Eli's Birth

I am sure that you are all dying to know the details......well, maybe not but I need to put them down before I forget everything. It all started on Friday morning when I had a doctor's appointment, we had scheduled this as close to the weekend as possible since Travis and Jordan had plane tickets to San Antonio for the Final Four. We wanted to know what the chances were that we would have a baby before Tuesday morning when they would return. So, we had an untrasound and everything looked great except for the technician saw a strange white band running through all the photos so after she consulted the dr, they decided that it would be best to schedule me to be induced for the 16th. (Early on in this pregnancy, the baby measured small for what my calculations were so they changed my due date from 4/7/08 to 4/23/08 which may not seem like a big deal but to me it was!) So they were thinking they would be taking the baby a week early from their due date. For anyone who has ever had time added onto their pregnancy, you know that you still hold firmly in your mind that your date is the right one! So....at my appointment, I was dilated to a 2-3 and my dr didn't think that there was much chance of me going into labor over the weekend. I told Travis that they should go ahead and go to the games and they had their bags packed and we were ready to go to the airport on Friday night. About 30 minutes before they were supposed to leave, Travis just told me that he didn't feel good about leaving so they were going to stay. I had been anticipating a nice quiet weekend with the girls, free of the stress from basketball games and the aftermath of high emotion......good or bad.

So, fast forward to early Monday morning, Halle had her usual 4 am bad dream and I picked her up to carry her back into her bed at about 5:30 am. About an hour later, I had a strong contraction and got up to use the bathroom, this time I figured out that my water had definitely broken! This has never happened to me before so I was a little freaked out by it. I decided to take a shower and get ready, thinking that I had plenty of time. By the time I had my hair dried, my contractions were coming every 3 minutes and so I walked into the bedroom and told Travis what was going on and he just rolled over and said, "very funny". After convincing him that this was a serious matter and that we needed to get the kids up and make a plan, he finally believed me. Of course we had nothing packed for anyone so we got the kids up, told them to pack a bag quickly. I was not really mentally aware of what was happening at that point, just walking around making beds, cleaning up, and trying to put a bag together for myself. By the time we got Jordan dropped off to our neighbor's house for school, and on our way to the hospital, I was thinking that maybe we should have hurried a bit faster because my pain level was nearing its limit. We met Trav's mom at the hospital and she took the girls with her so we could hurry in.

We got up to the maternity center and I swear, the nurses were moving in s l o w motion.....couldn't they see I was about to deliver! I finally got to a room at about 9 am and apparently did not convey well enough that things were moving along very quickly and that I needed an epidural ASAP. They came in and tried unsuccessfully to draw some blood for the lab which apparently they need before they can give you an epidural so after finally finding a vein and drawing a little blood, they sent it off and left me until the results came back. At this point I was levitating off of the hospital bed and clutching the side rail with every contraction just begging for something....anything really to help with the pain! Travis was trying to console me but there is not a whole lot that a guy can do to help and ice chips just don't go very far. The nurse finally came back and told us that the lab wasn't able to get a good test so they needed to do it again. At this point, my dr finally made it in and I demanded my epidural....I guess I just hadn't made myself clear beforehand. So, anyway, they finally got it done when I was dilated to 8 and our little guy was born very shortly thereafter. I know that a lot of women would have just suffered through it and not gotten anything for the pain at that point but I think that epidurals are wonderful and even though I got it late, it made the birth and everthing afterwards much more pleasant and tolerable. Here I am right after I got the epidural.

Elias John Beck was born at 11:11 and weighed 7 lbs 1 oz. and was 19 3/4 inches long. We named him after both of Trav's grandfathers who he was and is very close to. He is our heaviest child at birth outweighing Jordan by 1 oz. and he came out with a full head of dark hair and bright blue eyes. None of our kids has had any hair until about their 2nd birthdays so at first it creeped us out but now we love it and hope that it doesn't all fall out. We are so grateful to have a healthy baby boy!

We are lucky to have most of the Beck family live near us so they were nice enough to adopt our kids for a couple days and showed them a great time. They all came to visit at the hospital and we were even lucky enough to have Great Grandma Lois and Paul in town as well. Eli now shares a birthday with his cousin Abigail...for some reason we have a problem with spreading out the birthdays in this family:)

I told Travis that he was not allowed to watch the game at the hospital even though he claimed that he would be calm and that having a healthy baby was enough for one day. It was a good thing too, because as I watched the game that night I found myself getting very emotional as well.........and I heard through the grapevine that there at the end, the boys got a bit rowdy! I am proud to say that I did get the first phone call afterwards and we both laughed and cried together over the stunning victory of our beloved Jayhawks. I even got a "Honey, I love you, thank you for putting up with my obsession for all these years....I am sorry for all I have put you through to get to this point" So, it all ended well and Travis has been riding a wave of euphoria along with hundreds of text messages, well wishes, internet surfing, message boards, espn specials, game replays, and way too much money spent on championship t-shirts and paraphanalia to remember this great day and night.