by I’m *supposed* to be scrapbooking right now.
SO – in lieu of scrapbooking, I thought I’d write a scrapbook journal entry!
I do have the first 3 months of averie’s scrapbook done, but I haven’t managed to get pictures of the pages I’ve finished since she came home. I wanted to post some to my journal (and a scrapbooking journal) and see if I could get some ideas and inspiration from other scrapbookers… so please – feel free to share your work with me – especially baby scrapbooking pages, I’m dying for ideas here!!!
Page from when I was pregnant
Ultrasound pictures and story from finding out we were having a girl as well as the story of choosing her name
Pictures of her nursery
The baby shower (the circles were part of a game we played)
Baby shower pictures
Everyone at the shower signed one of these cards (there were two)
Averie’s Birth Story written by both Aaron and I (I’ll paste it below for those interested!)
First bath (not sure I like this page yet)
Pictures from the hospital – kind of hard to see, but there’s doilies behind the tags.
And for those interested, here’s her birth story that Aaron and I wrote up:
We had a scheduled appointment with my OB for May 4th – which was our actual due date. At the appointment, the Dr said he figured she’d likely go into labor either that night or the next day. Not too long after that Mom started having slight contractions. We went home and within a couple of hours the contractions were starting to hurt and were coming more regularly – Mom and Dad walked to the gas station to get some Ice Cream to help move things along (the walk was to move things along, the icecream was to make Mom happy!) Not long after we got home, they were under 5 minutes apart and stayed that way for 2 hours and we packed up to go back to the hospital. We didn’t figure they’d keep us, as Mom could still talk through the contractions. Mom text messaged Nana, who of course headed in as well. In the end, Mom was sent home around 10:30 PM with an Ambien to help her sleep and instructions to come back when the contractions were stronger to the point that she couldn’t talk through them.
We headed home and Mom relaxed on the couch after Dad made a quick can of lasagna. At this point Mom was still in pain, and it was increasing, but we didn’t want to go back in too soon. Mom took the Ambien and tried to sleep. Dad got ready for “bed” – he took a shower and got dressed in normal clothes – even put his shoes on – so that as soon as Mom said “lets go” he was ready! Mom didn’t get much sleep overnight, ended up with maybe an hour – the rest of the night was spent feeling miserable. By 7ish in the morning Mom decided we would have to pack up and go soon or she was going to have a breakdown from pure exhaustion! We ended up back at the hospital hooked up to the monitors again. Since we had gone once earlier for a false alarm for a total of 3 trips now to the hospital, we knew the drill. Unfortunately, when they checked, Mom was still measuring the same as the previous day. At 10:30 AM the nurse let us know that they were going to admit us anyway – she apparently told the Dr on call that if they didn’t admit us that Mom would likely have to crawl out the door to leave judging by how much pain Mom was seemingly in. Dad quick got a hold of Nana (who wasn’t impressed that we didn’t call her BEFORE heading to the hospital) and let his side of the family know as well.
They sent us to room 1165 and got all of the IV’s hooked up. At 12:30 PM Dr Driscoll came into the room and talked to us for a bit and then broke Mom’s water. Shortly after that the anesthesiologist came to put the epidural in. Mom felt a million times better! Grandma and Pauky showed up and Kelly stopped by, but for the most part Mom didn’t notice much from the visitors and was just crashed on the bed, not feeling any of the contractions. The first nurse (Deb) guessed Mom’s delivery time after 10 PM. Everyone else picked times close to the nurses. Dad opted to go against the grain and try to make mom feel better by choosing 6:45 PM (of course if you ask Dad he will say it was because he knew).
Around 4:30 PM our new nurse Nicole wanted to check me again, so everyone dispersed to go get food for dinner. She checked and Mom was already at 8 cm. Mom hadn’t been feeling the contractions, but they’d obviously been working! Everyone was still at dinner and Mom started to feel more and more pressure over the next 30 minutes or so. Dad came in and got the news. Nicole the new nurse then guessed our delivery time around 7:20 PM. By 5:00 people still weren’t back, but Mom was really feeling pressure – Nicole checked again and Mom was 9.5 cm. She said that whenever Mom was ready to start pushing we could. Mom held off until 5:20ish, but by then she felt like she needed to start pushing. Some people were back from dinner and were sitting outside the door, the nurse popped out and told Dad (who was still eating) that we were going to start pushing – he was a little nervous about getting ill since he had only just finished eating! He came in and at around 5:30 the pushing started.
Mom was doing alright with the pushing, but she kept thinking her eye was going to pop out from pushing so hard. Dad kept getting cool washcloths and doing silly things that amused mom – he was so nervous he even ran top speed into the wall! Eventually the pushing started to really hurt and the nurse was paging everyone she could trying to get the Dr in the room. She actually told Mom to to stop pushing because the Dr wasn’t there yet and we were close. Dad didn’t approve of what the nurse said but since he kept slipping and falling on the floor he couldn’t express his disapproval very well. Mom didn’t listen very well either and was still pushing , just not pushing as hard! After a few minutes there was a mad rush of nurses into the room and Dr Driscoll was there, ready to deliver Miss Averie. At 7:07 she was born. She barely made a peep, her cries were very soft and few and far between, Mom wasn’t sure what to think and was just listening hoping that everything was okay, Dad said “She’s beautiful” so Mom at least knew then that Averie was certainly a girl! After what felt like an eternity but was really less than a few minutes, they placed our baby girl on Mom’s stomach. Dad clipped the umbilical cord, and Averie was wiped down and put on Mom’s chest while Dr Driscoll finished up what she needed to do!
The rest of the hospital stay for mom was a blur of visitors, nursing Averie and trying to eat and sleep as well. Dad recalls staying up the first night with Averie so Mom could sleep a little. Dad also would parade our baby girl down the halls so all the nurses could see how beautiful she was, he even got upset when he took you to the nursery and they wouldn’t let him stay! Averie had a full head of hair and really captivated a lot of people because she was just so alert and nothing seemed to bother her. She definitely was a gorgeous little girl, and was so well behaved right away, taking to nursing and not raising a fuss when all sorts of different people wanted to hold her!
