Oh man. The countdown is on, and like every other pregnant lady at this stage in the game – I’m OVER it!

Last night I was lucky enough to have some alone time…probably the last I’ll have in a while.  My husband was off on a river rafting trip somewhere along some Oregon river, and Ellie was having a practice run of a sleepover at her Uncle Colin’s house with her other Uncle Jake. She’ll be staying there when I’m in labor, and I wanted to see how it would go.  It went swimmingly, and the two uncles (with some help from Auntie Suzie) were able to manage the situation just fine – albeit with really sugary cereal and fruit snacks.

I was looking forward to some much needed sleep and hit the hay early. When 2:30 am rolled around, however, my body had decided that it was done sleeping for the night….so I tossed and turned then peed…then tossed and turned and peed again….then went back to tossing and turning and…well, yeah, you get the idea.  I’m more tired tonight than I was last night; I had forgotten about the insomnia thing in late pregnancy.  The good thing is that I was able to make lots of lists of things that still needed to be done…………I didn’t write any of them down, though, and the only one I could remember when I woke up was “gifts for nurses.”

I didn’t know this was a thing until I began obsessively searching for a good “hospital packing list” on Pinterest and discovered that apparently I’m completely out of touch with what the rest of the world does.  I remember when I had Ellie that I sent flowers and a bouquet of those cardboard tasting cookies to the labor and delivery front desk, but according to Pinterest, that’s so not enough…Oh no, you gotta have a party favor for the nurses. I suppose it makes sense; I mean, think about it. They’re attending the party of the year, they should at least be thanked.  “Hey! There’s a party going on between my legs – here’s a little souvenir to take home with ya!”

So today I rounded up some things that I thought the nurses might enjoy and use…and here’s what I came up with…

  Let’s take a closer look…..

Pretzels, Lip Balm, $5 Jamba Juice card, $5 Starbucks Card, Gum (these were split apart packs…and I did just that…split them) and Mentos. Both Jamba Juice and Starbucks are just up the street from the hospital, so I figured it was the safest bet.

I used my favorite method to package them up…..clear plastic bags, scrapbook paper (cut into cool shapes using my oh-so-awesome Silhouette machine which has completely revolutionized my creative life) and………wait for it……….a flat iron. No glue or staples necessary.

Simply fold the paper over the plastic and use a flat iron set to medium heat to seal the packages

I added a little ribbon and a “thank you” tag to finish them off…

Here’s to hoping there won’t be more than 8 nurses over the course of the time that we’re there!

Have any of you ever done anything like this when you’ve pumped out a baby?