The nurse checked for progress at 5:45 and I was still at a one, at that moment I figured we were in for the long haul and it would be evening before Elijah made his entrance. My contractions had really just started and weren't that bad, I was breathing through them and talking to everyone. At six o'clock I hear my Aunts phone ring and I could hear my moms voice panicked on the other end. I couldn't hear what she was saying I just knew it was her. About 7 o'clock I noticed my contractions were picking up and becoming more painful. By 8 they were about 2 minutes apart and lasting 45-60 seconds at a time, I wasn't talking through them anymore! I decided to get an epidural at this point not knowing if I had had any change in dilation or not. My mom got there right before they started the Epidural and was able to say hi for just a second, I could tell she was a little overwhelmed with the fact her grandson was coming today.
They didn't check me again until about 9:15 and I was told that I was about a 4 and 80-90% effaced so I had made some good progress. At this point my mom, sister and best friend had joined the labor party. I sat in bed talking and joking with them for the next hour. The nurse came in to check again at 10:15 and said I was a 6 and almost thinned out. I told everyone when they came back in that I could get this done by lunch. They all laughed at me and guessed it would be later afternoon before I delivered. Thirty minutes later the nurse checked me and surprise I was at a 10 and completely thinned out, Elijah still needed to move down a little so they gave me a 15 minute warning till I would start pushing. My dad made it just in time to give me a hug and tell me good luck before they kicked everyone out and the whole delivery staff came in at 11:05.
Seventeen minutes later I heard the most beautiful sound I have ever known. After pushing four sets of three Elijah Shay Adkins was in our world at 11:22 AM, less than 24 hours after we made our first trip to the hospital and were sent home expecting it to be weeks. He was little I knew that right off the bat, but he was crying so I knew that was a good sign. The NICU staff took him to his bed and began checking him out, he scored an 8 and then a 9 on the APGAR test, again I knew this was a good sign. I got to hold him for just a few minutes before they took him to the NICU, Steve went with him. My family came back in after everything was done and were surprised and sad not to see a baby in there. I was sad, I didn't really know what was going on other than they said he was working a little hard to breathe and they wanted to watch him for awhile.
It took two hours for me to get moved to my room, on the way to my room they took me through the NICU so I could see Elijah. It was at this time that I found out they had admitted him and he would be staying in the NICU not coming to my room with me and initial estimate put him staying there at least a week. I went to my room and regrouped, gathered my thoughts, got settled and waited for updates on my little guy.
After our visitors left and we had time to take a little nap Steve took me down to see Elijah, he was still struggling to keep his saturation levels up at this point and they said they might have to put an Cpap machine on him but we could come back at 10 for touch time. We left and went back to our room until then, I called about 8 and they said they had put the oxygen hood on him, he wasn't struggling to much but they were just being cautious. Since he hadn't been able to eat his sugar had dropped and he was put on an IV which brought those number back up. We went down at 10 o'clock and were glad to see they had removed the oxygen and he was keeping his numbers up. We officially got to hold our baby boy for the first time. Here are some pictures from that first night...
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