Teresa Dee Meyerhoeffer Christensen's Life History : Hailey Elizabeth 1987

Halloween 1987

HAILEY ELIZABETH - Ontario,Oregon 1987

We were living a delightful life in Boise, when Roger informed me he got the Branch Manager job in Ontario, Oregon and was starting work there the first of the year January 1986. I did not even know he had applied for the job. (A job in Twin Falls had been open shortly before, but he did not feel like that was a good career move.) He commuted to Ontario 57 miles away for several months since we had to sell our Silver Spur home. All the girls were growing up. Emily had started school and was so smart, but hated the bus rides. Stephanie had a fear of toilets and an obsession with The Sound of Music, she wanted to meet the Von Trapp family. And Chelsea spent the first few days of the new year in the hospital with pneumonia, it was so scary. Then in July I wrecked our new little Dodge Colt (the only car we ever purchased new), luckily none of the girls were hurt, and we finally moved to a rental home in Ontario that month. I wrote in my journal, “It is Roger’s birthday. I HATE IT IN ONTARIO.” But that didn’t last long, we met some wonderful friends there, the Oakes (with 4 boys), the Dames (with 5 boys) and the Andersons (had a daughter who babysat for us and a son Steph’s age) and when it was time to move from Ontario a few years later, I did not want to leave.

Towards the end of September I found out I was expecting again. We were excited! On October 18th I went in to see the doctor with cramping and bleeding. In an ultrasound they found a live fetus with a heartbeat and either a dead twin or a blood clot behind the placenta. My new LDS doctor, Dr. Woodfield, sent me home to “take it easy” and said the pregnancy would either stabilize or I would miscarry. Fortunately things stabilized, but I remember ward members asking why was I trying to save the baby, that usually miscarriages were because something was not right. Of course I wanted to save the pregnancy if possible. Again on February 15th I had an episode of bleeding and the ultrasound showed we were having another little girl…at least the doctor said if he was a betting man that is what he would bet. If she had been a boy she would have been named “Lukas Roger,” but now we were going to have a “Brooke Elizabeth” or “Whitney Brooke”. Again things stabilized, thank goodness, and the baby was okay.

On Mother’s day May 10th 1987, I was cooking a ham for an elderly neighbor woman, Mrs. Powell, to join us for dinner when I stared bleeding again. It started slow, but after the doctor checked me the dam broke and I was hemorrhaging. He admitted me to the hospital with catheter, IV and monitor, then I was sent home after 7 hours with no baby. Chelsea wanted to know where the baby was and Steph told people at church I was not having a baby, they just could not take care of me. Great :-). I wrote in my journal: “The girls have been really good, Roger is calm - he always is and the doctor is the one who got the most scared . He is afraid of having to do a c-section or even hysterectomy….the baby is doing okay.”

May 12th, 1987 at my scheduled appointment the doctor decided not to check me, but I started bleeding through my clothes down the sides of the exam table, so he called a specialist in Boise that said to induce labor. Again I went to Saint Alphonsus Medical Center, across the street from Roger’s bank and they started Pitocin at 12:30 P.M. At 6:00 P.M. I still had a ways to go, so the doctor broke my water, said it would be about midnight before the baby arrived and he went to dinner.

At 7:30 I felt pressure and told Roger to have the nurse get the doctor. I had three crazy hard contractions, felt extremely sick and my arms went numb. I knew I was going to start pushing. They wheeled me into the delivery room and Roger thought he was going to have to deliver the baby. The doctor got there with three pushes to spare. Roger told him he did not have time to change clothes. In his street clothes the doctor caught Hailey posterior or face up and all. Roger cut the cord. The doctor said it was his “funnest” delivery ever and he wants to do more since everyone had such a great time. Sure we all did. I delivered on my side with Roger holding my leg up (Dr. Krueger's method).

Hailey Elizabeth Christensen was born at exactly 8:00 P.M. weighing exactly 8 lbs. and was 21 and a half inches long. I wrote in my journal at three days old: “She is so pretty. She has dark hair, dimples and a cleft. She looks more like Stephanie, but is her own little person. Mom thinks she looks like me when I was a baby.” We brought Hailey home, but Chelsea insisted on calling her Jessica for a while. Roger sent six roses for the six girls since my mom was there too. My four “little women” daughters had arrived! Hailey was an intense, determined, go-er from day one, and crawled by four months old.

In August 1987 the girls and I went to McCall with my parents and then to Moscow for my grandma Helen’s 80th birthday party. (Roger went to Portland for work). When we returned home I started packing to move again. We purchased a 2800 square foot rambler with a basement on Verde Drive for only $58,000 just 3 doors down from Emily’s school. It was on a busy road with a small yard, but we really liked it. We had planned to build a home in Fruitland, Idaho, but decided not too. The builder we worked with said he was going to sue us for $2800 for not building since he did not have any work. Two lawyers said we would win, but it would cost us $5000 in court costs, so we paid the builder. An expensive lesson, but the less stressful way to go. It made me sick to pay someone for nothing when we had a growing family with expenses. We did not even have a car that fit our whole family. But it was only money, a non-eternal entity.

That Christmas Eve 1987 someone dropped a ton of presents (16, I think) off on our front steps for the girls. It was so kind, overwhelming and such a blessing. I painted “THANK YOU ???” in large letters on our front window because I did not know who to thank (and do not to this day). It was a reminder to be generous and do things for others when we can. We did pay it forward.

I had been wrestling with the decision to go back to work for a few months. The hospital was close and offered me a job in the OB department which was my favorite place to work, the place I had most recent experience, we could use the extra money and it would help keep up my RN license. As pondered what to do I opened a drawer in our desk and an article fell out about the Prophet asking mothers to stay in the home if possible. Roger was always so busy (In my journal it said… “Roger is never home, he is on every committee in town and does at least one athletic event a day”, he worked 10 hour days and taught part-time at the Jr. College) the girls did need someone at home. I started babysitting a four month old baby girl twice a week instead. Ontario was beginning to feel like home, so of course we probably would not be there much longer. Roger had been applying for jobs in Oregon continuously…in Eugene (he was 2nd choice there), then Salem and finally applied for the Corvallis office which he was hired for.

In February 1988 the girls and I stayed behind for a few months while Roger went off and began his new adventure/job in Corvallis, Oregon. While he was away we enjoyed library outings and had a little roof fire from the wood burning stove. I was struggling with the prospects of moving again, so Roger asked me to pray about it. I begrudgingly did and afterward opened the scriptures to D&C section 111 which is all about moving to a new area and the treasures they would find there. Our treasures would not be monetary necessarily, but we did meet many great lifetime friends in that area (Catchpoles, Martin's, Moss's and Egans). Roger bought a home in Corvallis I had not even seen, but it had everything I asked for. It was in a mountain neighborhood surrounded by trees, 4 bedrooms, 3 baths for $70,000. It was smaller than our home in Ontario, but prices were higher in Oregon. It had a neighborhood association with a swimming pool which was fun and the girls would walk to school down a mountain path. There were some trials upon arriving…like our home was infested with a woodpecker, birds in the attic and huge carpenter ants under the carpet, so we had to live in a motel over Easter while it was fumigated…but we were now beginning the Corvallis chapter of our life and would be in Oregon for another 21 years.