Eli Howard Ward

On February 1, 2013, we were blessed to welcome our fourth child into the world. He came 4 weeks early, so we were surprised, but we can't believe how blessed and happy we are to have him. He is amazing and adorable, and we're all totally in love.

Eli Howard Ward was born at 4:31 am on Friday, February 1st. He is named after his great-grandfather, George Howard Ward. He was 8 pounds 5 ounces and 20 inches long. 10 fingers and 10 perfect little toes.

I started in labor on Thursday. By Thursday evening, I went to the hospital only to be told that I was only dialated to 3 cm and wouldn't be admitted until 4 cm. So, we went home to try and "sleep". Yeah..sure.

After 2 hours of laboring at home on my own, I woke David and we went back to the hospital. I was at 7 cm! So, what was supposed to be a scheduled c-section (because Eli was breach), calm and controlled, became an emergency, frantic and scary.

I was in surgery within minutes. As Eli was being pulled out in a hurry, his head caught on the side of the uterine wall and the incision was ripped open. A uterine blood vessel was torn and began to bleed, then retreated into the muscle to hide.

Right after David took Eli to the nursery, I was put to sleep. They put a tube down my throat and began a 2 hour mission to find that bleeding artery and repair it. In the process, I lost 2 liters of blood and had to receive a blood transfusion. About 2 seconds short of having to do an emergency hysterectomy, the blood vessel was repaired and the bleeding stopped.

I woke up in a recovery room, feeling very weak and like I had been chewing on some tree bark. I didn't know at that point what had happened. I couldn't talk and could barely move.

David finally was able to see me and reported that Eli was perfect, healthy and doing fine.

After several hours in recovery, I was moved to a surgical recovery room, and finally got to hold and nurse Eli.

We spent 3 challenging days in the hospital. No sleep and very frustrating physical challenges left me tired and plain grouchy. But considering all that transpired, we took our sweet baby boy home on Sunday.

I have recovered fairly quickly, although I'm still moving a bit slow.  Eli has brought his little piece of heaven into our home. He's a sweet, healthy, beautiful baby boy. I'm thankful for the prayers and blessings from my family and friends especially my husband and kids. I'm so thankful that I had enough medical care to get me through what could have been a very different outcome.

Most of all, I'm so grateful to a loving Heavenly Father who has given us such wonderful blessings of having a family.

Welcome ELI!!!