our island outlook: Evelyn's first year.

Here are some snapshots from her monthly photoshoots, conveniently placed in the same post so you can see her grow right before your eyes. Her transformation has been amazing; I didn't realize how much babies truly change until we had Evelyn.

Some fun facts:

- I was convinced that she was a he. So convinced, in fact, that before the anatomy scan, we had been calling her Tad, short for Tadpole. A boyish name, if I do say so myself. It took me a few weeks to switch my pronouns from "he" to "she" and to stop calling her Tad.

- She did not have a name until at least 24 hours after her birth. We just weren't sure which would best fit her. Evelyn was my most recent suggestion to Dan (about three weeks prior to her birth) as I had seen it on a baby name website.

- I was physically ill from about 9 weeks until right after I gave birth. If I didn't have the miracle drug, Zofran, I was throwing up at least 15 times a day. 15 times minimum. The last Zofran I took was after I gave birth, because I felt nauseous and really didn't feel like throwing up.

- I was in labor from Monday until Thursday afternoon, when I had her at 1:41PM local time. We went into L&D Monday evening and Tuesday evening and were told not to come back until A) My water broke, or B) I was bleeding. I thought that I had definitely progressed from my very strong contractions all day Monday until Tuesday night but nope ... wasn't where I needed to be in order to be admitted.

Finally on Wednesday at around midnight (so Thursday morning, I guess), I had bled a little bit, so I was so relieved that we could finally go to the hospital and they could do something. Except they couldn't, because I still wasn't dilated enough. I was a 1-2 so I had to walk around...that didn't last for as long as they suggested, and I ended up back in the triage room, miserable. Finally around 6am I was declared a 4, or "almost", and was admitted. They said the reason I was in so much pain was because completely effaced and she was at -1 or 0 station-wise. Yeah, ouch.

- Dan says that the best sleep he ever has had -- EVER -- was after I had my epidural. I was planning on a natural birth but after days of having no reprieve from intense contractions that were around 5 minutes apart (sometimes they'd ebb and fade, but a lot of the time they were just in line with the amount and intensity they suggest you go into the hospital at). They gave me ambien Tuesday night when they released me...as if I could sleep through them. Puh-lease. Unfortunately the ambien just made me super groggy but still in just as much pain.