Thrifty Wife Happy Life

What I Wore- Postpartum Style

March 10, 2016 by Katie Haller

Now that I’m starting to feel better, I decided it was time to start sharing some of my outfits that I’ve been wearing while I’m on maternity leave. I have to admit that it’s not always easy to get yourself ready and put together a cute outfit to wear when you are taking care of a newborn. My days are mostly spent at home cuddling with baby Jack, but I have been taking the occasional outing just to get out of the house. Even when I’m just at home, I like to keep myself busy and stay productive. That’s why putting on a cute outfit and getting ready helps me accomplish my goals for the day.

I feel like no one ever talks about what to wear after you have a baby. It’s easy to find cute maternity looks on blogs, but why doesn’t anyone ever talk about postpartum fashion? There is a lot to take into consideration when you are dressing your postpartum body. I knew that I’d probably want to wear comfortable clothes after my baby was born, but I didn’t really give it a whole lot of thought. Basically, my stomach is still pretty mushy, I’m still wearing a belly band to help put my stomach back together, and then there are the challenges of dressing for breastfeeding. I’ve pretty much been wearing leggings with long loose-fitting tops that are easy accesses for nursing. I’ve also worn some maxi dresses that are comfortable and are also easy for nursing. I’ve basically been wearing the same clothes that I wore while I was pregnant. Now they’re nice and lose fitting, perfect for dressing my postpartum body.

Here are some of the outfits that I wore last week.

Top- Nordstrom Rack

Leggings- Forever 21

Jacket- Meijer

Shoes- Target

Dress- Savers

Sweater- Target

Top- Target

Leggings- Forever 21

Sweater- Old Navy

It definitely feels good to be out of my pajamas, but I’m looking forward to the day that I feel completely back to my old self. I’m looking forward to the day that I feel like I can have a normal routine, but for now, I’m just enjoying every moment at home with my little guy.

Making the Most of Your Non-Maternity Clothes

March 6, 2016 by Katie Haller

Since I’m currently on maternity leave and pretty much living in my comfortable clothes, my creativity for putting together cute outfits is on hold right now. That’s why I decided to continue sharing some of my maternity looks.

As you know, I really enjoyed putting together maternity outfits during my pregnancy. In an effort to save money, I decided early on that I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on maternity clothes. Nothing against maternity clothes, but they tend to be more expensive than normal clothes and you can only wear them for a very short time. I was able to wear my normal non-maternity clothes right up until my little guy was born. I really enjoyed the challenge of finding new ways to wear my normal clothes to keep up with my growing baby bump. For me, the key was to find clothes that were stretchy and flowy. Anything that could fit over my big belly.

Here are some of my favorite non-maternity clothes that I was able to wear throughout my entire pregnancy.

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I bought this striped stretchy maxi dress at Target during my first trimester. I knew it would stretch so I’d be able to wear it for a long time. There really is no need to buy an actual “maternity” maxi dress, especially when you can buy a normal dress at a much cheaper price. Plus you’ll still be able to wear it after your baby arrives.

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I bought this tunic tank top at Kohl’s on clearance in the junior department early in my pregnancy. It quickly became one of my favorite tops to wear with my growing baby bump. I liked that it’s long and loose. I wore it a lot with leggings and boots during the winter. It doesn’t have a whole lot of stretch to it, so in my 9th month it was just a little too small, but I did wear it all the time while I still could.

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This loose-fitting tank top from Old Navy was another great top to wear while I was pregnant. I bought it before my baby started to show and I wore it all the way into my 3rd trimester.

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This LC Lauren Conrad blouse from Kohl’s has been a favorite top of mine for a while. I loved that I was able to wear it throughout my pregnancy. Since it’s loose-fitting and flowy, it worked great as a maternity top.

Now that I’m no longer pregnant, I’m happy that I don’t have a bunch of maternity clothes that I can’t wear anymore. Instead, I get to get back to wearing my normal clothes without my bump.

Life with Baby

February 29, 2016 by Katie Haller

I promise that one of these days I will get back to my normal outfit posts and thrifty tips, but as of right now my life is revolving around my new baby. It has been kind of a crazy couple of weeks at home with our little guy. Time feels like it’s flying by, but I also feel like things are standing still.

It’s such a weird feeling when you bring a new baby home. I know that people have told me that the first few weeks with a newborn are hard, but I think I just chose to ignore them. I think the most challenging thing for me has been trying to recover from my c-section while caring for Jack. Luckily, I’ve had a lot of help. I feel better than I did a week ago and I’m starting to feel more and more like myself each day, but I’m not perfect yet.

It definitely feels weird not being pregnant anymore. As much as I hated being pregnant, I miss it, if that makes any sense at all. I hated how uncomfortable I felt and how huge I was, but I miss having my baby with me all the time and feeling him move around. It’s a weird feeling actually holding him in my arms, knowing that he used to be inside me.

Even though having a newborn has some challenges with the lack of sleep, the poopy diapers, breastfeeding and all the other things that come with having a new baby, it’s still one of the most wonderful feelings that I’ve ever had. I’m overwhelmed with happiness when I look at Jack. I can’t believe that I’m his mom and I grew him for 9 months. It’s pretty amazing. I love this newborn stage, but I look forward to watching him grow and getting to know him more every day.

Here are a few pictures of my little angle.

Third Trimester Outfit Reviews

February 24, 2016 by Katie Haller

Today, I would have been posting my weekend wardrobe maternity outfits for my 40th week of pregnancy. Thank goodness I’m not doing that today. Instead, I’m snuggled up with my little baby boy. I’m still recovering from my surgery, but I’m slowly getting better. I highly doubt I will be putting any cute outfits together anytime soon or going shopping for a while. I still need time for my body to heal and I need to get used to having a newborn in my life now. What I can do is to use this time to look back on my maternity style during my last three months of pregnancy and share some of my favorite looks that I wore.

The third trimester was pretty rough, especially as it dragged on into the last 2 months. Finding cute outfits to dress my enormous bump was hard, but I didn’t give up. It’s not easy to have an extra 30 lbs of weight on you and still feel good about yourself, but the more I tried to put myself together, the better I felt. I really didn’t buy too many maternity clothes, so finding clothes that fit me was a pretty big challenge. I mostly stuck to anything that would stretch over my belly, long tank tops worked out great and I still used my belly band a lot for wearing my normal jeans.

Here are some of my favorite outfits that I wore during the last 3 months of pregnancy.

29 weeks

30 weeks

31 weeks

32 weeks

35 weeks

37 weeks

37 weeks

38 weeks

My bump went from big to huge in the last 3 months. Everyone wanted me to know that too. That was one thing that I didn’t like during my last couple months. Everyone had to comment on how big I was. When I was in public by myself, people would often look at me as if I was going to go into labor right in front of them. It got to the point where I only wanted to travel outside of the house with Kevin.

My third trimester baby bump growing.

Over all my third trimester was filled with lots of ups and downs. Like most women, I was extremely uncomfortable throughout my entire last trimester. In the last couple months I could barely sleep at night and work was getting really hard. It’s not easy trying to keep up with my energetic Pre K children all day. However, I do feel like I kept nice and busy during the third trimester, just trying to pass the time. We took a trip home to Michigan for Christmas and Kevin and I spent a lot of quality time together; going out together and organizing the house on our Saturday’s off. The best part of my third trimester was that I got to meet my baby boy 10 days earlier than expected. I was so relieved that I didn’t have to worry about an over due baby. The doctor had wanted to induce me today if the baby hadn’t been born yet. I’m so glad that didn’t happen and he came naturally on his own. Now I have a very healthy little baby boy at home with me. My heart feels full.

My family

Have a wonderful week!

My Birth Story

February 20, 2016 by Katie Haller

When it came to childbirth, I was always pretty relaxed about it. I am not the kind of person to come up with a detailed birth plan with all my wants and wishes. My birth plan was always to get my baby out as safely as possible and if I could make it less painful, then that was good too. I’m so glad I didn’t have a birth plan that I felt I had to stick to because my birth experience was nothing that I could have planned for. I talked with friends who have had kids, I read blogs of birth stories, watched birth stories on YouTube, but nothing could have ever prepared myself for what I experienced. Everything that I thought would happen, didn’t happen. I wasn’t going to share my birth story at first, but after going through with it, I realized every woman has a different story, and maybe mine might help some first-time mom like myself.

The morning of the day that my water broke. I thought I looked huge, little did I know my little guy was wanting out.

Labor

Wednesday, I went through my normal day. I went to work, Kevin and I took my car in to the dealership for a check, we came home and had a normal evening together. I had no signs of pain throughout the day. Then at about 10:00 pm, I woke up to go to the bathroom. I noticed some extra water coming out of me. I thought I was just losing control of my bladder, but it didn’t stop there. I kept feeling leakage. I spent an hour googling “water breaking”. Since I had no contractions, I thought I had plenty of time to get to the hospital. I didn’t want to wake up Kevin yet, so I went back to bed. About 1:30 am I woke up with a pretty strong, but bearable contraction. I decided to time them. Before I knew it, they were less than 5 minutes apart. I got Kevin up and he got ready as I tried to pack a bag for the hospital and clean my kitchen. (It was 10 days before my due date, so I was a little unprepared.) When we got to the hospital, I was in so much pain, it was horrible. I was checked around 4:30 am and I was dilated to 4 cm. There were so many babies being born on that day, that I got the last delivery room on the floor, which was doubling as a hospital storage room. They were able to get me an epidural right away. The epidural was amazing. It helped make the pain go away and I felt relaxed. The nurse checked me right after the epidural kicked in and I was already at 8 cm. She told me I pretty much had dilated all the way to an 8 on my own without the epidural. She also said I would probably be having my baby by lunchtime. I was happy that things were moving along so quickly. I thought that maybe my labor wouldn’t be so bad after all. I was wrong though.

Pushing

Between 8 and 9 am, I was dilated to 10 cm. Instead of pushing right away, they had me in a couple different positions to help bring the baby down. The nurse would leave me in a position for 15 minutes then she would have me push a little, then switch positions. We did this for an hour in a half or so. Then she started having me really push. This was the hardest part by far. The nurse had turned off the epidural, so I could feel the contractions and know when to push. It was so exhausting, frustrating and painful. No matter how hard I pushed, the baby would not come down. The nurse said I was doing a good job pushing, but the baby just wasn’t having it. He was always cradled on my left side and he kept turning his head, making it harder for me to push him out. After a little more than 2 hours of pushing like that with no results, the doctor said we would have to do a c-section. Of course, I didn’t want that. I was determined that I’d just get him out myself, but of course, that didn’t happen. Before I knew it the epidural was turned back on and I was being wheeled into the operating room.

Delivering

I really never thought that I would need a c-section. I had such a healthy pregnancy, I was not prepared for this at all. I was disappointed that I wouldn’t be able to hold my baby or see him when he came out. Kevin was so calm and it comforted me just to watch him. I could tell from his eyes what was happening. Before I knew it I heard the sweetest little cry in the world. Kevin took a bunch of pictures and kept showing them to me. He was so cute. My favorite part was when the nurse brought the baby to my face so I could give him a kiss. He was perfect. The most beautiful baby I had ever seen.

Kevin cutting the cord

The first time I got to meet Jack. It was love at first sight.

Recovery

Unfortunately, I got the worst of both worlds. Pushing followed by a c–section means double the recovery. It’s not fun. This was another thing I didn’t expect. After the surgery, I was taken back into the delivery room while I waited for a recovery room to open up. I got to spend some time skin to skin with Jack and feed him for the first time. Later I went to the recovery room. I was so thirsty, all I wanted was a huge glass of water. The nurses told me that water would make me nauseous, because of the medicine I was given during the surgery. Finally, they let me have some water. I was just so dehydrated after all the pushing, but eventually, I did through up some of it. The nurses at the hospital were all so nice. I have a new respect for everything nurses do in their jobs. Caring for people can’t be easy and they were all so nice, patient and helpful. I had packed a cute going home outfit with my yoga pants and a cute cardigan, thinking I’d be walking out of the hospital with makeup on and my hair done. Yeah right! I quickly learned that wouldn’t be happening. I barely fit in my baggy pajama pants, because I was pumped up with so many fluids, my legs were so swollen. I got to go home 48 hours after birth, but it was scary to leave the hospital. Luckily I had help on the way.

Skin to skin time

Precious baby

Daddy and Jack

I can’t resist baby feet

Over all, my birth story was no walk in the park, but when I’m holding my little baby Jack in my arms, I know it was so worth it. He is the most beautiful baby I’ve ever seen. He’s beyond perfect. Kevin has been an amazing husband and father. He never left my side at the hospital and since Jack came 10 days early, he had to work this week. Thankfully, we had family that was willing to come into town early from Michigan and California, to help us out with the first few weeks. Each day has brought new challenges for us, but we are definitely making our way. Besides, recovering from surgery is much better when you have such a cute little guy to snuggle up with. I’m so grateful for everything.

New Baby!!

February 17, 2016 by Katie Haller

I’m so excited to introduce you to my sweet baby boy! Jack William was born on February 11, 2016, at 2:13 pm. Jack surprised us by arriving 10 days early and weighing in at 7lb 15oz. I’m so glad he decided to show up when he did!

He is absolutely perfect and Kevin and I couldn’t be more in love with our little boy. We’ve been adjusting to having a baby in the house and I’m trying to heal my body up after having an unexpected c-section, but mostly, we are all just enjoying our little bundle of joy.

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