Ellis is here!

(Ben) Announcing the arrival of Ellis Evan Iverson!! We're so glad that he's here! The important stats are in the picture above (click to enlarge). For those of you wanting the nitty-gritty (non-graphic!) details of the arrival, read on:

On Saturday night, Jenn was completely fed up with the whole pregnancy thing. I mean, Saturday was her due date, and Henry came 5 days early, so we really didn't think that she'd make it all the way to the 6th without going in to labor. So, when Saturday night came around without even a contraction, she passed the time making this neat new version of the widget that has graced the sidebar of our blog for the past several months:

Yikes!

Luckily, we didn't have to wait long! Sunday morning she started having regular contractions, although they weren't too close together. They stayed fairly light and consistent until 4:00am Monday morning when they became bad enough to wake her. Jenn roused me at 4:40 to let me know that we were on the way to the hospital. It's incredible how easy it is to come fully awake when you hear those words...

We called our good friend Daija (thanks, Daija!!) about 5:30, and she zipped up to our house and slept on our couch so that we didn't have to wake Henry up. We made it to the hospital about 6:00am, got checked in, and Jenn continued to have pretty strong contractions. By 8:30 or 9:00 she was dilated to a 4 and they told her she could have the epidural at any time, although her doctor recommended waiting a bit longer in order to allow labor to continue as normally as possible. So, Jenn bravely soldiered on for another half hour, at which point they informed us that they were installing new monitors in all of the rooms that day, and asked if they could do our room first. We said that was fine, and left to wander the halls (there are a total of 3) for another 45 minutes. By that time (about 10:15) she was in a lot of pain, so she asked for the epidural. What they hadn't told us is that they still needed to hook up an IV and get a full bag of fluid in before they could give her the epidural, so she didn't end up getting any relief until about 11:15 or so. Once she could no longer feel her legs, her doctor checked her again and was shocked to find that she was at 9 already, meaning that she had essentially dilated the full amount without any anesthesia at all. We'll definitely ask for the epidural a bit earlier next time!

Unfortunately, at that point the baby's heart rate dropped quite low, and the doctor told us that unless it came back up she'd have to do a C-section. Some of you know that Henry was born by C-section for this very reason, but we were really hoping to be able to have this baby vaginally because (a) recovery is much easier and (b) you can't have too many kids by C-section because of scar tissue build-up. Anyway, I was pretty disappointed as they threw me some scrubs and wheeled Jenn into the O.R. to prepare for the C-section.

Luckily (or was it more than luck?), his heart rate picked up again when they entered the O.R., and the doctor said she was willing to try the birth vaginally. At that point, Jenn was ready to begin pushing, and (with some help from the forceps) 4 contractions later he was born!

Jenn's (of course) quite sore and tired, but feels much better than she did after the C-section, so we're so glad that things worked out so well. Ellis has a couple of bruises from the forceps (note the line down the middle of his forehead), but he's been pretty happy so far!

Henry is so happy to have Ellis finally here! He's still figuring out a few things (no, you can't touch his eyes, Henry), but he's excited to be the big brother. Once he gets those details worked out, I think things will go pretty well.

As for me, I'm hanging in there! I can't tell my right hand from my left, and I'm skipping math camp right now. I hope that I'm put back together a bit by next Monday when real classes start! Mostly, I'm just excited to be the father of two little boys!