As The Paint Dries

I am so pleased with how the room came out. Honestly, if anyone needs painting done let me know because Greg is amazing! He got this done all in one day! Here are some pics and I could not be happier!

 The wall where Nolan's crib will sit. 

I will be putting up block letters of his name in the white which hits just above the top of his crib.

 This wall will hold the changing table/dresser and hutch set. 

 If you can tell, Greg also painted the hallway, along with this room, in just one day!

 The glider is going over here. I tricked my Greg & said we got it in burnt orange, but i went with chocolate :) 

We got all the furniture ordered yesterday too. We cannot be more thankful to Greg's parents, Tommy & Ann, for helping us with all that. Some things are available later than others so we are having everything ordered together. So we probably won't have it all until the end of August. But that is A-OK with me! Then I will focus on adding he final touches to make the room Nolan's. 

This has just been just a blessing of a week. I have been able to catch up with old friends, get started on the final steps to making our house a home for the baby, and spend time with family. I am so excited to bring Nolan into this world with all the support Greg and I have and the love we feel from family and friends. Thank you everyone!

Nolan's Nursery - Decisions made & before shots

The big day is TOMORROW! We are starting on the nursery! I have decided on furniture, paint & decor. Now its time to get started. Thank you to my mom's co-worker for painting his room. It will be Valspar Churchill Hotel Maple on the bottom, valspar Du Jour for the stripe, and Allen + Roth rivermist on top. Here is a picture of the samples how they will be.

While Greg, mom's co-worker, is painting Tommy and I will be going to Baby's 1st Furniture on Richmond and Chimney Rock to purchase the nursery furniture! I decided on Baby's Dream Legendary curve top, safety gate crib in espresso. This is a great gender neutral crib that converts into a toddler bed then a twi size bed! And the great thing is that the safety gate is the rail for the toddler bed, so you don't have to buy that later on to convert! Now I had no clue what a safety gate was before I started looking. Recently it has been outlawed to even sell drop gate cribs, because it can hurt the baby, but it was convenient because if you are short (like me) you could get close to the mattress when placing the baby down to sleep. This safety gate is about a 6 in. section that flaps down so you can get closer to the mattress when the baby is larger and the mattress is set lower. I highly recommend this style of crib if you are looking into buying soon. Here is a picture of the crib.

We are getting the matching double dresser with hutch to serve as storage and changing table. Its a beautiful and very versatile piece of furniture as it doesn't look like baby furniture so it can grow with the kids. 

Now the nightstand with this set looked too library-ish so I decided to go with Baby's Dream (same manufacturer) Renaissance night stand. This is the other set I was contemplating but the crib didn't come with a safety gate. 

And lastly, Greg had mentioned this week he wanted to go to the Lay-Z Boy store and look into getting a recliner. Every wife's favorite piece of furniture :/ So I found a compromise! Best Chair designs gliders for nurseries and they can recline as well. So I found one that is spacious enough to fit Greg, while holding Nolan! So we are getting the Best Chair Irvington. The only thing is I didn't decide on a color, most likely I'll go for a chocolate.  Once I find a picture of exactly what we are getting I'll post it. 

Now for the before pictures of the room. I still call it a room until it is finished, then it will be the nursery!

The wall that the crib will be against

 From the window looking into the hallway 

I think Lacey is about to be really confused that this room won't be hers

 The opposite wall of the crib that will house the dresser

From the doorway looking into the room

The glider will be in the far corner

I'll post pictures throughout the process of converting this room into Nolan's nursery! Stay tuned...

Nolan's Nursery

I am getting so excited because we are getting Nolan's room ready, finally. I have been hesitant to work on it, because we have so much time until he gets here. But here we go! We have cleared out the room and are going furniture shopping next week!

After looking through the baby bargain book (great reference) if you live in Houston I recommend you look at Baby's 1st Furniture. They carry only top rated furniture manufacturers. Their biggest floor store is on I-45 N, and they are moving to the Woodlands soon, so they are selling a lot of their floor set ups. And another benefit of this store is that they set it up in room set already so you can see the whole thing together. And its a plus that Roula, from 104 KRBE, highly recommends this place too :)

Here are pictures of cribs I like. What do you think?






Sorry the last one is so big. The small ones are all sold, in multiple wood finishes, at Baby's first. The last one they can order because they sell from this manufacturer but they just don't have this set on the floor.

Next thing we have to set into motion is getting Nolan's room painted. His nursery theme will be bulldogs, of course! Here is the color scheme and wall painting I was thinking...

But a little altered of course. I like the khaki brown on bottom, but then I want a thick white stripe in the middle then the top be that baby blue. In the white stripe I will hang wooden letters of his name over his bed painted in a slate grey. The accent in his room will be that color. Here are some other things I want to include...(all found on pinterest)

I want this four picture set to put up in his room. 

I want the bulldog lamp, but Ill paint him metallic grey and get a blue shade. 

And I love the bulldog one, but would get four of it in only the bulldog with different shades of brown with different shades of blue for the background. 

Really getting excited now!

Half way there

Sorry I have not posted in awhile. I guess since my family lost Lane I have had a hard time connecting with Nolan and accepting the fact that I will be having him. I wish nothing more than for my family to feel no more pain but I have not had as many dreams, or comforting feelings, that I will have this baby. I had not seen him, known how he was growing/doing, since I had the NT ultrasound at a different office. I have seen my doctor for regular 4 week visits but its most comforting to see an ultrasound with my doctor so she can explain things to me and I can ask any questions that come up. I guess I just haven't had that comfort in awhile so I haven't felt comfortable in this pregnancy.

That is until yesterday. Even though I was not with my doctor, I did get an ultrasound with the technician. We got to see him move and kick, as I was feeling it too. It is always amazing to see your baby move, and see  his heart beating. We even had a close up of his heart to where we saw all for chambers of his heart working strong. And we got a confirmation picture that he was a boy! We saw his turtle, hehe. It was a very comforting feeling, and I cried through the whole experience. We were able to get multiple pictures to take home with us.

After the comfort I received I woke up this morning refreshed. I wondered when I would want to get things started to prepare our house for Nolan, and I am today. Right now his room is our study/storage room. So I am going to organize all the storage things and move them, clear things off the furniture to move them to other rooms. That way we can have the room deep cleaned to then have painted and buy furniture to move in.

I am starting to feel like we will be prepared for Nolan. Im thinking thats another thing I needed to feel connected to him, and that I will have this baby, I needed to feel like we were ready. We have been ready mentally and emotionally since we found out we were pregnant again, but now I needed the feeling of readiness physically at home.

No one tells you all the things you go through during pregnancy, probably because it is different for every women and couple. But there are so many stages you go through, especially if you have had a loss, but I/we need to have faith. I have a friend who said she prayed to St. Jude every night with all three of her children and never felt completely comfortable until she held them in her arms. I have a feeling I will be the same way. I am feeling better but as I said before, your worry as a mother starts when you get the plus on that pregnancy test and does not stop (however it does change) until you die.

But for now lets all enjoy some pictures of our approximately 13 oz bundle of joy.

 Nolan's profile

Nolan's turtle

We can't wait to see what he looks like. I think/want him to look just like his daddy and have a big baby belly to blow on. Greg thinks he will look like me because my traits are more dominant, such a doctor's train of thought. We shall see soon, half way there!

Thought we were having a baby, but we had an angel instead

May 20th, this is a hard day. Today was my due date for our first child who is now our angel watching over their little brother Nolan. I pray that I get to hold Nolan here on Earth and watch him grow, daily. It is never easy to lose a child, no matter at what point in their existence it might be.

We were so over joyed to find out we were pregnant less than two months after being married. And the day we called to tell our immediate family my sister in law, Lauren, had just taken a pregnancy test and hers was positive as well! We couldn't believe the blessing we were just given to have family go through this joyous time together. I have always dreamed of being pregnant with one of my sisters, I never had a sister until my brothers got married, and now I was having one of my biggest dreams come true. Lauren's baby was due 13 days after my blessing. I dreamt of them growing up together and getting to always have a cousin at family gatherings their exact age to hang out with.

Then when we went to the doctor's office on November 8th only to find out our baby had stopped growing at 9 weeks and there was no heartbeat, my dream was altered. I was unable to have my dream of giving birth with my sister in law, but now their blessing meant that much more to Greg and me. We were unable to hold our baby here on Earth but we would be able to watch theirs grow and imagine how ours would be at that age. Their child would help us to more frequently think of our angel.

In January  we found out Brad & Lauren's baby was a boy, Lane Ellis Geary. We couldn't wait to see him. We knew he would have the most beautiful lips, the kind women pay for, and couldn't wait to see what other attributes he got from which parents.

And then on February 14th we found out we would still be getting a blessing from God, we were pregnant again. Now Lane still got to have a cousin his age at family gatherings to play with. Knowing I was pregnant again made it easier to attend Lauren's shower. I know its a bit selfish but it was hard to see her belly after losing my first. But being pregnant again helped me get over that because I was getting my dream again to be pregnant with Lauren.

Kinda a bit of a tangent but, I have always thought I wanted to go to a psychic who could tell me what was going to happen to me in the future. However, after this past year I have totally changed my mind. I could hear a psychic tell me the good things but I not the bad. I think that not knowing what was coming allows us to enjoy the time we do have while not knowing. I feel that if we don't know then we can be happy for a while and not just focus on the upcoming heartache.

And that is what happened, for the third time, to my family, in a year on Friday May 11th. Lauren went in for a routine check up, she was 37 weeks, but they could not find Lane's heartbeat. After an ultrasound to confirm their findings Lane was not moving. Lauren was admitted to the hospital later that night to go through labor so they could check out Lane to figure out exactly what happened to Lane in utero that caused him to stop breathing. Just as we thought, Lane was stillborn Saturday May 12 at 4:46 pm EST with the cord wrapped around his neck twice.

My family, especially Lauren and Brad, are now dealing with a third family loss in one year. Lane was a perfect 5 lbs 6.1 oz and had the perfect lips we expected. He was 37 weeks 1 day, a viable age even without a NICU stay. It makes this that much harder, along with other events leading up to Lauren's appointment, our family is at the anger stage of coping. At this day in age, with the technology that we have available to us, no child should be lost due to a cord wrap. Greg and I both were born with the cord wrapped once around our necks and that was back in the 80s. Now, almost 30 years later this should not be a case for a fetal demise.

Greg and I are hurting on another level as well. I know my entire family is going to miss seeing Lane grow up, but we were looking at Lane as the child who was now in heaven. He meant that much more to us because our angel was supposed to always be his age, every step of the way. And now we don't get to see him grow up either. And now, with a miscarriage and a now a stillbirth, my family is very on edge with our little one, Nolan.

Lane has the perfect remembrance day, May 12th. It fits with our family of 12's, Dad - June 12, Bobby - September 12, me - November 12. We will always remember Lane and love him daily. But now he does get the original wish I had, he and our angel are together and now get to watch over us and his little siblings until we see him again in heaven. We may not have been able to have our first babies but we have our angels instead to watch over us. We can't wait until we get to hold them again with all of our loved ones we miss daily, in heaven.

Butterflies???

We are now 16 weeks and 3 days. I got all excited when reading the weekly updates from the MANY baby websites that I subscribe to, and they told me all the advances Nolan would be going through this week. First, he can hear! So now I need to watch what I say, and my yelling. But that also means I can get belly buds! I think I have dropped enough "subtle" hints to Greg that those would be a great mother's day gift. I can get those already, right? ;)

But the other thing is that this is the earliest I could possibly start feeling Nolan! Oh I can't wait, and I think I did! I was sitting at work yesterday and just reading a book and felt a little butterfly! And then again a few seconds later. I am almost positive it was Nolan! Hopefully I will be feeling him more frequently and more distinctly from now on.

We have our next doctors appointment next Thursday, 10 days to go. We will almost be 18 weeks then.

I also want to recognize my amazing, very talented and thoughtful aunt Martha. She is knitting Nolan a blanket that I hope he adores as much as I already have. The thread Martha picked is specifically bought from a website where the proceeds go to Share, a group designed to provide for support to those who have experienced pregnancy and infant loss.

After reading where my aunt bought the yarn for Nolan's blanket it really hit me about our first baby. We are VERY excited for Nolan but we are also very sad that we will not be able to hold our first child here on Earth. But I hope that baby knows how much they are loved, and will always be remembered and loved by our entire family. I know they are looking down on us and keeping and extra close eye on their little brother Nolan.

Counting the days

I am doing a lot of counting down these days: counting down the days until my next appointment, counting down the days until I get to see my baby (and drink alcohol again), and definitely counting down the days until the summer so I can get started on Nolan's nursery.  Check out my pinterest boards: http://pinterest.com/kclawler/nolan-s-nursery/

It has been so hard to concentrate since I learned our baby was a boy. My registries are looking as big as my wedding registry. I know I won't get everything but its a great place to get objects placed in my dreams. I can dream about doing specific things with Nolan, like walking Lacey with him in a specific stroller, or feeding him his first solid food in a certain high chair. I was nervous that the dreaming and mystery would fall a little dull after I found out he was a boy, but it has only multiplied. Now I can dream specific dreams with my little boy.

Now if only I could get my worries to go away. I guess it comes from having had a miscarriage, but I feel as if I worry about everything. I haven't gained much weight and that makes me very nervous. But a major comfort has been discussing these fears and worries with friends who have had children or are expecting. Thank you to everyone who has listened to my babbling and provided words of comfort and guidance.

Pregnancy comes with glorious hormones. Oh the hormones. I feel so bad sometimes for those around me because I KNOW I am being a b***h but the word vomit still comes out. Greg is a saint after dealing with me, and I am not even half way through this. I feel drained by the end of the day and my already short fuse is at its end, and who is the only person I see, my doting husband. I feel very blessed to have found such a wonderful man to be my husband and baby daddy, Nolan is one blessed child.

Ok I am just rambling now. I will see the doctor again in two weeks, these 4 weeks between check ups have been torture waiting to see my little man again. I can't wait to see him again! Update yall soon!