The Evertsen's

Raelee Sawyer Evertsen 5-1-15 7lbs 11 oz 20.5 inches 7:26 pm

This birth was a whole different experience for me. This time around I scheduled an induction. I had crazy mixed feelings about it. In fact, the night of the induction I was a nervous wreck. Had I made the right decision? Was I being selfish? Is everything going to be ok? I tried to sleep but couldn’t calm down enough. I tried taking a bath, which didn’t help. Watching some tv helped to distract me a little, but I was still way nervous.

Of course everything turned out great and I was just being my usual worry wart. We decided to schedule an induction this time for a couple different reasons. The main reason for me was that Jon has to fly out to Utah for a week in May and I didn’t want to be fresh out of the hospital, new mom of 3 kids and be by myself figuring things out. Also, since we just recently moved away from all our family we knew we wouldn’t have the same type of support system. When I had Ellie we had family that watched Taegen for a few days and made it possible for us just to focus on the new baby and my recovery. This time around we had a sitter lined up for the night before and day of (Thanks again Whitney!!!), but that’s it. I knew I was going to need to be released from the hospital asap to go back to taking care of the rest of my family, because I didn’t have the luxury of having family close by.

The induction was scheduled for Friday May 1^st at midnight. I dropped the kids off at Whitney’s around 5:30 and then went home to get ready and relax. I ate, well kind of. I was so nervous I couldn’t eat hardly anything. We watched some tv, I tried to take a nap and I took a bath. I only slept for 20 mins or so because my nerves we going crazy. I couldn’t turn my brain off. I kept worrying that I was so nervous because I had made the wrong choice or that something was going to go wrong. I took the bath to help calm me down, which helped a little bit. Watching t.v. helped to take my mind of things a bit. We left the house at 11:30 and headed to the hospital. We got there a little early and just sat in the car talking until it was 12:00. We got up to the room and they gave me some fluids. They gave me my first dose of Pitocin at 1:30, they checked me and I was not even 1 cm dilated. This wasn’t too surprising to me since with my other 2 labors I didn’t start dilating until I was in active labor. I was still really nervous and very shaky. They told me they could give me something to help me sleep, but I decided against it for the time being as I didn’t want to be groggy. But by 2:30 I was still wide awake. I knew I needed to sleep but just couldn’t do it, so I ended up asking for the Ambien. I was able to fall asleep for a few hours and at 5am I woke up to feeling some contractions. At 7:00 they upped the Pitocin. I started feeling the contractions even more. They told me they could call the anesthesiologist and have him come in right when he got there or I could wait until later in the day. If I waited there would be an hour wait period from when I requested the epidural to when the anesthesiologist could make it up to my room. I knew that once I decided I wanted the epidural I wouldn’t be able to wait the extra hour. So I told them to just have the anesthesiologist come in then. They gave me the extra fluid I would need to get the epidural and sent in the request. Jon then left to head back home to let our dog outside. Another down side to being new to the area, we didn’t have anyone to feed and let out Blue.

While Jon was gone (7:30am) the anesthesiologist came up to administer my epidural, which made me really shaky. With my other two labors I didn’t feel the epidural procedure. With Taegen I didn’t feel a thing, with Ellie I felt a little bit, but my main issue was the pain of sitting at the edge of the bed during contractions. This time I wasn’t in that much pain from contractions so I felt the whole thing. I was more painful than I thought it would be. Manageable, but it still hurt.

At 8:30 my doc came in and broke my water. I was only dilated to a 1.5. At 11:00 I was at 2 cm 60% effaced. So there was progress happening, but it was very slow. Also very boring. Me and Jon just relaxed and watched some tv shows on the computer. I tried sleeping again and was able to get in a little bit of sleep. At 1:00 I was 4 cm and they started flipping me from side to side, as opposed to just laying on my back. This was supposed to help me progress. At 2:00 they brought in a peanut ball. It was a big ball shaped like a peanut that they put in between my legs as I was laying on my sides, to help open up my hips and allow baby to move deeper into birth canal and help me dilate. At 4:00 they checked me again and I was only at a 5. This was really hard for me to hear. I felt like there was almost no progress happening and I started to worry about where my kids were going to stay if we didn’t have the baby until late that night or early the next morning. Luckily we found out my mother in law, JaRene had decided to fly into town last minute. This was such a blessing. I no longer had to worry about my kids as I knew she would be able to take them once she got here. It also made me a little depressed about the whole thing. I knew slow progress was better than no progress, and that it was best because it didn’t put stress on the baby. But it was still depressing to me. At this time they also decided to have me sit up instead of laying down. This seemed to help a lot because when they checked me again at 5:30 I was almost an 8 and 80% effaced. YAY!! Progress…FINALLY!!

My JaRene showed up and we told Whitney to go ahead and bring the kids to the hospital. That way JaRene could take them and keep they entertained while I had the baby, then they could come up and meet their new baby sister right after she was born. We sat and talked for a little bit, then at 7:00 they checked me and I was ready to go! The kids showed up right then too and JaRene took them outside to wait. They called my doc who was 6 mins out. Throughout the whole day I was able to up the dosage of my epidural if things got too painful. At 7 I was starting to feel the contractions and decided not to up the dosage. I wanted some ability to feel and move. But since I was able to feel a little bit, I could also feel how uncomfortable it was to wait. I knew baby girl was ready to come and I wanted to push, but knew I couldn’t. It was actually kind of painful on top of uncomfortable. Luckily my doc got there quickly and I was able to start pushing. It was really cool to be able to feel what was happening without feeling the pain. I had to push less than 5 times and she was here. Born at 7:26pm. She was quite a bit smaller than my other kids, (who were both over 8lbs) weighing in at 7lbs 11 oz, 20.5 inches long. Long and skinny just like her siblings. My dream of a chunky baby just aren’t going to happen. J

She didn’t cry right when she was born. It was really weird to me that she was so calm. They gave her to me to do skin to skin while they rubbed her clean. She didn’t make a peep. Not even when they had to prick her heel to check her blood sugar levels. After they got the room cleaned up we had JaRene bring up the kids. They were both excited to see her, Taegen more so than Ellie though. After the excitement wore down Jon left with JaRene and the kids to go back to the house. I told him that he could go home and sleep so he wouldn’t have to sleep on the horrible hospital recliner. I would much rather have him at home helping with the kids, then doing nothing at the hospital and being super uncomfortable all night in the chair. He ordered me some pizza, since I was starving and I sent him home.

I had a relatively good night. Raelee did really well. She was having some issues with latching on to breastfeed, specifically on the left side. But besides that she was doing great. Slept really well. Jon, grandma and the kids came back in the morning. Jon stayed with me while grandma took the kids to play for the day. We were just waiting for the 24 hour mark to come so they could test her bilirubin levels and then hopefully discharge us. Since she had really good coloring, we knew there was a good chance her levels would come back fine and we could go home. I did not want to stay another night in that awful bed! We were discharged and out of the hospital by 9pm.

It was a new experience, having a baby in a different, new town and hospital. I never realized how nice of a hospital IHC actually is. Not to say the hospital here was bad, because it wasn’t. It was just the little things that make quite the difference. The things they offered in the hospital room (no tucks, numbing spray, mesh underwear-they were made of stretchy weird material. I was not a fan). I stayed in the same room for delivery and recovery, which made the bed horrible. My butt hurt so bad from how hard it was. There was a great staff, and they checked on us a lot less throughout the night, which was SO nice! I was the only patient for the majority of the time I was there, so I never had to wait for help. It was a good experience overall. If I had to redo it would I schedule an induction again?...probably. But if our circumstances were different and Jon didn’t have to leave out of town so close to my due date, then no I would not choose to be induced again. The boring wait was horrible. Only to find my progress to be so slow! I can see why some people prefer to be induced, but it wasn’t my ideal situation.

Picture overload and in no particular order