Since becoming a mom I have loved making the boys their own special birthday cakes and enjoy decorating them. I’m by no means a professional or have any kind of training – but I have learned a few things along the way as the evolution of photos at the end of this post shows! I thought I would share some of the simple tips that have made a big difference in my cake game, from amateur mom baker to another.
Make it easy on yourself – I don’t make the entire cake from scratch… I’m all about jazzing up a box cake mix (using milk instead of water, butter instead of oil). If you want to try to do a fun decoration don’t feel like you have to DO IT ALL. Make things easier where you can!
Invest in a cake kit. The first few years I didn’t spend the $17 for a cake kit and I kinda wish I had. A turntable, a scraper and a couple decent spatulas can really make a big difference. This is the one I bought this year. They sell ones with dozens of more pieces but I opted for something simple.
Freeze your rounds – this was a tip I discovered last year. Freezing or chilling your cake rounds makes frosting SO much easier!! There’s none of that crumbling you normally experience and it doesn’t take away from the taste or texture. Just make sure to wrap them in plastic wrap tightly if you plan on chilling or freezing for longer than 30 min.
Start small and pick a design or style that you’re excited about – I get most of my ideas off pinterest & I try to pick cakes that feel doable. Over the years I have slowly expanded what I felt like was “doable” 3 years ago I would have never even tried this Cars cake. The idea of doing a fondant checkerboard bottom alone would have been too much. Even this year, I was fully prepared to scrap that detail if it wasn’t working out!
Stop by your local bakery! – did you know most grocery stores will sell you their cake frosting?? This year I went to Safeway and bought a bunch of white frosting directly from the bakery & then dyed it red! I’ll definitely be doing this going forward. Again, make things easier where you can! Maybe someday I’ll have time to perfect my own cake frosting but for now this is a short cut I’ll be taking!
BONUS: Have fun with it! Even if your cake flops it won’t be the end of the world. I have store-bought cupcakes as a back up & I focus on the fun aspect! Also don’t underestimate the power of crumbled graham cracker or Oreo cookie as a way to add texture and make the cake look more detailed!
Cars cake for Will’s 4th Birthday (2022)Dino Cake for Will’s 3rd birthday (2021)2021 “Wild One” for J’s 1st Birthday“Two the Moon” Will’s 2nd Birthday (2020)Smash cake for Will’s 1st Birthday… to show we all start somewhere!
On Sunday we celebrated William’s 2nd birthday in quarantine style. Since we couldn’t celebrate in person with all our family & friends we tried to still make it feel very much like a birthday party! I stuck with my original theme Two The Moon theme. William helped bake his cake the night before, he was so into it. I’ve fallen in love with King Arthur Flour Co! I used their gluten free, soy free chocolate cake mix, it was delicious. And then I attempted my first balloon arch, it was kind of a pain to hang it up on the wall but overall it was fairly easy & I think it turned out SUPER cute! We had a zoom family call in the morning where Will got to open his presents & everyone sang & we ate cake! We got Will a scooter, our upstairs neighbor’s daughter has one & he has been eyeing it for months – he got a chance to ride it over Easter & took to it right away so it was a no brainer. I don’t know if it’s the fact that there’s a pandemic happening, or the fact that I’m very pregnant but this birthday felt so emotional compared to turning one! Do other mamas feel this way??
Here’s the link to the scooter we got William – I’m impressed with the quality.
A few weeks ago we went to Scottsdale to celebrate my 30th birthday. It was such a fun long weekend. My best friend & my parents joined us & it was so low key & relaxing. We stayed at the Scottsdale Mccormick Ranch which has an awesome pool, that you can walk into. Will LOVED it. He was so brave and would just walk right in, which had us realizing he needs swim lessons ASAP because he has no concept of what to do when he gets too deep (literally). We also went and saw a Giants preseason game, which is always fun. All in all it was a great weekend with great food & even better company & it definitely felt like a special way to ring in 30. (which I still can’t believe I am!)
I can’t believe it’s been a whole year since I gave birth to my son. Parts of my birth experience still feel so incredibly fresh in my mind.
I was 40 weeks & 3 days when I went in for my non stress test. The two weeks leading up, I was trying my best to induce labor, walking flights of stairs, eating spicy foods, getting acupuncture 3x a week. After one of my accupuncture appointments I walked a mile to an apothecary store in the Mission in SF to get a special tincture that was supposed to induce labor. I tried it all. So when the nurse told us my amniotic fluid was 25% lower than what they expected I realized this was the start of my birth story. Right after our NST we went to my OB’s, I already had an appointment scheduled & we were supposed to be picking a back up induction day. “Good news, I have your induction day, today!” that was what my doctor told us. We were scheduled for 4pm, she encouraged us to go out to a nice lunch & then head back to the hospital. I went in for one last accupuncture appointment in hopes to make my induction as smooth as possible, then we went out for brunch. We ended up being an hour late to our induction, it was so hard to leave our apartment. It was such a surreal feeling of knowing we were leaving & we would come back & our house would never be the same.
We checked into L&D, I was having contractions but they weren’t regular. They gave my misoprostol & I went to bed. Ironically my nightshift nurse was someone I went to nursing school with. (what are the chances!?!) I got started on pitocin that night & I was able to sleep a little bit. Early in the morning my nurse told it me looked like baby wasn’t tolerating the pitocin the way they hoped so they were shutting it off. I remember feeling so defeated. We thought, well our doctor is going to come in & tell us we’ll be having a c-section.
My dayshift nurse the following day was an older woman who was such a badass, you could tell she was a nurse who had seen it all. She was so reassuring that we still didn’t know exactly what my doctors plan was but that there were lots of options & sure enough my doctor wanted to try a balloon that would help get me to 5cm. (I was only at 1cm at this point). So mid morning they put the balloon in. A few hours later it was definitely working, I was starting to really feel my contractions. I had gotten up to to pee, but I couldn’t & was coming back to bed & chris was helping reconnect me to the TOCO monitor & we couldn’t seem to get the monitor on. My nurse came in and baby’s heart rate was low. First she thought the monitor was possibly just picking up my heart beat, she had me lay on my left side, still low. At this point the charge nurse came into the room, I can still hear the TOCO slowing, 90, 80, 70. More nurses coming into the room. As a nurse myself I knew this wasn’t good, even though I was terrifed, I knew I was safe with Margret, she kept reassuring me they were going to take care of us. She had me get on my hands & knees, (the best way to get pressure off the baby, especially if the umbilical cord is being compressed) while they were calling my doctor & preparing for a crash c-section. Within a few seconds of being on my hands & knees baby started responding really well & the heartbeat recovered. Crash C-section avoided. My doctor came by later to check on me, she was reassured that baby recovered quickly.
The afternoon came & my nurses changed. This time I had a nurse who was precepting a new hire. Right off the bat I felt a little uneasy with my new nurses. About an hour into their shift I called them in because I was having a lot of trouble trying to pee with the balloon in. I didn’t realize how long had passed, but it had been about 9 hours since I was last able to pee & I felt like a lot of my pain was being caused by my bladder rather than my contractions. I had noticed every time I came back from the bathroom that the baby’s heart rate would dip. So I told my nurses I was certain I needed to have a catheter. My nurse told me I would have to lay flat in order for them to do this, I told my nurse that previously the baby’s heart rate hadn’t tolerated when I laid flat. She was insistent we do it that way, & as soon as they started baby’s heart rate plummeted. The reassurance I felt with Margaret, my previous nurse, was non existent with these two. They began yelling at each other, telling me baby was not doing well. I had to tell them I needed to get on my hands & knees. At this point the same thing happened with nurses flooding the room, they had already called for a crash c-section. & had called my doctor. Baby once again recovered while I was on my hands & knees. I told my nurses I needed them to catheterize me, I was fine in the position i was in, baby was fine so I wanted them to just do it. I was told “that’s really not ideal”. If you’re a nurse you know that there’s more than one position to put a catheter in a woman. The fact these nurses refused was mindblowing to me. The on call doctor came in, responding to the code they had called. I told her i needed the balloon OUT! She took it out, I walked to the bathroom & literally peed over 2 Liters!!!! I was immediately pain free. The doctor checked me & told me I was at a 0. This was a little baffling to me because the balloon had been in for nine hours & I was at a 1 when it was inserted. You don’t go backward. The on call doctor began talking about next steps. I informed her I wanted to wait until my doctor arrived before doing anything else.
4.5cm. That’s what my doctor said I was at when she came & checked herself. We chatted for a little bit about our plan. Although she wasn’t happy with how the baby was behaving as long as baby recovers she was comfortable with continuing on trying to have a vaginal birth. I voiced my concerns that I wasn’t being heard by nurses & was having to advocate for myself far more than a women going through labor should have to. If I hadn’t recognized that I desperately need to empty my bladder to take the pressure off my baby & relieve his distress I would have ended in a crash c-section. My doctor completely validated my concerns about my current nurses & asked the charge nurse for an assignment change. My advice to any patient is to advocate for yourself, if you feel like your concerns are not being heard or you just feel like something is wrong, SPEAK UP. We know our bodies better than anyone else!!
The plan going forward was to restart pitocin & then they put in a catheter that would go into my uterus and give fluid constantly to try to cushion the baby since my amniotic fluid was so low and this way they’d be able to more closely monitor my contractions. This took place around lunch time or so. I labored unmedicated the following 14 hours or so. I think I said maybe three sentences in those 14 hours. I had hastily downloaded a nature relaxation album on spotify that they play at my acupuncturist. Well we listened to that for 15 hours… ten tracks of Tibetan flutes all about 90 seconds long, meaning we listened to the album literally hundreds of times.
Finally after being in transition for about two hours I couldn’t take the unbearable pain & finally asked for an epidural. It was a godsend. They placed the epidural & my nurse said she’d let me rest and come back in to place my catheter. When she came back I had gone from 6cm to 9.5 in an hour. She got us all set up to start pushing, we did one push & baby totally crumped. Next thing I knew the charge nurse was in the room saying there would be no more pushing until my doctor arrived. So we waited for about 30 minutes for my doctor to get to the hospital. When she arrived she went through the possible outcomes that if the baby was not tolerating the pushing or if the pushing was effective there was still a chance I could end up in a c-section, or that they would need to use a vacuum to help assist. After four rounds of intense pushing our son William Hayes Dorsey entered the world at 6:34am. The umbilical cord had been wrapped tightly around his neck, that paired with my extremely low amniotic fluid was causing his distress throughout labor. The NICU was standing by & William did end up needing some initial stimulation to get him to take his first breath. But as anyone who’s gone through labor can tell you, hearing that first cry is unlike anything else in this world.
Birth is just amazing. It’s this terrifying, amazing, miraculous right of passage. And no two births are the same. I love that every experience is so unique & can be vastly different even with the same mom! My birth, although incredibly different than my ideal birth plan, is something I’m incredibly proud of. So no matter if you birthed your babe with an epidural, in a tub, via c-section, with 10 people in the room, with Tibetan Flutes in the background, I hope you feel immense pride about your journey.
Happy Mother’s Day – to all the mama’s out there, the real life superheros who work the toughest job in town.
At 40weeks & 3 days I was induced after a non stress test showed low amniotic fluid levels. After enduring 36 hours of labor our sweet boy, William Hayes Dorsey, made his debut last Friday 4/27 at 6:34am. We are so in love with our little guy. He was under stress throughout my labor & spent the last week in the NICU, but I am thrilled to report as of Friday we are home with a happy healthy boy!
This past weekend we celebrated Chris’ 31st birthday in Carmel, if this sounds familiar it is, last year for Chris’ 30th we splurged and stayed at Carmel Valley Ranch, which was wonderful but this year we decided we wanted to spend more time in Carmel proper. This seaside town is so quaint, filled with little cobblestone alley ways, italian eateries & wine pours as far as the eye can see. There are no street numbers in Carmel, so all the places just say what street they’re on and which streets they’re in between. We stayed at The Hideaway which is located right in the heart of Carmel. Everything, including the beach was walking distance. One of the best parts about Carmel is how dog friendly it is! We brought Juno along on this trip & it was a blast. She has so much fun roaming around new places & on Saturday she swam in the ocean for almost two hours. So many restaurants let you bring your dog and have them lay on the ground next to you & you can find dog friendly shops, and even wine tasting rooms. We got to Carmel on Friday afternoon & just enjoyed walking around and exploring. Our hotel offered a complimentary happy hour with wine & light snacks. So we sat in the courtyard and just enjoyed the fire pit & some free wine (score!). Saturday morning we got up early and headed to the beach. Carmel Beach is one of the few truly dog friendly beaches that allows you to have your dog off leash. So needless to say Juno was in HEAVEN, as I’m sure you can tell by the photos. After the beach we made it our mission to end up back in the same serene courtyard we found the first time we visited. Sure enough we were able to locate it & we sat outside enjoying the awesome weather. Next up we took a quick nap & then headed back to the complimentary happy hour. Finally we ended our evening with a super romantic dinner at Casanova. We ate at this place last year, but unfortunately I was ill at dinner & really couldn’t enjoy my food, however I am pleased to report that it completely lived up to the hype and might be my favorite restaurant in carmel!! Anyways hope everyone had an awesome weekend, I know I’m already dreaming of being back at this little seaside escape.
East Bay Mama 
