Riley Nora Ellis

In the nursery right before her first bath

We were in for quite a surprise late Sunday night/early Monday morning. After receiving all the sleep that I would for that night, which was about an hour, I started having contractions. I thought that it couldn't possibly be the real thing since this would make her 17 days early from her original due date, and 10 days early from her scheduled inducement date. I consulted the pregnancy "Bible" (a.k.a. "What to expect when you're expecting") while trying not to get my hopes up. After about 2 hours, we decided to head to the hospital. I was already dialated to a 4 when we arrived and quickly went to a 6 from there. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get an epidural as early as I would have liked due to taking my blood thinner shot just the night before. Once the epidural was in my system, I certainly didn't mind the wait as much, which was fortunate since we did have to wait a few hours from there for the Doctor to come and break my water. The Doctor came around 9 am and Riley was born at 10:54 am. Parker seems to be doing really well with this new addition in our home. So far, Riley has been such a good baby and we are loving every moment.