The Miller Family: Our Ella Bear is here!!!

She's Here!!! Our Ella Bear decided to come 5 weeks early and was born on Wednesday, November 5th at 2:41am in the early morning weighing 5 lbs. 13 oz. and 19" long. My water broke at 10pm on Tuesday night while Chris and I were laying on the couch watching our 4th episode of "24" on DVD. We made it to the hospital by 11pm to find my anxious mom waiting for us. She was really worried because I still had 5 weeks left but she hid that nervousness very well. Here's Chris and I at the entrance to the hospital. I was only having mild contractions by this time but didn't have any contractions before my water broke. I had even had a check-up appointment at 2:30pm earlier that day in which they monitored her heart beat and movements for 30 minutes and said everything looked great.

After going to labor and delivery, they took me to the triage room to monitor Ella's heart beat and make sure that my water did in fact break and I was in labor and not just a false alarm. I was definitely in labor!!!

I was 1 cm dilated when we got to the hospital and once we got into the delivery room, I was 2 and then it started to get more and more painful and I had less and less time in between each contraction. I had about 10 seconds between each contraction in the beginning but then it went down to 2 or 3 seconds! When they came in to give me an epidural I was 4 cm dilated and then by the time the doctor was finished (about 30 mins. later) I was already 9 cm dilated! I was going so fast luckily but my doctor was still not there and I was ready to push! The nurses had called my doctor but they did not expect me to progress so quickly.

My mom, Chris and KK were by my side every step of the way. Chris and KK took a lot of pictures and my mom endured my tight squeezes to her hand and arm. I don't really remember these pictures but Chris likes to say I looked like the exorcist while I was having the really bad contractions. I was getting ready to in the picture below. My epidural did not take since my labor progressed so quickly. I never got numb even afterwards. The doctor had told Chris that I would most likely feel everything since the epidural didn't work. And I did!

I gave 4 or 5 great big, 10 second pushes and then she came out! And so did the tears of joy! She was BEAUTIFUL!

The doctor worked on me for another 45 minutes trying to get the placenta out while Chris, my mom and KK watched our Ella bear get weighed, measured, finger and foot printed, etc. After 45 minutes, my doctor had to put me to sleep to get the placenta out.