Ellie Sophia Jauregui

She's here! Ellie Sophia Jauregui was born at 8:37pm this last Monday.  One day before her due date! She weighed 7lbs 15oz and is 20.5 inches long.  I started having noticeable contractions late Sunday night and spent all that night dozing and trying to relax.  By 7:00am the next morning my contractions were three minutes apart so we decided to head to the hospital.  It was pretty comical trying to get all our stuff plus my mom and Tom into the car.  Very similar to a clown car! 

When we arrived at the hospital my contractions had slowed down to about five minutes apart and when they examined me I was only 2 centimeters dilated.  They were going to have me walk around for a few hours and come back to see if I had progress a bit more, but by the time the doctor came around I was already 5 centimeters dilated so they decided to admit me.  At this point my contractions were coming on very strongly and close together with little to no breaks.  When they had me hooked up to the monitor, my contractions were off the chart.  We were doing our best to manage the pain, but it was becoming very difficult.  I was feeling my contractions mostly in my lower back, but I wasn't having back labor and it was really hard for me to manage.

We transitioned into our room and got settled. At this point I had been in labor for at least 14 hours and my body was starting to seize up because the contractions were so painful and frequent. My contractions were lasting 1-2 minutes with 15-30 second breaks in between.  I was still only 5 centimeters dilated and 75% effaced. I was having a really hard time managing the pain and I was becoming frantic.  I was basically writhing around and not able to do anything that we had practiced to help manage the pain.  As my mom put it, my body was starting to shut down and the contractions were becoming counter productive.  At this point we decided to get an epidural.   This was obviously not something we wanted but we didn't feel like we were progressing well without it.  It was a hard decision, but I'm glad we did it. Once the epidural was in I was able to relax and my labor progressed.  I could still feel the contractions and move my legs and body, but the intensity was gone.

At around 9 centimeters, my bag of waters still hadn't broken and the doctor felt strongly that we should break it to keep labor progressing.  We debated heavily about it because again, this is not something we wanted to have happen, but I was also getting very tired and knew that I need to keep my strength up for pushing.  We ultimately decided to go for it and found out that there was meconium in the water.  Once the water was broken, things progressed very quickly.  About an hour later I was fully dilated and ready to push.  I pushed for about an hour and half (which felt much quicker than that) and Ellie was born!  They had called in a Pediatrician from the NICU to get  rid of the meconium in her lungs.  It didn't take them very long at all, and soon I was holding her and we were bonding with our daughter. 

It was one of the most surreal and amazing experiences of my life.  I still can't believe that she is ours and that she is the same being that was inside my body.  Her birth didn't go according to our plan, but we are just happy that she was born vaginally and is healthy thriving girl. She is a breast feeding champ and poops and pees like you wouldn't believe! We are all doing really well and we are adjusting to life together.  We are still surviving off adrenaline and I'm sure it will all catch up with us soon.  She is an amazing little girl and we are so in love.  We already have a million pictures, but here are a few of my favorites.

Being born is hard work!

Familia Jauregui

Proud Papa

Ellie & Mamanina

Bebe Packard

Ready to go home!

Tom Jauregui...parent *eek!*

Ellie in front of the elephant

Finally home