I have a 2 week old!

Well, 2.5 weeks now. It still feels like he was just born yesterday. I have LOVED spending every day with him, snuggling and watching him discover the world around him. Which is currently mostly just our house. We take him out quite a bit (more than your average 2.5 week old), but still spend most of our days at home in the bed or on the couch. It's lovely!

I return to work on Monday (though I've been in to the office twice in the last two weeks...I'm a bit of a control freak!), and while I am looking forward to getting back in the swing of things, It's not going to be easy leaving my baby! Yesterday when I was at the office (with little man), J got off work early so he came and got E so I could finish work without having to worry about him. I was away from him for 4 hours and was itching to go home and get some smooches! I am glad that I'm going back to work sooner rather than later, but I just hope I don't miss any big milestones in his life!

Recovery hasn't been as bad as I thought it would be. I feel great, and would forget that I just had a baby if it weren't for this flab of skin on my tummy :P It's so nice to not have to worry about bumping in to everything with my bellehhh, my back hurting, contractions, or my feet swelling! :)

Little man is doing great. Most nights we get a 4-6 hour stretch of sleep, and then 3 hours stretches. Could be worse. I'm worried about getting enough sleep when I go back to work, but I'll be working nights, so I should (hopefully) be able to get some sleep during the day before I have to go in. He eats 3-5oz at a time (our little chunk-chunk!), every 2-4 hours (longer stretches at night). He is the cutest thing ever!! All day I feel like I just stare at him and take pictures. Most of them end up on Instagram! I adore his eyes, and loooove his chubby cheeks! While I don't like thinking of him growing up, I am SO excited to see who he is going to grow up to be. :))

Wow, that was a lot of rambling! 

Here is a picture of my little family from my work "Spirit Day" last Monday. :))

He's Heeeeere!!

Elijah Lee Eagle is finally here!! Friday didn't see much progress with what they had given me, but Saturday morning things skyrocketed in the right direction! :) He arrived without any complications at 12:27 on Saturday, 8/4/2012, weighing 8lbs, 13oz, and 20.5 inches long. He is the CUTEST baby in the world!

((Ignore this part if you don't want to know too much about me))
After being in the hospital since Thursday night at midnight, I finally started progressing on Saturday (aka Friday was a loooong, uneventful day!). My labor wasn't nearly as bad as I had feared. I got an epidural (which SUPER hurt to get put in!!) and they started pitocin at around 5-5:30am on Saturday, when I was less than 2cm dilated. The epidural was the most amazing thing ever, and I was able to sleep through my contractions finally. They were pretty bad, and about 2 minutes apart at that point. I don't remember the exact times they checked me after that, but I quickly got to 5-6 cm, then at around 10:30 I was at 8cm and they wanted me to start "practice pushing" at 11-11:15ish. Pushing was not easy, even though I couldn't feel much, because I was already exhausted. And every time the doctor said "I can see his head! He has lots of hair!" I got freaked out. Haha. While definitely a miracle, the thought of the head coming out is not something I want to think about often! Then the doctor said "Okay, who has blonde hair??" and that REALLY freaked me out. My baby is a blondie??! Then around noon the nurse and J were talking about when they thought he was going to come out. J said around 12:30, and the nurse said "I'm thinking more like 12:42." All I could think about was "45 MORE MINUTES OF PUSHING???!!!!?!" So I pushed harder. When the doctor came in, she said her guess was 12:27. And what do ya know! She's obviously very experienced with this. :) J's guess was practically spot on, too! Despite me thinking he wouldn't want to, he watched the whole thing happen. Which I think is gross, but it's his eyes! When Elijah finally came out, it was the weirdest feeling in the entire world. Like this slimy alien just sliding out of my body. When Elijah came out, he didn't cry at first, just started looking around at everything. They put him in this incubator thing to clean him up, and then he started crying the sweetest little cry in the world. He's not a very loud crier, and that made me start bawling. I still can't believe we made a baby! The placenta came out almost right after baby did, same weird slimy feeling, and I only had one small tear. They put Elijah on me and all I could do was stare at him... the drugs I was on made my body start shaking, so I gave little man to J to let them bond for a little, and begged the nurses for food. Luckily it wasn't too late for lunch! Halfway through eating, I threw it all up (I kept saying the whole time I was pushing that I was going to vomit!), but luckily it was only HALFway through, so I could still finish the rest. :P We got to spend an hour with him, just the 3 of us (and the nurse that bathed him and made sure everything checked out okay). Then we moved to our recovery room where both of our families were waiting to meet our little wonderman. Childbirth is a crazy experience.

I wasn't feeling too bad initially, but once the drugs wore off I was pretty sore. Recovery hasn't been as bad as I thought it'd be, either! My back hurts pretty bad where they put the epidural, and my tailbone hurts from the pushing, but I'm doing great! It takes me a little bit to get going when I've been sitting for a while, but once I'm up, I'm okay. I got to take a long shower today, and that was AMAZING! J is at work today, so it's just me and little man until he gets off and we go home. But they've got a lot of things to do with us/talk to us about since we're going home today. I am super excited to take Elijah home and have him all to ourselves (and not be constantly interrupted by the nurses who have to keep checking on me and baby, even though we've both been nothing but perfect!), and to show him all of his cool stuff that everyone got him. But I'm definitely nervous about not having anyone to help me at the push of a button (like get me ice water, bring me food, and tell me how good of a job I'm doing). We'll manage, though. :)

Overall, I had a pretty easy pregnancy (though it was LONG), a pretty easy delivery, and a very happy, healthy baby boy. We are VERY blessed, and I am so thankful that everything has turned out like it has. Despite all of this, it's not something I want to do again any time soon, so please, no talk of #2.

I couldn't add pics from the hospital, so here they are now:

 this was the announcement on my work's homepage :)

I can't get enough of his cute little body and squishy cheeks!!! I always thought people were weird when they talked about wanting to "eat" their babies. But now I understand!!! I want to just eat his cheeks and hands and feet and belly and..... you get the picture :) :)

Dear Elijah,

You get to meet your mom and dad soon! You were too comfortable inside mommy's tummy, so daddy and I came to the hospital at midnight last night to start "evicting" you. We're just too excited to kiss your sweet face! Nothing exciting has happened yet. When we first got here, they took some blood (OUCH!), the night nurse tried to put in an "IV Lock", but failed the first time (OWWW), and left the 2nd one in, but when the morning nurse saw it she noticed that it wasn't in right and would have leaked the IV fluids all over the place, so they had to undo that one and poke me AGAIN. But this one seems to be working, and they're just pumping me with fluids for now to make sure I'm plenty hydrated. They won't let me eat anything (sadface), so I just get to sip on apple juice (til they take that away from me...). I did get to take some ambien after the cervadil was put in, so I got about 6-7 hours of sleep and am feeling pretty good right now. This bed is SO uncomfortable on my back and bottom. And I can't really get up and walk around because of all the stuff I'm hooked up to. But the monitors all say how perfect and happy you are, and all the nurses are surprised at how much moving you do! Makes me a little nervous about when you get to walking...! But I'm sure you'll be a blast. :)

I can't stop praying that you'll come out healthy. I have no reason to believe you aren't healthy, because I've had a very healthy pregnancy, but your mama worries a LOT, about EVERYTHING. Get used to that. :)

These next couple of days are going to be full of so many unknowns... most of all, though, I pray that in the end you ARE healthy, and that you are happy with me and daddy as your parents. We have no idea what we're going to do with a little man around the house, but I promise we will do everything we can to make sure you have the best life available! Just be patient with us. I'm sure there will be fits of screaming (from all three of us), but know that we love you unconditionally, and we'll always be by your side. :)