I last left off around 9:30 PM on Tuesday night. Well, it's about 72 hours later so I suppose I'll give a recap.
At about 9:30, Tiff was dilated to about 8 cm. Unfortunately she stayed that way until about 12:30. Poor Tiffany had to breath through serious contractions, without the aid of an effective epidural, for those three hours. Our doctor kept saying that a C-section was imminent, but that she would give Tiffany every opportunity to have our baby naturally. Tiffany kept hitting the minimum criteria, whatever it was at the time, to deter the doctor from committing to a C-section.
Real close to 12:30 the doctor thought that Tiffany was finally ready to try for a natural delivery. Tiffany got to quit trying to breath through the contractions and start trying to push through them. The pushing process was very difficult and much different than what I was expecting. However, Tiffany and our baby continued to make steady progress until about 3:15 AM. At that time, our nurse called the doctor back in for delivery. The doctor came in with another nurse and a nursery worker in tow about 5 minutes later. After 19 hours of labor and 3 solid hours of pushing, our doctor delivered our healthy baby girl!
As the doctor was working on Tiff, I went over to meet my baby daughter. Right after our daughter was cleaned up a little bit, the nursery worker asked me what her name was. It was a serious toss up between Anna Elizabeth (the name we were planning on) and Ella Ann (a recently thought of name that pays homage to my late great-grandmother). I looked at our daughter, looked at Tiff across the room and told her our little girl's name was Ella Ann. For whatever reason, she just looked like an Ella.
After Ella was born, Tiffany finally got a glass of ice water and an apple. She hadn't eaten or drank anything for 30 hours! After plowing through about 50 glasses of water and staring at our beautiful Ella, the nursery came to get Ella for the morning rounds. We finally got to lay down for some sleep around 5:30.
At 7:00 the nurse came in to steal some of Tiff's blood and told us that she would be moving to the postpartum wing in an hour or so and Ella would be waiting for us. We got all packed up and moved into Tiff's new room. Fortunately for me, it was a double so I got my own bed. Ella came back and we finally got a chance to hold her and hug on her a little.
Tiffany apparently developed an infection during delivery so she was given an antibiotic in addition to her Pitocin and magnesium through her IV. Tiff's fever broke later that morning and she was finally back to her old self. We sat around with Tiff's mom, Tammy, on Wednesday and just enjoyed the company of Ella.
We sent Ella to the nursery around 11:30 on Wednesday night and got some much needed sleep. On Thursday morning, Ella came back to us around 8:30 and we sat with her until noon when the doctor came in. The doctor looked over Tiffany and asked if Ella was ready to go home with her. Tiffany was a little confused so the doctor laughed and told her that she was ready to be discharged that afternoon. A hearing test and PKU test later, we were out the door! At about 5:30 on Thursday afternoon, Ella had slept through her first truck ride and we were finally home.
Now as a reward for reading through all of that jibberish, here are a few pictures of our beautiful baby.
Sam could care less that Ella is here now.
Some flowers I picked up for my beautiful wife and mother-in-law.
Tiff (and Sam) getting some sleep while Ella was kicking it her new bassinet.
Baby Ella in her new bassinet.
A close up of our pretty baby sleeping. Peaceful, huh? Too bad it wasn't at night.
10 comments:
That's quite a story, Ben! So glad that part is over. Tiffany looks like a natural mother in the picture of her in the rocking chair holding baby Ella. And Ella WILL sleep...eventually. I promise. Love you all.
I confess. I peeked at the pics BEFORE I read the story! You are all doing such a great job. I couldn't be more proud....or more happy! It WILL get better, I promise. I have been there and I know. I am sure Tammy is telling you guys the same thing. (It's easy for grandparents to be more laid back, right Tammy? :) Love you all!
P.S. I love the fact that warmie is in the bassinet pic!
P.P.S. Wormie.
And all these years I thought it was "warmie". I'm a terrible mom!
I will accept "wormie" only if you can give me the origin of the word...!
I always associated that blanket with a caterpillar. Hence, wormie.
It was my blanket, I can call it whatever I want :)
Blanket...caterpillar...wormie. Sure, I get the connection. (where is the sarcasm font when I need it?!) But you are right, Ben...it IS your blanket, you can call it whatever you want to. Unless Ella changes its name!
I TOLD YOU SO! It was wormie!!!
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