Elijah Maxwell Elson

We would like to welcome our newest addition to the Elson family. He didn't come easily, but boy are we excited to have him here! Here's the story:

April 16, 4am, Amy woke up contracting. She had been having spells of contractions for the last couple of weeks, but these were more. They were stronger, and more regular. Amy tried drinking water, and getting up and moving around. In the past, her contractions would eventually go away given the combination of time, water and movement. But these were different. They didn't go away.

Around 4:30am, Amy woke me up and asked me what I thought. Her contractions were consistently between 2 and 3 minutes apart, and lasting 45 seconds. She decided she would call Gina (our doula, who was wonderful!) to see what she thought. Gina told her that I would be able to gauge how Amy was doing, and for me to watch her to see if they were getting worse. (Gina thought today would be the day!) Amy asked if it was ok to take a shower and watch a movie as we waited. Gina thought that would be a good idea.

So... Amy took a shower, and as she was drying off, her contractions were getting stronger, much stronger. She was now grunting as the contractions came, to help get her through the pain! So, the movie was out, and we called Amy's parents at 5:30am to ask if they could come over to watch the kids while we got ready to go to the hospital. I scrambled to look over my list to make sure we had everything. Backpack. Check. iPhone charger. Check. Exercise ball. Check. Cell Phones. Check. Amy. Check. Check. Check. Check. Amy's mom arrived, and at 6 am, we were off!

We pulled up to the hospital (Kaiser, South Sac.), at 6:30 am. It then took us half an hour to walk from our car to the hospital. It's not because it was a long walk, but because Amy had to stop with every contraction because she couldn't move. Nurses and doctors kept walking around us as I was holding Amy in one arm, the backpack, and a six-pack of gatorade, a towel, a blanket, and the exercise ball in my other arm. We had several people ask us if we needed a wheelchair. But Amy was determined. She wanted gravity working on her side. So she walked all the way up to the Labor and Delivery ward, arriving at 7 am. While we were checking in, one of the nurses asked us "are you just getting here, I passed you downstairs 10 minutes ago?" Thank you very much. Yes we are just getting here. Because my wife is a trooper!

The nurses at check-in were great (besides the afore-mentioned one), and in less than 5 minutes they had us in our room. Our nurse, Donna (who was an answer to prayers, very encouraging and supportive of a VBAC), started to get Amy hooked up to monitors and preparing for the long day ahead of us. Not that we knew it would be long...

She checked Amy, and found she was fully dilated. Her contractions were still 2-3 minutes apart, and were lasting about a minute now. The nurse thought it could happen quickly. As she asked questions, we told her this would be a VBAC, which changed her course of direction. She instantly hooked Amy up to a hep-lock, just in case it would be needed later. We also asked for the portable telemetry, so Amy would be free to move about the room. We were now set to have this baby. Amy just had to push it out!

For the next 2 1/2 hours, Amy focused on breathing through the contractions. We moved around the room, alternating positions from sitting on the exercise ball, to sitting on the toilet, to leaning over the bed. At 9:30am, the midwife came in to check Amy, and said the baby was dropping down quite nicely. Amy's water hadn't broken yet, but at this point, they told us it wouldn't necessarily matter. The baby was moving, whether the water broke or not. Amy wanted to know when she should start pushing. They told her she would know. She would have pressure, and an urge to push. Amy already had pressure, but she wasn't sure if it was from sitting on the exercise ball, so she changed positions.

Then she realized, it was time to push. And push she did. She pushed for the next 2 hours until the midwife came in, at 11:20. All the while, I was massaging her back between contractions, and squeezing her hips during contractions. (I know in the picture above, Gina is massaging her back, but that picture was taken right after we checked in.) Gina was helping her breathe, and find new positions. When the midwife came back to check her, Amy's water broke on the midwife. The midwife pretty much had it coming, and she got a good dousing! Good news, the baby was continuing to descend. Although we already knew that. Amy was continuing to have me massage lower and lower.

So here we are at 11:20, and Amy is continuing to push, and alternate positions, trying to just make it the least bit bareable. She was doing this with no medication, after all. Around noon, she found a combination of positions that seemed to work for her. Between contractions, she either sat on my lap, or kneeled on the floor. Then during the contractions, she would squat between my legs, while I sat in a chair holding her up under her armpits. We continued this until 12:30 when the midwife came in to check her again. That's when pandemonium struck.

Amy started having contractions every 1 1/2 minutes, that lasted over 1 minute. So she basically had 15-30 seconds of a break between contractions. This went on for 10 minutes, all while the midwife wanted to check her progress. Which she had to do on the bed. When the midwife was finally able to check Amy, she found that Amy had made no progress since she had last checked her over an hour ago. Then, the baby's heart rate dropped! At that point, they immediately scrambled for the emergency c-section team because the signs were pointing toward a possible uterine rupture. I said a quick prayer with Amy, and they wheeled her out to the operating room.

Thankfully, Amy's contractions normalized, and the baby's heart rate picked back up, so they were able to give Amy a spinal, which meant I could be in the room with her during the c-section. At 1:00 pm, they pulled out baby Elijah. I was very emotional at this point, and was crying pretty much the whole time in the operating room. Amy was a super-trooper. She was in very good spirits in the operating room. In fact, even though it didn't go as we had planned, how could we both not be anything but happy! Eli is healthy, Amy is healthy, Amy labored and did everything she could, and in the end, it wasn't our decision, but God's.

That boy was just too big! 10 lbs, 4 oz! 20.5 inches long.

Follow up:
Later in the day, after everything settled down, I called Baker to tell her that she had a new baby brother.  When I called, she immediately asked if "mommy's water broke".  I temporarily dodged the question and asked who was there when she woke up.  She said "Mimi helped her get dressed, and helped clean the house."  I then asked her if she knew where mommy and daddy were.  She said "no", so I told her we were at the hospital.  She excitedly asked again, "did mommy's water break?"  This time I told her it had, and told her we had the baby.  She then asked if it "was coming home forever?"  I told her it was, before asking her if she knew if it was a boy or a girl.  She said "a girl?"  I told her, "no, it was a boy, and his name is Eli!"  She was very excited, even though it was a boy!