My Miracle

September 11 was seriously one of the best days of my life.  It's right up there with my wedding day.  On this day, the sweetest little boy in the whole world was born.  His name is Travis Allan Zeugschmidt and I am so in love with him!  The whole experience of him being born was very special to me but I know people are interested in how it all came about.  I will give you the short and sweet story (OK, after writing it I realized it isn't short and sweet; I'm not good at that).

First, here is the last picture of me pregnant.  WOW!!!  I was huge...

The beginning of this story starts on September 9.  I woke up that morning feeling some cramping.  I knew something was going on with my body and that made me excited.  I got up and went to work just like any normal day.  Throughout the day I kept feeling more cramping and a little more pain.  It wasn't too bad though.  They had a party for me at work that day to celebrate me being there 3 years, my birthday, my baby and me leaving.  I'm glad I went to work that day!  When I left I was 95% sure that I would not be coming back.  I was right.  Once I got home the cramping turned into contractions and the pain was getting worse.  We went to dinner with some friends at Red Lobster and the whole time I was having contractions every 15 minutes for 30 seconds.  Our poor friends.  I bet it wasn't fun eating dinner with a girl in early labor.  Once we got home the contractions started to get worse, more painful and closer together.  They weren't so bad that I felt I needed to go to the hospital yet.  Well, I tried to sleep, but there was no way I was going to sleep through the pain and discomfort.  Needless to say, neither Eric nor I got ANY sleep that night.  Eric was so great with trying to help me relax.


Let's move forward to Saturday, September 10.  I "woke-up" around 7 and showered.  We decided to go to the hospital and headed out around 8.  I got there and they watched me for an hour only to tell me that I hadn't progressed at all.  I hadn't even really progressed since my appointment that Tuesday.  I was NOT a happy camper.  They sent me home with a morphine shot that they said would help me sleep.  That's not true...  I still couldn't sleep.  So, all day Saturday I was dealing with contractions every 6-8 minutes.  My brother and his friend came over to watch the BYU game that day.  They were probably both a little weirded out that I was in labor.  I was so exhausted but I didn't think it was time to go back to the hospital so Eric and I just hung out and timed contractions all evening.  I was in so much pain!  At 11 PM Eric and I went for a walk and WOW, that was the most painful walk of my life.  Eric convinced me to go to the hospital (I was terrified of being sent home again) and we got there at midnight.  They watched me for an hour and I had progressed 1 cm.  I was so happy!!  They checked me in and here is where the real story starts!

I tried to sleep, since I hadn't gotten a good nights sleep since Wednesday (I was up all Thursday night with awful heartburn.)  They gave me some basic painkillers to start off, but they were not doing much.  I was just so exhausted and needed some sleep, so at 5:30 AM I got the epidural.  It was not as bad as I thought it would be and it definitely helped.  I finally was able to relax! They put me on the lowest dose of pitocin and at 7 AM  my water broke.  At 8 AM my body was all ready but my doctor wanted him to descend a little bit more.  At 9:15 I started to push.  The nurse thought it would be super fast.  It wasn't.  It turns out that little Travis was face up.  The way he was laying made it hard for the doctor and nurse to determine this until 1.5 hours into the pushing.  They did an ultrasound to confirm it, and then my doctor had to manually turn him around during each contraction.  Otherwise, I would have had to have a c-section.  She was successful in turning him, but all of this had been a little stressful on him, so the doctor had to use forceps.  At 11:15 my little son was born and he was perfect.  He was healthy in every way!  Eric got to go hold him and watching him hold our son for the first time was a perfect moment that I will never forget.

Our little man was 21.5 inches long and weighed 8 lbs 7 oz.  He was a good size.  He has Eric's ears and face shape, my lips and my long torso.  That's all we can decipher so far.  All I know is that he is the cutest little boy and I can't stop staring at him.    

Birth really is an amazing thing.  I'm glad that Eric was there to support me through the whole thing.  He was so great.  So there you go, the story of our little Travis being born.  Now here's the good stuff; the pictures.  I have a lot, so I narrowed it down a little.  Enjoy looking at my cute little boy.

 

Our Crazy Week

Eric and I had one crazy week last week.  If you're in for a story, keep reading to find out what happened:

Crazy event #1:  We got home from church on Sunday and got some food to eat.  While we were sitting at the table we heard a pop and then water.  Eric ran in the kitchen to find a hose underneath the sink that had popped off of its connection.  Water was going EVERYWHERE and so fast.  The water shut-off is in the crawl space, but to get to the crawl space you have to open a little door on the floor of our storage closet.  Well, seeing how it's a storage closet, there was stuff all over the floor!  He was in his church clothes moving all of the items out of the closet while I ran upstairs to get every towel that we owned.  Eric finally got down to the crawl space and had to get to the other side to where the water shut-off is.  Luckily the crawl space is 3.5 feet high so he didn't get his nice clothes dirty.  By the time he turned the water off it was all over the kitchen floor and about 1/2"-1" deep.  We put all of the towels down to soak up the water but then we had to squeeze them out and do it all again.  We finally got all of the water cleaned off of the floor, but then Eric said that there were 2-3" of standing water in the crawl space on a plastic sheet.  We had to call the management company and they sent out a guy to come clean up the water and dry out the insulation.  Then they had a plumber come out the next day to fix the hose connection.  He fixed both the hot and cold one and now our sink is good to go.  It was nuts!  We are SO lucky that we were home when it happened.  Had it been a weekday, water would have been going all day and everything on the main floor would have had water damage.  That would have been a nightmare!

Crazy event #2:  Let's go to Tuesday.  At about 4:30 Eric called me at work to say he was going home because he was having an allergic reaction to something.  He thinks it was his shirt (which he hadn't worn in years) or the Beef Cup of Noodles he had eaten for lunch.  He said he had a rash that started in his armpit and was going down his arm.  I said it wouldn't make sense that it was his shirt then because his shirt wasn't in direct contact with his armpit.  So, I get home at five and see his rash.  It was on his arms, his chest, his back, his neck, and starting on his thighs.  It wasn't that bad at this point so we got some dinner and then he was just relaxing as much as he could with the amount of itching he was going through.  I went and got him some Benadryl, which he took at 8.  About an hour later he came up to me and showed me his stomach, which was COVERED in a rash.  I have never seen anything like it.  Not only was it covering his stomach, but his chest his sides, his thighs, neck, some of his face, his scalp and pretty much everywhere but below his knees.  It was bad.  He said it was getting a little hard to swallow too, so we both were concerned.  Well, at 9 we decided to take him to the Emergency Room because it wasn't getting better and we didn't know what to do.  2.5 hours later we left.  They didn't take us right away because other people had more serious injuries.  That makes sense though.  They just gave him some pills and a shot and gave him a prescription for steroids.  They told him food allergies can take 3 days to get out of your system so he may have some flare ups.  Well Wednesday he had a little bit of a rash but nothing like the day before.  It was crazy but I'm glad he's ok.

Crazy event #3:  Now this one isn't so bad, but it just added to the already crazy and exhausting week.  Thursday I was randomly checking our credit card online and noticed a charge for peoplesearch.com.  Now I'm pretty sure that neither Eric nor I were searching for anyone online, so I called Eric and sure enough, it was a fraudulent charge.  Eric called Visa, and they reversed the charge immediately and sent us out new cards that arrived the next day.  So, like I said, not so bad, but still annoying.

So there you go.  That was our crazy week.  We were both so ready for the long week-end.  We definitely took some time to relax and it was fabulous.  I don't think we'll have much time to relax in the coming weeks... we might as well take advantage of it right?    

Saying Good-Bye

This post is long overdue.  I don't like to say good-bye to my good friends.  Unfortunately, I had to do that twice in just under two weeks.  I'm already an emotional person, but then add pregnancy to that and look out!  Well, not really.  I don't think I've been THAT bad (Eric might have a different opinion though.)  Back to what I was saying...

One of my best friends, Kirsten, and her husband and kids moved to California.  I've known Kirsten since we lived in the dorms freshmen year together and we've been good friends since.  She's been there for me a lot and I just love her.  I wasn't ready for her to leave me, but I'm glad that her and Aaron get to live in a fun place that's close to Eric's family so I can visit her all of the time!!  I could go on and on about how wonderful she is, and how great her husband is, but I don't want to get too sappy here.  That was a hard good-bye for me but I'm glad I got to spend so much time with them and that I got to know their cute little kids.  I miss them!   Here's a picture of all of us at our wedding:

About a week later our good friends Ryan and Amber left town too.  They moved to Boston so that Ryan can go to dental school.  Ryan and Eric have known each other since freshmen year as well.  They met in their major and have been friends ever since.  After they both got home from their missions, they lived together until they both got married.  Ryan and Amber got engaged around the time that we did, and then they got married about one month after we did.  It was fun to have another couple in the same situation.  We have hung out a lot during the past few years.  They seriously will do anything and everything with us.  They've been great friends throughout the years which made that good-bye was very hard too.  Although Boston is very far away, I'm very excited to go visit someday.  Here we are, plus another friend in the middle, at another friend's wedding.  Was that confusing enough for you?  Haha.  

So there you go.  I don't like good-byes but I'm glad that I have such good friends that I will stay friends with even though they don't live close by.  We love all of you guys!