Ellie has arrived! 7.24.10

Ellie's Birth Story

Thursday morning I woke up and went to a session at the Mesa Temple. I felt tired but I thought it was just an early morning and lots of sitting and standing. After the Temple I went to visit my friend Lauren who just had a baby 6 days earlier. Little Henry was precious and the whole time I held him Ellie was kicking my belly (I think she wanted to be the one in my arms) I called my mom and told her about the cramps I had been having all day. They didn't hurt, they just felt like menstrual cramps, low and not regular at all. She told me they were indeed contractions!! I knew something would happen soon so I needed to finish the nursery. Spencer helped me hang some picture frames and her ELLIE letters above her crib. We finished packing the hospital bag and finally went to bed at 11:30pm! Yikes! Little did I know that I should have gone to sleep sooner. At my usual midnight potty break something was different. Contractions began at 1:30am! I laid back in bed and the contractions started to get stronger so we started to time them. We wanted to wait and labor at home as long as possible. Around 7:00am I got up and showered and ready to go. Contractions were about 6 minutes apart so we headed to the hospital at 8:30am. In triage we found out that I was only dilated to a 1. We couldn't be admitted unless we were in active labor. We walked around for a little bit but didn't feel well so I laid back down. The contractions slowed way down and were now 10 minutes apart, still very painful but I still wasn't dilating. At 11:30 am we were sent back home. I cried and cried. I was hurting and really wanted something to happen. Being home was tough. I lasted only a couple more hours before I called the triage nurses again. I didn't think I could take the pain anymore. The contractions were random, sometimes 4 min and sometimes 6 min apart. We decided to go back to the hospital at 3:30pm. Much to our dismay I was only dilated to a 1.5. I was so afraid of being sent home again. They decided to give me Demerol to help calm me down. It worked! I was able to rest between contractions. I was so tired and being able to relax really felt good. After a few hours I was dilated to a 5 and was able to get admited!! Woo hoo! By 7:00pm I was a 6 and was able to get my epidural! Thank goodness for medicine!!!! I was happy and pain free. This slowed things down so I was also put on Pitocin. We were making slow progress but we could see on the monitors that the contractions were getting stronger.

At 1:00am I was finally dilated to a 10! Time to start pushing!! I told my nurse that I was terrified of pushing and that I didn't think I could handle it. She was very nice and told me exactly what to do and when. It also helped to have Spencer by my side. He was so supportive all day!


Every push was exciting, we were getting closer and closer to meeting our little girl. I couldn't help but smile each time I pushed. It was so much better than I could have imagined. After 50 minutes of pushing there was a baby! Our baby girl had arrived!! Spencer was able to cut her ambilical cord.

She was quickly cleaned off and soon let out her first cry. It was the best sound ever!

20 1/2 inches long
7 pounds 7 ounces

Daddy was the first one to hold Ellie. She quickly melted his heart!!

My first time holding my little girl

It's amazing... we're parents!

Ellie was wide awake and happy!

Don't you just love that face and those big blue eyes!!

Pure joy!

We couldn't stop smiling!

We were all tired after a 24.5 hour labor!

The happy SMITH family!

Maternity Photo Shoot

We just love Justine Miller! She has been our photographer for our engagement, wedding, family sessions and now we get to see her amazing talent once again with our maternity photo shoot and soon Ellie's shoot!! We can hardly wait!!

Only SIX days till our due date!!

Feel free to post your guesses about her arrival date and weight :) let's see who's closest!!

Counting down

Time has been flying by. Each day gets us closer and closer to being able to hold out little girl. We are so thankful for a healthy and happy pregnancy. Ellie moves all the time and her kicks are getting stronger as she's been getting bigger. It's exciting to countdown for our upcoming life changing events...
the biggest two being:

9 days - Corissa has left of work

25 days - till Ellie's due date

We had our 37 week appointment this week and everything was good! Ellie is healthy and her heartbeat was 160 to 140.

This will be the last of post with belly shots... the next pics of chubby cheeks and feet will be on a cute little baby!

Happy Birthday Spencer!

On Sunday we celbrated Spencer's 32nd birthday!

It was a nice quiet day with french toast for breakfast, good day at church then yummy dinner and friends over for dessert!

Spencer is a wonderful husband, friend, and daddy in training. I love him so much and I hope he had a fabulous birthday.

I love you honey!

Family Tree

Yesterday was Father's Day! We had a great day celebrating and thinking about our sweet little girl on the way. We already love our little Ellie so much and we are excited to become her parents.

Family is where it all begins.

Spencer got a "family" tree for Father's Day. We are adding a new leaf to our tiny family!

Happy Father's Day to all dads-to-be, dads,

step-dads, and grandpas!

Shower the ones you love with love

Corissa's younger sister Cristina was born to be an event planner. Cristina has been calling dibs on planning Corissa's baby shower since she and Spencer were married. She finally got her chance and she did an amazing job with help from Grandma Lori, Nicole, and Angelica. These lovely ladies all helped make this an unforgetable day!This was the fabulous red velvet cake made by Corissa's cousin Stephanie. Not only is it super cute but it was absolutely delicious!

Yummy yummy food!!
Check out the diaper wreath too! Cute and useful.. nice!

There was a scrapbook table set-up for guests to design their own pages. Now Corissa just has to fill them in with pictures of lil Ellie!

Corissa and Cristina
- thank you Bean for the best baby shower ever!! XOXO
Corissa's mom Lori

Corissa and Julie

Gal pals - Lori, Angelica, Nicole and Erin

Corissa's favorite pregnant chic Ashlea

Baby Tess is due in September so Ellie will already have a bff!

Best buddies - Nicole and Corissa

More gal pals - Katee, Krystal and Jenna

Opening presents was so fun!

Ellie will be one well dressed little gal!

THANK YOU

to all who came for your love and support!!

Babymoon

We decided to take a babymoon to California to enjoy the cooler weather, go to Sea World and just relax! It was fabulous and we both had a great time together. We did have one small hiccup - we lost all our pictures from the trip. To this day we aren't sure what happened but Spencer did some searching and found a site that would allow us to recover everything on our SD card and no cost... Hooray! Now we have pictures to post!

The Shamu show was really cool. We were brave/crazy enough to sit in the soak zone but got lucky and didn't end up needing the Shamu poncho we bought. We thought about trying to sell it to other tourists at a discount rate but neither us of were brave enough to offer haha!

The whole time we were in Hawaii we wanted to find a place to crack open your own oysters and keep the pearl. We had a couple chances but passed them up thinking the next one would be better. Needless to say we left Hawaii with no pearl. Spencer was determined not to let that happen again. Corissa picked out the oyster and turns out it was a good choice!

The pearl is beautiful. They drill a hole in it so now we have to find a jeweler who will mount it for us.

Since this was our babymoon we needed to take a belly pick.

This is Corissa at 30 weeks

Back to the sea animals... CREEPY eels... yuck!

Pretty star fish

We were allowed to pick them up.. it was funny to feel them start to suck on your hand.

Corissa holding a sea snail

Dori!

We found Nemo!

The shark exhibit was really cool. Too dark for pictures but here we are in front of a shark jaw!

The sea lions show was the most entertaining. The animals and cast were really funny. The skits was called Sea Lions Live and they did parts of shows like Dancing with the Stars, Survivor, CSI and SNL. So so funny!

Check out that Walrus! HUGE!!
Corissa loved this fluffy penguin. He was just chilling posing for the camera.

We saw the polar bear for about 5 seconds and managed to get one picture. He was not being sociable at all.

After Sea World we met Spencer's brother Jacob for dinner at La Pizzeria Arrivederci. It was delicious! Corissa's current craving was pizza so we had pizza at different places 3 of the 4 nights we were there.

Before we headed back home we did some more sight seeing. The Mormon Battalion history center was just remodeled to we went to take a tour. They dressed Spencer up in the gear that the Mormon soldiers had.. he's such a good sport.

Light house at Point Loma

Last but not least we shopped. We stopped by the Hotel Del Coronado. It was so pretty. We found some cute stuff for Ellie, some yummy fudge, and a shirt and some jewelry for Corissa.

Time to head home.

We had a great time together just being able to enjoy each other. We are beyond excited for Ellie to join our family but having one last trip without her was nice too :)