Baby Gifts

Finally I have a completed crochet project to show!

This is a baby bathrobe I crocheted for my pregnant sister-in-law, Gehan who is having a girl in January. The pattern is from the February/March '07 issue of Crochet Today magazine (I love that magazine!). The pattern called for Red Heart Cupid yarn, but I didn't have any (and don't think I could have used it anyway, because I can't crochet with very textured yarns – I can't see the stitches). I ended up using some Lion Brand Cotton-Ease in the discontinued ”Strawberry Cream” color. I had bought seven skeins of it from a lady on the Yahoo Cotton-Ease group, and was saving it to make a summer top or sweater for myself, but the pink color just screamed "baby gift"! The pattern also called for Red Heart Baby Clouds for the trim, but I hate that yarn (gets fuzzy too quickly), so I used Bernat Baby Lash in “Wee White”. I had some difficulty seeing my stitches in it, but managed to work with it anyway. The Cotton-Ease was very nice to work with. I'm really disappointed though that Lion Brand discontinued the old Cotton-Ease colors. I think they're so much prettier than the new colors, and the old stuff feels softer to me too. In any case, the pattern was pretty easy to follow, and I finished the bathrobe in about 4 days, using a little over two skeins of the Cotton-Ease, and a small amount of the Baby Lash.

Gehan's baby shower was today, so I put the bathrobe, a granny square blanket I crocheted and a gift pack of baby bath supplies in a lined wicker basket, and that was her gift. Here's the blanket:
I used Bernat Satin in the “Bahamas” and “Spring” colors for the blanket. I realize it's not the best picture. I have a new camera, and am still trying to figure out how to use it well. Gehan really liked the gifts and everyone at the shower raved about the bathrobe. I had a pretty good time as well. Gehan is Muslim, and some of her female relatives wear the hijab, and cannot take it off around men except for their spouses, and they wanted to get comfortable, so the men (my husband, brother, Joe, and nephews) were all kicked out of the house, LOL! My son, being only four, was allowed to stay though, and had fun playing with his girl cousins.

This baby will make kid number 6 for Gehan and Joe. Joe has three sons from his first marriage and Gehan has a son and a daughter from her first marriage. Gehan's daughter is the same age as my daughter - they're both 9, and they get along really well, so that's a big plus. Gehan is a great lady, and I'm happy for her and Joe that they are expecting, and that she's part of my family but I can't help but feel a twinge of sadness, as I was also pregnant recently, but suffered a miscarriage.

I got pregnant in May with my third child, and was due exactly a month after Gehan - she is due January 17th, and I was due February 17th. My husband and I weren't planning on having any more kids, and I had tried to have my tubes tied after my son was born, but I had two surgeries on my colon in the past, and have so much internal scar tissue in my abdominal area, that my doctor couldn't even find my tubes when he cut me open to tie them. During my pregnancy with my son, I bled off and on through the pregnancy, quite heavily during the first few months, but he was still a healthy, full-term baby.

This time I started bleeding about a month into the pregnancy, and had two ultrasounds to try to determine the cause, but everything looked fine. At the second ultrasound at about 11 weeks, I was able to see the baby moving, and its heart beating, and got some ultrasound pictures to take home. I continued to bleed however, and although I'm not normally a very intuitive person, I just kept having a constant nagging feeling that something was wrong with the baby. Every time I would think about buying baby things, or crocheting something for the baby, something would tell me not to, in case something went wrong with the baby. My youngest sister however is very intuitive, has had dreams in the past about things that have come true, including my getting pregnant with a third child. She even accurately predicted the sex of all of my nieces and nephews. While I was pregnant this time, she said she kept forgetting I was pregnant, and kept having a feeling of emptiness, of nothingness about the baby.

At 13 weeks, I went to the doctor for a prenatal visit, and he tried to listen to the baby's heartbeat, but couldn't find it. He said that sometimes the heartbeat can't be heard outside of an ultrasound that early in the pregnancy, and that it was nothing to worry about. Three weeks later, at the end of August, I went in for another prenatal visit, and when the doctor still couldn't find a heartbeat, he sent me for an ultrasound that same day. I went to the ultrasound, and knew something was wrong when I saw my baby on the screen perfectly still, and the line for a heartbeat was flat. Still hoping everything would be OK, I asked the technician if she saw a heartbeat, and she just said she couldn't tell me, and asked when I was supposed to talk to my doctor. I told her I didn't know, that he just said he would call me when he got the ultrasound results, and that I couldn't stand going all weekend (this was a Friday evening) without not knowing if my baby was alive. When she saw me on the verge of tears, she told me the baby was gone, that it appeared the baby had died about 3 weeks earlier.

Needless to say, I was heartbroken, and I had a very long and depressing Labor Day weekend. After several more doctor visits, and an agonizing second ultrasound (because the technician's supervisor had mistakenly wrote that the baby was alive on the report from the first ultrasound), I had a D&C a week later.

My daughter took the news about the baby well, but my son was devastated. He was so looking forward to being a big brother. He hates being the littlest in the family, and bawled when I told him the baby had died. I'm thankful though that I had a lot of support from my husband and family, friends, and from a few kind women at my job that had also gone through miscarriages. The logical part of me knows that it's probably for the best that I lost the baby, because I was feeling overwhelmed by the idea of starting over with a baby, with diapers, and bottles, and sleepless nights, and I worried about the financial aspects of it, but the emotional side of me can't help but feel a bit sad when I see my sister-in-law pregnant, and see other women with babies.

I find crocheting therapeutic though, even when it's making baby stuff. I have a few more baby items I plan to crochet for Gehan if I have the time. Gehan's favorite colors are green and blue, so I bought some Red Heart Baby Teri yarn in a discontinued Lime color, from a seller on EBay, and am going to use it to crochet a baby bunting, hat, and booties for Gehan. I'm going to start on it after I finish up some Christmas presents I'm working on.