Welcome Mayla Grace Ellis

At 5:02 this morning, after a ridiculous amount of labor, no sleep, no food, etc, we excitedly greeted our first child, Mayla Grace Ellis, into the world. 

The entire process was extremely extensive with contractions beginning at 12:30 AM Wednesday morning, at which point virtually all sleeping for the following two days came to a "painful" halt. For the following five hours contractions ranged in time from 10-20 minutes with moderate, but definitely noticeable, amounts of pain and some bleeding. Come 5:00ish, Keri woke me up and gave some indication that she is coming. Since we realized it would probably take a while, we enjoyed our last few minutes snuggling together in bed. Shortly after the shower, singing & dancing ensued. Throughout our entire pregnancy, we have been incredibly blessed by the generosity of our church, friends, family, and others that we met throughout the pregnancy who quickly became friends. Wednesday morning, we took advantage of one church family's generosity and accepted an offer for a ride to the hospital. 

We arrived to the hospital around 7:00 am, were quickly ushered inside to a room within the birthing center where Keri's contractions and Mayla's heart rate was monitored for an hour or so. Unsurprisingly, Mayla's grand morning entrance was thwarted by her desire to remain inside the comforts of her warm, wet, home; she opted to allow the contractions to virtually cease with all pain being all but eliminated. Since we were scheduled to go to the hospital anyway for a checkup, we then moved on to the ultrasound where we had another look at out darling girl. Once again, in all her game playing, she made things difficult and the doctors were not able to get an accurate measurement of her head, completely throwing off the estimated weight, which we were given about 4.2 kg (9.2 lbs), enough to make me apologize to Keri for being HUGE...

Other plans for the day included many errands being run in the city so we took the opportunity to try and "work" this girl out. We continued on with our plans, walking and tramming all over the city, with Keri even receiving a long overdue massage. From there it was decision time. Around 1:00 pm, we had to decide if we were going back home or staying in the city to keep working her out. We opted to go home since we were both exhausted from lack of sleep. Once home, I slept for about three hours while Keri managed just an hour. Come 4:30, again, Keri wakes me and asks "ready to go to the hospital?" She had significantly more bleeding and contractions every 10 mins. Dancing ensues once again and we joyfully take advantage of another generous offer from a new friend to take us to the hospital. We arrived around 7:00 and were once again ushered into the SAME ROOM where contractions and Mayla's heartbeat were monitored. This time, GOAL!!! We're NOT going home. Keri then receives a MASSIVE needle to the left arm for her IV and to remove almost all the blood her body can hold, no sense letting it go to waste on the floor of the delivery room right? Just kidding, but really, they took like 10 vials of blood. It was insane. At this point, contractions were intense to the point Keri could not talk through them, I began massaging her lower back through them and we are getting more and more excited. We then found out we (I mean Keri) were already 3-4 cm dilated. This was AWESOME! 7 more hours and we are done!!!

We then gave all the paperwork and answered all the questions necessary for our child to be born in Switzerland and were given our own private room. Super mega answer to prayer because I can only stay at the hospital if Keri is in a private room. We have to pay for the upgrade but figure it's worth it, and so is time with Mayla.

While there, Mayla wasted no time making her presence known, proceeding with contractions roughly 5 minutes apart and calls of agony, the likes of which I have never heard from my wife (don't let the smile fool you, this contraction was NOT fun!).

After about an hour we walked down the LONG corridor from our room and made our way to the delivery room. Now, I haven't exactly been in a lot of birthing rooms in the U.S., but I don't recall seeing one like this, and Hollywood SURELY doesn't show them this way.

Almost immediately Keri plopped into the tub for a nice soothing bath, all the while contractions kicking her bathing booty. Despite the pain, we made the best of it and had fun. I even moved the hangy-downy-thingy and used it as a swing. Yeah, I almost got an underdawg (you just went back in time didn't you, me too). 

Keri toughed it out until midnight when the contractions were too often and too fierce to handle and so opted for the epidural. It's important to note that I almost crashed at the epidural. While I won't go into all the details, it did not have as much to do with the needle and procedure as much as the lack of food. By now Keri was dilated to 8 cm and we were thinking we're almost home. RIGHT! Once again, our stubborn daughter had her say about wanting to remain in the womb. In the end, Keri won, but not without a five hour long battle, some of which was spent with her napping. One of the great benefits of the epidural is no longer feeling contractions, which meant, she could actually get some well deserved rest; by this time, Keri had been up for most of 24 hours straight. Contractions came and went with no notice from Keri, unfortunately the epidural also slowed the process down a bit and we made absolutely NO progress for the next few hours.

By 3:30 the mid-wife and doctor finally started getting serious about intervening in Mayla's wishes. Keri received another drip which aided in bringing contractions on, and while it helped, it wasn't quite the effect doctors were hoping for. She was still real high and had no apparent desire to leave the nest. To this point, Keri's water had not yet broken and the amniotic sack was causing issues with Mayla dropping down into the pelvis. A decision was eventually made that the sack would be broken manually/artificially, we would up the doses of party-time and see if we couldn't get this girl out. After some intense battles, a lot of man-handling of my wife (awkward...), a super sucker that left a ring around the posy after the fact, and arguably the most intense pushing by any woman, any where, any time, ever, seriously, she was out. Seriously, I've never seen Keri work so hard at anything. I'm a bit afraid of her now. If you've ever seen her barefoot, and you've seen the look on her face, multiply that by infinity. Yeah, see...

Once Mayla was out it seemed as if she was almost thrown onto Keri's chest with scissors stuffed in my face in order to make sausage links out of a sausage meter. While the final push was ensuing, the staff pediatrician entered the room and after the chord was cut, she quickly took Mayla away to begin her check-up. For those that were not on the phone list this morning we are sorry but it was early and we were not 100% there. This, though, is where it begins getting scary for us. As Keri was holding Mayla (for the all of two or three minutes), she noticed Mayla seemed a bit blue, even pale. She was right. The pediatrician quickly busted out some old school looking equipment running tests. Mayla seemed to have some strange breathing patterns as if there was still goo in her lungs. There was, but that wasn't the issue. The thing is, the pediatrician couldn't discover the issue right away and after probably 30 minutes of looking her over, including air masks and oxygen tube/blower hose things, she explained Mayla would have to go to neo-natal. Not exactly what we wanted to hear after 9 months of waiting for this gift.

After Mayla was taken, Keri was cleaned up, stitched up, and fixed up. It was probably close to 6:00 when the pediatrician came back with the entire gang of doctors and mid-wives to explain the situation (you know it's not good when all of them slowly enter the room, together). Mayla had a breathing problem. Problem was, she couldn't pinpoint the problem. Could be lungs, could be heart, not 100% sure because the tests run in neo-natal all came back fine. If it weren't for the fact the Mayla turned blue when she cried and needed oxygyn to stabilize her breathing, you'd think she was all good, perfect; she was and is. The decision was made that Mayla needed to be transferred to the children's hospital where they have an amazing cardiac department and nicu. Without hesitation we of course agreed. Up to now, our Mayla had been in the world for over an hour, of which, Keri held her for all of a few minutes and I had not yet touched her skin. And now our gift has an oxygen problem that can't be identified and she was being transferred to the nicu 15 minutes away by ambulance. Quite a bit longer by public transport; if there was ever a time to need/want a car...

Before Mayla was sent off, we were able to spend some time with her in the neo-natal. Some observations, she's TALL (no, not long, she's not a fish), she's beautiful, she's tough, and she's a fighter. Three of these we knew before seeing her, but assumed she would also be beautiful. She was a fighter in the womb and through-out delivery, and she demonstrated her fighting ways in the incubator, trying to squirm and kick her way out. Keri and I shed a lot of tears from the time she was born and sent to neo-natal to the time she was transferred, and beyond, but we serve the One True God whom is bigger than all of this. He has given us a gift, and he is giving us a story out of all this. We believed without a doubt, that everything would be okay. We didn't know what was wrong, and neither did anybody else, but we knew our Father will care for her, look after her, protect her, heal her, and bring her back to us. 

As it stands now, Mayla is at the Kinderspital Zürich while we remain at the Zollikerberg Spital some 15+ minutes away. I will be leaving shortly to visit our baby girl while Keri will stay back and continue her recovery. We pray for rapid and miraculous healing of Keri so she can come tomorrow, maybe even tonight. I will return to Zollikerberg this afternoon/evening where I will stay with Keri. We have since heard from the Kinderspital Zürich regarding Mayla's prognosis and while it isn't "nothing", we are not worried and have peace about the next steps. Mayla has something we have never heard of, Transposition of the Great Vessels/Arteries. This is where her aorta and pulmonary artery have swapped positions on the heart. This isn't "nothing" because if not treated quickly, it is deadly. On the other hand, we serve the One True God who is above all this and has blessed our baby with an amazing staff of cardiologists that knows what's wrong, knows what to do, has done it before with awesome success, and has given us great peace about the surgery Mayla will need to have.

I will get more details on the surgery when I get to the Kinderspital but the short version is, she has heart surgery sometime in the next 6 days to swap the arteries back. First, she must have an "intervention" which is a small procedure, not a surgery, to create a temporary fix so her blood can be oxygenated. More details to come on our beautiful baby girl and her upcoming procedures, until then we leave you with some of the first pictures we have of her and ask for continued prayers for us, Mayla, and everything that is going one. This is of course NOT the vision we had of delivering Mayla and our first days with her. However, we accept the challenge in front of us and approach with humility, peace, joy, faith, and trust in the creator of the world, the creator of Mayla. Thank you all for your prayers and support.

Before she was transported....

Spending quality time before she leaves us....

she's got good barefootin' feet....