Our Baby Story

Well, after 38 1/2 weeks of pregnancy, I was definitely ready to meet my beautiful daughter! Brad was at work on Valentine's Day, so I crashed at my parents house for the day. I had been having contractions off and on for a couple weeks, but that night around 6 pm they got worse...much worse. I tried really hard to convince myself they were just Braxton Hicks because Brad wasn't there and I was determined that she wasn't going to come even a minute before my due date. I decided to just sit in pain with Todd, Catrina, and my parents until Brad got off work and picked me up. Once Brad got to their house, I was convinced that even though my contractions had been 5 minutes apart, lasting over a minute each for 3 hours straight that I wasn't in labor. We went home and while Brad fell asleep, I laid in bed until the morning still having contractions. At about 8 am, I called my doctors office to see if they thought I should go to the hospital. Because I had been dilated 3 cm and 80% effaced since 36 weeks, they didn't hesitate to send me to the hospital. I decided to shower and make sure everything was packed before we left for the hospital. At about 10 am we checked into Labor and Delivery to start the baby monitoring. I couldn't believe it!

They hooked me up to a couple different monitors to measure my blood pressure, the baby's heartbeat and my contractions. It was cool to see my contractions on the monitor because I could prove that I wasn't making it all up! At about 11 am the nurse decided that I should walk around the floor for an hour because I wasn't progressing very quickly. After the hour was up she would check everything again and see if I was getting closer to delivery or if I was simply experiencing Braxton Hicks. Brad and I did so many laps around the labor and delivery floor. I thought the hour would never end! My feet hurt so bad just doing normal daily activity that after an hour of walking they killed! The nurse hooked me back up to everything and monitored everything for about 30 minutes. She came back in and told me that she thought that I should just get a morphine shot to take the pain away and go home to sleep for the day because it could just have been Braxton Hicks. She left to go get the shot and I was so frustrated. I knew I was in pain and that it felt worse than ever before! Fifteen minutes later she came in and told me that she had been watching my monitor and that she didn't actually feel comfortable sending me home because my contractions were so consistent. This was it...I really was in labor!!!

Then began the fun part. More waiting. By this time I was dilated to 5 cm and 100% effaced. Only 5 more to go! They decided that Dr. Glenn should come in and break my water to get things moving a lot faster. Before he got there, the nurses started an IV on me. I could not believe how painful this part was! My nurse tried on my left hand and blew the vein. She then missed the vein completely on my right side and decided to go get a better nurse to try again. That nurse had to fish around on my left hand for what seemed like forever, but she finally got the IV in. I was not very happy with the nurses because it hurt so badly! After they got the IV in, the anesthesiologist came in to give me my epidural. I felt when he gave me the numbing shot, but when he said he was done with the epidural, I thought he was joking. I didn't feel it at all! That was the part I was most worried about, and I had no idea he had done it at all. What a blessing! The epidural worked really quickly and was the best decision for me! Soon after I got my epidural, Dr. Glenn showed up to break my water. That was quick and painless as well, thanks to the epidural!

After all of that fun stuff, we just kept waiting. The nurse came in about every hour to see how much I had progressed. To pass the time, Brad had brought a season of the TV show Scrubs, so we watched a few episodes of that and some TV. By about 6 pm my contractions started to hurt very badly. The nurse contacted Dr. Glenn and they decided that because I was officially fully dilated that I would start pushing at 7:30 pm, after about an hour of rest. I was excited when the nurse told me that the average pushing time was 2 hours because that meant that I was so close to being able to hold my baby girl! Brad was so helpful in this process - even when I got mad at him because he was counting to 10 too slow! I kept looking at the clock to calculate how much longer I had until the 2 hour mark. The nurse kept telling me that the baby was getting closer and closer and that I was doing so well, but I still didn't have my daughter in my arms after 2 hours of pushing. What luck! Dr. Glenn showed up about 9:30 pm to check on my progress. The end of my labor was finally in sight! Thank goodness, because by now I hadn't slept in a couple days and I was practically asleep in the delivery room!

At 10:11 pm, my beautiful daughter was born. At that moment, I was so grateful that Brad was there and that our family had grown more complete. After Brad cut her umbilical cord and the nurses cleaned her up a little bit, I got to hold her for the first time. Even though I was completely exhausted, that was such an incredible moment that I will never forget. I could not believe that she was finally in my arms and that she was absolutely perfect. The nurses then took her to the warming table to clean her up even more, give her the vitamin K shot and the eye drops, and take her first measurements. She weighed 7 pounds 1 ounce and was 20 inches long.

I got to hold her again and still couldn't believe that she was mine. It was so surreal that the 38 weeks of waiting, preparing, and planning was over! After seeing her and holding her, we decided to name her Sarah Naomi Larsen. Sarah is a family name on both sides of the family, and Naomi is my Grandma Brewer's middle name. I absolutely love her name and it is so perfect for her. Our parents had been in the waiting room for hours and it was getting really late, so we let them come in the room to see our baby. It was such a happy experience but I'm pretty sure I only remember half of it because I was SO tired and SO hungry. I remember how glad I was that they were all there, though!

After our parents left, the nurses took Sarah to the nursery to wash her, check her vitals, and get her dressed. While they did this, I ate some snacks and then they took me to my room on the Mother/Baby floor. After a few minutes, Brad and Sarah came into our room. We settled in for the night at about 12:30 am. I didn't sleep well that night even though I was extremely tired because I couldn't stop thinking about how much my life had changed in such a short time. I was happy that she had arrived safely and that she was so perfect!

I'm so glad that everything went well with her birth and I'm even more glad that the first month of her life has been such a wonderful experience. It's been really hard and really tiring, but it's been so worth it. Brad has been such a great help with Sarah and he is such an amazing father. I really appreciate all he does when he is at home. Our families have also been a great help to us, especially when Brad is at work. I'm so grateful that our families are so close and that they are always willing to help with anything that we need. I have learned to much from my mom over the last month and could not imagine how much harder this all would have been without her so close!

Sarah is growing more and more each day. She is such a healthy baby. Most of the time she is a pretty good sleeper, but some nights are still so hard because she wants to stay awake all night! Her newborn clothes are starting to get a little tight and I am dreading the day when she can't wear them anymore. They are so cute! She has lots of cute clothes that are bigger, though, so it will be okay. Sarah is so unbelievably strong. She has liked tummy time since week 1 and is always looking around and lifting her head up. Her facial expressions are constantly making us laugh and she tends to smile right before she spits up. We love the fun things that she does every day and we even love when she explodes out of her diaper or spits up everywhere. I can't think of anything that we don't just absolutely love about her! She is such an incredible blessing that has been placed in our lives and I am forever grateful for the great blessing she is within our family. She is just the best!!

Life Update!

Well we have sure been busy lately! School is almost over; Brad and I just have a couple more finals and then it's summertime! Our classes have certainly kept us busy this semester and we sure have done well considering we got married after the semester started! Our summer will be extremely busy as well, however, because I finally got a job! I work full time at Elite Security now with my sisters. I absolutely love it so far. I'll be working 8-5 every day and then Brad works 7-1 most nights. We won't see each other a whole lot during the week but our weekends will be better. Brad is taking classes to get his EMT during May and June so he will be busy while I'm at work most of the time.

We are officially moving May 1st! We got a new apartment across the street from BYU. While looking for apartments on Craigslist, I found a bunch of posts for purchasing contracts from Cambridge Court Apartments. The one we fell in love with was an extremely good deal for us, so we couldn't pass it up! It'll be really nice for me to be able to walk to school in the fall instead of being stuck at school all day waiting for a ride home. We're absolutely excited to move! The apartment we are in right now is fine, but it will be nice to live on the top floor and have no more kids running above us at 6 in the morning. YAY!!

My brother, Todd, is now engaged too! Catrina is such an amazing girl and they are both lucky to have each other! Their wedding is in the end of July in the Newport Beach temple, so it will be a wonderful vacation for our family!

Brad's birthday was over the weekend and we celebrated for three days! On Friday we went out to dinner with his parents and Heather. We went to Brick Oven and it was delicious! That's definitely one of my favorite restaurants! His family is so fun to spend time with! I'm so glad that they are so awesome!

His actual birthday was such a great day! We decided to go up to the Hogle Zoo in the afternoon. On our way up, my dad called us to tell us that Brad had mail from UVU. We had been waiting to hear if he was accepted to Paramedic School for Fall semester, and it came! My dad opened it while we were on the phone and HE WAS ACCEPTED!! Both him and my brother-in-law, Troy, were accepted. Thank goodness! So, I'll be going to BYU alone in the fall and Brad will finally be taking classes that are perfect for him! I'm so excited for him to become a paramedic and a firefighter! I'm so proud of the hard work he put in to study for the paramedic entrance exam and everything. He's going to be such a good paramedic! What a great birthday present! We then walked around the zoo for a while and saw all of the animals. I think we both agree that our favorite was the baby elephant! We got to watch it run and play and it was SO cute! After we saw everything at the zoo, we decided we were hungry. We drove to Gateway Mall in Salt Lake City and ate at Jason's Deli. It was delicious! After that, we decided to walk around the mall. Brad found some shirts he really liked at PacSun and I found my family! My sister, Cathy, and her family rode Trax up to SLC and we ran into them at the mall. What a coincidence! It was really fun to see them up there. After we bought Brad his shirts, we drove to Ikea to look for a kitchen table for our apartment. Ikea is the biggest store, so that took forever. By the time we finished walking around the store we were both exhausted. We decided to head home and pick up his paramedic packet that was at my house. Once we got that we decided we should end the day by getting massages because we had a pretty good coupon. Man, was that nice! After walking a whole day it was really nice to relax. I hope Brad had such a great birthday!!

Sunday was his last day of celebrating his birthday. We went to church in his home ward because Keith Newsom was giving his farewell talk. It was fun to see everyone there! Then we went to my parents house and made Brad's birthday cake! Funfetti of course! Haha. A little while later Brad started cooking the meat. He chose to have carne asada for his birthday dinner, and what a good choice that was! It was so delicious. I searched the kitchen cupboards for candles and found exactly 22 for his cake. I keep forgetting how huge my family is getting: we had just enough cake for everyone, too! It was so fun to spend time with both my family and Brad's family for his birthday! We absolutely love all of them! They helped make Brad's birthday and the entire weekend great.

Pictures hopefully to come!