Baby Elouise

Baby Elouise

Last night at 9:13 the world welcomed a new light. Elouise Alicia Fitch tipped the tiny scales at 5 lbs and 5 oz and measured 18 1/2″ long. She was born after 37 weeks and three long days, the last one being the longest of all.
Tues the 28th Michelle went to see her Dr. for her normal routine checkup while I was at home with Arri packing for a short trip to Denver to pick up my car for the Fiesta Movement. I got the call from Michelle at around 10:30 saying that she had pre-eclampsia (pregnancy induced high blood pressure) and the Dr. wanted to induce her that day. The next couple of hours consisted of me scrambling to cancel my trip, and calling all our wonderful family and friends to arrange for help as I got ready to go to the hospital. To make things even more fun I went downstairs to discover a leaky water pipe in our basement that was slowly flooding our house. By 2:30 I finally had someone to watch Arri (thanks Sage and Starr) and a repair man at our house to fix our pipe. When I finally made it to the hospital Michelle was happy to see me to say the least.
They had started her on Pitocin at around 1:00 and she was having regular strong contractions. Her blood pressure was still quite high and she was actually have blurry and double vision, likely due to the pre-eclampsia. The Dr. was back and forth about whether to give her Magnesium which helps raise the seizure threshold but makes you feel lousy. Luckily some Tylenol and a good back rub was able to get Michelle back to seeing normal. At around 5:00 Michelle got an epidural which did a wonderful job at helping her to feel comfortable. By this point she was dilated to about a 3 and 50% effaced. Still a ways to go. Over the next couple of hours she slowly progressed to a 7 and 70% effaced. Despite the progress the nurses were becoming increasingly concerned about little Elouise. During the contractions her heart rate was dropping and she was slow to recover back to baseline. As we approached 9:00 PM it was becoming more and more apparent that she wasn’t tolerating it well. To add to the concern Michelle was having more than normal bleeding which pointed toward the possibility that the placenta was starting to detach. Shortly after Elouise had a couple long dips in her heart rate and it was decided that a cesarean was best for both mom and baby. We rushed back to the OR and at 9:13 little Elie joined our happy family. She is the most adorable thing you have ever seen, and quite the little eater. Good thing too, because she has some chunking up to do…