Our son – Alan Jordan

Early in the morning on March 5th we welcomed our new baby boy –

Alan Jordan Goodwin

He came 9 days before his due date, so let me back up a little bit to tell the story of his birth…

On March 1st I had a checkup with my midwife.

This is Marian ‘helping’ with the check up. She was very interested in everything, and enjoyed hearing the baby’s heartbeat. For many weeks I had been telling her about the baby inside me, and she would pat my bump and say ‘baby’ with much excitement, especially when I showed her pictures of what newborn babies looked like. (I don’t know how much she really knew or realized, but I tried to let her know about her new sibling as best I could!)

On March 4th I had a very busy day – we were having company supper that night, and I also had to go into town with Jordan’s mom to pick up our monthly Azure Standard order (a natural food co-op) and run some errands. By that evening I was pretty exhausted. The next day I decided to take it a bit easier.

So, that morning I organized the pantry and put up our co-op groceries, gave Marian a bath, climbed the ladder into the attic to pull out some baby items in preparation for the upcoming birth, changed the sheets on our bed, cleaned cobwebs off the ceiling, sorted through a bunch of clothes to take to the thrift store, and got several of our miniature beds ready to ship…

Looking back I’m not real sure how I thought doing all that in one morning was ‘taking it easy’!! (apparently the nesting instinct must have been setting in strong!) Meanwhile it had been raining hard most of the night and day so far, and our creek was flooded and up pretty high. We have to cross this creek to get to the highway, so when it floods it means we are pretty much stuck at home! When we woke up that morning and saw we wouldn’t be able to cross, I was joking with Jordan that if the baby came early he just might have to deliver it. (little did we know how close of a call we would have!)

Early afternoon I thought I might have lost my mucous plug, but wasn’t sure. Just to be on the safe side I decided to sit down and rest until evening. Since the creek was a up still I was a little bit nervous. As the evening progressed I started having what turned out to be minor contractions, but they were mild enough I wasn’t sure they were contractions, or just me tired from doing too much in that past few days.

As we got ready to go to bed, they were getting stronger, but once we laid down things seemed to calm down a lot, so we both tried to get some sleep. I never could sleep, and the contractions were getting pretty hard – so I finally realized this might be the real thing, and woke up Jordan and said we had better call the midwife. We were both pretty scared at the prospect of having the baby without help. Jordan got dressed and went outside (where the rain had turned to bitter cold wind and sleet) to look at the creek, thinking perhaps he could fell a tree over the creek creating a temporary bridge to at least get the midwife across.

While he was gone I called my Mom and talked to her about 20 minutes. During this time my contractions were hard enough I couldn’t talk through them and about 5-6 minutes apart. Finally, looking out the upstairs window, I saw tractor lights coming through the dark! The creek had gone down enough that they were able to safely drive the tractor across – praise the Lord! Many people were praying for us that night.

Jordan was able to get both the midwife and his mother across the creek. The roads were so icy that the midwife almost didn’t get there! After they got to the house it was about an hour and a half of pretty intense labor until we got to meet our baby! Total labor was three and a half hours, and he arrived at 3:39am.  Everything happened so fast and so much earlier than we expected, that we were basically in shock after the fact – but very happy!

Our sweet baby boy!

Alan weighed 7lbs 10oz and was 19.5″ long.

Marian was very brave through the whole birth, and didn’t seem very worried at all. She was very interested in the new arrival and kept pointing to him and saying ‘bay-ee’ which is how she says ‘baby’.

When the sun rose it was to a white blanketed world – it had snowed a beautiful fluffy 4 inches overnight for Alan’s birthday.

Isn’t he a handsome little man?

Alan has very large hands! To me they look just like Jordan’s.

 

Nothing better than waking up beside my little snuggle bug!

Marian loves to ‘hold’ her brother.

Alan likes to look around at the big world. (between his almost endless naps!)

The only problem now seems to be that there isn’t room for Jordan and I in our own bed!

We are so thankful that our baby boy arrived safe and healthy! We couldn’t be happier with our little Alan Jordan and are enjoying watching him grow.

Sewing Project – a Maternity Housedress

Even though I’m almost through the end of my second pregnancy, and even though I’m supposedly a seamstress… I think this is the first maternity sewing project I’ve done.

This has been in my head for a while, though. I want to make several house dresses (that’s where I am most of the time after all!). Dresses that are comfortable, easy to wash and dry, don’t show stains easily, and are easy to nurse in (just try shopping for clothes that fit all those requirements – they don’t exist! I’m sure other mothers share my frustration).

My goal (if it ever comes to pass) is to eventually make most of our ‘around the house’ clothes by hand. Washing with a hand washer and line drying in a humid climate really changes whats practical in clothing. Modern machine washers and dryers do well with modern clothing – which are made from mostly knit and stretch fabrics. The super agitation of the wash (mostly) gets the stains out of the knits, and the heat and movement of the dryer shrinks them back to shape and takes the wrinkles out.

However – hand washing and line drying knits and stretchy fabrics results in clothes that have lost their shape and are too stretched out.

Now, vice versa – modern machine washing and drying is pretty hard on woven fabric (printed cottons for example) and handmade clothing. It gets torn up, snagged, and raveled pretty fast if washed frequently. Washing them the old fashioned way seems to make them last longer, and wrinkles caused by the wringer blow out on the line without wadding up seams and tearing threads like modern dryers. They also seem to let go of dirt and stains much easier than knits.

ANYWAY. Sorry to go off on a tangent. Its not that I am against modern clothes, or that I don’t or won’t wear them – its just I think that for the majority of my home life there are definitely more practical and long lasting options (I also want to note here that I have not yet begun doing all our laundry in our hand machine. In these cold winter months Jordan’s family generously takes much of our laundry and does it for us! Its a huge blessing).

So, that was my purpose in designing this maternity house dress. I really like the results! My baby bump thanks me for the non-constricting style, and the front opening style makes it easy to feed Marian throughout the day. It has a dart fitted bodice, but I purposely made it to fit a tad loose and added a front tie closure as well for that much more adjust-ability. The full skirt definitely doesn’t minimize my baby bump – lol! But really at 8.5 months pregnant, who really cares?? It sure is comfortable though – the skirt length reaches just to my ankles, and it’s short enough I don’t trip on it while walking up the stairs with both hands full of Marian (big plus! most of my skirts were driving me crazy doing that). I decided on 3/4 length sleeves because you don’t have to worry about rolling them up while washing dishes and such.

Really like having a dress to wear that is a patterned fabric! It stayed looking respectable for many days in a row. (seems like most modern clothes are solid-colored. Usually I don’t last more than about an hour in solid-colored shirt, as Marian likes to use me as a giant napkin)

It is rather amusing that I started with the above vintage pattern. My results were quite different – definitely not ‘slenderette’! ha!

I just chopped off the bodice pattern at the shorter length I needed, added a rectangular gathered skirt of 2 fabric widths, used the sleeves as-is, and bias bound the neckline.

I think this dress rather ended up being a modern version of a 19th century wrapper. That was certainly a main inspiration.

So, yes. I want to make more variations of this style soon. Also – I apologize for the long ramblings on my wardrobe schemes. But it’s your fault for visiting the blog of a woman suffering from acute cabin fever and pregnancy brain. :)

I am so ready for spring, aren’t you?

I’d love to hear from other mothers about what they found the most practical during pregnancy!