He's here! (Part 1)

And he's even home...it is crazy to think of all what has gone on in the last few days...but WOW...God is good!

We have a beautiful son, Eli Wayne, and he's healthy, mostly happy, and just an answer to so many prayers. The way he decided to join the world may not have been the way we were planning for him to join the world, but he's here and he's soooooo loved!

I'll give the quick version of his arrival.

We called into the hospital on Wednesday morning and then told us to try to get there by 8:30 am...so we did our best (considering we were calling at 7:45 am). By 9 am we were in the birthing room, the Dr had seen us and broken my water, got me hooked up to pitocin and the show was on the road.

The pitocin kicked in and started to do its thing...around noon they made me get back in the bed...I had been up walking and alternately sitting in the chair in the room - figured as much UP time that I had would help move things along. I was put to bed because Eli's heart rate was plummeting. They had to stop the Pitocin, give me Oxygen and get things stabilized. The Pitocin had made contractions come on pretty hard there and the baby wasn't having enough time to bounce back between contractions.

After an hour or two things stabilized and they started the pitocin again, but as they were checking me my cervix wasn't making much progress...I had basically gotten to 3 was 85% effaced, and Eli was at -1 station. As the afternoon evening wore on the pain was getting to me as the contractions just kept on coming, so we all decided that an epidural was due. I got the epidural at about 5:30 pm. The hope was that as I was able to relax some with the epidural that my cervix would make more progress. That didn't really happen. The doctor gave us the final call time of 8 pm to either continue on with labor or she would do a c-section.

At 8 pm very little had changed...except that Eli was now at a -2 station...so he really wasn't trying to help things by moving down at all. The Doctor had a few concerns overall and rather than wait a lot longer and then have to do a section we all decided to go ahead with it at that point.

Well, by 9pm I was all prepped and headed off to the OR for the C-section. And at 9:31 pm Eli Wayne made is entrance...to the comments of the OR staff..."he's a line backer"!

Larry and I got to see him before he was whisked off to the Nursery...with Larry right along by his side. I was stitched up and sent over to recovery for an hour or so and then I was sent up to the same floor where Larry & Eli were waiting for me. Larry was sweet & had come back down to see me in recovery to show me pics of Eli and a little video he'd taken. That did help tide me over until I could see him for real.