Baby Claire

Claire Emily Mendenhall was born October 20th at 6:07 AM. She weighed 6 lbs. 12 oz, and since then she's gotten even smaller. She is so tiny. We went to the hospital at 7 in the morning on Friday. Here's a picture of me just before we left.

The baby had once again flipped in my belly so they had to do a version again. I couldn't believe it when the doctor told me that she was breech again at 39 weeks. At first the doctor had a hard time flipping her. He tried several times, and it was really hurting my belly since he had to push so hard. He seemed to be getting discouraged but then decided to try flipping her the other way, and she went on the first try! After that we had to wait a really long time. The doctor wanted to start me into labor while we knew the baby was head down, but the problem was I was only dilated to a 1, barely. They gave me some medicine to help get things going. Finally at about 3 in the afternoon they were able to break my water. After that the contractions started to get really bad. I still wasn't dilated very much. I can sometimes be pretty stubborn. Rusty kept saying that I should get an epidural, but I thought I should wait since I still had a while to go. Finally after several painful contractions in a row I gave in and got the epidural. It was a wonderful decision.  

We waited around the rest of the afternoon and evening. The nurses would come and check on me every hour. I finally got dilated to a 4, but then I was stuck there for a very long time. In the evening the doctor came back to the hospital and told us there was still a possibility we might have to do a C-section because the baby's heartbeat sometimes would drop low when I had contractions. But he was such a great doctor and wanted to do everything he could to avoid that so it will be easier when I have other kids in the future. We decided to just wait it out. I said I was very hungry, but I could go longer without food if it meant avoiding a C-section. We slept throughout the night, and the nurses would come in every hour. I was getting more dilated each time they came in, so the waiting did pay off. I had to start wearing an oxygen mask Friday night to keep the baby's heartbeat up. That was a little inconvenient. The doctor came back to the hospital around 5 Saturday morning. The nurses had already started me pushing. I had to push about an hour, and then little Claire was finally born! Rusty was great through the whole 23 hour waiting process and tried to help me as much as he could. 

We had a lot of visitors come see us at the hospital.

Kristen and Claire

Cara and Chris

Danielle, Jenn, and Rusty's mom Kay

Rusty's dad

Dallen

The baby did not like her first bath.

But her bath made her hair really fluffy!

My dad and mom

Cara and the baby.

Cara and Kristen had to help Rusty change the messy diaper. 

She went away to the nursery for the night. When she came  back the nurses had done her hair.

Kristen and I had fun dressing her on Monday when we got home from the hospital. She is too little for most of her clothes.

She loves to lay on Rusty.

My old roommates Jessica and Kaylie also came to visit us at the hospital, and Rebecca and Travis came also. It still is a little crazy to me that we have a baby and are parents, but we sure do think she is cute! We definitely are learning a lot and trying to figure things out.

Breech Baby

On October 3rd I went to the doctor for my regular visit. He was checking the baby and got out his little ultra sound machine and found out some bad news. The baby was breech. It was not pleasant news, but he said that I shouldn't worry about it. Yes I was 37 weeks along, but it wasn't too late to flip the baby around. He decided he was going to do a version (something I had never heard of before) that night at the hospital. He said pretty much all that happens is he puts some gel on my belly and pushes really hard on the baby and tries to get her to flip over. They had to do it at the hospital and I had to have an IV just in case something went wrong with the umbilical chord wrapped around the baby and they needed to rush me to do an emergency C-section. He said that they had never happened before though. So I had to wait around all day until 8:30 that evening. Then we went to the hospital. They checked me in and got everything ready. The doctor put the gel on  my belly and said he thought he felt the head and bum. He pushed really hard and started to turn his hands in a circle. When he was done trying just one time he thought the baby might have already flipped, and he checked on the ultra sound machine, and she actually had! They said it hardly ever happens that fast. Usually the baby is much more difficult. The longest part of the night was waiting there for an hour and a half after until the nurses got 20 minutes of constant heartbeat. Apparently I was moving too much the first hour, but they never told me it messed up the heartbeat counter until we had been there a really long time. Once I knew not to move it was fast and we were able to go home. The next week I stressed quite a bit thinking the baby might have flipped back, but when I went for my visit the next Wednesday she was still head down! I'm so happy everything worked out.

Other things that have been going on are Cara, Kristen, and I went and checked out the new store Scheels. It's giant! There were some really great places to take photos so it looked like you were in the mountains.

We did a project last Saturday morning. My parents wanted to build another garden box. Now we can grow even more things next summer. Rusty was really buff pushing the wheelbarrow full of stones.

 Here is my dad chiseling the bottom of the stones so the bottom layer was flat on the ground.

 Kristen had such good leveling skills.

 My mom and I measured a lot. We wanted to make sure it was straight.

That night Rusty and I got to do something really fun. We were asked to chaperone the stake young dance. It was a really funny experience. There were a lot of tasty treats for us to eat. Unfortunately we didn't take any pictures at the dance.

Hurst Baby Shower

Saturday night while the men were off at Preisthood Session the Fahey girls were so nice and threw me a baby shower. It was a lot of fun! It had a nursery rhyme theme, and I realized that I'm pretty lousy at knowing nursery rhymes. We had delicious food, and I got many wonderful presents. Everyone was so nice. The baby has a lot of new cute clothes. My grandma crocheted a very pretty white blanket, and my mom and sisters secretly made a very cute and colorful fray blanket. It was a great time.

Elaine and Cara

 Heidi, Sarah, Lisa, and Heather

 me, my mom, Kristen, and Jessie

 Patty and Renae

 Shannon and grandma

 Renae made a very fancy Quiet Book. It must have taken so much time. Kristen and Jessie really were excited about it!

Kitty City

Last Friday Cara, Kristen, and I finally went and visited the new Kitty City addition at the Humane Society. There were many different rooms with around 8-10 cats in each one. They had little beds and places to climb. They seemed much happier than they did in the old cages that they had before.

 This cat was very loving. He was trying to snuggle in my arm.

 This cat made scary hissing noises.

 This cat has incredible ear hair and whiskers.

 This cat Cara is holding was huge! He had redness on the fur around his eyes.

 Chubby Keith and Cara.

This cat looked like a wolf.

 This cat was trying to bite me while the picture was being taken.

 This cat was so sad looking. He was very loving, but he had red eyes and tears leaking down his face. He looked so lonely.

We love Kitty City. I want to go back and visit again.