Ellie Enters The Picture

August 30th at 1:29 in the morning I woke up to a contraction.  In order for a contraction to wake me up from my sleep it has to be a fairly good contraction.  But I had had so many false alarms the past two weeks with what I like to call fake contractions that I didn’t dare believe I was going into labor.  Little did I know that within hours I would meet this little bundle of joy that had been growing inside my tummy.

At 2:30 in the morning Danny finally woke up to my struggling through the contractions.  He asked how long I had been having contractions and I told him.  He asked how far apart they were and I explained that I hadn’t been keeping close attention but that I thought they were about 5 minutes apart.

For the next 2 hours we struggle with deciding what to do.  Not only were the contractions not regular, but we also needed to contact someone to come stay with our boys.  We had already asked Matt and Kim to be on standby, but should we make the call and have them travel the 20 minutes to our house when the contractions weren’t regular yet?  In fact, we kept the record of each timed contraction...

5.46

5.20

4.00

2.24

6.25

7.07

6.48

2.15

4.38

7.35

7.47

7.10

3.19

1.33

2.01

11.14

5.30

2.00

1.10

1.29

2.48

3.00

3.25

4.37

7.51

3.25

1.58

2.02

3.22

4.13

2.27

1.52

3.55

8.00

5.28

As you can see, there was absolutely no regularity in each of the timed contractions.  We just didn’t know what to do.

At approximately 4:30, we decided to call Matt and Kim and let them know what was going on.  That way, they would truly be on standby.  But just one problem...  Their phones were on silent.  We tried calling for about 15 minutes to no avail.  They simply couldn’t hear their phones.  What were we going to do?  We decided to just continue to wait to see if the contractions got regular and take it from there.  But about a 1/2 hour later Matt just happened to wake up, look at his phone, and call us back.  Danny explained the situation, Matt took his phone off vibrate, and we continued to wait.

At about 5:15 I could no longer take the pain.  I wanted an epidural so badly!  So we called Matt and they headed to our house.  Meanwhile, all we could do was wait until Matt and Kim got there before we could leave for the hospital.  But it hurt so bad!  I got impatient and at 5:40 we called Matt to see where he was.  Thankfully they were just pulling in to the subdivision, so we left.

When we got to the hospital, they didn’t even monitor me - They simply admitted me.  When they checked my dilation, I said to the nurse, “Please don’t tell me I’m still a 3.”  The nurse replied with, “You’re definitely not a 3.”  And she proceeded to tell me that I was dilated to a 7.  To which I responded, “Please give me an epidural!”  :)  Then I turned to Danny and proudly said, “I made it to a 7!” - You see, with both Kaden and Preston I had an epidural by the time I was dilated to a 4.  Now I actually know what a true contraction feels like. :)

They got the anesthesiologist in and he gave me an epidural.  It worked everywhere except on the right side of my back and my right leg.  I explained this to the nurse and she called the anesthesiologist back in to give me more.  

After I got some more epidural, I started to feel nauseous and then light-headed.  They had given me too much and I felt extremely weird.  Meanwhile, I had progressed enough that it was time to push.  I had to push while feeling like I was going to pass out and I couldn’t feel a thing from my waist down.  And to top it all off, Ellie was face-up so the doctor had to try to turn her with the forceps.  And then she wouldn’t turn because her shoulder was caught on my bone.  I ended up pushing for an hour; but towards the end of the pushing, the epidural started to wear off.  So they had to call the anesthesiologist back in to give me even more.

But finally, at 8:59 AM on August 30th, 2008, Danny and I welcomed this beautiful little angel into the world.  She weighed 8 lbs 2 oz and was 20 inches long.  And she took my breath away.  

Childbirth is truly an indescribable event.  It was emotional from start to finish, and I still get tears in my eyes when I think about the first time I saw her.  Once again, children bring a whole new perspective in to our lives and I am so grateful for my opportunity to experience each joy, pain, happiness, misery, frustration, and proud moment.