The Reynolds Family: Elliot Elizabeth Reynolds

As many of you know, via my wonderful excited husband's posts, our sweet baby girl was born Thursday February 24th. Her name is Elliot Elizabeth. The Elliot is from a name I came across, and Tim loves the nickname Ellie. The Elizabeth is my mom and grandmother's middle names (having at least one family name is really big in my family). She weighed 6 lbs 14 oz and 20 in long and arrived at exactly 7:00 pm. Here is a run down of her birthday...

At 4:00 am, I woke up with some contractions. They weren't very strong, but I had a feeling it was the real thing. So I called the midwife, and she agreed that I shouldn't go into work just in case (thank goodness!).
The contractions were regularly 10 minutes apart when I woke Tim up at 6:00 am with "Tim we're going to have a baby today!" He had a bunch of meetings scheduled and debated whether or not to go in. We both agreed he should at least go to the first one.
Tim's boss told him not to worry about the meetings. Then the contractions increased to six to five minutes apart lasting for almost a minute. There was more back pain then I expected to have. However, it was better than all belly pain because Tim could massage it through.
We called the midwife and she said to take a long walk and call again when they were 3 minutes apart. So we took Brinkley for a nice walk around the neighborhood giving me lots of breaks to breath through the contractions.
Not too long after we returned home, my water broke! We were both very excited to finally go to the hospital! Thankfully we only live 10 min away from the hospital. We arrived at 12:00 pm.
When I was admitted, I was 4 cm dilated and 100% effaced!
At 5 cm dilated I really wanted an epidural, but felt like a wimp since I was only half way there. But I'm SO SO SO glad I did get it! Apparently they were completely booked and the Dr was running from room to room all day. If I had waited any longer, it would have been at least another HOUR before I could get the epidural. ( Brittany you were right- it was the worst time of my life waiting for the epidural after I decided I wanted it).
Once I got the glorious epidural through an IV in my back, the world looked a little brighter :) I tried to rest and Tim set up a work station in the room where he checked emails and updated facebook.
At 5pm, I was 10 cm and ready to go...except she wasn't low enough. So I had to "labor down" for an hour. That was awful! Even though I had the epidural, I could still move my legs, feel touch, and LOTS of pressure. The whole day seemed to fly by, except for that hour!
At 6 pm, I started to practice push. Then real pushing. Then holy crap this really hurts pushing. And at 7 pm, Elliot was born! Tim got an unwilling front row seat to the show because they had him hold one of my legs. He said it was like he got drafted! This is why you are supposed to be married when you have babies, because only your spouse will stick around after seeing all that!
Tim was immediately beaming when she arrived and I was still in shock that my baby girl was actually here!

We spent Friday and Saturday morning at the hospital. The nursing staff was wonderful and helped to answer all my first time mom questions. All the rooms were private, but ours had an extra bed, so Tim could stay the night with us!

My mom arrived Friday afternoon with balloons and flowers in hand! She was so excited to see her grandbaby! My mom is staying with us for a week to help out around the house and provide an extra person for night shifts.

We arrived home around 9 am to an eager grandma and Brinkley. Brinkley is doing pretty well with her! He recognizes that he's been demoted, and while he's not happy about it he's adjusting.