Part 2 - Elli's Birth

I arrived at the hospital at about 10:30pm.  By the time I made it up to Labor and Delivery and they hooked me up to the monitors, I was contracting every 2-3 minutes!!  The nurse checked to see how dilated I was and I was 4cm.   She told me that she definitely thought they'd be keeping me because at 4cm and contracting every 2-3 minutes, they'd be nervous to send me home.  I remember having a little "argument" with her saying that they couldn't possibly be keeping me...I think I was expecting to be sent home at least once.  All of a sudden reality was really beginning to hit that I may not leave this hospital without a baby in my arms!!  So I called my parents immediately and told them to start making the 1 1/2 hour trip to the house so that Nate could then come join me.  I was expecting his arrival around 12:30am or so.

I walked the halls for a bit.  And at midnight, the resident came in my room to check me.  I was only 4 1/2cm!  Grrr.  I was nervous that they were going to send me home.  My parents would've just been arriving at the house only for me to show up shortly behind them!!  Luckily, they told me they would give me another couple hours to see what happened.  So I texted Nate the update and then went for another walk.  It was at some point during that walk that he arrived at the hospital and so graciously walked the halls with me.

At 2am when I was checked, I was 6cm.  I was hoping for more given that my body had already done this before, but oh well, we were moving in the right direction.  They said at that point I could have an epidural. It took just under 3 hours to finally get it because the anesthesiologist listed as on call wasn’t actually on call! So it took some time to find out who was!

During this time, as I was breathing through every contraction, Nate was drifting off to sleep.  Not a big deal, we both had been awake since 6:30am the morning before, so we were tired and one of us might as well get some sleep.  At least twice (but maybe three times), he startled himself awake, looked over at me and would say "honey, why don't you try to get some rest."  Ummmm, excuse me!?  How about YOU contract every 2-3 mintes for 90 seconds at a time and see how much rest YOU can get!!!  I didn't say that.  I sure thought it though!  We think that in his groggy state, he actually thought that I had already received the epidural and that I should now relax.  Ha.  Umm, not so much.  This is painful work!!

Finally at 4:45am, I got the epidural. When I was checked again at 5am, I had stalled out at 6cm!! I couldn’t believe it! I contracted for 3 hours with absolutely no change.  Talk about feeling defeated!  They asked if I wanted them to break my water and I said that I did. I figured that something had to kick start this process again!

At 5:45am, the doc came in to break my water. And at 7:14am, realizing that I hadn't given my mom an update all night, I made a call to let her know that things had slowed down a bit and it might still be a while. Just as I said that, I said “I gotta go, I’m feeling a ton of pressure.” The nurse checked me 2 minutes later and her eyes got really big. She said “uh, yeah, there’s a baby sitting right there!” She grabbed the doc quick who came in and said “let’s give a little practice push.” Half a push later he yelled at me to STOP and frantically started searching for some gloves. I had no idea why I was told to stop.  I actually thought something was wrong because I couldn't feel a single thing (this epidural was much denser than with the twins, I felt quite a bit with them).  So when I was yelled at to stop, I had no idea that she was crowning with just that little half of a push.  After the doctor got his gloves on I was instructed to begin pushing again.  In one push, out came her head. And with one more push the rest of her body slid out at 7:25am. So much for things slowing down! I went from 6cm to baby in 1 ½ hours and just 2 1/2 little pushes!

After asking Nate to announce the gender (because we didn’t know), they placed her on my chest. My immediate thought was that she was definitely bigger than Alivia (who was 6lbs 15oz) but not *that much* bigger. Sure enough, when they weighed her, she was exactly a pound and a half larger at 8lbs 7oz and I was absolutely shocked!

Our lives forever changed on September 13, 2010 at 7:25am when this chunky, gorgeous, amazing, beautiful, incredible, perfect baby girl graced us with her presence.  I was awestruck.  Nate was teary-eyed.  We created another absolutely perfect baby girl.  Miss Elliana Jo.

Our first time holding our precious Baby Elli.