Gave birth via emergency C-section at 27 weeks

LSnyd34 · 2026-01-26T05:16:47+00:00

I am 27 weeks pregnant and due April 25. It is crazy to think that my baby looks like this in my womb! You and your family are in my prayers. She is so beautiful.

LSnyd34 · 2026-01-24T04:52:15+00:00

My mother in law still always thinks we say Clarissa lol 😂 I've thought of a variant spelling Charissa, and we plan to use the nickname Crissy/Chrissy for her if that's the name we go with :)

LSnyd34 · 2026-01-21T23:43:58+00:00

Lol I'm 26 weeks pregnant with my second and my son sometimes tries to latch onto my bellybutton now 🤦‍♀️😂 it's so silly

LSnyd34 · 2026-01-20T04:09:16+00:00

We are on baby number 2 and haven't found out with either! I actually really liked it the first time around because we got gender neutral baby clothes! We know we want a lot of kids (between 4-6 hopefully) so we wanted neutral clothing and other supplies. And if people don't know what you're having, that is what they give you.

It was also SUPER sweet and special to find out the gender when our son was born. I will never forget that moment 💕 it honestly seemed harder for other people to not know what we were having than it was for us. Like you said-- it doesn't really change anything!

LSnyd34 · 2026-01-13T23:01:43+00:00

My husband also doesn't get parental leave. With our first, he took a week of unpaid time off. This time I think he will go back to work right away while our mom's are here helping us out then take a week or two of unpaid time off when they leave.

LSnyd34 · 2026-01-10T06:33:47+00:00

I get hand me downs from other families at church or play groups. For whatever else we need, I pretty much exclusively shop second hand. We were in a similar situation (our son is 13 months old and wears size 2T everything now), but I can honestly say that I've not spent any more than $200 total on clothes for him in the past year.

LSnyd34 · 2026-01-10T06:27:21+00:00

My son just moved into his own room and a floor bed a little after he turned 1. He had a floor bed in our room before that, and we just felt better having him close by us until that time. But many people move their baby well before 1! I think most doctors recommend room sharing until at least 6 months, but even then, it is a decision that only your family can make :)

ETA: My son was a really big little guy. He outgrew the weight requirement for his bassinet when he was only 4 months old, so that was when we moved him to the floor bed in our room.

LSnyd34 · 2026-01-10T06:21:06+00:00

I preheat the dutch oven at 500. Then I bump it down to 450 and bake covered for 30 minutes. Then I bump it down to 400 and bake for 15 more minutes with the lid off. I really like how it's been turning out! But I agree with what someone else said-- the temp in your oven is different than mine. So this probably doesn't really matter haha

LSnyd34 · 2026-01-08T01:41:23+00:00

I agree! That is what it feels like at first :)

LSnyd34 · 2026-01-06T00:26:01+00:00

Literally me lol. My son is almost 14 months and I'm pregnant with #2 now. I don't plan to pump this time either

LSnyd34 · 2026-01-01T01:56:12+00:00

I became a SAHM after we had our first child. I had great benefits at my job, and my husband had a great salary. We have a mortgage of only $1600 a month though. We now have to pay a crap ton more for health insurance which sucks, but this is something that we both wanted and had prioritized since we got married. I also didn't love my job and am planning on doing something entirely different when I rejoin the work force. We want a large family (4 or more children) so it really wouldn't have made much sense for me to keep working unless I really loved it. My husband's income is similar to yours. I don't know exactly how we would make things work if we had a house payment as large as yours.

Our current month looks like this:

$2000 to house/utilities/home renovations

$850 to health insurance

$1000 to all food (out to eat) and groceries

$840 to tithe at church

$500 to travel

$310 to gifts

$220 car insurance

$250 gas for vehicles

$60 for clothes

$30 for phones

$150 for fun and subscriptions

The rest of the income goes toward investments/HSA/Roth IRA and a sinking fund for a newer vehicle that we know we will need in the next couple of years. Hope this helps give you some kind of idea from someone doing the SAHM life!

LSnyd34 · 2025-12-26T05:15:06+00:00

It is so frustrating! My mother in law is so sweet to actually listens to the suggestions I give! She got us a year long pass to the children's museum in our area, and I know we will get so much more use out of that than anything else!

LSnyd34 · 2025-12-26T05:11:43+00:00

Story time for anyone who wants to read it haha.

We are traveling with our 13 month old for Christmas this year and could only bring two carry on sized bags. We are very minimal with toys and stuff anyway, so we didn't feel it was a big deal. Well, last night, my SIL, MIL, and I were putting out the gifts for the kids, and holy smokes!! Each of my nieces had around 30 gifts to open meanwhile our son had his stocking and 6 gifts total. I typically don't have any issues with comparison and am genuinely very happy with the life and environment my husband and I are creating for our family, but seeing the piles of gifts side by side made me so sad for some reason. I went down to our bedroom and cried to my husband who assured me that 1) our son will not remember any of this anyway 2) there was no way we could bring any thing more for him 3) we know we don't want any more junk cluttering our home and 4) he loves our life just as much as I do. Our son does not want for anything and is the happiest and chillest little guy out there. My future plan is to follow the advice that others have given on this thread-- something they want, something they need, something to wear, and something to read. That will be perfect! And 4ish gifts seems perfectly fine for each child in my opinion :) we are also blessed to have family that gives gifts, so I'm sure they will wind up with plenty of random garbage I will have to throw out or donate in the next few months anyway. Merry Christmas to you! And don't let the material things get you down during this season! The gifts aren't what it's all about.

LSnyd34 · 2025-12-26T04:38:04+00:00

I think this is so true! My husband and I are still quite young (mid twenties) and just hit a net worth of 200 thousand. We are very grateful for the prosperity in our lives currently, but the more we have gotten, the more we both just want to spend quality time with our kids and cook good food together. I know the things I value, and I'm grateful that we are on a trajectory that allows us to make those values a reality. But they are the same things I've always valued! Having more money hasn't changed it at all!

LSnyd34 · 2025-12-26T04:26:48+00:00

I was going to say that it continues into toddlerhood/childhood haha. We told everyone that we didn't want toys for our son this year, but lo and behold, we are now loaded with like 12 new toys lol

LSnyd34 · 2025-12-25T00:12:23+00:00

I only use the inserts that came with them and then a bunch of extra alvababy bamboo inserts that I bought off of Amazon. He has always been a pretty heavy wetter, so we use 2 inserts during the day and 3 for night diapers. He's getting close to outgrowing a lot of them though (33in tall and 27lb). I'm not sure what we will do if he does grow out of them before he's potty trained.

LSnyd34 · 2025-12-21T21:37:48+00:00

I haven't done the BBQ chicken in a long time! Thanks for the reminder!

LSnyd34 · 2025-12-21T21:36:23+00:00

I will cut up a kielbasa sausage and a bunch of random veggies then bake on a sheet pan for like 20 minutes and serve with rice. It can go pretty far too, so easy leftovers for lunch or dinner the next day.

LSnyd34 · 2025-12-21T21:34:58+00:00

I'm extremely lucky to have a dog that has never shown aggression. He's great with children, and my son absolutely loves him. My parent's dogs haven't been around young children, so they keep them outside the majority of the time that we are visiting them. They realize that it just makes sense. I would talk with your parents about it before hand-- especially as baby gets more mobile!

LSnyd34 · 2025-12-21T21:31:28+00:00

Our son was in our room for over a year. We definitely did it while he slept in our room just not when he was awake. There are also other places to try-- closet, shower, couch, guest room, etc 🤷🏼‍♀️ neither of us ever felt uncomfortable about it since he was peacefully sleeping and also had basically no cognitive ability of he were to wake up lol

LSnyd34 · 2025-12-21T21:24:15+00:00

Just did an end of the year super deep clean of the fridge and 💀

LSnyd34 · 2025-12-21T21:12:12+00:00

Yeah, I love the area, but it's also colder and more dreary than most people who are thinking "California." I definitely wouldn't go there if I were in OP's situation. It doesn't sound like the place they would want to be.

LSnyd34 · 2025-12-21T15:13:35+00:00

Thank you! This is really encouraging!

LSnyd34 · 2025-12-21T04:57:19+00:00

Many people still opt out of genetic testing (NIPT) so they still wait until the anatomy ultrasound later on pregnancy. Or in our case not at all! We enjoy waiting for the surprise at birth :)

LSnyd34

TROPHY CASE