Welcome Evan John Pipal!

On the morning of Saturday, October 25, Eric and I were woken up at 5:45am by Claire and David. We were discussing who would get up with them and who would sleep in. I offered to get up that morning since I didn't feel that tired at the time. As soon as I stepped out of bed, I felt a trickle and knew my water had broken! Needless to say, Eric didn't get to sleep in that morning! It was 2.5 weeks (18 days) before my November 12th due date, so we were definitely not as prepared for Evan's arrival as we had been for our previous pregnancies. Eric still had to pack a hospital bag, we needed to call on our next door neighbors Tim and Mary to come over to watch the big kids before Mimi Irene and Grandpa Bob could get to our house from northern NJ, and we still had to come up with a name for our newest baby boy!

I was less than 2cm dilated and not having any contractions when we got to the hospital at 8am, so I thought, for sure, we were going to be there for a while. But, our nurse assured me that since this was my third pregnancy, that by the evening, we would have a baby. At noon, they started to push Pitocin since I still wasn't having contractions. Finally, the contractions started and they were getting stronger and more painful very quickly. At 2:15, I was 4cm and had an epidural. I was very relieved and comfortable once the epidural took, so Eric and I rested and I spent a lot of time texting my parents, sister and friends. Lucas had a birthday party at 4pm, and one of our friends offered to take him, so I was coordinating the pickup between my girlfriend and my dad! It's amazing how different labor was between all 4 kids! At 4:20pm, my OB came in to check me, and, voila!, 10 cm! 3 contractions later, at 4:33pm, we welcomed a screaming Baby Boy Pipal into the world! He was beautiful and healthy and looked so much like Lucas and David did at birth. He weighed 6 lbs, 12 oz and was 20" long. He was nameless, so over the next couple hours, Eric and I worked hard on what to call him so we didn't have to refer to him as "Baby Boy Pipal" when the kiddos and family showed up to meet him that evening! Around 6:30pm, we finally agreed on Evan John!

Dr. Rappe. She is credited with the awesome delivery of the twins, and now, Evan, too!