This Crib is BUMPIN!

So in my post yesterday, I mentioned that I found evidence of Nathan chewing/gnawing on the railing of his crib the other day.

All of those little white marks are the damage so far.

Wanting to nip this problem in the bud, I got materials to make a rail bumper to compliment the one we have that goes with his crib set.

His current rail bumper is precious, but too big for the side where we have the problem.

My plan was to just steal the basic design, which is a large padded rectangle with Velcro on the inside, so when you fold it over the rail, it sticks to itself. Easier than ties, if you ask me!

I got started having no idea how it was going to turn out. It's not like I had a pattern, but it's not like the concept was difficult either.

The fabrics I chose compliment the crib set, but aren't exact, but I liked the way it looked with the original stuff. I also grabbed a high loft batting.

I bought new fabric scissors because someone (my husband) used my old ones at some point and then I just kind of wrote them off as being regular scissors, so for this project I wanted new ones. I also decided to give a rotary cutter a whirl for the basic reason that it looks really fantastic when I'm watching Project Runway and they're slicing fabric effortlessly while I am struggling to make a straight cut with my janky scissors.

Let's talk about that rotary cutter and how it is the best tool for someone to sew with. Well, there's not much more to say than it's a great tool and anyone who sews regularly should get one. I used a 50% off coupon I got from the Joann's website and was able to get mine for $12.50 instead of $25. I also wanted a good straight edge and cutting mat so I bought those too.

My sewing in the past has mostly been pretty unadventurous, so I didn't have those items.

I bought 2 yards of the solid color fabric (45" wide) and 1 of the polka dot (45" wide) and then 1 yard of the batting, which was SUPER (90") wide, but it was all I could find in the high loft by-the-yard option. I'm sure I'll find a use for that leftover batting eventually.

I measured the rail I was planning to cover and also measured the existing rail bumper so they would be the same width.

The measurements I used were 29" x 17" for the rectangle. That provided a 2" seam allowance on the long side (I needed it to be 25" by 15") and a 1" seam allowance on the short side. I chose huge seam allowances because having no idea how this project may go, I just felt safe having the extra fabric. It ended up being completely unnecessary, but that's ok.

So I made my giant rectangle, and without thinking, left a long side open. I should have done a short side open, just because it would have been easier, but it worked out fine.

Knowing that I was going to put trim on the edge, I sewed it shut the easiest way since nobody would see that edge. Work smarter, not harder, yo.


Next is the trim. I picked the width based on a little mistake I made trimming the seam allowance off. I got carried away trimming the fastest way with the rotary cutter (I may have been a little over-eager to use it!) and trimmed off part of the seam. Thankfully it was on the ugly edge, so I ended up making wider trim to cover my mistake.

I cut a strip of 8"-ish wide fabric and pinned the edges back. I  just picked a width. I did NOT sew these down until I was actually attaching it to the rectangle because I didn't want the extra line, or the pressure of sewing it exactly on top of a seam.

 I did sew down the short side to keep the edges from getting weird.

 

I originally cut the strip when the fabric was doubled over, then cut that piece in half so I would only have to make the long cut once. After I got the strips pinned, I pinned them onto the rectangle.

Then I cut another strip of the trim to run across the long side. I wasn't sure if I was going to to both long sides or just one (since one side is on the inside of the crib) and I repeated the process of pinning and attaching to the rectangle.

When attaching the rectangle, I knew I wanted it to be mitered, so I looked up how to miter, and I was too ADD to watch videos and read several different sets of instructions to make sense of it all, so I just made it up as I went.

The next pictures show how I did my own take on a mitered edge (ha!)

 

It only looks pretty from the front. The back...not so much.

See? It's not pretty on the back side (above) but it works. The front corners aren't sewn down, but on the back side, I did a hand-stitch that makes Dr. Frankenstein look like a skilled tailor. The truth is I didn't care about how the back looked because it's going to be folded so nobody will see it. I doubt that the Queen of England or Martha Stewart is going to come over and demand that they see the inside of this rail bumper, you know? So I didn't waste my time making it pretty.

Then I sewed the trim down. I ended up only doing the trim on one side. It wasn't important enough to me to cut and pin another piece of the trim. (Those faux-mitered corners were a trial and error success the first time, I didn't think I'd be as lucky the second time).

Ok, so it's not perfect, but I figured if it was awful, I'd make another.

 The next step was getting the Velcro on. The bumper we already have has a long strip across the bottom and a few going perpendicular to the long strip, but I felt like I didn't need the short strips. If I felt I needed them, I could always go back.

Again, working smarter, not harder. I didn't want to take time to do extra work that wasn't necessary!

Did you know they make IRON-ON Velcro? I didn't until yesterday!

 I stuck the strips of Velcro together, trimmed them to the right length and stuck them to the fabric ready to iron them on.

Pardon my busted nails. I painted them yesterday on a whim and they weren't dry when Nathan wanted my attention.

I ironed the Velcro on with the bumper folded over and just flipped it to get both sides done. The only downside was that I wasn't thinking and the iron melted the batting on the inside, but I didn't care. It's just not as fluffy as the top portion.

As soon as I got the Velcro finished, I put it on to see if I was happy with it!

I'm very happy with it! When it's on, you can't really see the flaws, thank goodness!

So I brought Nathan in to break it in!

The bumpers don't match, but the colors in the bumper I made are in his room and in the comforter.

It didn't take him long to go for his favorite spot. That's directly on top of the part of the crib where he left marks.

Mom...this is different.

I decided not to make one for the other side because he NEVER stands there, and if he starts to, then I'll make one, but he actually loves his mobile and that's in the way and...I'm just not wasting that energy!

Once I had it figured out, it wasn't too hard to do. I know it would take me half the time to make another if I needed to. I'm feeling like Martha again, y'all. ;)

I would like to thank my sweet husband who watched Nathan pretty much all day by himself while I worked on this project. You are appreciated! <3

Nathan is here! :)

Ok, fine, he didn't just arrive or anything, but I've been busy!

Nathan is already 5 weeks old, which I absolutely cannot believe! I know that several of the people that read my blog are on Facebook, so I know you've seen tons of my pictures, but I haven't really shared much about the experience.

If you read in my previous post, you know that I was scheduled to have a c-section on September 7th, and we were able to stick to that plan. The night before, I was really focus on getting the house clean one more time before the baby arrives, since, you know, newborns are rumored to keep parents busy.

We went to bed probably around 1:30am and we were awake around 3:45am so that we could get ready and be there by 5am. I took a shower, did my hair and make-up, because I thought I just may be somewhat presentable after the surgery if I did all of this before.

I didn't want to be late, and of course we were anxious, which made us get to the hospital about 20 minutes early. The hospital staff was like, "Um...you're early." Oops. Our bad, yo.

We got into our room and began the process of getting ready for surgery.

OMG, I was ginormous.

The surgery was scheduled for 7am, but there were some setbacks, so we didn't get into surgery until 11:30 or so. The surgery went really smoothly (Travis didn't pass out or anything!) and Nathan was born on Friday, September 7th at 12:28pm weighing 9lbs 3.4oz and measuring 20inches long. I can honestly say that seeing him for the first time was THE happiest moment of my life. I can't describe how it makes you feel, but it's the best feeling ever.

Nathan did have some troubles that we were expecting due to being a bigger baby and because there was a lot of amniotic fluid (which isn't a good thing, but we knew this in advance. The doctor never figured out what caused that though). The first problem is that with all of the fluid. During a c-section, the baby often gets startled when the pull him out, so his reaction is to inhale, getting fluid in his lungs. Nathan did exactly that, so he was put in a special nursery (not quite NICU), to be monitored and put on oxygen. The second issue was that bigger babies have trouble regulating their blood sugar, so they have to stay monitored for that. Because of the breathing stuff they had him on an IV until I could feed him myself, which I was thankful for. 

 

It took him longer to have normal breathing than expected, so around 6pm on Friday they told us that they would have to keep him in the nursery overnight. At that point, I had only seen him for a minute in the operating room, so this was devastating news. I immediately asked them if I could go see him, and they said I could go as soon as I could get out of bed and into a chair without getting dizzy.

My immediate thought was, "Is that a challenge?" and my second thought, in the words of Barney Stinson,

I asked them for a wheelchair and managed to sit up (keep in mind that I had just had a surgery where they mess with your abdominal muscles!), and when the nurse asked if I was dizzy, I definitely lied and said no. I made the transition and we went to the nursery, but we couldn't hold him. He was hooked up to too much.

 

Although I hated not having him with us, the upside was that for my first night as a mother, I was able to get some rest, so I felt much better the next day. Around 10:30am, we were able to go see him again (this time I even walked about 15 steps!), and I was able to hold him for the first time, which was the 2nd best moment in my life.

While we were down there, they took him off of the oxygen because his breathing had regulated and I was able to feed him. I won't share pictures of that moment, but Travis got to give him a bottle of formula as well because they wanted to keep his blood sugar at the right level.

 

We eventually had to go back to our room without the baby, because they wanted to check me and then we had Travis' cousins Jaymi and Kyrie come to visit, so we stayed in our room for a while. Around 4:30pm, Jaymi and Kyrie decided they were going to leave, so we walked with them down to the nursery so I could go in and hold Nathan up in the window so they could see him better. It was at this time when the majority of Travis' family as well as mine showed up. I was holding the baby up so everyone could see him (because nobody had seen him yet without being hooked up to everything) and the nurse noticed the 5 zillion people looking at us through the window. She looked at me and said, "You know, he's doing really well. You can take him down to your room so he can visit with everyone."

Our First Family Photo

This was probably the best thing I had heard that day. She just told me that we would need to bring him back before each feeding to do a quick test. If he passed the next 2 tests, he'd be able to stay with us overnight, and he did. He slept remarkably well on Saturday night, and on Sunday they mentioned that we were ready to go home. You would think that I would have been ecstatic, but this is how the conversation went:

"Today? I figured we were going home tomorrow."

"Oh, do you want to wait until tomorrow? We have the room, so you can."

"Well, let us think about it."

A few minutes later I decided to stay the extra night. I just felt like we needed it since the whole first day of his life we weren't the ones taking care of him. I wasn't ready to give up the extra help. He did amazingly well all day on Sunday, slept just fine that night and Monday morning, we were feeling much more prepared to go home.

Heading home from the hospital!

We are really thankful that the nurse decided at that time to allow Nathan to come with us to our room because he was able to meet Dadow, Travis' maternal grandfather for the only time. Exactly one week later, Dadow passed away unexpectedly, and having the memory of Dadow meeting Nathan has brought us a great deal of comfort.

We have talked a lot about God's perfect timing, and Nathan's arrival is such a perfect example of that. Nathan was originally in the correct position, and for some reason, he turned the other way, which is what brought my doctor to decide to deliver him early. If he had been born on his due date, we would have had to do all of this while coping with a loss, which would have been so difficult. Having Nathan around while we grieved as a family made it a little easier for everyone, and we are so thankful for that.

Now, here we are, and Nathan is 5 weeks and 4 days old. Travis and I are adjusting to life as parents, and we are loving it! Sure, we have our moments (more me than Travis since he's returned to work) but there isn't a moment that goes by that I am not overwhelmed with the love I feel for this sweet baby.  

Here are some pictures from his newborn photo shoot:

And here he is at one month old!

Everyone keeps asking me if I'm ready to go back to work, and the answer is absolutely not. I wish I could stay with him all day! :)