Introducing Eli Boyd McClenaghan

On November 29 2009, at 10:46pm Eli Boyd McClenaghan officially joined our little family and we have loved every moment since. He is such a blessing in our lives and I've already forgotten what our life was like before him. The amount of love that we have for our little boy is unbelievable. This post is more for my sake than anyone else's, I don't want to forget any of the details of how Eli came into the world.

We were planning on getting induced and knew that we would get the call to come into the hospital, sometime on Saturday or Sunday. We spent all day Saturday nesting; we cleaned the house, ran a few errands and were trying to keep ourselves busy while we impatiently waited. When Saturday night rolled around and we hadn't been called yet we were a little disappointed but figured we would get the call on Sunday, well weren't we excited when at 7:30pm the call came, they wanted to know if we could be there within the hour. Needless to say we were overwhelmed with emotion. We were so excited to finally meet our little boy, but at the same time became incredibly aware of the new found responsibility that was entering our lives. My pregnancy hormones didn't particularly help in that department. We quickly grabbed our things and heading out the door, the hospital told me to make sure I ate before I came in, because once the induction process started I wouldn't be able to. We made a Subway stop and I had my sandwich downed by the time we got to the hospital, which is only a mile away. We registered at the hospital and made our way up to Labour and Delivery. It was incredibly surreal to know that in only a few hours we would be parents.

The final belly shot!

They started me on prostaglandin gels at 10pm and so began the waiting game of having a baby. The nurse insisted that I spend a significant portion of the night walking the halls, which; combined with being checked in on almost constantly; made sleep virtually nonexistent in our room. Come morning my nurse was pretty confident that I hadn't progressed at all and that they'd likely be sending me home. What a let down. She said I was only dilated to 1cm, which was less than I was at my last appointment so I didn't really believe her. When my new nurse came in, she was determined to help me stay at the hospital and have my baby. I loved her! She checked to see how dilated I was, but she couldn't reach my cervix because it was pointed backwards, remember how I said she was determined? Well she sent for reinforcements. Long (and painful) story short they were able to get to my cervix, pull it foreword, and YAY! I was 3cm, I got to stay.

Pretty soon after I was put on pitocin, and got my epidural. Unfortunately my only experience with births, was what I'd seen on tv, so I thought that it was all going to happen quite quickly... not the case. It was a good thing I had my epidural, it allowed me to catch up on some of sleep I missed the night before. Speaking of epidurals, they might be one the greatest medical miracles to date if you ask me they should be handed out with your hospital bracelet and gown. It made the experience really comfortable for me, and to be honest I think with it I would much rather be in labour than be pregnant.

Our doctor is in our ward, and he stopped by on his way to church to break my water; slowly but surely we were making progress. He swung by again after church, and said things were going really well and figured he' be back in not too long to deliver our baby. It was starting to get really exiting in our room!

We thought we were finally about to me meet our little guy, when the nurse told us I was almost fully dilated, there was just a little part of cervix that was caught on the baby's head, but she figured that on my next contraction she would be able to push it back and we'd be all set to push. When that next contraction came and she pushed my cervix back, Eli's heart rate slowed down a little bit, which made them a bit worried, so they took me off pitocin. So there I lay, fully dilated, but without pitocin, not having good enough contractions to do anything about it.

It seemed like forever waiting for my contractions to pick back up once the pitocin was started up again. We were starting to doubt whether or not we'd ever meet this little guy. Once the time came to push, however, time flew by. Before I knew it they were calling the doctor back in to deliver the baby. While this was happening another one of my doctor's patients had come in too; what are the chances that she and I were ready to have our babies at exactly the same moment? Well she came in too far along to get an epidural so I guess it's fair she got to go first (I wasn't quite so understanding at the time). The doctor let Todd "catch" the baby which was really exciting. Eli came out perfect. It was such an amazing feeling to know that he was ours, and have the love that we had for him for nine months become instantly magnified beyond anything we could have imagined. He came into the world weighed 7lbs 13oz, measured 20in and had the hands of a basketball player! We couldn't be happier to parents!

Eli seeing the world for the first time.