Cleaning my room (Part 1)

I have been busy today! As you may know, I had a baby about three weeks ago. Well about a week before that I moved into a new bedroom, because my mother moved away for a job, leaving the master suite available for me. I pretty much just moved all of my stuff in here, and haven't organized and arranged things at all. Which means that the surfaces in my room are overflowing with stuff. Not to mention packaging from random stuff is accumulating all over. And then there's all of the paper clutter and advertisement stuff the hospital sends home with you that I need to go through and get rid of.

I'm done for today, but nowhere near being done, so this will be the first in a two or three part series. Maybe more, but not totally sure how I'll break it all down.

First I'll start with some before pictures. Everyone loves to see how messy other people's houses get, right?

The first thing I usually do when I clean my room is to make my bed. It gives me a nice clean work space, which is really nice in smaller bedrooms when you don't have much floor space to use for sorting. Thankfully I don't have that issue in this room, but it's just habit now from having smaller rooms in the past.

Still trying to decide how exactly to set up my pillows. I think I like this alright.

Next I folded up all of my laundry, and sorted it all out on my freshly made bed;).

It's also nice for holding cute babies, hehe.

Next I decided to clean up this little corner.

Ta da!

Since I had a few wraps on the ottoman, I decided to find a home for all of my baby carriers.

Here are 4 woven wraps, a homemade stretchy wrap, plus two mei tais.

There's another woven and a soft structured carrier in the car:).

Bed didn't stay made for long:P

Next I cleared off the whole floor, putting away what I could and sorting everything else. Here we have the packaging for the new printer I just bought, (that I want to keep to pack in when we move,) a basket full of cardboard, my new black woven basket I just bought to keep all of my paper recycling in, a garbage bag, and then a basket with stuff that doesn't belong in my room. 

And now to tackle the desk, eek!

Cleared things off and this was the pile of stuff to sort through and find a home for.

Already looking a lot better.

In this little organizer I have my camera cord and charger, Scentsy bars, a little section full of random odds and ends, and in the medium sized section I have my journal, some loan booklets, and little manuals for my iMac, camera, and printer.

I went through all of the stuff the hospital sent home, putting most of it in the recycling bin (what a waste of paper, seriously!) But they did send me one useful thing. They gave me this little organizer which has ready made formula bottles in it, along with a little cooler thing and some empty bottles. The formula, bottles, and cooler will all go to the women's shelter I interned at this year, but the organizer is being put to use.

Matilda and I bedshare, so I made a little night time kit. It has a container with wipes and eight diapers, and then in the left hand compartment I have an extra blanket, onesie, and underpad in case of a diaper leak or really bad spit up. I sleep with an underpad under Matilda and I to catch any milk that dribbles down or smaller bits of spit up. It's nice for bigger messes, too.

I've been working on this for most of the day, little by little. Had to take a lot of breaks to take care of my daughters, and of course lots of nursing breaks, too:).

Left to do is clean off my dresser, organize my closet, organize the movies in the closet, and find pictures and hang them up along with this clock. Oh and I have tons of boxes to sort through, one of which is sitting in my bedroom, but I don't know if I should count that toward organizing my room or another project altogether.

So that's what I've done so far! Hopefully I'll get more done tomorrow:).

Week 1, Task 2: Think about the next year

Week 1: Organizae Your Mind & Life Vision

Regular text is from the book "Organize Now! by Jennifer Ford Berry. My responses are italicized.

Think about what you want to accomplish within the next fifty-six weeks.

When you look back on this time in your life, what will you remember?

I hope I will remember feelings of accomplishment every time I complete a project. I also want to remember how creative I was in coming up with my own organization solutions.

What will you be proud of?

I will be proud of how much I let go of my perfectionism, and learned to develop systems that work for me, even if they aren't perfect.

List these goals.

Find ways to cut clutter.

Purge unnecessary items!
-sell
-donate
-throw away

Give everything that sticks around its own designated place

Make better use of my time.
-spend less time on the computer
-spend more time being active

A week and a half later

It has been a little over a week and a half since Matilda's birth. Only three days later Michael had to return to Korea, so I've been dealing with regular postpartum stress, adjusting to having three girls under four years of age, and having to say goodbye to my husband all at the same time.

At the park with all three girls

Thankfully one of my friends from high school and her sister drove up and spent a few days with me. That was a nice distraction after Michael left, and they really helped out with meals and playing with the two older girls. I also have my sister to help out, but she's a busy teenager and I definitely don't expect her to put her life on hold just to help me. She does help a lot when she does help though, so it's nice having her here with me. Then of course I'm in my hometown right now, so I have tons of family willing to help out. Just last night my aunt came over to watch McKaleigh and Adelaide, while Matilda and I made a trip to Target. It was nice not to have to get all three girls in and out of their car seats and through the store; I haven't been daring enough to do that on my own yet, haha.

Day of discharge from the hospital

There have been a lot of good things going on, in between feeling overwhelmed and missing Michael. I managed to complete all of my homework for class last week, so although I still have some stuff to catch up on, I'm not falling further behind. The house got super messy, pretty quickly, but I think I cleaned up pretty well yesterday, at least the kitchen and living room. I need to get around to cleaning my room, but I'm not stressing out about it, and I'll get to it when I get to it.

Another thing that has made me really happy has been my weight loss. I gained 30 pounds this pregnancy and started out with about 10 extra pounds, which means I'm hoping to lose 40 pounds overall. I've already lost 20! And I haven't even started working out yet, other than some easy yoga sequences, which I really do more for my mind than for my body. My mom (who is now living in a different state) has fall break in October and has already signed up for a 5k here in town. I'll be about 2 months postpartum, so I doubt I'll be able to run it, but I still think I'm going to sign up and walk it, maybe running every now and then. I really cannot wait to start running again. I'm tempted to start around 4 weeks postpartum, but I know I should wait for my doctor to give the okay at my six week checkup.

Daddy and baby

And an update with Matilda, she is doing great! She had her first check up two days ago and was already 10 ounces past her birth weight! So needless to say, breastfeeding has been going great! My milk came in on about day three, and we have had no problems at all. She does have really sleepy periods in the evenings where she's difficult to wake up and I get a little engorged, but usually by bedtime she's ready to empty me out, haha. Also, I totally forgot how many diapers a newborn goes through! It seems like with each baby it has been a big surprise to me.

Pretty girl, at home:)

Big sisters, McKaleigh and Adelaide, have been doing okay. Both have had their moments, Adelaide throws tantrums pretty frequently, and McKaleigh has developed quite the little attitude, but they both absolutely love their new sister. They love to help out and McKaleigh holds Matilda every chance she gets, which is really nice when Matilda isn't hungry and just needs to be held, since it gives me a chance to get a few things done.

I'm hoping to make a YouTube video soon to "introduce" Matilda, but we'll see when I get around to it. That's not really high on my to do list priority-wise, but hopefully I'll get it done. I can't believe how much older she already looks. These early months always go by so quickly!

Matilda is here!

We'll start with the stats before I get into the details:).
Her full name is Matilda Elizabeth Lynn Koch.
She weighed 8 pounds and 1 3/4 ounce and was 19 inches long.
She arrived at 12:23 PM today, August 6th, 2012.

I came in to the hospital this morning at 7:00 AM for a scheduled induction. I had been having lots of contractions over the last week or two, so I started out this morning at 5cm, although the baby wasn't down as far as she had been last week. Because of the dates Michael was allowed to take for his leave from Korea, he has to return in a few days. That was why I elected to be induced, so that Michael wouldn't miss the birth. It's definitely a long way away from the unmedicated homebirth I had originally hoped for, but it really did go well, overall.

I was started on a very low dosage of pitocin about half an hour after being admitted. It was slowly increased and my body responded very quickly. The first few hours were very manageable. I totally expected to use pain medication because of how much more severe pitocin contractions can be, so when things started to get difficult I went ahead and asked for morphine. I had morphine with McKaleigh, so I felt comfortable using it again. The nurse checked me to report to the OB in order to get orders and I had progressed to 7cm. He ordered a very low dose of morphine for me, so low that it hardly even took the edge off. It helped me relax between contractions a little more, but the actual contractions were not any more tolerable. I started going through transition and finally experienced what most women describe transition as when going without pain medication. I really felt like I wasn't going to be able to handle it for awhile and told the nurse I was going to need something stronger for the pain. I even asked for an epidural! The nurse checked me again and I was fully dilated. She told me at that point an epidural probably wouldn't do a whole lot for me, but she would call the OB and see what they could do.

He walked in a few minutes later and said "the nurse told me you were either going to get an epidural or push this baby out, so I think it's time to push the baby out." As much as I hated to hear this because I felt like I couldn't handle anymore, I am really glad that he followed my initial wishes of not getting an epidural. I do have to say that I did not like the position I pushed in. I was flat on my back and it was way more difficult than I think it had to be, but at that point I was really emotionally fragile and in no mood to fight about it. Thankfully it didn't take long, in spite of the poor positioning and in about 5 or 6 sets of contractions she was here.

I'm still having trouble believing that I had a pitocin induced birth, practically without pain meds. It was extremely intense, but I am really happy with how things went, and am so glad that Michael has gotten to meet his newest daughter before returning to Korea.

Nursing has been going really well. She latched right away and nurses well with each feeding. We'll hopefully get out of here at the 24 hour mark. It doesn't sound like they are going to try to keep us any longer than that. I think that about covers it. We're happily resting now:).