Baby Eli!

Well... He's here! He came 9 days late but our baby boy finally decided to come! :)
We named him Eli Tyler Leavitt
He was born on Friday, November 12th at 10:50 a.m. He weighed 7 lbs 13 oz. and measured 19.5 inches long.
He is absolutely perfect.

So for those of you who are so curious as to how my "natural childbirth" went here's Eli's birth story...

(Sorry, there's no short version)

Wednesday, November 10th I was 41 weeks pregnant and still barely dilated to a 1. My doctor decided to use what basically consists of a water balloon to help get me dilated and hopefully get labor going. We had decided that if I hadn't gone into labor by Thursday at midnight that I would be induced, which I really didn't want to do. So... Wednesday night around 5:00 p.m. I went and saw an acupuncturist who was an absolute angel and took me completely last minute. She did a treatment on me to induce labor and told me that when she usually did this that the women would go into labor later that day.
So now I just had to wait....
At 12:20 a.m on Thursday morning we got a call from the hospital asking where I was because I was scheduled to be induced and never showed up.
Ha...
Apparently "Thursday at midnight" means Thursday at 12:00 a.m.... not Thursday night... my bad.
After asking if we could come down right then and me not being too keen on the idea, they called my doctor and told me to come in later that day at 2 (in the afternoon). So now I'm all stressed out, I still haven't started having contractions from the acupuncture and that dang balloon still hadn't fallen out ( it was supposed to fall out when I got to a 4). I asked Tyler to give me a blessing and we decided to take a walk around the block (it's one in the morning.. freezing and windy by the way). We got back to the house, had some hot chocolate and I started having contractions. Yay! At 2 a.m. we went back to sleep and I woke up a couple hours later with stronger contractions but nothing very consistent. I called the doctors office around 9 and told them I wasn't coming in to be induced because I had started labor naturally (miracle) and they told me to just come down when they were stronger and closer together.
So more waiting...
For the rest of the day Thursday I was keeping a log to keep track of the time between contractions and waiting for them to get more intense. At about 6 p.m I was getting worried because they were getting stronger but farther apart (what the heck?) So Tyler rented a movie to get my mind off things. Libby (my lovely sister) brought over ice cream and at about 8:00 p.m. with strong contractions at around 6 minutes apart I decided it was time to go.
We were admitted to Summerlin hospital at 9:10 p.m. and I was dilated to a 5 and was having contractions every 4-5 minutes. I called the lady who was coming to set up the birthing tub and then again just waited (in pain) for the baby to get here.

Everything was going well, until the back labor set in.
The only words I can use to describe what back labor feels like is ABSOLUTE HELL. :)

At around 5 in the morning I was absolutely exhausted and had completely given up. I think I was dilated to about a 7 and the thought of several more hours of labor seemed completely unbearable. I think I remember saying "why would anyone try to have a baby naturally?" "this is so stupid!" My amazing husband Tyler gave me a blessing sometime around then for me to make it through this and for the baby to be healthy. I had my mom, Tyler, and sister (poor Libby) in the room, and they all ended up having to help me get through each contraction. If I laid down they hurt 50 times more, I couldn't get on my hands and knees because they had a dang IV thing set up just "in case," which left standing up while bending over the bed as the only position I could bear to be in during a contraction. Each time they would come my mom and Tyler would just press on my back as hard as they could to apply counter pressure while I would scream like a wild banshee.

I'm pretty sure Libby was deciding never to have children at this point.

I had completely lost track of time, but I think it was around 9 that my water finally broke (ya... that still hadn't happened). They checked me right after and said I was almost there but needed to get a little farther and wait through a couple more contractions. I thought I would die but at this point I really had no more options. When I was finally dilated to where I needed to be they called the doctor over and the pushing began. I ended up being on the bed instead of the tub because I couldn't even fathom the idea of walking over there to get in the water. The doctor informed us that the baby was occiput posterior, or face up (which explained my back labor) and he was going to need to turn him as he came out.

Little tid bit for those of you who don't know, but when the a baby is face up it leaves the back of the baby's head pressing on the bony part of your spine. Hence the "back labor" or "hell" which is experienced...

So... after I pushed for about 4 or 5 contractions, 3 times each as the doctor turned him, Eli finally came out!

So there it is. The birth of Eli.  I know it's probably surprising, but if I had to do it again I wouldn't have changed a thing. I really believe that everything happened the way it was supposed to. The one thing that I keep looking back at was the fact that when they were monitoring the baby's heart rate when I laid down on the bed it would drop, but when I asked them if I could stand while they monitored me, his heart rate was fine. I think that when I would lay down he must have been laying on the cord or something that caused his heart rate to drop, and since an epidural would have caused me to be laying down the entire time I really think it would have led to a c-section or some other issue. But that's just a "what if."

We are so excited that Eli is finally here and I would do it all over again to have such an amazing little miracle in my life! :)