Second Pregnancy

They say every pregnancy is different. Overall, I would have to agree. I had a post about my pregnancy with Will, so I feel like I need to write about this one too so I don't forget. There were plenty of similarities, but enough differences that I thought the baby would be a girl.

Sickness:
I was much sicker this time. I had morning, noon, and night sickness from week 7 up until 6 months. JT actually started preparing himself to have a girl after the sickness continued into the second trimester. Sweets made me sick with Will, but this time there was no certain food that triggered it. I ate sweets this time, but I didn't necessarily crave them. I actually didn't crave anything. Just like last time, my diet consisted of lots of ginger ale, bagels, and apples.

Looks/Weight Gain:
I had gotten up to 21 pounds, but started losing weight toward the end. I ended up with 19 pounds above pre-pregnancy weight. I gained 30 pounds with Will.
I was "all belly" again! This is the one thing that made me think we were having another boy. Back to girl thoughts, my "bump" was definitely higher this time though. When I looked in a mirror, I thought I had gained weight nowhere but my belly. I see it in my face and arms though when I look at pictures.
I had some swelling like last time. It was mainly my right hand and right leg though. It actually hurt in my fingers because of all of the extra fluid. I expected more swelling since I went through some summer months, but it really wasn't too bad. Thank goodness this was a mild summer!

Gestational Diabetes:
At 28 weeks I failed my first glucose tolerance test. I was expecting that since it happened with Will. I had to go through the 4 hour glucose test and failed the fasting portion of that which was an automatic indicator for gestational diabetes. I argued with the nurse about this though because I had taken my blood sugar that morning 2 hours before I went for the test and it was within goal. I have no idea how it jumped up for the lab test. I demanded a retest, but honestly I really didn't want to go through all of that again. (What should have been 4 needle sticks ended up being 7. I hate needles - and my veins refused to cooperate during this entire pregnancy.) The nurse said I had to go to diabetes nutrition and education class, but I told her that I actually teach that class at Publix so she let me skip it if I promised to check my blood sugar 4 times a day and follow a low-carb diet. Since I was still convinced that the lab was wrong, I checked my blood sugars for 2 weeks and couldn't wait to show off my awesome results - and I didn't even change my diet really! When I went for my 32 week appointment, I showed Dr. Crowe my blood sugar readings and told her that her lab was wrong.  She looked them over and told me they were excellent blood sugars for a diabetic, but not a pregnant diabetic. What?!?! The goals are so much stricter for gestational diabetes, and I was not aware of this. My goodness I felt like a fool! I begged her to let me change my diet to control it because I did not want to be on medicine, especially insulin shots! She told me to fax my readings over each week and I could stay off medicine if I could stay at goal. I worked so hard at this (aka starved myself) and was able to keep it managed by myself throughout the rest of the pregnancy. Dr. Crowe taught me a trick that we both feel is absolutely ridiculous, but it works - eat a bedtime snack with carbs. I didn't do this at first because I just couldn't understand why I would do that when the whole point was to cut out carbs. But it worked! Before bed I would eat an apple or peanut butter toast or a small bowl of ice cream. My fasting blood sugar the next morning would be 70-80. If I didn't have that snack, it would be high 80s. Makes no sense, but it was the one time of day that I actually enjoyed eating!
**I think I probably had this with Will too. I was just exercising several times per week with him which I know helped me, and I didn't exercise at all this time.

The night my water broke (before I actually realized what happened), I had a really good time with Will. JT had been asleep since dinner and Will and I just hung out. We had a little dance party together and then I put him to bed. I didn't get to tell him bye before we left for the hospital, so I am so thankful for this fun memory.

This pregnancy went by so fast! I really enjoyed being pregnant both times, even though this second one was definitely not so easy.

Getting to Know Evie

We spent 4 days at Baptist Hospital since I had a c-section again. Unlike last time, we were ready to get home! (With Will, we wanted to stay there forever because everything was going so smoothly and we didn't want to return to the "real world".)

All of the grandparents were able to meet Evie the first day except for MAO. He had planned a trip to visit his parents in Florida and we never thought we'd have this baby early. Lauren came to visit that night and so did Hope and Garrett.

Gram and Gramps with Evie

Pops and Nonna with Evie

On Wednesday, Evie made her acting debut! The nurse manager came in that morning and asked if we would be interested in being in a promotional video. Baptist is in the process of changing their name to St. Thomas Midtown and they were making a video about "One Healing Community". I thought they were just going to video Evie, but they said I would have a line to say. I was all for it as long as I had time to take a shower first. Our acting career only lasted about 10 minutes, but we had fun! Check out the video at https://vimeo.com/75501244 and password is "mvp". It is about 6 minutes long, but we are right after about 1:30.

We finally got to see Will on Wednesday and it was a wonderful reunion. We hadn't seen him since I put him to bed Monday night. We didn't even get to say goodbye to him before we went to the hospital. I didn't want him to come until I was unhooked from IV's and stuff - he knows what those are all about and I didn't want to scare him. Gram and Gramps brought him to the hospital and JT was standing in the hallway as they came in. Will RAN and jumped into JT's arms. (Gram started crying because it was so sweet!) I met them out in the hallway and we walked around with Will for a minute while Gram and Gramps stayed with Evie.

Then we let him come in and meet his little sister. He did really well! He was distracted by all of the "big brother presents" that I was bribing him with, but he did look her over and even gave her a kiss. He earned himself a great big sticker!

Uncle Jon came to the hospital to meet Evie.

NeeNee came back to visit on Thursday during her lunch hour. Will ended up coming back up on Thursday for a few minutes with Hope and KiKi. He probably thought JT and I moved there without him and now he and Maggie were on their own at the house with a rotating crew of favorite people to babysit them! The Ellers came to visit Thursday evening and Maddy enjoyed holding "baby Evie".

Most of the hospital stay was uneventful. She passed her hearing screening. We got some good rest and just hung out with Evie. She stayed in the room with us all day and night except for an hour in the mornings when the pediatrician came by. There was no option to send her to the nursery at night like there was with Will, but she slept well so it wasn't a big deal since I felt like I knew what I was doing. I would have panicked if it had been like that with Will! She nursed well and cuddled a lot. JT and Evie even took a few naps together on his little couch bed.

She seems so little. We call her "Lil' Bit" or "Bit".

She has a little grip and likes to hang on to my shirt.

She grunts and squeaks.

She has the chubbiest cheeks I've ever seen. JT calls her "Cheeks".

We knew we would get to go home Friday and we were so ready! JT had our bags packed by 8:00 A.M. I'm sure the nurse was annoyed with us because we weren't being very patient. We were finally headed home at 11:00. We couldn't wait to get home and finally have our little family all together!

Since we've been home, Evie finally got to meet MAO.

Uncle Kerry and Aunt Julia came for a visit.

Protective Maggie melted at Uncle Kerry's feet!

And she met one set of her Great-Grandparents. She loved staring at Mama.

Daddy's Little Girl

There is no doubt that JT is absolutely wrapped around Evie's finger...actually all 10 of them! From the moment he said "It'a a GIRL" I knew he was in big trouble! He has always said that he just didn't know if he could handle a girl. Well, no doubt he is absolutely in love and Evie can have anything she wants!

I love watching them together. She is such a cuddler and loves to be laying on Daddy's chest! They took naps together while we were in the hospital, and now they cuddle at night before we all go to sleep.

Evie got her first present from him when he went down to the cafeteria the first night and stopped at the gift shop on the way back up to the room. He got her a little pink polka dot puppy dog.

When we came home from the hospital and got settled, JT went to the grocery store to get a few things. He came back and asked if I was good for about 10 more minutes because he had to go get something for Evie. He came back with a dress, jacket, and a kitchen! It was the weekend for the fall neighborhood garage sale and he passed by a house and saw this little kitchen set. The women selling it convinced him he needed the clothes that he bought too. Such a sweet daddy! He was so excited to show it to me when he brought it home. We have it put up for now until she is ready to play with it. We'd hate for Will to mess it up if we have it sitting out now.

Don't worry, I'm going to teach Evie everything that she needs to know on how to be a Daddy's Girl. I have a feeling it isn't going to be very hard for her though!

It's a GIRL!!!

Evelyn Nicole Livezey was born 9/10/13 at 4:52 A.M. She was 7 lb 2 oz and 18.25 inches long - impressive size considering she was over 2 weeks early! She has a head full of black hair, except the very top of forehead which is blonde.

Labor:
I had scheduled a c-section for 9/26 which was her due date. I knew she would probably come earlier than that, but I was thinking only a few days at the most. I had been to the doctor Monday morning (9/9) for my 37 week appointment. I had not been having any real contractions and was not dilated at all. On Monday night after dinner I thought my water may have broken, but it wasn't anything like what I would have expected, so I kind of ignored it. After an hour or so, I called some friends to get their thoughts and then decided to call the doctor on call. The doctor didn't really think it sounded like my water broke and told me to come in the morning so they could check me again. She said to call back if I had any contractions or any other changes. I felt fine so I went ahead with my nightly routine and put Will to bed. I still wasn't completely comfortable with whatever was going on, so I started packing a bag for the hospital "just in case". I went to bed and woke up around 11:00 with some discomfort. It wasn't pain around my belly like I expected a contraction to be; it was all in my lower abdomen. It kept coming and going and getting more uncomfortable each time. I downloaded a contraction timer on my phone and started keeping up with them that way. They were already less than 5 minutes apart but only lasted about 30 seconds each. Around 1:30 I gave in and called the doctor back. She said I was definitely in labor and needed to get to the hospital soon. I woke JT up (he had been asleep through all of this) and told him we need to go to the hospital. He was so confused but got up and added a couple of things to my hospital bag that I had been packing. I called our neighbor Karen and asked her to come over and stay with Will. I didn't want to wait on Gram or NeeNee to get to the house. Karen has been on "baby watch" for weeks now, so thank goodness she answered and came right over. JT called NeeNee only the way and asked her to come relieve Karen in a few hours. He then called Gram and told her just to be on standby to come to the hospital. JT and I were both pretty sure that I was being crazy and we would be sent back home, so we didn't see any need to have everyone rushing to hospital at 3:00 in the morning. On the way, we got pulled over for speeding - classic! The cop seemed to take forever getting out of his car, so JT yelled out the window "My wife is in labor!". The cop quit walking toward us and told JT to go on. We were relieved because we thought they would have to escort us to the hospital. We made it to the hospital and got checked in. Once we got to the room I was hooked up to all of the monitors and was dilated to 1 cm. They went ahead and called my doctor and got the c-section pre-op started since they confirmed that my water had broken. It took 3 tries to get my IV in - I have had the worst luck with needle sticks with this pregnancy. My fear, anxiety, and all other emotions had me shaking uncontrollably. The shaking and constant contractions were making me miserable. Let me just say that I suffered through about 2 hours of this pain. I realize that this is nothing compared to women that labor of hours and hours. Those women are nothing but amazing in my eyes. I don't know that I could have handled much more of it. JT was of course amazing and let me almost break his fingers and rip his shirt from my grip.

Delivery:
Dr. Crowe came in a little after 4:00 and was ready to go. We went to the operating room and JT had to wait outside until I got my spinal injection and was all prepped. I have never been so excited to have a needle in my back! I was starting to panic because they were waiting to do it until I had a break in between contractions, but I felt like I was never getting a break. Finally it was done and I was numb almost immediately. JT came in when it was time to start and everyone was ready to go. Dr. Crowe got to work and asked me right before she pulled out the baby about my guess to the gender. I said "girl" but not with much confidence - I really thought "girl"from the beginning up until the last month where I started thinking "boy". Finally she told JT to stand up and he excitedly said, "It's a GIRL!". It took me a couple of seconds to process what he had said...GIRL!!! Dr. Crowe showed her to me and then the nurses started checking her out.

First look at the little girl! She already seems calmer than Will!

Waiting on baby girl to get cleaned up while I get put back together.

Baby Girl:
She weighed 7 lb 2 oz and was 18.25 inches long. She scored an 8 and a 9 on her APGAR tests. She had a head full of dark hair (not as much as Will had). Of course JT looked her over and made sure she had no extra markings of hemangiomas like Will. She had no problems, but she looked like she was sunburned all over because she was so red. The nurses wrapped her up to let me hold me hold her. Dr. Crowe made an adjustment to her little hat so that she would have a bow, because every little girl needs a bow!

7 lb 2 oz

Dr. Crowe's bow for baby girl

Post-Op:
Gram was already at the hospital when we got to post-op. JT went out and told her that she "got her GIRL!". Gram has said this baby was a girl from the day I told her I was pregnant. Pops and Nonna arrived shortly after. NeeNee came over when Hope got to the house to take care of Will. We all went together to our room that we would be in for the next few days and started getting to know this precious little girl.

Name:
JT and I were narrowing down her name. We had pretty much decided that Nicole would be her middle name (Nicole is my middle name). Evelyn was most likely the first name (name of his grandmother that he never met). I have loved the name Caroline though so it was still up for consideration. Will is named after family and we wanted to continue that, so it officially became Evelyn Nicole. We are calling her Evie.

We are absolutely in love with her!