Eli's story

Monday our day started out at 4:42 a.m. because we forgot to set the alarm. Good thing I woke up! We hurried out the door and packed our sleepy little girls, who were now perfectly alert into the car and headed on our way to my mom's who was watching them for the day. As we arrived we got the girls settled and Jed and my dad gave me a blessing. It was so comforting and sweet.

We got up to the hospital and got signed in and they pretty much prepped me for a c-section because of the possibility of needing one if the EV failed. With my last EV they did it without any pain medication. This time however since he was going to be coming one way or the other, they wanted to have the IV line open in case of an emergency so they could quickly give me a dose of meds. I can't even begin to say how incredibly comfortable I was while the EV was happening because the epidural. Jed said as he was watching, they would push into my stomach about six inches and hold it there and then do it in another spot to try to get him to flip. He absolutely was not going to budge going to the right, so they attempted to get him to go to the left, and they were able to flip him! That was such exciting news to me simply because I didn't want a section, and we had waited 6 days hoping this would be the outcome.

They broke my water, and were very careful about slowly adding the internal monitors every hour or so. They didn't want to give him any extra room to move around. I was pretty comfortable pain wise for about for about 4 hours, but every time I was about to fall asleep the blood pressure cuff would start beeping and we would have to call the nurse. At around noon, I started to get mildly uncomfortable, but we waited because I didn't want to max out on my pain med, and then not get to have any right before he was born.

After about 30 minutes I wanted some relief so the anesthesiologist came in and gave me a shot to help. It worked fine until I would turn over and then the pain would come back. So over the course of the next two hours the anesthesiologist came back twice to see if she could help me. It would happen in the same pattern, I would feel better and then the pain was back fairly quickly. I was trying so hard to breathe through the contractions and just endure, which I did for the next half hour. By this point I was sobbing and holding on to the bed rail every time I would have a contraction. Jed hurried to get the nurse because he said it took to long for them to be paged. They came back about 5 minutes later to check me and my Dr. was there also, I was checked and was to a complete 10, and experiencing the worst pain of my life. Dr. Later told me that I could wait 20 minutes for the anesthesiologist to be done with a patient and for me to be numb or I could push with the contractions and have my son here in 5 minutes. I became a swearing woman that day, not during labor thogu I think I shocked Jed.

I chose the latter, and let me just say without being overly verbose or graphic, I have such great respect for women who have or had natural births without pain meds. I felt everything and I now understand why they call the baby's head crowning "the ring of fire." I was so exhausted by this point and Jed said I just wanted to keep pushing, but he would tell me to wait for the contraction because it would make it more effective. With each contraction, my Dr. told me to get angry, using a little less voice and a little more muscle. (I didn't remember this, Jed filled me in later.) After about 6-7 pushes our "little" guy was here!





In my mind, it seemed like he was whisked away, my Dr. stayed to help me deliver the placenta and then it felt I was left all by myself and I was still hurting, exhausted, shaking (To which the nurse called over to me that it was perfectly normal.) Every one was over ogling at our big bubba. After about 10 minutes and what seemed like an eternity to me, they brought my son over and we got to cuddle skin to skin. At that moment, every last bit of pain I felt was gone. Best feeling ever when they put that little guy in my arms.


He is such a sweet little guy. At first, I was thinking he completely looked like Ruby, but now he looks like a chubby Emma with a large dose of masculinity. We are so in love with him! He has such a calm nature, and the sweetest little lips. He is so fun to watch.

I think of him as my miracle baby. Simply because, how in the world did he flip on his own with out getting tangled and then that he was able to be flipped manually weighing 10 lbs. 1 oz. My nurse told me that Dr. Later has the highest success rate at the hospital with EV's, and that if he had any inkling about how big Eli was, he never would have attempted the EV. I am so grateful we were in the dark about his size.

Around 5:30 we had our first set of visitors. Jed parents came, my parents, Sarah and Adam, Erin and Phillip, and Lanette and Shaun. We had a good number of visitors, which I am glad because when I took him to the nursery for the evening they discovered that his respiration rates were 120, when they should have been around 60. Eli hasn't been able to leave the nursery, and we are just waiting for them to rule out what is causing his 02 stat's to drop, so he can come home. The nurses there are so fantastic and have taken such good care of Eli and I. I am grateful for them and I am so thankful for Jed pretty much taking over so that I can spend as much time at the hospital with Eli. That's a story for another time.