Eleanor Has Arrived (with flare!)

Welcome to the World,
Eleanor Lee Lewis!

The long wait is over and Eleanor Lee Lewis joined our family on Friday, July 10, 2009 at 2:10 am! Because she is part Brown, part Lewis, she definitely wasn't about to come into the world without a little production. Here is a scaled down version of the events.
Thursday, July 9
6:00 am-My water breaks as I am sitting in bed. I wake up Ben (who admits that one of his first thoughts was, "Well, that was my last night of decent rest") and we get ready to go.

7:00 am-Admitted to Utah Valley Regional Medical Center. We took the last available bed in Labor and Delivery!

10:00 am-Labor has not started, so Dr. Dewey orders Pitocin to get me going. We play and tie in games of Phase 10 and Zilch.

2:00 pm-I'm only dilated to a 4 and about 90%.

4:00 pm-Please give me an epidural now! I'm still a four! We play and tie in Uno.This is me post-epidural.

8:00 pm-I'm still only a 4! What the!? Dr. Dewey advises that we prepare for a C-section. He's concerned that either her head is too big or my birth canal is too small, neither of which have ever seen to be a problem. But 6 hours stuck at 4 is a problem. So my amazing anesthesiologist ups my dosage and we wait for Dr. Dewey to get out of the ER at another hospital and come to us.This is Ben all dressed up. I was kind of sad at the idea of getting a C-section. I didn't want to mess with the recovery, and I didn't want to miss the experience of birth. But I knew that it was more important to get Eleanor safely into the world no matter in what fashion. Thank goodness we live in an age where C-sections are an option!

10:00 pm-Dr. Dewey arrives and the nurse getting me ready to take me to the OR. As she is checking my catheter she checks my dialation, and I'm at a 10! Two hours took me from a 4 to a 10? Dr. Dewey decides that this baby will be coming in the traditional fashion! I'm relieved, but realize that there is no way I'll be able to push with the amount of drugs I'm on. My mom and Grandma Sunny arrive at the hospital in time to here the good news about the cancellation of the C-section. They come into the room just in time for the meds to start making me seriously nauseous and I puke up water (since I haven't eaten anything since Wednesday night). Dr. Lind (the amazing anesthesiologist) makes that go away and now we wait for the epidural to wear down. I sleep a little (a very, very little).

Friday, 12:00 am-Hooray! I can start pushing. It's not very good pushing at first cause I'm still pretty numb. But Ben is the best coach ever and really gets into his job (Dr. Dewey later comments that Ben was really fantastic).

1:00 am-Dr. Dewey checks me out and has me push for another hour with Ben's coaching. He advises me that this will be a forceps delivery. Not a problem! I saw my sister born with the aid of forceps, and I'm cool with whatever it takes to get her out. I do some serious pushing.

2:00 pm-Dr. Dewey comes in and gets ready. We can see Eleanor's head, and everything goes great. She is born at 2:10 am, only 20 hours after my water broke Thursday morning. She weighs in at 7 lb 14 oz and is 19 inches long. She's got a bit of a cone-head since she sat for 6 hours at a 4 in my birth canal. Ben assumes the role of photographer. She still has some stuff in her lungs that is giving her just a tiny problem, so they take her briefly to the NICU while I get stitched up, but not before my mom takes our first family photo. Ben goes with Eleanor and my mom stays with me. We are all reunited in Recovery about 40 minutes later.
My first thought when she was born was, "Wow, she's not a wrinkly, old man at all! She's plump and beautiful!" And she really is. I'm her mother, I can be biased, but I still think she is the loveliest thing in the world.