut all the excess fabric off to clean it up a bit.
Put the cushion back on and you are all DONE! Yay!

This took me like 4 hours in between taking care of Edie so its totally doable with your kids around. I’m super happy with the outcome! This fabric updated the look of these chairs and now they match my apartment much, MUCH better.

My (4 month late) Birth Story

May 31, 2016June 1, 20162 Comments

Photo by John Robert Woods Photography

Welcome to my birth story. I thought a birth story would be good introduction to my blog about my new life as a mom. It’s a long one but ill try to keep the story telling short. Those who know me know that my story telling ability is…unbearable? Let’s just say I’m much better on paper than in person, though it is a hilarious feat to observe.

For you to understand my birth story you must first know a little bit of background about my pregnancy. It all started when…ok, it was a perfect pregnancy, what all the mommy groups and blogs refer to as a “unicorn pregnancy” and I had plenty of pregnancy around me at the time to compare. I gained the perfect amount of weight, I worked on my feet up until 3 weeks before my due date, I had no morning sickness, and not one complication. The worst complaint I had was the rib pain and the heart burn, but lets be honest…who doesn’t have those things. Now, I’m not telling you this to brag or to qualify for some “amazing pregnant lady” award, I’m telling you this to say that I was in no way prepared for what was to come.

At my 37 week appointment I was a mere 2 centimeters dilated, but my OB kept insisting that things change fast and we are on pace for a due date delivery, “but it could happen at any moment” she joked. Week 38, still 2 centimeters and week 39. At this appointment we talk induction, she says if I don’t go into labor by week 40 we will schedule the induction for the following week. The entire time insisting that its just a formality and we won’t have to use that appointment, my OB is the best and super cheery and amazing she was obviously trying to keep me sane. So you can guess what happens next, week 41 at 12:30 AM I am checking into the hospital for my scheduled induction. Even though it sucked that I had to be induced we were so stoked that we were finally going to meet our baby girl.

We got settled in and the whole show was on the road. Well, after it took an hour and 4 sticks from 3 different nurses to get my I.V. in. I am a hard stick, so it wasn’t really their fault its always like that. My Pitocin started around 1:30 AM and we just waited, and waited, and walked, and waited…walked some more and kept waiting. There was little change over the course of the day. They would turn the IV up, some progress would be made, and then we would need to turn it down cause the baby was in distress. They broke my water and the changes came, but still very slowly. I got my epidural Saturday night and just kept waiting. The epidural was wearing off pretty quickly so the anesthesiologist had to come back multiple times, but we kept in good spirits. Finally, Sunday morning I was 10 centimeters and it was time to push…but my contractions were very small now. I pushed but nothing happened really, she was not budging. We waited an hour and tried again, still nothing. So after 36 hours of labor, all the way to 10 centimeters, my doctor told me that we should probably opt for a C-section. She explained that my uterus was very tired and at this point even if I could push her out it would take a very long time and there was a high chance that my uterus would be too tired to contract after the birth, and this is not good if they are trying to stop the bleeding. I was kind of sad, I admit I cried just a little, but overall it was the safest choice for my baby girl and I. It all happened pretty fast after that, within the hour Edythe Marie Phillips was born via C-Section on Sunday, January 31, 2016. She was a healthy 9 pounds 7 ounces 21.25 inch long beauty, I got a little skin to skin but I was feeling out of it so they took her away and gave her to Justin. I felt so bad for my husband because they sent him with Edie to the recovery room and said I would be right behind him but it took them almost an hour to stop my bleeding so he was waiting and worried with our baby girl. Eventually, everything was perfect and to be honest I didn’t really know anything was going wrong because my doctors were so amazing and cool under pressure.

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After she was born the doctor told me she wasn’t 100% straight head down and she was bigger than expected so honestly it probably would have ended in a C-section anyway. All in all it was a little jarring to have a C-section after a long labor but everything was perfect with the baby so we were so happy and my recovery was great so I don’t have much to complain about. Maybe I’m a little sad that I didn’t have the vaginal birth experience but what are you gonna do? You have to roll with the punches and my birth story makes me happy when I think back on it, and our little girl is so perfect its ridiculous.