Charles Elijah

Charles Elijah

What a roller coaster the last few days have been! On Sunday, after church, I took the kids to the outlet mall to get some new shoes, and it was sweltering hot. We hurried, rushed home and met Kenzie and Joe at the pool, and wouldn't you know it, a cold front came in just as we got to the pool, it dropped 20 degrees! The kids still jumped in, but after swimming about an hour, we were all freezing and turning blue, so we left.

When we got home, Kenzie told me she thought she had been leaking amniotic fluid for a few days. I was concerned about that and told her to call the doctor immediately and see what they say about it. Well, they told her to go ahead and pack her bags just in case, and come on in, but no rush. So, she went home and packed her bags and came back here and I drove her to the hospital. Well, they got her checked out and sure enough, it was amniotic fluid so they decided to hook her up to a pitocin drip right away to get contractions started.

I went home and changed clothes (it was freezing in there and I will still in my "hot" clothes) so took Regan back up there with me where we sat and waited. And waited. And waited! She was around 1cm for hours. They got the pitocin up as high as they would go and left it there most of the night, and while she was having regular contractions, they just weren't productive.

So, on Monday afternoon, I went home, cleaned up, took a nap, and then headed back up there Monday evening. The doctor finally said they could increase the pitocin by double the amount, and so that started climbing, the contractions got worse, and much more painful, and finally, about 27 hours in, Kenzie asked for an epidural. It was horrible, I know she was so hungry, and tired and worn out, and in so much pain at that point, that even I, a staunch epidural-opponent, was like, get that needle in here STAT!!

Well, that made contractions stop completely, so they upped the pitocin again, but that made Eli's heart rate drop off the charts, so they would stop pitocin, then the contractions would stop, so they would start pitocin again, and then his heart would drop again, it was a long back and forth, back and forth. Finally, they realized, she was still just barely at 5cm, and this was not going anywhere, so they decided to do an emergency c-section. They said she could bring one person with her, she pointed at me, they gave me some lovely paper scrubs, and away we went. I was nervous, I don't handle blood well AT ALL. Mine is fine, anyone else's and I get light headed.

So, within minutes, I find myself at her head, desperately trying not to see anything, and just freaking out over the whole c-section process. They were very aggressive at that point, and it was just all so surreal. But in a matter of minutes, we see little Eli, and come to find out, the cord was wrapped tightly around his little neck, and it took him a while to breathe and start making noises. But finally he started making some little sounds, and they wrapped him up, showed him to Kenzie, then me and Eli left for the nursery while they put her back together.

He was perfect, so cute and a head full of black hair!! He was born at 12:58am on May 3rd. He weighed in at 7lbs 12 oz, and that's a pretty good size for being 3 weeks early! He was 20.5 inches long, head was 14.5 inches. He was in the nursery for a couple of hours for observation, but then they brought us back to Kenzie's room where she finally got to hold him. We stayed there for a couple of hours, getting our stuff together to move to a different room, and finally got moved over around 6am. It was a long, hard night!

So, here are some pictures of Charles Elijah, and some of his visitors. He's been really good, sleeping for 3 hours at a time, waking up to nurse, he's taken to breastfeeding almost immediately, and he's just so darn cute! Kenzie is finally up and around, and should be able to leave the hospital tomorrow.