Home at Last!

Well we're officially home, thank heavens! I'm so glad the whole ordeal is over and that we were able to take our precious son home happy and healthy. That was not the experience we were expecting to have, but are so glad that everything turned out ok.
I'll start where I left off last time, Taegen was on respiratory machine to send air into his lungs at a more forceful speed than he could breathe in. This air helped open up his lungs the rest of the way. He was on this until wednesday. Once he was able to breathe enough on his own to keep his lungs open, we were able to hold him any time we wanted. This was such a relief. Not being able to hold him was pretty rough. Luckily that was only for a short period of time. I was also able to start breastfeeding once he was off the respirator. This has proved to be a little more difficult than I thought it was going to be. But we're stickin with it and I know he'll catch on. Since I was now able to breastfeed, anytime he woke up they called us (if we weren't already there) to have us come down to feed him. and since the NICU checks the infants every 3 hours night and day, my sleep is offically gone :)
Thursday morning during one of the feedings, our nurse came in with a pair of the bilirubin lights and said he now had to be on the machine until his levels went down. Well this was really shocking to us because we thought we had opted out of that test. We wanted as little poking and proding done to our little guy as possible. We researched our options and had decided to opt out of this test. They talked to us about it, and told them we would talk about it and let them know if we decided to change our minds. Well, we never gave them permission to do the testing and the next morning they came back and said his levels were a little high. Needless to say we were not happy that they disregarded our feelings and did the test without our consent. Anyways, so all day thursday we had to lay on this bed with the blue lights shining with a wrap around his head and eyes so the lights wouldn't do permanant damage to his eyes. It broke my heart to see him with the bandage around his head. Feedings were the only time we were allowed to take him off and only for about 30 mins at a time. When we were done, I always made Jon or the nurse put the wrap back on his head, I just didn't have the heart to do it myself. Friday morning the doc came in and said his levels were low enough that he could be taken off the lights....YEAH! It was so nice to be able to hold my baby again for how ever long I wanted. (I think he was held the majority of the day by either me or Jon :) )
Now the only thing keeping them from releasing Taegen was his urine output. They had him on an iv to make sure he wouldn't get dehydrated. He had to be weaned from the iv onto just breastmilk and he had to have enough wet diapers to prove that he was getting enough food. By thursday night his output was at 1.9 (the required level is between 2 and 3) so we were hoping that they would just let us leave. I mean .1 didn't seem like a big enough deal to keep us there. At rounds with the docs friday morning they told us to get a few more breastfeedings and wet diapers then we would be released. We were so excited to hear this. Our deadline was 5:00. At 2:00 they checked his output and it was down to 1.6 we were so discouraged. We thought for sure they'd make us stay another night. We did everything we could to get the little guy to eat a whole bunch then hopefully he'd have a good diaper that would raise his numbers. That didn't work. When we went to change his diaper a while later...NOTHING! We were getting so frustrated. The nurse came in and told us she'd talk to the doc and to not get discouraged. She came back a while later and said the doc said we could be released anyway! FINALLY 3 days of being in the NICU is not fun. I don't think I've washed my hands that many times in my whole life.
We are now home (well at my inlaws since they're out of town, so we don't have to drive home and be super far away just in case we need some help) and it's going great. He's doing really good and it's so nice to be able to hold him without all the wires.
We're loving being parents. Jon is completely amazing! He's so good and patient with Taegen (although when it comes to him catching onto breastfeeding I'm a little more patient, which is funny cuz I'm normally the impatient one) He's been so helpful and involved. He's actually done almost all of the diaper changes, and my choice! I think I've only changed two so far. How lucky am I?! He came with me to all the middle of the night feedings even though all he could really do was sit there. He's always wanting to be right there with him. It's so cute. I love the boys in my life!!!

Taegen with all the tubes and wires :(

Jon and Taegen doing skin to skin

My boys taking a nap together, so cute!!

Taegen Wesley Evertsen

He's finally here! He was born Tuesday April 13 at 12:56pm. Weighing in at 8 lbs 2 ounces 21 inches long. Labor was LONG! around 48 hours total with really bad back labor.
Our original plan was to have a home birth. My consistent contractions started at 1am on monday, my midwife checked me at about 2 pm and I was only at 2 cm, 75% effaced. 4 hours later I was 3 cm, almost 100% effaced, and 4 hours after that...yup you guessed it, 4 cm 100% effaced. By around 5 am I was barely at a 5. (mind you this is after 31hours of labor) Since I wasn't dilating and he wasn't dropping we then decided to go to the hospital. I was really disappointed that I didn't get my home birth (but maybe next time) but it was good that we ended up going to the hospital. Once we got admitted they gave me some pitocin to help my labor get moving which then led to me getting an epidural. 4 hours later Taegen was born after less than 1/2 an hour of pushing.
When my water broke Janae noticed there was meconium in the fluid, which was another reason we decided to go to the hospital. When he was born he had a lot of meconium and amniotic fluild in his nose and throat, he was really floppy with slow reflexes and was having trouble breathing properly which caused him to be really gray instead of pink. We told everybody we wanted immediate skin to skin contact, to breastfeed asap and for the cord to stop pulsating before the clamped and cut it. Well since he was having these difficulties none of these things happened. They gave him to me for a few seconds before they wisked him off. They worked on him in our room for 30-40 minutes. Then NICU nurses then came up and helped out and decided that he needed to be taken downstairs to the NICU "waiting room" (I dont really know what it is called so thats been my name for it). Its a place where they give babies 6 hours without officially being admitted into the NICU to improve their conditions. We were told his lungs weren't opening up all the way and he couldn't keep them open. We then were told we had to wait until 7 o clock for any definate answers. In between that time I got to go down to see him and they let me hold him for a few minutes. Jon got to hold him a little later for a short period too.
At 7 we were informed that he was doing better but not enough to be able to come up with us and that he was going to have to be admitted to the NICU! In the chest X-Ray they did they saw a small tear in his right lung that had leaked out some air. This they said should heal on its own (if it hasn't already) since its so small. It also showed he has hazy lungs. They don;t think its eunomonia since he's not showing any other signs but will have to monitor him closely. They think it's either underdeveloped lungs or he has some sort of infection since his white blood count is really high. he also has some weak white blood cells. Luckily it doesn't look like he has too many of those. They have to have him on a respiratory to help expand his lungs. When they take him off of it, he does OK, but not as good as he needs to be. After a minute he starts grunting and showing signs of labored breathing. He needs to be able to be off the respirator or atleast on a lower dosage before they'll let him start breastfeeding. I will be able to pump and keep them in the fridge for him when he is able to start tho. He also has a tube down his throat to help release some of the air that is being pushed into his stomach from the respirator.
This has all been a pretty traumatic experience. It all seems a little surreal. Almost like it's not my baby and he's a nephew of mine or something. I'm sure this feeling will pass when we get to hold him a little more. They are saying as of now to plan on about 5-7 days of him being here. He could be out as early has two, this would be in the case of a miracle baby though. It all just depends on little Taegen and how long he wants to take. We just love him though and can't wait to be able to take him home.

Jon holding his son for the first time. Taegen with some tubs. This is one of the times they took him off the respirator.

Taegen in his incubator :(

Change

This past weekend we took a trip up north to see baby Tatum. He is doing really well. Visit his blog for better updates http://tatumsangels.blogspot.com/ I didn't get any pictures of him but he is so precious. Even though this whole experience does make me a little nervous, it makes me even more excited for my little boy to get here. I know life will dramatically change and that scares me a little. (For those of you that know me, know that I'm not a huge fan of change). But I think this is a change I can handle and am excited to experience. Especially since I'm completely done being pregnant! :) Too bad I still have about 3 weeks left huh?! haha. Oh well, he'll come when he's ready.

Here's me at 39 weeks.

This weekend was all about family. A great way to spend the Easter holiday. Jon even made fudge with grandma and grandpa Sheriff.

He has the biggest sweet tooth, especially when it comes to grandmas fudge!

Conference was great, as always. I will admit though that there were a few talks that I had a hard time with. One being on Saturday from M. Russell Ballard on mother daughter relationships. Oh how that made me miss my mother. Especially when I'm about to have my first baby. The thought of not having my mother here with me brings me to tears everytime I think about it. So that talk was really hard on me. Then the next was from Sunday morning session. I don't remember who it was but the first half of the talk was about mothers and/or babies passing away during or shortly after labor....SCARY! Not exactly what I'd like to be thinking about right now. But all in all... it was a great conference.

Tatum's Angels

My sister-in-law Zeffie had her adorable baby boy, Tatum on Friday. He was born with some serious health problems.Tatum was lifelighted up to Primary Childrens shortly after he was born with Brandon, his dad. Zeffie got to join them up there the next day.  I'm not the greatest at explaining his conditions so you can go to the blog they have set up to keep friends and family informed, by either clicking on the button on the left of my blog or just click here. 
I don't know the medical terminology for his conditions yet, but I know he's currently in surgery to fix his esophagus so he can eat and keep things down. He also has a heart condition that hopefully they'll be able to fix. They won't know too many details on this until after the surgery today. If all goes well he should be having his first surgery for his heart later this week.
Family is doing good and trying to keep their spirits high. Any prayers on their behalf would be greatly appreciated.
We will be having a benefit garage sale to help the family with the financial costs along with a few other ways for anyone to donate and help them out. I'll make sure to post the information when we have more details. There is also a facebook page for Tatum. I'm not to familiar with facebook but it's called Tatum's Angels. This should be updated daily as well as the blog so either location should keep you well informed.

Induction into parenthood complete

This past weekend we stayed at Brandon and Zeffie's house after they had their new baby (post coming soon about baby Tatum) to watch their 3 other kids.
- Fun play time...check
- Refusal to go to bed...check
- Peace and quite once they did finally go to bed...check
- crying baby missing her mom in the middle of the night...check
- toddler throwing up over everything...check
- screaming baby and toddler all night...check
- husband who couldn't go anywhere near the throw up or its smell...check
- sleeping on the floor (9 months pregnant)so the sick child wouldn't wake up crying...check
- max 3 hours of sleep...check

And last but not least, the relief when JoLee got there in the morning to relieve us of our duties (since by this time I was now feeling sick myself). I know this part isn't a normal part of parenthood, but starting out with 3 kids is def a handful. I'm glad we're only having one and can ease our way into more kids.

Even through it all, we still can't wait to meet our little guy. :)

Pregnancy Update

- I'm 36 weeks (picture in post below).

- I think we're pretty close to having everything we need (thank for all the gifts from the baby showers). I just need to make the bumper, buy the crib sheet, and get a few more blankets.

- I'm finally, kind of getting into the nesting faze. It's taken me quite a while but I'm getting there :)

- My hands are still numb and tingeling all the time. I can't wait till I get the feeling back in the tips of my fingers. It's amazing how many things are hard to do when you can't feel very well.

- I'm officially down to weekly appointments with the midwife. Hopefully my iron levels will go up each week. Any suggestions for raising Iron levels other than eating leafy greens? I'm trying to do that, but it's harder than it looks. And I've heard taking an Iron supplement will make me sick, so i prefer not to do that.

- Its getting so close that it's starting to get scary. We went shopping for our remaining items the other day and it really freaked Jon out. It's starting to become more of a reality.

- Of course I get asked a bunch of times a day how much longer I have and when I tell people 4-6 weeks (since my family has a history of going about 2 weeks late on their firsts) They don't seem to believe me. They all say "Oh I'm sure you'll only go about 4 more weeks" haha if only that were true. We're still planning for the end of April sometime, hopefully atleast before May! :)

- We only have 1 more Bradley class. Wow these past few months have gone by so fast I almost can't believe it.

- The past few days Jon hasn't been feeling very well. His back, hips, knees etc have been really hurting him. So he came up to me and said "Man, I feel like an old man" and my response was "Well, I feel like a whale" and he says... "Yeah but I don't look like an old man" Me: "So you're saying that I actually look like a whale?! HUMPH You're totally calling me fat aren't you (in a joking voice)?" typical man. Not thinking before he speaks, haha. It's only funny cuz it's true. He doesn't look like an old man but I'm looking more and more like a whale.

- I'm not really having too big of a problem with him being up in my rib cage or making it hard for me to breathe (knock on wood). I'm guessing its cuz I have a long torso, so even though I'm carrying high, he still has plenty of room and is staying away from my lungs/ribs. Thank you son!

- I'm totally craving watermelon. I finally caved and made Jon buy me one of the small ones even though they aren't in season. It was so yummy! I can't wait for actual watermelon season to hit. Although eating watermelon hasn't helped my constant need to go to the bathroom.

- I'm still sleeping pretty good. (well as good as can be expected) I only wake up 1-2 times a night to go to the bathroom. I do wake up and need to change positions ALL THE TIME, but I can easily fall back asleep so it's not too bad...yet.

- I'm getting really excited for this little man to get here! Just yesterday Jon put together the strolller and car set combo (mainly cuz I couldn't stand for it to just sit in the box any longer. Oh did I mention that we got it on saturday, so it had only been in the box for less than 24 hours. haha) and pushed it around the house saying "Oh it's just me and my son walking around" It was so cute! He's going to be such a great dad!!

Baby Showers

First off, I want to thank everyone who came to either one of my baby showers. I really appreciate it. Also thank you Natalie H, Becky, Stephanie and Kristel for throwing them. They were both great!
These are in opposite order. It was taking to long to switch them around. So my first shower is at the end of the post.

The 2nd shower was this past weekend. This one was for my family mingled with a few friends. This one wasn't a traditional baby shower. It was a chocolate tasting. We are doing a John Deere themed nursey so my sisters decided to tie that into the shower as well. Everything turned out so cute. Here's so pictures of how creative my sisters are. I never would have thought to do anything like this.

Oh and heres me at 36 weeks.

My cute Nephew Hudsen playing with one of the balloons

Olivia :)

John Deere colors - Lemons and Limes for the water
Andrea, Natalie, Julie w/ Hudsen (my bro in laws mom and also my dads girlfriend :) ) my grandma W, Kimi and Me

Delecta, Zeffie (who is about a week ahead of me) mil JaRene with avaree and Kristel

Chocolate covered potatoe chips, apples and oranges

Chocolate donuts with tire tracks

Chocolate covered strawberries some stuffed with cream cheese. yum yum

The only thing I haven't mentioned yes is the chocolate covered jalapenos... yeah there wasn't too many people who tried those. I know I didn't!

The center pieces. Everyone also had to drink out of bottles. So cute

My first one was thrown by my good friend Natalie and her mom Becky. This one was intended to be for my friends. There wasn't too many people that showed up, but thanks for all the work you guys put into making it a great shower :) I was always under the impression that if you went to someones bridal/baby shower they were more likely to show up to your bridal/baby shower. I dunno, maybe it has always just been me that thought that way...but apparently I have been wrong all these years. I think I'm done going to showers unless they are for family members or select few friends. Heres some pics. I was 34 almost 35 weeks along. (8 months)

A few of the people that came
Katie, Alison and Natalie N(who just had her baby girl a month or so before who is totally adorable.) These girls are coworkers of mine, or in Natalie's case ex coworker but I love her the same :) Oh and this is not the same Natalie that threw the party.

The cutest cupcakes that Becky made.

Finally...

FYI... Forthcoming info may be a little too personal for some

My belly is FINALLY bigger than my boobs! haha Well actually it has been for a little while, but not it's actually noticable. I've had a lot of people tell me that I don't look how far along I am. For instance, when I was 30 weeks I had a couple different tell me that I didn't look 30 weeks along. At first I was a little worried/let down, then I talked to Jon and my sister Kristel and came up with this conclusion: because my boobs are rather large, it makes my belly look smaller. If I had small (or atleast some what smaller) boobs then my belly would look bigger! I even did a little test in the mirror to see if this theory was right by doing some smooshing and low and behold we were right!! Man the pains of large breasted women!! :)

Here's a pic of me at 33 weeks and 6 days (7 1/2 months) I can't seem to remember to take any flattering pics so I'm stuck with the unflattering bathroom shots that make my arms look GINORMOUS!!! Maybe that'll be insentive to take more pics huh?...Maybe.

- I'm retaining water, UGH! Not too bad tho so I just hope it stays that way. (my wedding ring hasn't fit for a few weeks already. I'm having to wear it around my neck)

- To Jon's dismay, I MUST sleep with a pillow on both sides of me.

- His kicks are starting to hurt. Not all of them, but every once in a while he'll kick some major organ and man does it not feel good.

- I don't feel like I've really gotten into the so called nesting faze. We have his crib up, and clothes up away, but thats about it...whoops. Maybe I'll kick my butt into gear after the baby showers.

- I'm starting to feel the uncomfortable-ness that everybody always talks about. Oh and the back pain.

- I have poor circulation in my hands. My right hand is worse than my left. It tingles ALL DAY LONG! (this is how I know he's not just sitting on a nerve) I have to keep my hand in the same position all night long (in a loose fist) or my muscle freaks out. But then when I wake up in the morning, I can't move it or use it...period.

Oh and we got more snow! Man am I sick of it. Probably about a foot total.

Our SLC adventure

My dad bought some trucks from the military and last week we took the trip up north to pick them up. My dad, me, Jon, Stacie, Kristel and Eric all squished into a truck and off we went. The ride up was fun (a little tight. 6 adults don't fit into one truck very easily). We stayed at Jan and Paulines for a night and the next morning headed off to pick up all the vehicles we would be driving home. Jon drove the duece and a half (which is now his new favorite thing. When we got home, he made me go with him down the road to throw away the trash just so he could drive the duece again...silly boy). Everyone else drove either Blazers or a truck.

After we picked the vehicles up, we all met at IKEA to eat dinner. Yum Yum. The boys left to pick up some trailers and us girls stayed and shopped around a little. When we were done we just headed home. (Little did we know, that probably wasn't the smartest idea. We should have waited for the men). We stopped in Nephi for a bit (Kristel was freezing since she hadn't figured out how to work her heater yet and Stacie needed to clean off her windows so she could see since her back window was blocked by a camper shell) Once we got back on the road we made it about 10-15 minutes outside of Nephi and Stacie's truck sputtered a little bit, had some white smoke puff out of it then it just died. By this time it was almost 8 pm. We called my dad, since we had no idea what could be the problem, and he told us to wait for them to get there. Waiting doesn't seem to be so bad now does it... Well I forgot to mention that they were just passing through SLC and the duece only goes a max of 50 MPH! Eric was a little closer than my dad and Jon so he stopped to get some gas to see if that could be the problem. He showed up a little after 10. Was he our night in shining armor? Did he fix the truck and off we went? HA.. I WISH! The truck still wouldn't start. So we sat around until almost 11 waiting for my dad and Jon. Once they got there they took one look at it and told us that it had blown up. We were going to have to leave it on the side of the freeway.

So me Kristel and Stacie had sat on the side of the road for 3 HOURS for absolutely no reason! We could have been home in that time. So while we were sitting there waiting we got a little bored. Plus, can you even imagine 3 girls in 3 camo colored vehicles sitting on the side of the road in the middle of no where in the dark?! Yeah it was little scary there. Oh and did I mention that not one cop stopped to help or see if everything was ok! Isn't that their job? Well here's some pics of us while we waited. (Oh and no worries, we didn't get home till 2 am. To keep myself awake can you guess what I did since there was no radio to blast?.... I sang newsies songs at the top of my lungs. haha good thing I was alone, it wasn't pretty)

Stacie's truck just sitting there... totally useless.

Me Stacie and Kristel...Can you tell we were a little bored?

Here's the 3 of us again.
We figured we needed a decent picture to document the night.

30 Weeks

10 more weeks! It's getting closer. I can't believe how fast it's going. I know I've said that before, but it's crazy that I'm already 30 weeks. It feels like just a month ago that I was having my first midwife appointment at 8 weeks. crazy crazy. I'm still feeling really good. I'm not extremely uncomfortable yet... thank heavens :)

Total cheesey picture of me. haha oh well.

We got our porta crib set up... isn't it just so cute. I'm so excited!

The other day Jon got the ice out of the freezer and was completely fascinated with it. He had never seen anything like this before. I on the other hand, have seen it a few times so I thought his fascination was rather entertaining.

This past weekend Jon went to a Jeep rock crawling event in Hurricane with some of his friends. This is just one of the many pictures that he took (he was in total heaven watching this).

Since they saw such fun crazy things, of course they decided that they needed to go out and have a little fun of their own. Luckily nothing happened to any of them or the truck. (good thing I wasn't there. I probably would have had a heart attack, this picture doesn't look bad but knowing my husband it got much worse than this. This is not so much my favorite thing. Good thing he has some friends that he can go out with instead of trying to drag me along :) )