Ella Mae Selander

Just as I was getting ready to head off to church on Sunday afternoon (12:27pm to be exact), my best friend, Alicia, called me to say she had been admitted to the hospital and was in labor!
 Since Bryan was speaking at Canyonview Camp starting Sunday night, I needed to get everything packed up for a week at camp AND a night of me staying at the hospital with Alicia and Ben (I was the designated right-after-birth photographer). So....I skipped church to pack. Once I got everything ready for a week away from home, I packed up Cayden and headed to my parents house, so they could watch her while I was at the hospital. Bryan had to head to camp that night, so he couldn't watch Cayden the whole night. By the time I got to the hospital (4pm), Alicia had already gotten the epidural and was resting quite comfortably.
 Whenever she wanted more drugs, she could press this little bolus button. It was a very handy button.
Alicia's whole family was there at one point.

The epidural slowed things down a lot (as to be expected), and so we just hung out waiting for her to dilate to 10 cm. She would not tolerate any food smells in the delivery room, so we had to eat our Hawaiian Time out in the waiting room at dinner time. I think by 10pm, she was at 10cm, and they just kept waiting for her to "have the urge" to push. They told me the same thing when I was having Cayden, but that urge never came to either of us, and at 11:15pm, they just decided to have her start pushing.  
Her contractions were about 5 minutes apart, so the pushing progress was slow. Alicia worked so hard, pushing for almost 3 hours! I couldn't imagine that! I only pushed for 30 minutes! 
Little Eleanora "Ella" Mae Selander was born at 1:54am, July 30th, 2012. 
She weighed a petite 6 pounds, 14 ounces and was 19.5 inches long.
 The little family of 3.
 A happy grandma (Oma)
 Proud daddy
 Auntie Brittany
 There's her eyes
 Only a couple of minutes old..
Welcome to the world, Ella Mae.

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