It’s hard to believe that our baby girl has been here for less than two days now. It’s been a very exciting, surreal couple of days and we’re loving every minute of it.

Wednesday was my last day of work and on Thursday morning I woke up at 7 am with warning signs of labor. We called our midwife, who walked us through the process of when to page her again. I took a bath and about an hour later, started having rhythmic contractions, about 4 minutes apart! They were lasting about 40-60 seconds, so after an hour, Brian paged Erin again. After hearing that things were progressing so quickly, she decided it was time for her to come over. The labor tub was delivered and when Erin arrived at about 10:30 and the contractions were about every three minutes for a minute. At 10:30 I was dilated 3 cm.

Because I took a bath in the morning, there was no hot water for the labor tub. Brian and the team got it heated by about 1:30 and I got in. It felt so much better to get in the tub! I only labored in the tub for about 20 minutes and then about 40 minutes later it was time to push.

Ellie was born at 3:10, about 7 hours after contractions started. It was absolutely an amazing out of body experience. We feel very fortunate that everything went so quickly and so smoothly. Our team of midwives were absolutely fantastic and Brian was the best doula ever! I wish everyone I know could have such an amazing wonderful experience. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw our little daughter come to us and start making noise.

She’s been on the typical eat, get gassy, sleep schedule and we’re adjusting to sleeping on her schedule, which is tough, but definitely worth it. Here are a few pics of our little Eloise Jean Thompson, weighing in at 7 lbs, 14 ouches and measuring 20 inches long.