Tabitha the Tapir and Me - With Love, Kristina

It’s my last little collaborative post with Erstwilder, although you’ll definitely be seeing me sport these brooches a lot this summer. To end this three-post series, I’m styling the cutest little Tapir named Tabitha. With her delicate pink bow and pearls, and a touch of rainbow in her white belly, Tabitha is sweet and girly and exactly the kind of piece I love adding to an ultra-feminine outfit.

One of my favorite things about Tabitha is that her body, which appears white at first glance, actually shimmers with little rainbow reflections in the sunlight. I tried capturing that in photographs but it’s really just something you have to see in person! This subtle iridescent effect adds such a pretty and unexpected touch to her design! Plus, all of her cute little nails are painted like a proper little lady. I cannot get over how darling she is in person. But then, I’ve never gotten anything less than absolutely wonderful from Erstwilder so I’m not surprised that Tabitha has so many subtle nuances, just like every other piece in their collections!

In my pregnant state of mind I meant to have this and the last post go live last week, but through a blogging error and my not remembering to check to ensure my scheduled posts were going live, both are late. Ah! And now all of the things I wrote seem a bit out of touch with how everything is going these days!

In my last baby update, I mentioned that we had an ECV and that we were hoping the baby was going to stay head down. And that, if it didn’t, we’d have to be induced.

Well, thankfully this baby has stayed head down ever since, and we are now in the long waiting game of seeing whether this will be an earlier baby than my other two, or whether he/she will follow suit and come very, very late. I see my midwife weekly now, so that she can check the baby’s head down status and also my body’s readiness for birth, and it’s always reassuring to see that little body in the ultrasound staying head down where it should be! Even though I’ve become attuned to what is the head and what is the bottom, it’s still nice to have what I can feel confirmed visually.

Though I was fully prepared to wait for this one, somehow this waiting game has been a little harder than the last two. Perhaps because we thought for a week or so that we’d be having an early baby, perhaps because we don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl, perhaps because I’ve been able to do a lot less at the end of this pregnancy than I could with my others. Whatever the case, this last week is dragging on, and I’m happy to have any sort of distraction to make each day pass.

It’s funny how even after three pregnancies and two labors, I’m still not quite sure how this labor and delivery will go. Asa and Evie came so differently and yet so similarly that I both have some ideas of how things will likely go (by 2cm my water can be broken and then 1.5 hours of labor in a tub gets me to 10cm), and yet there are things I’m NOT sure about (Asa came after three days of constant prodromal labor and I have no idea where or if real labor ever started, Evie was naturally encouraged to come via sweeping of the membranes and labor didn’t feel “real” until my water was broken). Will labor come naturally this time? Will my water break on its own (it never has)? Or will this baby need a little encouragement just like my other two?

Whatever the case, I am looking forward to experiencing the journey of this new baby, labor, finding out what he or she looks like, and what his or her name will be! As I sit here writing I am being bombarded by strong kicks and pushes that I know I will miss, and the anticipation grows moment by moment to meet this little human.

As a side note, if you aren’t subscribed to my YouTube channel and didn’t catch it, I made a spontaneous lookbook featuring all of the Erstwilder brooches I got to choose, and I have to say… it’s one of my favorite things ever! Thank you, Erstwilder, for letting me style these beauties and for your patience as I fumbled through the last week unaware my posts weren’t going live!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNL5_8qJ9oo