Elliott's Birth Story

I've been working on this post for FOREVER with Elliott's birthstory, and this week seems like a good one to post it since we've been reliving all of these memories!

Warning: This could take a while, and is really more for record sake because I imagine all of the details are pretty boring to everyone else!

Overall, I would rate my first pregnancy as somewhat difficult, though ironically the final weeks were the easiest of it all. Based on family history, I had a feeling I might pass the 40 week mark, which proved true as November 16th came and went with only a few Braxton Hicks to show for it.

I was hoping that I could stick it out until my body went into labor on its own without being induced. However, because of how the Thanksgiving holiday was falling with it all, I agreed to be induced 1 week after my due date in order to guarantee that both of our family's travel plans wouldn't get messed up by travel black out dates.

On Sunday afternoon, I went in to L&D to have a foley catheter put in to help start the dilation process ... I had only reached a mere 1cm on my own :( My sweet sister Anne was able to come out for the occasion and went with me as the fun began. As soon as I got in the car to go home from the procedure, I started having contractions. Hello! They had mentioned a small chance that the catheter could send me into full labor, so I started wondering if I would be back at the hospital that afternoon rather than waiting until the following morning. We started timing as soon as we got home and I was having them every 6-7 minutes. We busied ourselves around the house, ran some errands, but (much to my disappointment) the contractions stopped after a couple of hours. We spent the rest of the night doing last minute preparations and having dinner with our family.

Monday morning we woke to be at the hospital by 7am and the fun began! I got checked into my room and met my nurse and the student nurse shadowing her.

One of my big fears going in was getting the IV set. But bless these two little words: local anesthesia. Luckily they numbed the area before they set it which turned out to be a great thing as it took several attempts by the student nurse, real nurse, and then a third nurse who was called in. Apparently I have "rolly" veins, and I could actually see blood dripping to the floor off the side of my bed from my hand! Lovely!

Soon after, my OB came in to check me and break my water. The catheter had done its job so we were starting the day off at 3cm! They started the Pitocin and the party began!



Ok, I'm going to confess publicly. I kind of wondered in the back of my mind if I could do it all without the epidural (let the laughter begin!). I don't even know if I even said that outloud to anyone beforehand. But I wanted to wait as long as I could before getting the epidural, so as the contractions started coming, I wanted to be up and moving as much as possible to hopefully learn to deal with the pain.


The morning went by fairly quickly. The contractions were definitely owning me but were managable when I was standing and distracting myself with TV, visitors, etc. Some morning visitors:



I actually asked the nurse at some point that morning how long to expect labor to be ... she said between 12 and 24 hours. Ha ... I laughed at even the idea of 24 hours ... I knew I was going to push this baby out much faster than that!

For the record, I also need to let everyone know how many people commented on how high my pain tolerance was. Not something I've ever been complimented on before, so just wanted to throw that out there!

After lunch, my OB stopped in to check on me and checked me ... 5cm .... and encouraged me to go ahead with the epidural. Deal. I was out. I was really hurting by that point and couldn't resist the offer to get some relief!

The anesthesiologist came in to do the epidural. I'll be honest ... not fun at all. After hunching in this terrible position while having terrible contractions, tear set #1 of the day started flowing. Soon, however, the effects of the medicine started to kick in and let me just tell you ... as my friend Courtney says, "If epidural were available from dealers, I would buy it on the streets!" This is the way that I describe it ... the feeling is like being cold and wet, and then having someone come hug you with a warm blanket. But the feeling never stops. It's amazing!

The next 4 hours were oh-so-wonderful. I napped, chatted with visitors, watched TV, just hung out. Before I knew it, my OB stopped in on her way out of the office. I had hoped to deliver by 5pm so she could be there, but unfortunately I wasn't far enough along so the on-call Dr. took over.

Luckily the Titans were on Monday Night Football, and I had told Adam we could watch the game as long as I wasn't actively pushing. By this point I was only at about a 6, so we thought we could relaxingly watch the game.

Warning: this is where you might want to stop reading if you'd like to have kids in the future.

So as the game was coming on, the nurse sat my bed up for a change of position and gradually I started being more aware of the contractions again. At first it was just a mild pressure but then started to turn back into pain. I laid back down, tried to sleep it off, tried switching the side I was laying on, etc., but it continued to get worse.

The on-call dr stopped by around 8:15 and checked me. We were at 7. Yuck. Not what we were hoping for, and I was really hurting by this point. But he promised we would do everything we could to get the baby here by midnight. After he left I heard him talking to family just outside the waiting room and mentioned that there was an 80% chance of me being able to deliver without a c-section. Just hearing those words scared me as I really didn’t want that for my first delivery … tears again at the thought of it, especially after lots of hurting and hours of waiting for it to all be over in a c-section. Also I was starting to get discouraged that everything was just taking a lot longer than we originally expected and tired of the process … ready for something real to be happening!

By this point I was trying to understand what was going on with my pain levels ... basically I felt exactly the way that I did before the epidural, only the contractions were more intense, more frequent, and much more difficult as I was now confined to bed since I had gotten the epidural. I kept being told by the nurses that what I was feeling was normal, and since it was my first baby, I just trusted them and assumed that I didn't know what I was talking about.

By 9:45 I had progressed to 8. Slow but at least we were still moving ... still hoping to hold off the c-section. And completely feeling everything by this point.

Honestly, after this everything was kind of a blur of horrible. I was just SO in pain and nothing was helping. The nurses gave my epidural a "boost" (aka bolus) a couple of times. Each time it would help for about 20 minutes before I was back to feeling everything again. I'll spare you all of the details, but just imagine me laying in bed crying, Adam running around frantically, etc... you get the picture.

By 11pm we were at 9. Crawling along. Our hopes of having the baby that day were quickly diminishing, and I was absolutely convinced that he would n-e-v-e-r come! Our friends and family were SUCH troopers! It was incredible ~ Courtney and Kyle slept in their car at the hospital, my sweet sister and her 9-month-old were walking the floors of the basement level of the hospital, our parents were barely staying awake on their central-time body clocks ... it was crazy. Trying to entertain themselves before it gets too late:



At 12:15am, the doctor came back again to check, and we were at 9.5. So close, but just not there yet. As if my body could even feel more pain, I started having a lot of lower back pain with each contraction. We figured out that if someone pushed super hard on my lower back through each one, it made it a little more bearable, so mom came in to help me cope with everything since I was already WAY past the end of my rope for pain tolerance.

The next 3 hours again were a blur of pain, checking to see that I was STILL at 9.5, and desperately wanting it all to end.

Finally around 3:15am, they told me I could start pushing. I don't even know if I ever officially reached 10 or if they finally just let me go even though I was still at 9.5. I won't lie ... pushing was extremely difficult. I was SO physically exhausted from the hours of labor that I felt like I had NO ounce of strength in my body. The nurses, Adam, and my mom were all having to help hold me up to push, but I was incredibly motivated, knowing that successful pushing was the ONLY thing that could make the pain stop. It was also difficult to make the transition from trying to breathe through each contraction, to holding my breath for pushing.

Despite the difficulty, my first couple of pushes actually brought a bit of relief to the pain. I was still suffering tremendously from the pain of the contractions, but the end was in sight and finally there was something I could do about the pain, rather than just lying there as it happened to me.

During one of my first pushes, Elliott's heart rate dropped drastically and there was a bunch of scurrying and whispering happening all around me. I assumed that it was just about his heartrate, but they turned me on my side and he stabilized right away.

Then I heard possibly the worst words of my life. My nurse ever-so-casually came over and said:

"Um, well, there's just one problem. Your doctor just started a couple of minutes ago with another girl who's pushing, so we're just going to stop and wait for her to deliver before we start pushing again."

I was devastated and bawling ... my only relief had just been taken away. I really didn't care if I had to catch the baby myself ... I just wanted the pain to stop!

So I lay in bed and tried NOT to push which was virtually impossible at this point. Finally, about 30 minutes later, the doctor came in and I could start pushing again. Possibly the worst 30 minutes I can think of!!

As we started, the doctor immediately noticed that E was "sunny side up" when he should have been face-down, explaining all of the back pain accompanying each contraction. The doctor complimented me on how "extra tough" the labor for sunny side up babies is:) Awesome!

Luckily the pushing went pretty quickly from there. Adam loves to tell people that I was the meanest he's ever seen me. I just was so frustrated because as each contraction would start, no one in the room seemed to notice as the dr and nurses were all chatting casually between contractions. I may or may not have said something along the lines of "I love how nobody's even paying attention here to when my contractions are starting!" What can I say, I was a desperate woman!

Finally they talked me through the last upcoming push ... and it happened! He came!! At 4:20am, 21.5 hours after we had started, the doctor told me to look down for the first glimpse of our son and then there he was. They lifted him up and laid him on my chest.

I wish I could say that the next line of this story is "I took my first look at my son and wept, instantly forgetting everything I had been through that day when I looked into his eyes." But unfortunately that's not it. Here's the next line: I took my first look at my son and wept, because I was just so relieved that the pain was over. I had a vague awareness of a baby lying there with me but was barely able to even process what was happening because of my exhaustion. I was just hoping that Adam and the nurses were a little more with it than me because I was totally out of it!!

And now, the photos. **Warning, there is some blood if that freaks you out! I'm so glad Adam was together enough to take these photos, especially since I was so out of it. Also, I'm really sick of seeing people's birth photos where they look pretty ... and their hair is fixed ... and they aren't crying!! Here's the reality of what 22 hours of labor looks like! No shame!

The first photo of Elliott!

I love this one as the doctor lifts him up:

First look ... it's over! Hallelujah!

One thing that you CAN'T see in these photos is Elliott's unbelievable conehead ... Adam was so freaked out by it that he tried to crop it out of most of the photos! You can kind of tell in this one:

It's pretty normal for babies to have coneheads but Elliott's definitely surpassed the "normal" range, I think because of the long labor and the whole waiting-for-the-doctor-to-push thing. As the baby was getting cleaned up, Adam went out to show pictures to the amazingly-loyal-until-4:30am fan club outside, and asked his mom if the conehead thing was normal, and she assured him it was. But then, when she came in, she said her eyes got wide and she regretted saying that!! Luckily it went down over the first month and he has a very normal shaped head now!

Our first video of E ... love those sweet baby cries and love that it really looks like him:

Untitled from adam r on Vimeo.

The next 45 minutes were spent cleaning and checking Elliott ... all healthy ... while I finished up the delivery (what!!! it's not over after the baby comes out? um, no ... not at all). One of my most vivid memories is laying there getting stitched up (yup! still feeling everything!) and desperately trying to get Adam's attention to tell him to take a picture of the placenta for Reba before they took it away. Long story ... my friend Reba loves placentas ... you have to know her. I'll spare you posting the picture of it but we have it if you want to see!

Elliott checked in at 7lbs 14 ounces ... much smaller than we originally thought he might be based on his ultrasounds! Hooray! And 20 inches long.




Taking him in:

Untitled from adam r on Vimeo.

After Elliott and I both checked out, I could finally have some apple juice after many many hours without food or drink! And,we could let our visitors in to meet our son! They handed Elliott back to me and announced to our friends and family that they could come in to meet him! Everyone flooded in and I sat overwhelmed with both exhaustion and emotion when suddenly ... I started throwing up apple juice everywhere. Just the perfect finale to the whole process. Luckily mom was quick enough to grab Elliott while I got it all out. What a lovely display in front of everyone!

After that was over, we really did enjoy getting to show Elliott to everyone, while still trying to take him in ourselves.

Four exhausted but proud grandparents!!

Aunt Anne's first look!

Mimi and Grandaddly:

Our first family-of-three photo!

With GrandGreg:

After everyone got to meet him, they all went home to try to get some rest. We had our first feeding (success!) and fell asleep for a whopping 1 hour until doctors started rounding the next morning and we were back up and trying to learn what to do with this baby!

Looking just slightly better the next morning aka the same morning after 1 hour of sleep:




Luckily we only had to stay in the hospital one more night and were able to be home in time for Thanksgiving! Our family and friends kept us busy with visits, and we slept just a teeny bit more in between incessant feedings and diaper changes. After the pain stopped, I quickly began to take in the magnitude of this new little life, and had many moments of crying in the hospital, only being able to say to Adam "I just love him!!"










Finally ... time to go home on Wednesday afternoon ... just in time for Thanksgiving! We put him in his Going Home outfit ... more tears. "He's like a real baby, not just a hospital baby! I just love him!"



We decided to snap a couple of "real" photos as we were waiting to be discharged and I'm so glad we did! I love these and remember these moments so clearly!





I remember saying we should take a picture of him in his carseat because I assumed he would look so little in it to us one day ... already true!


Going home in his carseat with the blanket his daddy left the hospital with:


On the way home we drove through Sonic :) It was so strange to do something "normal" but with a baby!! I wanted to tell the girl excitedly at the drive-thru "We have our baby in the backseat!!!" but I refrained.

We're home!!!!

And to see what happened next, just start back at the beginning of this blog!!

It was all SO SO crazy and I can't say that I'm looking forward to doing it again, but we couldn't love our little boy more and yes, it was worth it!