Elijah Wayne

Here he is world! Elijah Wayne Darst!
He was born Friday, February 17, 2012 at 4:58 am in the morning! Woo! He weighed in at 8 lbs 4oz and was 20.5 inches long.

Here's the whole story:
Since Eli decided not to come by his due date, we opted to induce him. I was really hoping for the whole going into labor naturally experience, but we decided to induce for a few reasons. First, I felt like I couldn't be a good teacher anymore...my energy level just wasn't there. Being 40 weeks pregnant and rounding up Kindergarteners all day is difficult! I really felt like I couldn't work effectively anymore. Second, because of the nature of my job, I really didn't want to use my leave days without a baby. I didn't want to stop working and just wait for him to come. By the end of my leave, I would be kicking myself wondering why I wasted a week of leave before Eli came than waiting to spend that week with him after. So, my doctor scheduled me for Thursday, February 16 at 5:00am. We called our folks and everyone trucked down here short notice!

My parents and Jeff, Sarah and their kids made the treck down here Wednesday night so they could be here for his birthday on Thursday! So, my alarm goes off at 3:30am on Friday morning and I get up and shower (I wanted to be nice and clean and refreshed!). Around 4:15, as we are gathering our things to leave, the hospital calls and says that they are full and needed to push me back to around 8. Well, that's great, but a call an hour before that would have been nice. We were awake and it's hard to go back to sleep when you're excited. I took a little nap and watched tv until 8oclock passed...no update. So, I called and they said we would aim for 10am. 10 am rolled around and they said they were still booked and they would call me back. I finally got a call around 10:30 and they told us to come in at noon and I could eat something light since it was getting so late. So, I had some donuts and finally at 11:45, we left for the hospital!

We got to the hospital at 12 and they were still full, so they put me in this little curtained off area on a gourney to get things started. I got dressed in that oh so sexy hospital gown where we waited about 45 minutes for a nurse. At this point, I was getting flustered because I thought we may be stuck in there and I thought the bed was what all hospital beds were like. She came in and got the rest of the paperwork finished and hooked me up with my fluid iv. *Pause- let me take a second to brag on our first nurse, Trisha! She was amazing. She came back to check on me Friday and saw some things that hadn't been done and started doing them for me...she was AWESOME. We didn't want her to go* Then, she came back about 30 minutes later to get the pitocin pumping. About 20 minutes after that, they finally gave me a room! I was in heaven at that point...the room was great with a super comfortable bed (compared to the darn gourney) and a view of a pond out the window. My contractions were definitely going and increasing in frequency and in power, but little Eli was laying facing the ceiling instead of facing the floor. He wasn't breech, just laying on his back! So, that slowed everything down. They came to break my water at about 5 pm (I think?) and the contractions slowly started to get painful. The nurse hinted that I was allowed to ask for the epidural whenever...so I did. Thus, I only went through maybe 45 minutes of pain! Then, the epidural came and all was wonderful!

I couldn't feel ANYTHING! I was laughing and pointing to the screen that monitored the contractions saying, "I don't feel that!!" I was more comfortable at that point than I had been in 9 months...pure bliss! So, as we are waiting we are hanging out, talking, laughing, joking...and I turn on the tv and the Stars game is on! PERFECT! And, they won! Through all of this, they were checking me about every hour and seeing my progress...it was steady...about 1 cm/hr. Our poor family was in and out napping and trying to stay entertained. Colin (4 years old) and Carley (19 months) were total champs! They stayed at the hospital overnight and didn't wine or fight! AWESOME! Anyways, we hung out until about 1 or 2 and I fell asleep. They woke me up around 3 or 3:30 and said it's time to push!

The pushing process was one of the more humorous events in my life. I had no control over my right leg. It kept falling off the bed and I would just laugh and say HELP! The nurses were awesome and helped me put my legs where they needed to be and guided me in pushing. A few of my pushes were disrupted by me laughing because the nurses were great and bantered with us. An hour later, we had an Eli!

I am going to admit now that I actually had fun with labor! If I didn't have the epidural, I probably would be singing a different tune...but everything was exciting and even though labor lasted 14 hours, it flew by for me! It was great! So, now, I leave you with pictures of our beautiful baby boy!