Eve Marie

Eve Marie was born on May 7, 2014 at 9:38 PM

 Eve was my best delivery! I'm a pretty high risk for having a baby on the side of the road because my babies have come so quickly. They mentioned that I could have a planned induction at 39 weeks if I wanted and after thinking a lot about it, we decided that would be the best option for us. I've had 2 babies without medication and I enjoyed those births and experiences, but with Eve, I had such a hard pregnancy and could count on one hand the number of weeks I felt "ok" in the last 9 months, so I really wanted an epidural this time. I thought it would be nice to just skip labor. I spoke with the doctors and they said they could start the epidural before they started the induction so we did that. It was AWESOME. They put the epidural in and gave me the lowest dose because I hadn't actually started labor. It was great. I felt SO relaxed. I could still move my legs and things, it just completely relaxed me and I was able to take a little nap. They started the lowest dose of pitocin at 8:28 PM and Eve was born at 9:38 PM. She came so fast. With Lily and Matthew I pushed twice...once for the head, once for the body, but with Eve I pushed her head out and her body literally just slid out afterwards. It was insane. The doctor wasn't even in the room. I was in significant discomfort the 2 minutes before she was born so I had paged the nurse and she brought the resident, but I was ready to push when she came in and couldn't hold Eve in any longer. So Eve was on the bed when the doctor came in. I am so glad we opted for the induction. She came SO fast and literally slid out, so I'm pretty sure she would have been born in the car or some other place had I gone into labor on my own.
The hospital was very full and when I asked about our discharge date they mentioned we could technically go home after the baby was 24 hours old. I felt so great and hated the uncomfortable hospital bed, so we opted for this. After Eve was 24 hours old, they did the required tests and all of her numbers came back ok so we left the hospital at around 11:30 PM and headed home.
I had a REALLY hard pregnancy. I felt like all I did was lie on a couch for 9 months, because that's about all I could do. The first 18 weeks were filled with sickness like I've never known. I thought I was sick with the others, but with Eve I threw up every 15 minutes or so until the doctor prescribed Zofran. The medicine was great as far as physically preventing me from throwing up, but it only took the edge off the nausea and came with a host of other side effects. All of these were better than throwing up every 15 minutes though. After the nausea finally subsided I had a pretty good week. Then my blood pressure started getting high. I had to go through a slew of tests and the doctors were worried about preeclampsia. I had headaches constantly and when my bp would spike I could feel it even more. My head would get all fuzzy and I could think clearly and just generally felt awful. It's hard to describe. Whenever it would spike up very high I always felt completely wiped out like I had just run some kind of race or something after it came back down. Thankfully I never developed preeclampsia and delivered a healthy full term baby. I say all this because when I was so sick in the beginning I "knew" that this would be my last baby. Then after the sickness subsided I thought "Well that was awful, but it really was only 4 months maybe I could do it again." And then when my BP started acting up and with the preeclampsia scare, I thought "well I guess she's just reminding me that she's my last". Sean had a close friend in high school who's mother past away in childbirth because of eclampsia and so it was pretty concerning to him when they were monitoring me for preeclampsia.
Eve's pregnancy was the hardest physical 9 months of my life. I don't think I've ever felt that bad for so long. It makes me feel so awful for those who suffer from chronic illness. We were certain that she was going to be our last child just because I didn't think I could physically do another pregnancy. I say this because just 2 days after Eve's birth I felt like I could do it all over again. I know it sounds crazy after having the 9 months that I did, but all I can say is I know even more now that God wants the earth populated, otherwise he wouldn't have women's brains work this way. Sean's brain doesn't work this way, just mine. It's incredible. I can't say that we will have more for sure or not (nor do I know if Sean will be willing to risk another preeclampsia scare), but I know I can't close the door on the idea either. I was speaking to my friend who has had preeclampsia with all three of her kiddos with higher BP than mine and so I can only imagine how much worse she felt than me and she's had THREE pregnancies like that and she just said that when you see the baby you know it's just all worth it.
And it is...it SO is.
We are in love with our precious baby Eve.