She's Here!

I've been waiting so long to finally announce this! Our sweet baby is here!

Evangeline Joy Mendenhall was born at 4:02 p.m. on Friday, July 13.

I'd begun to accept the idea that at almost 41 weeks, I'd have to be induced. I'd only had off-and-on mild contractions at night, would fall asleep, and wake up the next morning...still pregnant. I'm not going to lie, I was getting impatient and a bit discouraged because while scheduling an induction would have still done the trick and we'd be thrilled for her to get here, I was beginning to really get excited about the whole surprise of water breaking, having close contractions, making the highly anticipated trip to the hospital...probably the only time in life that you'd actually be excited for these kind of painful/pretty gross things to happen.

Ironically, that Friday was supposed to be my appointment to discuss induction, but as Brendan's boss predicted, we skipped the appointment to go for the real thing. My water broke at around 4:30 a.m., which came an invited surprise. We got to the hospital an hour later and after I while, I still had no significant contractions so they stared me on pitocin, which did the trick.

After the contractions got pretty painful, I opted for the epidural which worked wonders and soon after fell asleep for a little bit. When I woke up, I felt a lot of pressure and started to understand why sometimes women who get their epidurals really early on think they don't work because the pressure is still pretty significant.

But then it became more than significant pressure. About ten minutes after waking up, I felt actual pain. I'd completely missed the part about pressing the little IV button to increase the epidural. Oops. And by that point it was kinda too late for it took kick in more because things were happening already. I knew something was going on and Brendan grabbed the nurse to check me again. Sure enough, I was 10 centimeters and she could see the head.

Oooh boy.

I'm not sure how long I pushed for. It wasn't too long, but felt like forever (that is no joke, especially with only 50 percent of what your epidural should be). Thank God the last push was the last because I remember thinking it was the last one I had in me.

And taaadaaa! There she was! The first thing I thought when they threw her on me was that she definitely has her daddy's nose.

She was completely beautiful.

Since being home, she's been so good. She got to hang out her Mimi Jeannie and has already met tons of new friends. She's not too fussy, eats a ton, and is making progress at night sleeping in her pack-n-play.

Here are a few pics from the hospital and coming home...

We are so, so appreciative for all of the prayers and well wishes. We can definitely feel the love :)
We're so thankful to have this sweet little girl in our lives and can't wait to see her little life unfold.