Emery Faith McElroy

Our little blonde-hair, blue-eyed princess arrived on March 17, 2009 at 9:31pm weighing 7lbs 2oz and 21 ¼ inches long.

Who knew that deciding to clean the whole-entire house would help Baby Emery make her debut! Last Sunday, Ross finished his drywall and spackling project… the house was a HUGE dust ball! So, as he finished his project, I began CLEANING!!! I literally cleaned the whole-entire house on Sunday. I had this huge burst of ENERGY that lasted all day long! The house was looking spotless and I was feeling great! Once I sat down to rest and relax, the real fun began… I was having severe back pain to the point where I was not able to stand-up and walk on my own. At times, I found myself crawling to the bathroom.

Monday AM, I decided it would be best for me to work from home. My back was a bit sore, but I was able to manage and walk with much more ease. Laura, Gina & I had lunch at Mimi’s… and they swore I was in the early stages of labor. Yea, right… Emery wasn’t coming for another week!

Monday PM, Ross decided it was time for us to begin watching the Laugh and Learn About Childbirth video… we made it through anatomy, preliminary signs of labor, three actual signs of labor, and one breathing technique. We were on our way for preparing for our baby girl… Little did we know, my water broke at 12:07am and off to the hospital we went!

Laboring was a very long process as my water broke before my uterus began the contracting. We arrived at the hospital at 1:30am, Dr. Gopal started me on pitocin at 9:00am, and I had received the epidural by 10:30am. Now, we wait and wait and wait… Laboring continued at the very slow pace until Dr. Pickford arrived at 5:00pm. She increased the pitocin and I started making progress. By 8:45pm, I was ready. Now, everything gets a bit interesting… sometime after checking me when I was at an 8, my epidural came out of my back. We have no clue when it happened and only realized it when the anesthesiologist came to give me my final “delivery dose” and he was holding the epidural cord in his hand. According to Ross & Laura, my face was priceless as I realized what I was about to experience. We were already about 30 minutes into the pushing phase and I just wanted it to be over with… my body was getting tired and I told Dr. Pickford “We’re going for it!” I’m sure Laura and Ross were thinking I was CRAZY!!! I remember about four more STRONG contractions and some help from the vacuum… And, I was holding our baby girl!

In my perspective, this is definitely classified as a natural delivery! Even though I labored with the epidural, I felt EVERYTHING during the delivery. WOW!!!

Ross & I are truly blessed with a beautiful baby girl! She was totally worth the pain!!!