Wednesday, May 28th, 2008
A few hours after my last entry, at 2:41 AM, my water broke! I labored at home until after 6am when I couldn’t take it anymore and we left to the birth center. I felt the urge to push IN THE CAR, but Jason’s amazing coaching helped me deal (though not so gracefully–I roared through the contractions that came one on top of the other) and we got to the birthing center. When we got there, my midwife was waiting outside because she didn’t have a key! I ended up giving birth on the sidewalk only about what felt like 2 minutes after we got there. It was absolutely wonderful. we were at home in bed less than 5 hours later.
Andrew Roark
born at 6:39am, 4 hours after my water broke
9lbs 4.5oz, 21.5″ long
Monday, May 19th, 2008
Well, my due date came and went. It was the 17th of May and it is now the 20th (or will be in a few short minutes). I just got home from a night of bowling. I had maybe one painful contraction, but man my hips are so sore! There’s a full moon out tonight, so we’re hopeful *something* will happen. I have a midwife appointment, tomorrow afternoon. I was ~3 cm dilated, 50% effaced and his head was at -2 station, last Thursday. I’m hoping he’s made some progress in his descent to my birth canal. I don’t really have any faith that dilation means anything, though, so if she says I’m 4 cm, I’ll probably just shrug it off. I want him to be lower (I think he is) and I sort of want to get some more painful contractions. Come on, uterus, squeeze this kid out! I probably won’t be updating much in the next few weeks, but I’ll be sure to announce my son’s arrival eventually. Please send some good vibes/prayers to us. Be safe, everyone!
Friday, May 2nd, 2008
I watched the demonstration by Anna Maria Horner on Martha Stewart about making painted fabric silhouettes and was inspired to make some as Mother’s Day gifts (and also one for myself!). However, I decided to tweak her process a little.
Materials (specifics I used):
fabric (some fat quarters I had)
canvases (one 12″x12″, two 10″x10″)
mod podge (gloss-lustre)
x-acto knife
freezer paper
iron
foam brushes
staple gun
First, I searched through the hundreds of photos of my son for a good profile shot. Since all my photos are digital, I used Photoshop to make the silhouette/outline. I used the vector tool and basically just traced his profile. I printed it out and set it aside.
I stapled my fabric to the canvases, as in the demo on Martha. Make sure you get the fabric nice and tight, to avoid any puckering from painting. there are a few air bubbles in mine, but I kind of like them.
Since I did these a little differently, I didn’t go straight to mod-podging the fabric. Instead, I grabbed my printouts and used my x-acto knife to cut out stencils with freezer paper (just tape the printout to freezer paper and cut out carefully).
I kept both parts of the stencil, the shape and the “outline.” I then layed the stencil, waxy side down, and ironed it to my fabric using a hot [DRY] iron. Once I was certain all parts were stuck down, I started painting until I was happy with the evenness of the color and whatnot. After it had a little time to dry, I gently unstuck the stencil and voila! I had my silhouette on the canvas. For the blue and brown silhouette, I ironed down the “outside” of the stencil, and for the other two, I ironed down just the actual face and painted around it. you can do whichever you like.
After the paint completely dried, I used Mod Podge to “seal” it and give it a nice sheen. that’s it! the longest part of it all was cutting out my stencils. Also, I had to put quite a few coats of the lime green paint onto the brown fabric. you can still see some un-evenness, but my husband says that makes it look “awesome.” How nice.