At 5:08 this evening, 34 hours after my water broke, we welcomed Eli Christopher into the world.
He was born at 35 weeks, and was a whopping 5 pounds, 8 ounces and 19.5 inches long.
Despite his early arrival (we were expecting a 42-week baby!), he is for the most part healthy and strong. We are so thankful.
I am waiting on pictures from my beloved friend/photographer, Sara, so I won't post his birth story yet. But in the meantime, I need to document what I can so that I don't forget it!
After 34 hours of actively trying to birth this baby, I felt exactly the way he looks in this picture:
Wiped out.
But God is good, and He provided everything we needed. Despite a major change in our plans, and a really rocky road to delivery, our story ended happily.
I look like a woman who has earned her prize, no?
After Eli was born, I sent Chris home to help my mom with bedtime for the kids. The nurse wheeled me to a postpartum room, and I prepared to spend the night in the hospital with my new baby - and without my husband. Definitely not how we hoped things would go, but at least I had Eli with me, and not in the NICU!
The doctors did a great job of scaring me with tales of babies who "honeymoon" - act like they're healthy and strong, but suddenly develop breathing problems after 6 or 12 hours, so I got very little sleep. After I called the nurse a second time to check Eli's breathing, she suggested I send him to the nursery so that they could monitor him while I slept. I felt like a terrible mom, but I totally did it. It turned out that everything was fine, and those three hours were the most I slept that night. So it goes.
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