Sunday, August 21, 2005

Happy Birthday, Eli!

FINALLY HE'S HERE! Friday night my parents flew into town to join me in waiting for the Hulk to arrive. No contractions or anything Friday or Saturday. We went to bed around midnight Saturday night planning nothing more than church for the next day. However, the Hulk had other plans... I woke up at 2:00am for one of my routine trips to the restroom and my water broke. I called my doula and midwife and they told me since the contractions had just started to labor at home as long as I wanted (or as long as the contractions were at least 3 min. apart), and then head to the hospital. Once they started, they never let up, and they were mostly in my back (lucky me!). I labored on my own for almost two hours and then gave Lehr a wake up call at 3:30am because the pain was starting to get a little intense and I knew I'd want to head to the hospital within the hour. He showered and loaded up the car (by then the pain was very intense), and we arrived at 4:30am. We were admitted pretty quickly and my doula arrived right after us. The nurse checked me and I was dilated to a 7 and fully effaced. The midwife was called and things started happening really fast. I remember not opening my eyes from the time I entered the labor and delivery room until he was born, and I remember screaming a lot. Lehr had to fill in some of the other details for me. There was a time right when I started pushing when the Hulk's heartbeat dropped a little too low, so the midwife paged the doctor. I remember her telling me that she paged him, but she wanted me to deliver before he got there. I didn't, and a c-section was discussed. Fortunately, the midwife had me change my position (several times), and his heartbeat picked up immediately. Unfortunately, I had to push for 90 full minutes thanks to Eli's posterior positioning - that was not fun. I was very lucky to have Lehr and Stephanie (doula) there to help - they kept giving me encouragement from opposite sides of the table throughout the entire thing. Without them I would have never been able to deliver 'au natural'. The Hulk was posterior (sunny side up), which caused a LOT of back labor/pain, but that was nothing compared to the pushing (I think I gave everyone in the room a splitting headache!). At 8:20am I opened my eyes briefly and the midwife said I'd have the baby within 10 minutes; she was right! At 8:28am with one final push, Eli was born. He was very healthy (apgars: 8/9), so they let me hold him right away for about 40 minutes. His feet were clubbed (as expected), but everything else about him is perfect. Lehr and I stayed at the hospital exactly 48 hours before we brought him home.

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