Make It Perfect

Were you wondering where I had disappeared to? Thought I might have had the baby?

I didn’t.

Instead, our computer (the trusty, much loved Mac that has been perfectly faithful to us and given us almost 4 years free of any technological hassle) decided to go crazy and have issues with its hard drive. Its all fixed up now. 5 days of no computer/internet was really hard. But good. The first two days I was having withdrawals but soon got used to it and had an extremely productive week getting a lot of cleaning, sorting, organising and sewing done that I’m sure wouldn’t have happened if the distraction/temptation of blogs, emails and internet surfing were there.

Baby sewing and last minute preparation has been going on this week. I FINALLY packed my bag for hospital – are you proud of me Melissa?!! Talk about leaving it until the last minute, I just couldn’t find the motivation to do it!

If you’re a sewing-blog surfer then no doubt you have come across this free pattern for baby Cloth Shoes from Stardust Shoes. They have been on my list of things to try for awhile. I was only going to make one or two pairs, but decided if I was going to the effort to make a couple I may aswell make multiple and throw a few in the present box for later on! They are tiny, and very cute. I made myself stick to “scraps only” to try and reduce my fabric scrap box which is quickly overflowing! They were pretty easy to make, fiddly though because of their small size and I was well and truly sick of them after sewing six pairs!I wasn’t going to sew another baby blanket until I had the baby and knew if I was sewing for a girl or a boy, but I really like these quick throw-together minkee-backed blankets so put together another gender neutral one. Love love love this duck fabric…yes, I was weak…
And the little baby FINALLY has a bed to rest his/her head. I did a lot of baby hammock research when I was just pregnant and came across Amby Baby Hammocks. I was determined to purchase one, but only second-hand because I enjoy a good bargain and didn’t want to pay full-price! All of the hammocks on Ebay were in the rest of Australia and most people didn’t offer delivery to Tasmania, so after a couple of months searching I gave up and we decided that we would just put the baby in the portacot for a few months until Lil was ready to move out of the cot and into her big bed. Then my friend let me know that she had bought a hammock and only used it for a few weeks because her baby was unsettled and ended up sleeping in her bed most of the time anyway, so she wanted to sell it. I figured we haven’t needed to buy anything new for this baby so far and should treat the little mite to something new so we bought it off her! Hopefully it will provide us (all) with good night sleeps. We set it up a couple of days ago and I’m glad we did so that hopefully the novelty of swinging it around and hanging from the frame will have worn off before the baby needs to use it!
So, now I am feeling ready to have the baby. Today we did a little bit of shopping and I bought some cute little suits for him or her. I was feeling bad as I packed the hospital bag that everything in there was hand-me-down and wanted a couple of new little suits for the baby to wear! I was exactly 6 days overdue with both Oscar and Lil, so if the trend continues it will mean I will have the baby on Tuesday. If not, the doctor at my last hospital visit said that I would go in on Friday to be induced – really hoping it doesn’t come to that though!

Why do things like a bad dose of the flu always come at the most inopportune times?

Jaron and I have both been struck with a nasty case of the flu. He got it mid-last week and is just starting to recover now. Poor thing didn’t take any time off work becuase he is saving his days off for when I have the baby. At least he can ease it a bit with medicine. I started feeling yucky on Saturday morning and by Saturday night I was really feeling bad. For some reason, Oscar and Lil both decided they would wake up multiple times during the night, so it seemed like I was up every hour either settling them, going to the toilet or being awake feeling sick. (All in good preparation for sleepless nights with a newborn, I’m sure!)

And then I started to worry about going into labour. My first two labours have been really positive experiences. I won’t go into details and can’t even really explain how I feel about them, but I actually really enjoy (perhaps not the right word?) labour. Yes, it hurts bad and I think I am going to die, but there is something exhillirating and liberating about it. I want this one to be the same, positive experience and since I have been sick have been really stressed out about having a horrible labour, going into it feeling awful already and having no energy.

Little baby, feel free to hang around in there for another week or two. I’m happy to be uncomfortable pregnant-wise to give myself a bit of recovery time and feel back up to it again! Today is much better, the kids slept last night and the razor sore throat has almost gone. Still all sinusey and have sore ears and head, but I can feel it getting better.

I haven’t sewed anything new for this baby yet and I am itching to make some stuff for it. The hard thing is not knowing if I am having a boy or a girl. This is the first time we haven’t found out and it is killing me! So, last week I made this really simple, minkee-backed blanket. There are so many beautiful fabrics around that I just don’t want to cut into to turn into a pieced quilt, so I opted for keeping the fabric on the front of the quilt whole (aren’t those grumpy owls adorable?!) and backing with a plain white minkee, then sewing on a thick binding out of left-over fabric from another project. Jaron thinks it is girly-looking, I was more inclined to think it was boy-friendly, so I guess that makes it gender-neutral!!
I’m looking forward to sewing up a few more of these, hopefully this week. They are thin enough to wrap the baby in, but still warm and cosy.

I think I’m going to have to sew up quite a few more because this little miss keeps stealing it to cuddle her “buba” in. She is so into babies at the moment and wants to hold real ones when ever we see them. Hopefully her enthusiasm doesn’t turn to jealousy when a real-life baby enters our house!