The other day I was sitting around with Michael and got thinking to myself, "Hey, I dont want to forget any of this". So I started thinking 'hmmm how can I preserve these memories' and I toyed around with a few ideas. I thought maybe I would do a daily vlog but decided that would take up too much time. Then I decided to maybe make a scrapbook and I do plan on doing that, but my next idea was to make a daily journal that I detail my day with Michael in. So I went out and bought this cute little notebook and have been writing in it every night. My plan for the journal is to write an entry every night directed towards Michael in sort of a letter format just talking about what we did that day, and saying whatever it is that I want to tell him, like how much I love him, how proud I am, etc. When Michael is older, when he moves out or when he needs it most I'll give him the journals and he can choose to read them or not. But at least he will have them there if he wants them. I know that I think it would have been neat to get something like this from my parents and when I look at how much my grandmother misses her parents I know that she would have loved something like this to remember them and always have a bit of them with her. So that's that!

Be sure to comment if you plan on making a daily memory journal (or something like it)!

Hey Guys! In case y'all didn't notice I've been inactive on this blog for the last little while and may be inactive for a little while longer. The reason for this would be because I had my little boy, Michael Anthony, about 7 weeks ago! He was born weighing 7.15 lbs at 1:15pm on April 11th 2015. Its been a bit of an adjustment so I haven't really been online much and until I've taken care of a few other things I've fallen behind in this blog might stay sort of inactive.


 Anyways I'm going to use the rest of this post to tell you guys about my labor and delivery and how its been being a mommy so far. So lets start with labor & delivery. I went into labor around 8am. I was woken up by some painful contractions and a lot of pressure down below. It felt like I really had to go to the bathroom and I tried that a few times but obviously that wasn't the issue so my attempts to go to the bathroom were unsuccessful. Over the next hour my contractions got so bad that I could hardly breathe and came pretty close to tears. At around 9 I had Tyler run a bath for me and stayed in there until about 9:30 when my mum came to pick us up and take us to the hospital. I don't think my mum really believed I was in labor because she didn't see any urgency in getting me to the hospital. She even stopped for Tim Hortons on the way to pick me up as I was laying there in pain. Thanks mum! But anyways we ended up arriving at the hospital at around 10:30am and I was 6cm dilated and having very consistent and close contractions. My water still hadn't broken and they took me into a delivery room. I asked for an epidural just so they would have it set up in case I did want one eventually but I didn't plan on getting the epidural unless I needed it. Once we were in the delivery room my midwife offered me sterile water injections in my back which I accepted because she said they would hurt for a few seconds and it would just feel like a bee sting. She lied. It felt like my entire back was on fire for about 2 minutes and I wanted to punch her. :p I stood for about half the time we were in the delivery room before I started pushing leaning over the bed and then I got too tired to stand and laid down. I ended up probably nearly breaking my mums hand from squeezing it so hard. I was offered other hands to spare hers but sometimes you just need your mom. After a while laying down it was time for me to push, although I was told repeatedly not to...but I mean..when its time its time. You cant just clench and keep your baby in. this was around 12:30 and I had been in labour for around 4.5 hours at this point. My water still hadn't broken. The pushing was the worst bit of the delivery. My waters broke while I was pushing and gushed out everywhere, It was like a fire hydrant that had exploded everywhere or something, I think that shocked everyone and it was quite funny looking back on it. Everything hurt 10x more after that and that wasn't so funny. Michael's heart rate dropped quite a bit when I started pushing so an OB was brought into the room but it must have just been his position that was changing his heart rate because it went back to normal after my second or third push. The timeline of things is a little fuzzy for me so it might not be 100% accurate but I remember getting very annoyed with a nurse who wouldn't stop saying positive affirmations to me and ended up telling her to just shut up and I remember when Michael started crowning I looked down and said something along the lines of "ew, that's disgusting" and then went back to pushing. Seriously guys. Its gross. And after some more pushes he was finally born. I said "oh my god, that's my baby" and we did immediate skin to skin. I used to doubt people when they said once your baby is born you forget all the pain of delivery but honestly you do. The only thing that matters is the tiny person in your arms. I couldn't believe I had created such a perfect little human. During our hour of skin to skin when he was born he  ended up doing his first poop on me which I didn't notice, or care about when I found out since I was already covered in a bunch of blood and fluids and gunk from birthing him. He latched and fed from me within that first hour and he fell asleep. I am still amazed with my body and the fact that I created and delivered a baby completely naturally. So there's my birth story I guess.


Since that day he's grown quite a bit. He's grown out of newborn diapers and clothes and is wearing size 1 diapers and 0-3 month clothes but I'm guessing he'll be wearing size 2 diapers and size 3-6 month clothes by the middle of next month. He loves his baths now. He can roll onto his belly from his back and his head support is amazing. He is constantly pushing off of things with his little legs. He is still EBF and he basically sleeps through the night. He wakes up once in the night for a sleep feed and he sleeps from 8/9pm-9/11am. He smiles a lot and he is awake for 3-4 hours at a time between naps. We bed share and he nurses to sleep. He is just generally a very happy and healthy baby and I couldn't be more proud of being his mama. Anyways this is all I can think to write at the moment. Stay tuned for more updates!

Hey guys! I've decided that every Friday, starting today, I will be releasing a new freebie for all of you! These freebies could be printables, clip art, fonts, patterns, recipes, etc. Just anything I can think up for that week. This week's freebie is a printable calendar for April 2015. You can see a preview of it above and you can click the link below to download the version without a watermark, however it would be nice if you would give credit somewhere if you do use it. :) Just note that this printable is free for personal use only, thankyou!

Okay today's method is getting a stretch and sweep. For those that don't know, a stretch and sweep is basically where your doctor will stick their finger up your hoo hah and try to stretch out your cervix once it had started dilating. Thats the basic version of things anyways.

Method: Stretch & Sweep.
Difficulty: Its fairly uncomfortable, besides the awkwardness of having someone's cold fingers inside you while you lay on a table avoiding eye contact, there is a lot of pressure and the stretching can get a bit painful.
Results: Discomfort, a few contractions, still getting them but they are VERY spread apart.
Is baby coming: Possibly. Probably not but he's close.
Would you recommend: Yes. Its uncomfortable but has a lot of good results and its the best method outside of sex that I've tried so far. 

Question of the Post: Have you ever had a stretch and sweep? What was your experience with it? Leave your responses in the comment section below and dont forget to vote in the poll in my sidebar before you leave the blog. 

So I've been super busy over the last few days organizing my room and getting things ready for our little aliens appearance. Due to that I haven't had a chance to update you guys on various labor induction things I have done. 10 Days of Labor Induction just became 10 Ways of Labor Induction, and today I'll be sharing the results of ways 4-7 with you!

Method: Eat Spicy Food.
Difficulty: There wasn't any difficulty really. Just yummy food.
Results: Nothing came of this technique for me, but I don't think the food I ate was spicy enough. I had some rigatoni with meatballs and some spicy sauce my dad made especially for this purpose but I don't think it really had enough of a kick to it. If he isn't here soon I may try this method again with some spicier food.
Is baby coming: Nope.
Would you recommend: Maybe with something spicier than what I had?

Method: Climb Stairs.
Difficulty: It will probably make it hard for your pregnant self to breath. So good luck with that.
Results: Cramps, Small contractions, and a complete loss of breath.
Is baby coming: No still no baby.
Would you recommend: Sure! It did give me a few small contractions so maybe it would work completely for someone else!

Method: Squats.
Difficulty: The fact that gravity hates me now with my belly and I could only do like 3 squats before falling on my ass.
Results: A sore butt?
Is baby coming: No.
Would you recommend: If you can manage to balance yourself for them with a belly getting up and down like that then why not. I however could not.

So there you have 3 more ways to induce labor and in a few hours I will update you on how things go with my midwife and have a new labor induction post up because I will be asking for a stretch and sweep. I don't know if I will be getting it today though so you might have to wait a bit for the post about it. 

Question Of The Post: Did any of these methods work for you? Share your results in the comments section below. And don't forget to vote in the poll on my sidebar before you leave the blog!

Alrighty so yesterday was day 3 of my 10 days of labor induction. I read somewhere that warm baths can help start labor. I had a bath bomb that I wanted to try out and figured I might as well. Honestly I don't know why I listened to whoever wrote that because warm baths have always slowed my contractions not started them.

Method: Warm Bath.
Difficulty: The only difficult aspect of this was getting myself in and out of the bath. Standing up isn't really easy anymore.
Results: It slowed down the contractions I was having all day.
Is baby coming: Not from the bath no. Its actually probably going to take longer because of that.
Would you recommend: No. Just 100% no.

Question of the Post: Have you had success with this method?

IF YOURE RELATED TO ME DON'T READ THIS. SORRY MOM.

Alright so this post is a few hours late so expect two posts for this series today but day two of attempting to induce labor is done and since I stayed with the fiance last night sex was obviously the
most convenient method to try out so....

Method: Sex.
Difficulty: Aside from the usual pregnancy sex awkwardness because of the belly this is probably the easiest and most enjoyable way to try starting labor tbh.
Results: A few contractions; I usually get them after sex though but these ones were strong and lasted like all night.
Is baby coming: probably not but if we went for a few more rounds who knows.
Would you recommend: yep. But just because it's sex..whoops.

Question of the Post: Have you had success with this method?

So today is the first day of my 10 days of labor induction series, as promised. The trick I tried out today was walking. Lots and lots of walking. I went shopping for some things for the planner I'm making (I'll make a post about that soon) and I also got some craft things and outdoor fun stuff for Ben and some new undergarments and bath things for myself. Overall we were out for about 6 hours and we were walking around shopping for at least 5 of those 6 hours. Nothing too intense but I was also pushing a stroller a lot of the time so that's something. I don't think tonight will be the night that Michael makes an appearance so it was a bust overall but I did have 4 rather painful contractions while we were out, I'm not sure if the walking had anything to do with it or if it would have happened regardless. I'm leaning towards option number two. So that's how that went but to summarize...

Starting today until Michael's due date (or whenever he decides to show up) I will be trying at least one labor inducing thing every day. I'll keep you guys updated every day with a post about how successful each trick was and if I would recommend it. I'm actually pretty excited to start this so wish me luck!

Question Of The Post: What ways do you know of to induce labor? Have you tried any of the various tricks floating around to start your labor? Was it successful or a waste of time? Let me know in the comments section. :)

Friday night I went to the new LUSH store that opened in the mall near me. This is the first LUSH store to open anywhere near me so I got super excited about going. My mum came with me to the store and was smelling everything. Her reactions to the scents of all of the products were hilarious, she thought everything smelled terrible and like old ladies. It was pretty great. So after a few minutes of watching her reactions I picked up the Honey Bee, Space Girl & Blackberry bath bombs. I hadn't ever used any LUSH products so I was super excited to get home and try one out after seeing so much hype about them, and the Honey Bee bath bomb seemed like the most relaxing, safe choice of the 3 that I bought. I intended to break it in half and save one half for a later date but I forgot to do that before entering the bathroom and didn't remember until I was already butt naked standing in front of a full bathtub so I just said to hell with it and used the whole thing. I do not regret that decision. Anyway without further ado here is my review.





Smell ☆☆☆☆☆ Immediately upon putting the bath bomb in the water I was surrounded by a absolutely divine smell. It was sweet with a nice rich undertone, but not so sweet and rich that it was overpowering and almost sickly like a lot of honey scented things. Honestly I can rarely ever stand honey scented things so I don't know what prompted me to buy this bath bomb but I am so glad I didn't let the scent turn me away from it because it put my nose in heaven. The scent stuck around for about half an hour as well which was great, so I'm going to give the scent 5/5 stars.

Appearance ☆☆☆☆☆ The bath bomb itself wasn't really anything special to look at and maybe its just that I have a green bath tub but it didn't seem to change the water much either. I'm going to give the appearance 2/5 stars.

Feeling During & After ☆☆☆☆☆ This bath bomb left the water feeling so silky and nice. I wasn't expecting much of a change in the feeling of the water but it really did feel amazing. My skin after the bath was as smooth as a baby's bottom. It got super soft and I smelled really super nice. I was quite pleased. 5/5 stars.

Uniqueness ☆☆☆☆☆ While the bath bomb was great there wasn't really anything that stood out about it in the end. So its going to get a 2/5 star rating on this front.

Overall ☆☆☆☆☆ The smell and the way it made the water and my skin feel far outweigh the fact that it may have been a little dull appearance wise. I'm going to give it a 4/5 star rating.

Have you used the Honey Bee bath bomb from LUSH? What were your thoughts on it? Which bath bomb should I try next? Let me know in the comments.

Things I got:

• High Chair
• Lots of Clothes
• Crib Bedding Set
• Lots of Blankets & Crib Sheets
• Crib Mattress
• Little Toys
• Pumping Accessories
• Baby Carriers
• Baby Toiletries
• Pacifiers
• Diaper Bag
• Stuffed Animals
• Probably more stuff that I cant think of off the top of my head.

So yes I'm very very pleased and grateful for everything that I got at that shower. I really wasn't expecting to get so much and the things I got were all so nice, I'm very happy with it all. So I suppose that concludes the baby shower post because there really isn't much more to say. Sorry there aren't better/more pictures but I didn't take any myself and nobody has really posted any even though I was posing for a new picture every 2 seconds. OH before I forget look at the cute things my mom and her friends made for the shower.

Hello, Hello, Hello! It's Saturday again Okay it was Saturday when I wrote this, which means this seemingly eternal pregnancy has made it to a brand new week. I am officially 38 weeks pregnant, leaving just 14 more days until Michael is supposed to make an appearance outside of my womb and the time could not be moving any slower. This last month of pregnancy feels like its lasted 3 years! Anyways, enough rambling about how impatient I am and onto the update!