Ellis Michael Demars

we are parents! it still doesn't seem real= though the 16 hours of pain sure felt real!

Ellis Michael Demars was born today around 3:30 in the afternoon, at 41 weeks and 2 days!  he was 7 lbs 11 oz and 19 3/4 inches long.  he has the most awesome head of reddish brown hair.

if you don't want  to read the story, you an skip below to the pictures... but when i was pregnant, reading others birth stories were good inspiration for me and i ate them up.

we arrived at the hospital at 7:30 last night.  bad idea: not taking a nap during the day before you go in to be induced, running errands all day, being extremely tired, etc.  we got in and got set up in our room and lucky for us, our sweet friend Amanda from our ward was on shift!  she gave her patient away so she could take us and she was a great starter nurse, we were super sad she was only working till 3 a.m. and wouldn't be here for the birth, but she was so sweet and helpful and awesome while we had her and hung out with us till midnight- thanks Amanda!

we started cervadil  (softens your cervix) right before 9 pm. i really had not wanted to be induced since i was planning on going natural, and knew that one intervention leads to another and turns into a big snowball effect of drugs and epidurals and c-sections and epesiotomies- yikes!  due to a crazy turn of events and being given the 42 week limit where we had to plan an induction by then if i hadn't gone on my own, and then the hospital being all booked around my 42 week mark (tuesday), we had no choice but to set an induction for yesterday evening.  so i cried a lot tuesday and wednesday and was resigned to my fate. haha.

well like i said, we hung out with Amanda till about midnight when we finally 'went to sleep'  which for me meant 'started having cramps'. awesome. no sleep for me. i tried to let damon sleep though, and succeed till a little after 3 am when my contractions were just too much and then my water broke (i was so hoping that would happen instead of having to start pitocin in the morning)!  from then on, things were a blur of pain and barfing and moving all over the place in different positions, from the bed, to walking, to sitting in the jacuzzi tub to trying anything i could to ease the pain a little, since i was only a 1 and had a loooong way to go for how bad i was feeling.  my midwife came in at 7 am and i was checked and at a 3... not a ton of progress but over the next 5 ish hours i went to a 7- a lot of pain and tears and making damon push with all his might on my back- oh, the back labor was horrid!  i was having no luck finding relief, and felt bad for my neighbors, i hope they weren't put off by my very very loud moaning and groaning!  well, wouldn't you know it, i made it to a 9 at 11:30... where i proceeded to stay till 2. talk about horrible. i was getting louder and louder and more and more hysterical, especially after every time they checked me and i'd made no progress. finally around 2 my body started pushing on it's own, and after a good while of that, finally pushed itself to a 10 and though not quite the station i would have liked to be, far enough that i could get away with pushing.

wow, pushing was something out of this world- on one hand, you can't help it and your body is bearing down with a mind of it's own and it is super relieving to push. on the other, you are contracting and your uterus is hard as a rock so it's almost impossible to push down and your baby is distressing cause you've been stuck too long and so it's painful and so it's the worlds biggest... oxymoron isn't the right phrase, but it's all my mush brain can think of.

in the end, i did it... mostly by calling on Heavenly Father to help me... like a lot. and really loudly.  and second, because damon was by my side the whole time. the poor guy was falling asleep in weird positions with me draped all over him in the jacuzzi tub, on the exercise ball, on the bed, he only ate once- a yogurt when a nurse got it for him... and he pushed on my back so hard he's probably super sore. but somehow we made out with this cute guy, and i got my natural birth, even after tons of interventions i didn't want...  life just works sometimes, you know?

and they handed me a squirmy little baby with tectonic plates still shifting on his conehead and a great head of hair that's a great combination of damon and i.  he had some issues 'grunting' when he cried so they thought he might have some respiratory issues and because he was kinda in distress from me not progressing, we had a whole slew of folks witnessing the show- including like 6 nurses and my midwife and then a team of 4 from the nicu. in the end, he got his stuff together after about 45 minutes and he's fine.  he is so cute and sweet and good smelling...

haha, doesn't this look like a newborn with a cheezy huge smile?!? we thought it was pretty funny...

at the spa.