A Baby Story

This week has been filled with some amazing baby stories! I had 2 of my best girlfriends have sweet baby girls, Ava's future BFF's, and the Royal Prince was born! What a week! Whew! Seeing pictures of all these sweet babies make me nostalgic of Ava's newborn days. Her scrunchy little face, her curled up body, her excessive milk intake... oh wait she still eats everything!

Hearing about friend's birth stories makes me think of how Ava came into this world. I have never really shared her birth story so here you go... DISCLAIMER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW DON'T READ IT :-) 

Being pregnant with Ava was no picnic. I was very, very, very sick until around week 16. I had terrible morning/all day sickness and some days could not even open my eyes or think about moving. Around week 16 it got better only to come back from week 20-22 and then again week 34-36. In between those weeks there was no "pregnancy glow" only terrible heartburn and then at week 27 Ava bruised my ribs and muscles around my right side and continued to kick that area right up until the moment she was born... no joke she kicked me throughout delivery. I also had very very low blood pressure and was put on "light duty" at 33 weeks after I almost fainted 3 times at work. So as you can see pregnancy was not the most delightful time of my life. 

At 38 weeks Ava also decided that she maybe wanted to come out and play but she wanted to take her sweet time. I had contractions every 5 minutes for 8 days... yes 8 days... I went to the hospital twice and the nurses told me that I was absolutely "in labor" but not "active labor" and that I needed to just stay active and try to get things moving. I made it my mission to walk that baby out! I walked 4 miles a day every day, while having contractions every 5 minutes. I was miserable, couldn't sleep, and extremely uncomfortable. 

Then at 2am on November 26 my water broke. Anyone who says "I don't know if my water broke," let me tell you it didn't because when it does you know! After my water broke and we headed to the hospital and guess what? My week of solid contractions every 5 minutes stopped. That's right! As soon as my water broke I had contractions every 20-25 minutes. After about 3 hours of no contractions they said it was time for the devil drug aka pitocin. They started with the lightest dose and after 2 hours contractions started hitting fast and furious. The nurse checked and I was only 4 cm at 6am. I was in extreme pain and she asked if I would like to go ahead and get the epidural. Now I am soooo proud of you Momma's who are all about natural childbirth! MORE POWER TO YOU! I however was all about the epidural but I have also heard if you get it too early your labor can slow down and it can wear off before you deliver. So I declined and said I'll wait until 7cm. I tried to relax and breathe through them. They slowed down about 30 minutes later so Peter decided to go make some toast since it was now 7am. He left the room and I decided to use the restroom and try to sit on the birthing ball. My Mom was in the room and helped me around the room and helped me sit on the ball. The second I sat down I had the longest and hardest contraction. My whole body started shaking, I started crying, my knees gave out, I couldn't stand and at that moment Peter walked into the room, with his toast. I immediately yelled out "Don't you ever leave me!" Toast was thrown on the table and he was by my side. Poor guy! 

Peter grabbed the nurse since I felt like I had to push. She casually came in because just an hour before I was 4 cm. She checked, 9.5cm and it was time to push. I immediately asked for my epidural and she said "Oh honey, there is no time, it's time to push." Que the waterworks, begging and pleading, and asking if I could just go home... 

2 hours later, Ms. Ava was stuck and the anesthesiologist was available. They said they couldn't give me a full epidural but could give me a little one (whatever that means) to cut down the pain. He came in and decided to talk all about the oatmeal he was eating downstairs. Here I am whimpering and feeling like I am literally going to die and this guy is telling everyone in the room about how the cafeteria downstairs is even on Yelp because their oatmeal is so good. Luckily I was in too much pain to tell him what I really thought about his food review. 

An hour after that I was still pushing and COULD STILL FEEL EVERYTHING! I had 2 nurses in the room, 1 was training the other, and the older nurse was going on and on saying how great it was that I could feel everything since normally women have epidurals and can't really focus on the pushing. Well that was great she felt that but I wanted to be one of those women! 

Anyways, after 3.5 hours of pushing at 11:21am Ava Ray Lamar was born. She pooped while coming out so she was 1 poop shy of 7 pounds. She had a full head of hair, rosebud lips, and a perfect little face. She was perfect in every way and changed our life in the most amazing way imaginable. 

So that's Ava's birth story. A friend asked me a few weeks ago if I would have the next one naturally since I basically had Ava sans epidural... My response was next time I'll ask for the epidural the moment I walk in the hospital. 

Mind your P's and Q's

Well here I am about to get on my soap box but after some of the appalling things I have witnessed this week it is necessary. So here we go... 

What happened to manners? When I was young if you didn't say please or thank you you didn't get it. Every adult was called Mr. or Mrs. and even your babysitter was Miss. You always said sorry when you did something wrong, you didn't cut in line, you weren't allowed to hit or kick people/things, you had to drink your milk and eat your veggies before you got dessert. I feel like these are all normal things. 

So this is all I am going to say... if you have kids please teach them some common courtesy and to have manners, saying sorry or excuse me is not a thing of the past. OK the end... 

Fashion Friday- Sunny Side Up!

Traveling is always so hectic... traveling with a 7 month old and having a 2.5 hour delay is just insane! This was our issue on Tuesday when we were on our way home from a 9 day trip to visit family and friends in Florida (I'll blog about the trip next week). Anyways we got to the airport at 4:30pm for our 6:30pm flight. Got through security and then found out due to fog in SF our direct 6:30 flight was now delayed to 8:30pm (we actually left at 9pm!) Luckily I brought lots of toys, food, milk for Ava so we took over some floor space in the airport and played for several hours. She actually did great, better than me! She played in the airport, slept the whole plane ride, slept on the shuttle home, and then went right back to sleep when we got home and slept until 7am Cali time. I still can't believe how good she was! 

Sometime during the commotion of playing/packing/boarding the plan I lost my sunglasses. So now I am on the hunt for some new sunnies. I am very very picky about sunglasses. They must be brown, normally tortoise, big but not too large, and they have to be polarized! I once sunburnt my eyes, no joke, so I always spend the extra money for dark polarized glasses. I normally always buy kate spade because they are made very well and look super classy but I may switch it up this time around. Here are the top contenders. 

kate spade Gayla sunnies 

kate spade Lulu sunnies

Tory Burch sunnies

which ones are your favorite? 

Fashion Faux Pas- thredup followup

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog about sending a lot of my clothes into a consignement website called Thredup. I was really excited beacuse I was able to clean out a good chunk of my closet and the process seemed super easy... boy was I WRONG! 

My first negative interaction with thredup was when I treid to use at 20% off coupon code that I recieved for sigining up. The coupon code wouldn't work and it took customer support 4 days to get me a correct coupon code. During that time the items I wanted to purchase were sold to someone else. 

Second negative experience was when I was actually able to use my 20% off coupon code and purcahsed an awesome Lilly Pulitzer top and a few J.Crew tops. The package came super fast but when I openened it there was no Lilly top! I checked the receipt and someone had crossed out the top in pencil and said unavailable. I emailed threup asking about my item... 3 days later they responded that it was flawed so they didn't send it. I didn't get a refund via paypal until 2 days after that. It would have been nice to receive an email and refund prior to receiving the package. 

My third negative experience was when I sent in my bags. They normally say they process them within 3-4 business days... 17 business days later they finally processed my bag. I emailed them 4 times checking in and only got 1 generic email back. I left a vm and no one called me back. I mean when things take longer than stated on the website at least send out a 20% off promo code or respond to emails in a timely process. In terms of the money they paid overall was fair but some items were WAY OFF! Clearly whoever is buying and pricing their items is not up to date on fashion. They paid me $4 for a Forever 21 top that I probably bought for $8 and $5 for an Ann Taylor blazer that was originally $198. Seems a little wacky! Also I can only use the money they are paying me towards a purchase for 16 more days. 

My sister has also had some of the same issues with the company and had lots of problems returning items. Overall I think the idea is great but they are obviously growing quickly as a company and may need to hire mor e staff and learn a little about customer service. 

My friend tried Twice and had an awesome expereience. I think I will stick with them from now on! Sorry Thredup but you receive a giant 2 thumbs down from this frequent shopper!