Baby Emma Comes Home.

After some tears and promising, they let baby Emma come home. She was a little jaundice so they were going to make us schedule an appointment with the pediatrician before they would discharge us. But they didn't tell us this until after the pediatrician's office was closed. Luckily, they trusted us when I promised I would take her first thing in the morning. We were greeted at home by some very excited big siblings. The next morning we headed to get her little heals pricked. She was not a fan, but I was because her bilirubin levels dropped and we were in the clear!

Emma June Catmull

 

Born January 22, 2017 at 2:31 pm.

Height: 20 inches

Weight: 7 lbs 10 oz

A little back story first. I was called to serve as the Primary president in our new ward. Shortly after I was called to serve, my OBGYN, Dr Erickson, was called to be the second counselor in the Bishopric- the counselor over primary. We have gotten to know Dr Erickson through serving together in church. And what a blessing it turned out to be- even though I thought it was going to be so weird and awkward.

Dr Erickson found out that Shawn was going to be leaving for the month the last Sunday of January, the 29th. Dr Erickson thought it would be good for Shawn to be home with the baby (and me) for a week before he left for his rotation in Kingman. Dr Erickson scheduled us for an induction Sunday the 22nd at 930 am. (He did not think I would make it to Sunday so it was more of a just in case you do.) Well, I did.

We got to the hospital at 9:30 am. (Grandma and Grandpa Catmull came and held down the fort for us while we were at the hospital. And the kids still are missing them and asking if they are in the shower when they can't find them.) Having a 9:30 Sunday morning induction is apparently a very uncommon thing. We checked in and headed to the labor room. A nurse came in and said "Did you talk to Dr Erickson about this induction? We don't think he will be here. He doesn't come in on Sundays." Shawn said, "Yep, he scheduled it for us and chose today." The nurse was shocked and then said, "You must be a family friend?" We got to explain to her we went to church with Dr Erickson, Shawn was leaving, etc. and she became the nicest nurse ever. She even called in a different nurse to do my IV because the other nurse was the best. (The other nurse missed the first time and ended up having to do it twice anyways.)


We got all hooked up and set up. At check in, I was dilated to almost a five so they decided to wait to start pitocin until after Dr Erickson stopped by on his way to church to check me and break my water. Our goal was to deliver after 2 o'clock church around 230 so they didn't want to start it too soon. Dr Erickson came in at 1030 and broke my water and headed to church. I knew I wanted an epidural early because the last two pregnancies were so fast. The anesthesiologist came in and gave me the epidural. It turned out Shawn knew him from his surgery rotation he had done at the hospital. I seriously felt nothing. Shawn and I watched a movie while Shawn studied for his shelf exam. They did a small dose of pitocin, but held off on anymore because after breaking my water, my body did its own thing. I started to feel a little uncomfortable at 2. The nurse (we had a nurse change at this point because the other one had to help with an emergency c section) checked me and immediately said that she was going to call Dr Erickson. About 20 minutes later Dr Erickson came running in. He said, "two pushes and baby will be here." Sure enough two and a half pushes later and he was holding up a baby for me to see the gender. My guess for delivery time was 230 and Emma was born at 231. Dr Erickson said it was perfect timing because he finished up all of church and got to hand off tithing duties to Bro Burnett.

The nursery nurses didn't make it in time to the delivery. It was just my nurse and Dr Erickson. He helped the nurse do the apgar test, wipe the baby down, weigh her, and then he brought Emma to me while the nurse cleaned me up and got me taken care of. It was a neat experience to have such a hands on doctor who we knew. (Dr Erickson delivered Henry, but that was before the ward boundary changes and we didn't know him.) The nurse seemed really frustrated when the nursery nurses finally arrived and made some snarky comments to them about being all alone and Dr Erickson was there special for this delivery. Shawn and I had a good chuckle about it later. We felt like VIPs.

A couple things were different this time... 1. They no longer bathe the baby until 6-8 hours later. I was not a big fan of that. I ended up with sticky, white stuff all over me and nursing Emma was a different experience. 2. They, also, made kangaroo hour mandatory. I completely get it, but really wanted Shawn to have a chance to hold her. And they didn't put a diaper on her for that hour.

Henry Dorsal Catmull

Little Baby #3 decided to make his grand entrance on June 23rd, 2015. He waited a lot longer than anyone thought he would and led to plans/ flights having to be changed, but we are so glad he is here now.

And for memory purposes here is his little birth story...

I woke up at 5:30 am and thought I might have had a pain, but wasn't sure. I laid in bed for a few minutes and realized that I was having contractions and they were definitely real. (I could feel them in my stomach, back, hips and legs.) I decided to take a bath and wait to wake Shawn up. Lucky for me (not), I got super sick and Shawn heard me in the bathroom. He says as soon as he heard me, he knew it was time and the real deal. He came in and we decided we should head to the hospital. We grabbed our hospital bags and made it to the hospital around 6:30 am. 

Getting admitted to the hospital seemed to take forever and I don't think any of the nurses believed me when I said I was in labor. Shawn says next time I need to scream and wail. The admit nurse finally got around to checking me (7:30) and said oh yep, you are a six and staying. I am just glad that there were five other women in labor so the anesthesiologist was already there and got in to see me quickly. . (Rewind: the admit nurse was so grumpy! I think the most painful part was her blowing my vein and then having to try a second time. She poked and poked and poked my hand. She left my arm/hand bruised.)

They moved me into a labor and delivery room around 8:00. The anesthesiologist came and gave me an epidural pretty quickly and all pain was gone. I did get super itchy and sleepy. I could barely keep my eyes open. My blood pressure dropped a bit, but after medicine and being monitored it went back up. Around 9:30, my contractions were back in full force out of nowhere. I paged the nurse after I couldn't help, but have the urge to push. She came in quickly and said the baby was right there and no more pushing until the doctor got there. She tried to get my water to break, but it wasn't. She let Shawn see the membranes squish out during a contraction. He thought that was pretty cool. (Everyone knowing he was a medical student made this a different experience than the first two. He was much more involved and they explained everything to him in big words.) 

Around 10:00, the doctor (Doctor Erickson) got there and got everything set up to break my water. He tried to break it and said my bag was made of steel and had to get different tools because it was not breaking. He broke the water at 10:12 and two pushes later baby was born at 10:13. 

It was incredibly fast and easy. And amazing... Not knowing the gender of the baby was different and surprisingly not that hard to wait, but when baby came out and hearing Shawn say "it's a boy" first was pretty exciting and special. I immediately started to cry and was so thrilled. (I really thought it was a girl so it was a double surprise.) 

Baby Boy spent the first few hours of his life as the baby referred to by a ?. We are happy to say he is no longer ?, but Henry Dorsal- named after Shawn's Grandpa Doc and Henry because I just really love that name and Henry B Eyring is one of my favorite apostles (if we are allowed to have favorites.)

Henry Dorsal

June 23rd, 2015

10:13 am 

7 lbs 3 oz

19 3/4 inches

Charles Wallace Catmull

Baby Charlie decided this morning that he had cooked long enough and wasted no time getting here once he made his mind up.

At 3:30am, I woke up feeling really sick. I was puking and had other not so lovely issues going on. I wasn't sure exactly what was going on. But as it continued, all the memories came back and I knew I was in labor. (It was the same feeling as with Iva except I was induced with Iva and was sick in the hospital bathroom instead of at home.) I woke Shawn up and told him I wanted to take a shower, but thought I was in labor. After I showered, I told Shawn to shower while I timed contractions a little longer. I wanted to make sure I was really in labor before we drove to Rexburg and called Grandma Catmull to come and stay with Iva. 

Grandma Catmull came over to the house and we were on the road to Rexburg around 4:20am. The drive to Rexburg was loooong. I made Shawn talk the whole time- I was less than nice. My contractions were 1 1/2 to 2 minutes apart and I felt like there was no break in between them to recover. 

We made it to the hospital around 5:00am. I must have had the look of this lady is in real labor because they immediately rushed me into an admit room and had me sign the one release and said we could do the rest of the paperwork after. The nurse came in to check me. As I changed into the gown and went to crawl in to bed, I got super nauseous again. I stood up puked and my water broke all at once. (Talk about embarrassing.) When she checked me, I was at a 6 and then about five minutes later I was at an 8. She quickly moved me to a delivery room and said the doctor was on his way. She checked me again and I was at a 9. She told me I had probably missed my window for an epidural, but lucky for me, Lane had rushed to the hospital when he heard how far along I was and went as fast as possible to get the epidural in. Dr.Allred came in while he was finishing the epidural to check the position of the baby. He said the baby was positioned a little funny and had me do a few pushes while he rotated him a bit and then he told me to stop pushing while we waited for the baby nurse to show up. She showed up and we started doing a few pushes. She told me to stop pushing and then Dr Allred came back into the room and said, "oh wow, there he is." He suctioned out his nose and mouth and I pushed a couple more times and out came little Charlie. He was born at 6:49am.  He weighs exactly 7 lbs and is 19 inches long. He is a little guy, but pretty cute. Although Shawn says he looks like an old man with a receeding hairline. 

(I should rewind a little and fill in some details... Before I got the epidural, I was miserable. I have a lot of respect for women who go natural. I don't know how you do it. I was super lucky to have a good nurse who helped me through my contractions and encouraged me. And I cannot say how amazing the epidural is. I went from crazy women to this is nothing in a matter of minutes. Lane told me if I want an epidural next time that I should go to the hospital a little earlier next time. I will definitely remember that. But for the record, I swore during labor with Iva, but had no swear words slip out this time.) 

Here are a few pictures of Charlie...

Up, down, up, down, and UP!

Baby Iva is here and let me tell you I went through a whole lot of ups and downs, but can say I am more UP than ever!

Here is a little bit of the story... Ok, so it is a lot of the story. Don't feel obligated to read it all. I just want to be able to remember.

July 19th: Shawn and I went to the doctor to check and see if I was making any progress or if there were any signs of labor. Shawn was relieved when the doctor said there was no progress yet. He still had finals to study for and take. My hormones got the best of me :) Shawn had to make our follow up appt because our appt was for the 25th- two days after my due date- and I couldn't stop crying. It is completely irrational, but I felt like our baby was never going to come.

July 25th: I headed off for our appt alone. (Sidenote: Shawn got a job and started work the week after he got out of school. Talk about blessings! We were so worried he wouldn't be able to find one for awhile.) The doctor listened to the baby and was concerned there wasn't as much movement. I had to have an ultrasound to check the baby. She wasn't moving much at all- her little ring finger only moved once in the 30 minutes we watched her. So I was scheduled for an induction to help baby get coming the next night. (They wanted to do it that night, but the hospital was full so we couldn't get a room.) More tears and worry.

July 26th: I woke up at 5:30 to call and confirm our induction time only to be told, "we are sorry the hospital is still full and we won't be able to get you in tonight, but we are worried about your baby's movement so we need you to come in and take a stress test and monitor the baby." I broke down yet again. I called Shawn and made him leave work early to go to the clinic with me. We went to the clinic and they monitored baby. Her movements were up and she seemed fine to wait one more day. So we scheduled our induction for the next night and went home.

July 27th: This time they called me and said they were still full and we would  have to wait till the following morning to come in. That was it. I was done. I called the doctor and he was a little concerned and said he would keep in touch. He just said to make sure and do the fetal kick counts and keep him posted if they slowed down again. I had a lot of encouragement to keep busy and do something fun so I decided to listen :) Shawn had work off so we played aka worked on his fishtank and hit up the bulk candy at Winco. Later that night, we got a call from the doctor saying he had just delivered a baby and emptied out a room for us. I was ecstatic! We quickly ran out the door and headed to the hospital. The whole way there, I was in shock and was convinced we were going to get there and they were going to say someone in active labor had come in while we were driving there so we were bumped again.

The Real Story of July 27th and 28th:
10:00 PM. We checked into the hospital. Shawn made his little bed while I got all hooked up to machines and got an IV.
11:30 PM. I took cytotec to get the process going and an ambien.
2:00 AM. I vaguely remember  huge nurse named Nancy coming into the room and giving me another pill and scaring me! She told me she had to go under my sheets to adjust the monitor. I remember thinking, "Hmm... why is she going under my sheets? And who is she? She isn't my nurse" Shawn said I said weird things all night and was pretty out of it. I don't even remember most of the night.
6:00 AM. I woke up sick... my stomach was killing me. I took off the monitors and went to the bathroom. I remember trying to curl up into a ball in the bathroom. After awhile the nurse realized my monitors weren't working and came in to check on me. She told me I was in labor and that my pain was contractions. My memories of the whole thing are a little vague because I couldn't really wake up from having taken the ambien.
7:06 AM. The nurse came in to check me. I got super embarrassed because I thought I peed the bed. To our surprise my water had broken naturally and I was dilated to a 7.
7:08 AM. The contractions were two minutes apart and the baby was showing signs of stress. They gave me an oxygen mask to see if that would help. Then I was given medicine to lower my blood pressure to see if it would help baby calm down. At this point, the nurse suggested an epidural to calm me down and hopefully in turn calm the baby down. An amazing man named Layne came and gave me an epidural. He was giving it to me in the middle of a contraction and I didn't feel the end of it. I was going to try and go natural, but am glad that nurse Jessica convinced me to do an epidural.
10:00 Dr Evans showed up. We did a few sets of pushing. He thought it was so funny because at one point when I was pushing and he could see the baby's head she was shaking her head no. Shawn got to see her shake her little head. Dr Evans was worried that the baby was so stressed so he decided to use suction to extract the baby. Baby Iva is a vacuum extraction- I thought it was funny when they typed that into the computer. He got her in one pull and no slips.
10:37 Baby Jacqueline Iva is born! Shawn cut the umbilical cord. He was very hands on in the whole delivery- I was really surprised at how involved he was. It was pretty neat. The one thing I didn't like was when the doctor let him push on my stomach to feel my back bone because of the cavity that is left. Shawn thought it was pretty cool- I guess that explains why he wants to be a doctor.

Now I am home with baby Iva and couldn't be happier. It was a whole lot of emotions, but she is completely worth it. At one point after she was born, everyone had left the room and I was alone holding my little baby. I just stared at her and cried. She is perfect and I can't believe I am trusted enough to be able to raise this sweet little baby. I pray that I am an adequate mother and can do everything I can to help prepare this sweet little spirit for this crazy world! Last night Shawn said that Iva is already tugging on his heart strings. It was pretty special to see Shawn hold  our baby for the first time and tear up. I am sure there will be lots of tears to come- good and bad. And call me crazy, but I can hardly wait!

Sidenote: I have to say how much it helped having family supporting me- especially Shawn. He didn't ask questions when I would randomly start crying throughout this last week. When I wanted to buy a romper for the baby, he helped me find a cute one online. He made sure I was completely taken care of and FED- I think I had about 5 last meals before we finally made it to the doctor. (The random texts from family helped a lot too- even though I cried every time I got one. When did I become so emotional?)

Getting ready for the day.

Hungry baby!

Well, here are just a couple pictures of Iva. She is sound asleep now and I don't want to disturb her. So only two new pictures for now.

Over cooked?!?

Shaver babies are known for being bald and bald for a long time. I just knew I was going to have a bald baby. I spent quite a lot of time making cute little headbands for baby so people wouldn't mistake her for a boy. Grandma Catmull even got on board and made the cutest little flowers to put on the headbands. Shawn kept telling me you never know (he quoted how many different ways our genes could come together- it was like a trillion or something?), but I knew she was going to be bald.

Well, once Iva was overdue, I kept telling Shawn she was getting overcooked. He'd laugh, but I was convinced she was going to come out with long hair and long fingernails from the extra time she got (oh and a hard head.) And guess what... I was right! (Ok, so maybe it isn't long flowing locks, but it is a lot of hair for a Shaver baby. Guess it is a good thing it is a Shaver/Catmull baby.)

Her first bath... look at that hair.

It is the softest hair too. It feels like a teddy bear.