Our Suburban Farm: Elijah's Birthday

Eli's "birthday" seemed like the longest day since he joined us at 1:30 am. Even though I didn't sleep at all that night and was recovering from a c-section, I was totally running on adrenaline with the excitement of our new amazing miracle all day!

I was hooked up to an IV and a catheter and not allowed to get out of bed yet, so I was pretty restricted for the morning. Adam was amazing and did all of the diaper changes and moving and getting for both of us. You would never have known that Adam wasn't around newborns his whole life. He jumped into the daddy thing like he's being doing this forever. And let me say....seeing Adam as a dad is pretty much the best thing ever.

Happy Birthday Elijah!

The newspaper on the day of his birth!

(Funny story about this. My parents grabbed a newspaper for us on the 9th, because we all thought he was coming then. So when he came at 1:35 am on the 10th, grandma had to go out and get a new newspaper!)

I was allowed to get out of bed about noon that morning. The tech just wanted me to go to the chair, but I was feeling good and so we went to the bathroom so I could wash my face and brush my teeth. I felt like a new woman! Then I sat in the chair. Shortly after that they came for Eli's circ and Adam went with (we chose to not have him go anywhere without one of us). Well then I was stuck in the chair without my phone or anything. I felt pretty good and knew I could do it, so I got up on my own (after I'd been told not to) and went to the bed. Well there was a stack of pillows on the bed so I started to move them to a chair. Then my nurse came in! I was caught red handed standing in the middle of the room holding pillows! She went down to where Adam was and told on me that I was "cleaning" the room! (All in good fun!)

My nurse that afternoon was on Operation: Free Stephanie. She got me on a full diet (just being careful what I ate) earlier than expected and got me off the IV because my output was great and I wasn't taking any pain meds except oral ibuprofen. At about 7:00 she freed me from the catheter with the promise I would try to go every hour. 11:00 was the magic number! I was totally free!

At about 10:00 that evening they came to do Elijah's hearing screening and I went with for that since it is interesting to me. Well of course the child of the teacher of the Deaf/hard of hearing gave them a run for their money. His hearing screening ended up taking 2.5 hours! She said it really wasn't anything he was doing though, as he was pretty calm for the whole thing. He probably had some fluid in his ears which made it take longer. He was the talk of the floor because he held up the line for all the babies that needed their screening done!

When we were in recovery, the nurses asked if we preferred to delay the bath and do it ourselves. We really appreciated that! So later in the day on his birthday the tech came in and we got to give him his first bath together. It also really helped us feel confident with the whole bath thing for when we did it at home for the first time!

He HATED being washed

But he loved his hair being washed

Every person we encountered at the hospital was so wonderful. They were respectful of our wishes and sometimes (like with the bath) even anticipated what we would want without us asking. They were caring and thoughtful and all around amazing people. Also, pretty much every person that we encountered had heard that I had labored and pushed for 3 hours totally med free and then ended up with the c-section and they would come in and tell me how amazing I was and I really needed that. (Not that I think I'm amazing, but with the post c-section emotions and recovery, it was nice to hear!)

Of course, throughout the day we took appropriately 5 million pictures. I'll try to contain myself and only post a few here!