William Orson Taylor

We are now a family of 4! William is beautiful (I'm referring to the younger William, not my husband.  Not that my husband isn't attractive, but he just buzzed his hair fairly short after almost 4 months with no hair cut and, well, I'm still trying to get used to it). At any rate, the new William makes the best faces. Evelyn loves giving him kisses and rubbing his head. She is handling the transition well. I hope we can help her still feel loved and special.

So a few of you have asked about his arrival.  So I'll summarize that and then I'll explain his name/nickname since many people have been confused by it.  

I blogged about my pregnancy in my last post, so I'll continue where I left off.

Wednesday January 14th: I had a midwife appointment.   Since Tuesday I felt like I was...hmmm, how to put this most euphemistically...I felt like I was leaking. So I told my midwife and she did a few different tests.  She checked my cervix for amniotic fluid and the swab came back a very light blue. (If I were leaking a lot of fluid it would have been very blue.) The ultrasound also showed good levels of fluid.  She said perhaps I was leaking a little, but it must have plugged back up or I could have just been leaking a little pee.  :)  I for sure didn't know. It felt different and something I couldn't control, but it was just a little bit here and there so we weren't really too worried.  I went home thinking I'd see her again in a week at my 39 week check up.  At the beginning of my pregnancy, I felt like this pregnancy would happen early.  I'm not saying it was revelation or anything, but I just felt it.  My body had all sorts of issues including carpal tunnel and it was a pretty exhausting pregnancy.  However, by 37 weeks, I started to feel better about being pregnant and in my last post I mentioned how I had learned to be patient and didn't feel he would come early anymore.

Friday, January, 17th-38 Weeks, 5 days:  All morning I was feeling pretty tired.  I don't usually let Evelyn watch TV until after lunch for quiet time if she chooses, but I just had no energy so I told her we could watch a movie. I looked through some of the Disney Movies on Netflix that Evelyn hadn't seen and ended up turning on Aristocrats.  We snuggled together and watched it for a bit. I actually emailed Will after I started the movie, around 10:30, saying: "I'm so tired and have no energy. I feel like a failure and dont know how pioneer woman did it."   (Yes...I'm pretty hard on myself...) He sent an encouraging email back.  While we watched the movie I bought us tickets to go to the gymnastics meet that night. We were all looking forward to going.  After awhile, I felt like I could start doing some chores.  We started organizing all of Evelyn's toys in the toy closet.  We were making great progress.  

Around 12:15, I felt a small gush of water come out. I was right next to the bathroom so I ran  inside not sure if my bladder was being cruel or if the small leak I mentioned previously had intensified.  Turns out that I did have "to go", but after I was done "going", the water kept coming (if you know what I mean).  I wasn't sure what the heck was going on.  Especially since I couldn't stop whatever it is that kept coming (granted, the "leaking" that was continuing was still pretty light).  At any rate, I was thoroughly confused. 

I sent Will an email (to make this blog post as true-to-life as possible, I'll just copy it for you.  I'm curious if the emails Will and I send to each other are typical of most couples.  But I digress...): "So i just started losing some water....ran to the bathroom to go pee and i really think it was way more than just pee....i kept having to wipe and i never pee that much? I'm not sure what to do....if i'm going insane and just peed a ton or what??!" 

Now, before I continue, I suppose I should provide some background info; many pregnant woman find themselves going to the bathroom a lot, and this pregnancy certainly was no different.  I had to go all the time.  But, because I went so often, my bladder never was that full when I'd "go".  So, at this point, the fact that I was losing more fluid than normal was a big indicator to me that something was up.  I called the midwives after I emailed Will and left a message with the on-call nurse.  I really wasn't 100% sure what was going on, so I decided to finish cleaning with Evelyn and wait until the midwives called back before I jumped to conclusions. (Not that I was doing a lot of jumping towards anything at this point.  When you're 9 months pregnant your ability to jump diminishes markedly. :) ).  Around 12:55 the nurse called me back and she said it sounded like it could be my water and suggested I go to the hospital for an evaluation.  It was either right before the phone call or right after where I felt another small gush of water leak and then the rest of the day there was a constant small leak of water.  I called a friend to see if she could watch Evelyn for us, and then grabbed our pregnancy bags that I had put together and some other things I never packed for Evelyn and for me in case the baby was coming.  I felt fine and wasn't really having any big contractions or anything too regular.  They felt like the ones I had been having for weeks.  We hadn't had lunch yet, so I also put together a lunch for Evelyn and myself.  I dropped her off around 1:40 and went to pick up Will.  (Will read through this and insisted that I add at least a few sentences regarding his role in the story up to this point.  When I sent the first email to Will, he was in a project meeting, which he was basically in charge of.  Following that meeting, he had to get on his bike and ride a mile away to another meeting.  He says that his memory of what went on in either of those meetings is basically nonexistent).  I ate while he drove us up to the hospital.  Contractions were becoming more regular, every 4 or 5 minutes but not intense.   I started to realize that he was coming today. I was thrilled that he decided to come early! 

We got to the hospital around 2:30 (I had never actually been to the hospital.  I had planned to take a tour of it the following week.  Suffice it to say that we had some trouble figuring out where to go).  They tested the fluid and the swab had no problems detecting amniotic fluid this time...dark blue!  The nurse checked me and said I was dilated to a 4.  She mentioned how effaced I was and what station his head was in, but I don't remember.  The next few hours seemed to drag on forever.  We got checked in and into our room by 4.  My midwife was not on call, but she told them she'd come in. I was so grateful, especially given the fact that the next morning she was flying to Tennessee for the weekend.

By this point I was getting really frustrated with my body.  Evelyn's labor happened so differently (or this link too).  (I didn't have any Braxton Hicks and then the day she arrived I started having contractions around midnight, which started strong and were 3 minutes apart from the get-go and she arrived by 6am.)  Because I wasn't feeling any strong contractions yet, like I did with her, I was getting really impatient and worried how long it would take.  I kept walking around, but 5 hours after my water breaking, the midwife came in and checked on me, and after expressing my frustrations, she suggested I try nipple stimulation to pick up labor.  A few minutes after starting, I noticed my contractions coming stronger, but they were still pretty easy.  I was hooked up to a machine that tracked the strength of the contractions, and Will entertained himself by watching the graph and encouraging me to see if I could get it up to a certain point.  I suppose he was hearkening back to his days of hurdling when his coach would try to get him to run it under a certain time. He also found my impatience somewhat amusing.  He told me that when I was in the throes of labor and in intense pain, that he was going to remind me of the fact that I was bored a few hours earlier and was longing for the painful contractions to come.  He was wise and decided to refrain from making such a comment when the contractions did come.  :) At any rate, after a while (I think around 6), I told Will he better go get something to eat.  He got a salad and a slice of pizza (Thai pizza...it was weird).  I had a few bites.  Finally, after an hour or so of walking around the hallway and room, contractions were getting more intense, but nothing to suggest I'd have a baby in a few hours (Will wanted to see how fast we could do laps around the birthing wing of the hospital to really get things going).  My midwife came in and suggested that there might be some more amniotic fluid that was still in there and once that was broken, she guessed things would pick up quickly.  She said around 8:00, she'd come back and do an internal exam and break the rest of the water.

She came in at 8:25 and upon examination she said I was probably at an 8.  Then she reached in higher and grabbed the bag of waters and broke that.  That was very uncomfortable.  She also felt for the baby and said she was going to try and turn him around so he was in a  better position for labor.  Again VERY uncomfortable.  And of course I started having a very intense contraction while she was doing all that and I couldn't get back in my comfortable position to work with it.  As soon as she was done, contractions were INSANE, which I should have been thrilled about, since that meant baby was coming quickly and I was no longer bored...but I lost my happy thoughts when she was doing her exam and couldn't get it back.   The midwife and Will got me into a new laboring position...kneeling on the bed.  They raised the bed into a L and so I was leaning up against the bed on my knees. I grabbed onto the top rail of bed when a new contraction would come.  The midwife left, and said to let her know if I felt like pushing.  As soon as she left, I told Will that I felt like I was transitioning.  So, they started prepping the room.  Around 9:05 I started pushing with my contractions with advice from the midwife and by 9:14 he slid out and I turned over and laid down relieved.  They put him on my chest and he started sucking immediately.  They just let us lay there together while I labored my placenta.  They didn't take him away to weigh him until we were ready, which was GREAT and they waited to cut the cord until it was done pulsing.  We stayed in the hospital until Sunday night to make sure his bilirubin levels were acceptable.  We had a great support system of friends who helped watch Evelyn, and we are forever grateful!

So here is William Orson Taylor:

He's a great baby.  If you are on Facebook you know that we've been having breastfeeding problems, and I'll blog about that later.  Before I end, I'll leave you with the story of his name. 

I assume most people are as picky about names as we are.  I want it to be a strong name and like it have special meaning.  Evelyn was named after Eve. I had been reading a book about Eve and felt a great love and understanding for her example as the mother of all living.  Evelyn's middle name is after my mother Jolene.  So she is named after two great mothers.  

William's name was pretty easy for me. I've always LOVED the name Liam.  When Will and I were dating I told him I wanted to call him Liam.  (wilLIAM) He was saved in my phone as Liam, but sadly, it never stuck...he was Will and I couldn't change that.  I do love his name.  His mother named him William because there are a lot of William's in their family history (William Clayton, song writer of "Come, Come Ye Saints", one of my favorite songs, is Will's 4th great grandpa!) and she specifically wanted him to be called Will because he was strong willed.  (She had a rough delivery and the fact that he survived was a miracle and she felt like Will would have a strong will.)

So, that's William.  Orson comes from Orson Hyde, another great grandfather of Will's. He was a leader in the early days of the LDS church and is notable for going on a mission to Jerusalem in the the early 1840s where he dedicated the area for the preaching of the Gospel (someday we'll hopefully go there to visit the park named after him.

And so we are calling him LIAM.  That last part of William.  Will goes by the first part and Liam the last. And now you know the starting story of one of God's precious souls.  We'll see what's in store for him and for us!  Stay tuned!