Elijah Andrew's Birth Story (Stef's side of things)

Our little guy is here! Elijah (Eli) was born Wednesday, February 22nd at 6:03am weighing 7 pounds and measuring 20 inches. Following is his birth story. Warning - if you don't like to hear words like dilated and contractions, then you should probably skip over this post. :) I promise there is nothing gross involved though!

I woke up Tuesday morning feeling like something was different and thought it could possibly be the day I go into labor. I was still 10 days away from my due date, but babies are born early all the time, even though I knew it was more uncommon for first time moms. I decided to go ahead and substitute teach anyway and the students made jokes all day that they hoped I would go into labor then. I, however, did not agree that going into labor at the school would be the most ideal situation! I did feel a little pain throughout the day, but nothing too intense. In fact, I called my mom after school and asked her if it was possible to have contractions without knowing it. She said that I would most definitely know and not to worry about missing them. After a few hours I felt small contractions that lasted every 15-20 minutes, but they were definitely bearable. Around 10pm that night my contractions became closer together and a little more intense, and after an hour they were 5 minutes apart and definitely starting to hurt! I'm really glad we don't have any downstairs neighbors right now because I'm pretty sure my groaning would have been loud and clear to them. I called my doctor and she told me that if they lasted for an hour at 5 minutes apart then I needed to go to the hospital. I told Jon that we would most likely need to head to the hospital that night and started packing my hospital bag while he finished up a game of Call of Duty. By the time we left for the hospital around 11:45 the contractions were 2 minutes apart and I prayed that they would not send us home once we arrived.

We arrived at the hospital and they told me that I was 3 cm. dilated, but they would like to see more dilation before admitting me officially. They made me walk around the corridor of the floor for an hour, which was probably one of the most painful things I have ever done. I had to stop every 30 feet or so to wait through a contraction and may have shed a few tears in the process. What can I say? I'm a bit of a wuss. After an hour I was finally 4 or 5 cm. dilated and they checked me into a birthing suite. I got my epidural (there was no way I was going through the pain of labor once I knew what contractions felt like!) and then they broke my water. At that point I was then 6 cm. dilated, which was roughly half an hour or so after they admitted me. We waited another hour before they checked me again and I was surprisingly another 2 cm. dilated so things were definitely progressing more quickly than anticipated. Another 45 minutes later I was dilated to 10 cm. and ready to start pushing. It was at this point that my parents arrived at the hospital so I got to say a quick hello for about 5 minutes and then had to kick them out. My doctor had been at the hospital a few hours earlier for a delivery, but went home not expecting me to progress so quickly. They called her back and had me wait to really push so she could be there to deliver. (sidenote: I was really fortunate to have my own doctor on call that evening!) Once my doctor arrived back at the hospital I pushed for about 20 minutes and Elijah was here!

More posts to follow on all the details after his arrival.

- S