Mason C. Sterner's Arrival

This is my first post and probably the most important one of 2011. November 18, 2010 Andrew and I found out officially that we were expecting a little addition to our family. At the first doctors appointment they did an ultrasound and I was able to see a tiny little dot at 5.4 cm that had a heartbeat of race horse.

As the weeks went on, I was lucky not to have any morning sickness, weird cravings or tremendous weight gain. There were a few weeks that I was super tired but other than that I just tried to relax. Here are a few pictures from weeks 12-36.

We had everyone at my house for Thanksgiving this year and announced the babies arrival over dinner. Everyone was completely ecstatic.

At 19 weeks we went in for our next check up and got some great ultrasound shots. The next week, my mom came up for our apt and we found out we were having a sweet baby boy!!!!!

Of course Andrew had predicted that it was a boy from the beginning and I was a little sad to find out that he was not a girl. Little did I know that little boys steal your heart from the very first second you see them!
Weeks went on and we finally decided on the name Mason, however, we could not decide on a nursery them.
We knew we needed the basics so we started with a crib, changing table and a sweet stroller that I spent hours deciding on......literally!

After toying with the idea of dogs, basic shapes and colors, pirates and a few others we finally saw some owl nursery ideas that we fell in love with. After looking at all of the ideas we found a wonderful decal on blik.com.

After more research we found some wonderful owl mobiles on Etsy but they were all super expensive. After looking at these prototypes, I knew with a few Michael's coupons and my sewing machine, I could make something very similar!

On June 19th, we had a small scare, I was a little nervous because I had not felt the baby kick all day. Everything that I had read said that at this point in the pregnancy if you don't feel fetal kicks you should call the doctor. Andrew rushed me the the L&D and they ran a few tests to check the baby. After chugging sprite, the sugar kicked in and he started moving. That was the most expensive Sprite I have ever drank!

A few hours later, we were sent home.......no baby that day.

At this point in my pregnancy I only had 2.5 weeks left and baby Mason was still in the breech position. At my OB apts, the first time she mentioned a c-section, I called my mom hysterical because I was so upset. I had all intentions of having a natural birth. I found a website on how to turn a breech baby and tried all of the methods more than once. Still no luck. After tons and tons of research, I started to be at ease with the idea of a c-section and just started to prepare myself. We went to our next OB apt that week and scheduled little Mason to be born June 27th, 2011.
Mom came into town the night before we were to go in for the delivery. We had to be there at 5:15am. After all of our paper work, pre-op blood work and anxiously waiting, we were ready to go to the L&D. I was hooked up to all of the machines to monitor my vitals and shortly taken down to the OR waiting room. All of the staff was wonderful and very informative on how the procedure would take place. We went into the OR at 7:15 and Mason was born at 7:41 AM.
Since we brought him home, he has been a wonderful, peaceful angel.

Owl Mobile

Ever see something you really really like but you can't imagine spending the asking price for it. Well when we decided on Mason's nursery theme of owls, I started to look for crib mobiles and all of the ones that I found with owls on them with starting at $45 all the way up to $70. After looking online for printable templates/patterns and taking a nice LONG trip to Michael's Craft Store, I was able to replicate the project.

Inspiration:

Actual Replica:

Materials:

8-10 sheets of felt (depending on the variation of owl colors you want)

sewing machine

polyester stuffing

twine

decorative cotton balls

dowell rod

owl template