Evelyn Emma's Arrival!

It has been way too long since I last wrote on here, but better late than never! Since my last post, we moved to Burlington, KY and delivered our baby girl, Evelyn Emma.

I promise I will take some pictures of the house sometime to put up, but it's really not ready yet! We closed on the house April 15 and our stuff arrived April 21. We had about 5 weeks to make friends and see some of the sights before Evie arrived.

Evie was born Sunday, May 22 at 10:46 am. She weighed 7 lbs 8 oz and was 20 inches long. She had and still has a head full of spikey, dark hair with what looks like lighter highlights. Her delivery story isn't as funny as Jared's, but is still amusing in its own way. I woke up at 5 in the morning from a dream where I was in labor and realized a couple minutes later that I was having contractions. I decided to shower and pack while I timed them for an hour and let Isaac sleep. One hour later, I woke Isaac and showed him the list where I had been recording the times for my contractions and he immediately sprang out of bed and started racing around like a mad man! My contractions had been 3 to 7 minutes apart for that hour. I told him to calm down, because they still didn't really hurt yet. That was exactly why I didn't wake him up at the beginning, though!

We left Jared with some friends from church and were on our way to the hospital by about 6:30. There were virtually no other cars on the road at that time, yet we still got stopped at like 12 of the 15 stoplights on the way to the hospital! I was fine, until I would get a contraction, and then I would ask Isaac to just run them.. we had a good excuse if we got pulled over! haha! He didn't, though. Once we got to the hospital, they took FOREVER to get me admitted, even though I had pre-registered as soon as we had moved into the area. They finally got around to checking me at about 7:30 and I was 4 cm dilated. No big deal, except that I kept telling them that I had my son in about 5 hours, so I go quick. Apparently they didn't believe me. I finally got a room around 8, at which point I was crying with my contractions because they were really starting to hurt. I asked for an epidural and they said I had to get this big bag of IV fluid in me first.. so I finally got my epidural close to 9!

I was able to relax for about an hour before I really started feeling the urge to push. I called in the nurse, she checked me and said that I was definitely ready, she then has me try to push with my next contraction to see how things go. She then calls the doctor to come and stops coaching me to push, so Isaac had to help me during each contraction. I was so confused, though, because the nurse wasn't paying me any attention, so I don't think I was really doing all that I could or should have been. When the doctor finally gets there was when I really started pushing, which was sometime around 10:20. After a couple of pushes, though, I actually started feeling it! My epidural was wearing off!! The doctor told me to stop pushing and they would top me off with more drugs, but I couldn't! It hurt more to not push at that point! So, I pushed through it. I don't think it was quite the same as natural, but I bet I got pretty close this time! I remember picturing the scene of Padme giving birth in Star Wars Episode 3 every time I had to push. I have definitely been married to Isaac for a long time if images of Star Wars pop into my head at a time like that! haha!

For all the pain I went through in this labor, though, I was rewarded immediately by getting to actually hold my baby!! I couldn't stop crying! I was so happy! Even though I could feel every stitch as the doctor had to sew me up.. I got to hold my beautiful, baby girl!!

Our parents all came to meet her a few hours later and brought Jared along, too. He completely melted my heart, because as soon as he walked into the room, he said Mommy and ran to my bed! He didn't hardly notice the baby at all. We got a picture of him "holding" her, but he tried to push her away as soon as we got one picture taken.

Well, that's my labor and delivery story. It was at the St. Elizabeth hospital in Florence, KY, which is an older hospital, so not at all like my experience at the new Clarian hospital with Jared. It was an interesting experience, but I was not surprised to hear from someone that the labor and delivery will be shut down later this year. I guess our next one (a LONG time from now!) will get to be at the nicer hospital! Yay! :-)