introducing little miss sage!

(sorry this post is so late! things have been crazy here.)

she is finally here! sage renee peterson made her entrance on saturday, october 17th at 6:11pm at elmendorf air force base hospital. she weighed in at a healthy 8.1 lbs and was 21 inches long! ya, definitely NOT a small baby as the doctors had told me at my check ups...i'm just happy she didn't follow in steve's footsteps as i would have split in TWO delivering a 10+ pound baby (louise, i don't know how you did it!)!

we had an awesome experience and labor was fabulous! the staff was amazing and the hospital was new and clean! so much better the second time around...

so here is the story. skip ahead and look at the pictures if you must as it's pretty long! i made the mistake of not writing about my delivery experience with brynn, and feel just awful about that as i don't remember every detail.

friday, october 16th

i had my 40 week appointment in the afternoon and was praying that i had made some progress from the week before. (the previous friday i was still only dilated to a two and effaced about 30 percent.) they stripped my membranes (sounds so lovely, huh?!) a week before and i got my hopes up that i would go into labor shortly after as that sometimes does it for some women...didn't happen for me. so at this appointment, i saw the same doctor and she told me that i hadn't made any progress from the week before. i was so sad! she stripped my membranes once again and told me that she was pretty sure she would see me next week. i left the clinic sad, trying to hold back my tears, as i made my way to the parking lot. steve helped me out by watching brynn in my car during my appointment and could tell i didn't get the news i wanted as he saw me waddle towards him. he calmed me down by talking and we both agreed that she would come when the time was right. i just had to be patient (although it was hard as i wasn't able to sleep much at night or get comfortable) and stay busy at home to keep my mind off things.

the rest of the day, i felt crampy and kept having contractions but didn't think much of them as that had been happening for weeks now. so i continued to clean my house, do laundry, and get dinner ready.

i didn't sleep well that night and either did steve as i kept getting up every 30 minutes to pee or walk around as my legs were so restless.

saturday, october 17th

woke up (if you can call it that...i didn't really sleep) at 6:30am in a fair amount of pain. again, didn't get too excited as this was pretty normal. so i went downstairs to the office and looked at more tutorials online to keep my mind distracted.

from 10am-noon, our ward was having its primary program practice and we both had to be there as steve is a teacher for the valiant 11's and i'm the secretary. but since i was getting more and more uncomfortable by the minute, we decided that i would stay home with brynn while steve went to the church. so i repacked my hospital bag, and took a shower while steve got ready to go all the while looking at the clock to time my contractions. they were definitely getting closer together, and increasingly more painful, but i assured steve that one of us just HAD to go help as our primary is crazy huge. so he left, cell phone in hand, as i stayed back and walked up and down the hall trying to decide if i should go to the hospital.

i ended up calling my mom to ask her her opinion as i was terrified of being turned away at the hospital. she helped me time my contractions over the phone and told me that i was definitely in the first stages of labor (she is an obgyn/labor & deliver nurse who is currently teaching at a university in texas). she told me i should go anyways with the intentions of just being checked so i didn't get my hopes up about being admitted. so i called the hospital to tell them about my current status, and they told me that my chart was ready and that they believed i too was in labor. i checked my bags once again to make sure i had everything, and called steve on his cell to have him come home. it was close to noon at this time, and the primary kids were just finishing up so he raced home, grabbed me and brynn, and headed back to the church. our awesome friend and neighbor shannon said she would watch brynn for us, (she just happens to also serve in the primary) so we dropped off brynn with her there. i felt like such a friggin BABY as a few ladies from the ward ran over to our car when steve brought brynn inside, and there i was bawling my eyes out in the front seat. i hate crying in front of people but i was in so much pain and anxious that i would be turned away at the hospital that i couldn't help it.

so steve and i drove to base, parked in an "expecting mothers" (GOSH I LOVE THOSE PARKING SPOTS!) spot, and checked in. the nurse took me into a huge, clean room and told me to get into a gown so i could be checked. i was so nervous that i hadn't made any progress, so i held back the tears and thought happy thoughts. but, the news was great! i was dialated to a FIVE and 100% effaced!!! they were going to admit me! i was so giddy!
here i am in pain (but happy, i swear!) awaiting an iv.

since i tested positive for strep b at 36 weeks, i had to have an iv for 4 hours so sage could be delivered safely. i was praying that i didn't have her during that time as she would have had to undergo extra shots and additional blood work right after delivery. lucky for me, my contractions started to become less intense, and further apart (which made me think that they would send me home!). so they gave me some stadal to help me sleep and i sent steve off to call our family and get something to eat for himself. so i chilled, watched some tv and tried to sleep but just couldn't get comfortable in the stupid hospital bed with all the monitors around my gut and the blood pressure cuff going on every 5 minutes.

the anesthesiologist came in, about 2 hours into my iv, to hook me up and prevent me from going 'au naturale'. i was TERRIFIED of going too quickly the second time around and not being able to make it into the hospital in time for an epidural so you can imagine how happy i was the way things were going. the second the guy came in, i recognized him! we had met him earlier in the summer at the local elementary school's playground. super nice guy with 6 kids (and not mormon, surprisingly) who grew up in washington state like me! so we talked about the area, and laughed about things that we had in common.

so, after i had the epidural i just chilled and talked to steve while we waited for the 4 hours to be up on the iv. as soon as it was, they gave me patossin to speed things up as i wasn't progressing much. i was on that for a little while, then felt a ton of pressure and asked to be checked. i was already to a nine! hooray! so the nurses called the doctor in, and they started getting everything ready for delivery. it was so surreal. i could not believe i was so close to seeing and holding our sweet little sage! the 9 months seemed to have dragged on forever and it was just crazy to think that soon i would actually be done!
ok, i was terrified about one thing...POOPING! and since the staff was awesome and all had a sense of humor, they knew this as i had talked about it from the time i was admitted. so when it came time to push, i held back as i did NOT want to do that! they could tell i wasn't pushing as much as i could have, so they suggested bringing in the mirror. now, i was not too cool with this in the beginning. one, i had NEVER seen an actual birth and two, i didn't want to see myself looking all NASTY down there! but they convinced me to try it and i'm sooooo glad i did. it did freak me out in the beginning (i begged steve to look away!!! LOL!) to see everything so, ugh, LONG, but it was amazing to see her little head and that gave me the incentive to push her out harder. from the time i started pushing to the time i actually delivered her, it only took 20 minutes! SO much better then the 2 1/2 hours it took with brynn....gah.

sage was born at 6:11pm with a full head of hair and chubby cheeks! the staff all commented on how big she was (which made me even more anxious to see how much she weighed) and all took their guesses on her weight. it was nice to see that she wasn't as big as steve as i was fearing for my body and the damage below!
the second they gave her to me, she started rooting and it cracked me up! already a little piggy from the beginning (that would explain all the crazy nighttime cravings i had towards the end...)! again, it was so surreal to actually see and hold her! i fell in love with her immediately and was so grateful that she came to us healthy and without any complications. she looked so much like brynn did! same hair line, same swollen eyes, same toes (which they both get from daddy), and same cute cry and squeaks.

steve left about an hour after we had her, to get brynn and bring her to the hospital. i was excited to see brynn's reaction and a little nervous at how she would do now that she was no longer the only child.
brynn loved her from the beginning, even sang to her (i will upload the video later) but was mad that we couldn't take her home right away. she was also convinced that sage "crawled" out of me and that cracked us up! one thing that was totally unexpected was the way brynn acted towards steve whenever he would come near her and sage...she would get FURIOUS with him, yelling that she was "her baby" and that he needed to get his own. ugh, child? daddy is part of the reason that baby is even here! gosh...

since i tested positive for strep b, they kept sage and i at the hospital for 48 hours to make sure all was well. i was ready to go the next day, but i understood their policy. i couldn't wait to get back to my bed as i couldn't get to sleep. it was awful as the bed was soooo uncomfortable and loud from the plastic covered mattress, and the other babies were screaming so much that it kept waking me up thinking it was sage. sage just wanted to be held the whole time so it was impossible to get comfortable as i was terrified of rolling over on top of her. so you can imagine why i was packed, and ready to go at noon the day we were supposed to be discharged! ya, and i had to wait until 6:00pm as it had to be a full 48 hours from the time she was born.

here we are headed home from the hospital. brynn was so proud that sage sat in the back seat with her! it was a little squished as we were crammed in steve's car.

our first night home, we noticed that our house was ridiculously colder then normal. in the middle of the night, steve went to turn the thermostat up and noticed that it was set at 50 degrees and would NOT go up! so he went out into the garage to check the unit, and couldn't see anything wrong out there. what sucked even more is that COLD air was blowing thru all the vents and we could not figure out how to shut that off! ya, it was like having full out air conditioning. not something you want in the middle of october in alaska. so we brought sage into our bed, and huddled close to keep her warm.
the next day we had to fork out $525 to get it fixed...good times.