Elyse's arrival story

After much anticipation the last several weeks, Carl and I had resolved that it would probably be early January before Elyse joined us. On Saturday, Carl took Henry swimming while Ava napped and I rested. About 4 o'clock I thought I noticed a bit of a trickle indicating my water had broken but I was so determined not to go to the hospital again for a false alarm (we had gone the Sunday before) that I was sure I was mistaken. Needless to say I puttered in preparation just in case. By the time Ava woke up at 5:30 (she had a really LONG nap) I was quite sure that my water had, in fact, broken. I called Carl about 5:45 and we started the preparation. We called Carl's mom who was all set to watch the kids, called my parents who were at dinner and our siblings. We took the kids through the McDonald's drive-thru for dinner and stopped at the store for a few essentials as a huge winter storm was about to hit. We headed to the hospital shortly after 7 and it was quickly determined that not only had my water broken (at this point it was gushing) but I was having contractions every 2-3 minutes. I thought this would be my first birth without pitosin!

Both Ava and Henry were born on Sundays and I was hopeful that Elyse would be too but unfortunately since my contractions were so close at 8:30 pm, I thought it would be much faster than that. Elyse's timing was perfect. My mom and sister had just returned from a trip to Hawaii late Friday night and my OB, Dr. Frank was headed to Syria and Lebanon with his family for two weeks leaving Tuesday morning. Dr. Frank joined us at the hospital about 9:30. He came in to deliver Elyse even though he was not the doctor on call. Soon after, my contractions waned and were only about every 7-8 minutes apart and not as intense. They had given me a course of Penicillin because I had not yet been tested for Strep B and they wanted to be safe. We had to wait until 1:30 am to be sure that Elyse would not have to have a blood culture after she was born so we just waited. At 11:30 I told Dr. Frank that we would need some pitosin and we did. They started me on it about 12:30 at 2, then moved it to 4 and then to 6. That did it. Within 40 minutes I went from 5 cm dilated (which I had been at for hours) to having a baby. I refer to her as my 'one push wonder' as her entire head delivered by itself during a contraction (when the doctor had stepped out to go to the bathroom) and I had to wait to do the one push for her shoulders. She was born at 2:13 am--a Sunday--just like I had hoped. It was amazingly fast and so far my recovery has been a breeze. I really feel almost like my normal self.

Elyse cried for about the first 10 minutes after she was born and we were astonished that she was 6 lbs. 4 oz. (we thought she'd be under 6 lbs.) and 18 inches (the exact same stats as her brother who was also born at 36 weeks). Since then she is very content and doesn't even complain when she has a dirty diaper. She has been eating well so far and we'll pray she continues to as preemies are notorious for being too tired to feed well. She is beautiful, has a full head of hair and long beautiful fingers and toes! We are all smitten--even Henry and Ava. Pictures coming later today!