Born: Thursday, July 31 2008 at 12:58 a.m.
Length: between 18.5 and 19 inches
Weight: 6 lb 4 oz
Head Circumference: 33.5 cm
Place of Birth: Albuquerque NEW MEXICO
Our little Eliza Nicole is here. We love her more than we can say.
We've known about Eliza for a couple of months (May 27th to be exact). She was a "He" until about 2 weeks before she was born. She was also due August 5th and then it was changed to August 19th. So she came a little earlier than we were expecting. It's been hard not to tell people, but adoption is so up in the air that we wanted to wait to be sure before we let people know.
Eliza's birth mother's name is Lauren. She is 18 and a single mother. She is not a member of the LDS church and has a daughter that turned 1 on July 29th. Lauren knew she couldn't be a good mother to both children and talked to some adoption agencies and ended up liking LDS Family Services the best. They sent her home and showed her how to look online at profiles. She and her mom went through profiles for about 4 hours online and then they came to our profile. She said that they read it and then looked at each other and they both had tears in their eyes and knew that we were the right couple for the baby.
We went down and met with Lauren the last weekend in June. She is a really sweet girl and mature for her age. She is a good little mom to her daughter Lexie, and we are eternally grateful to Lauren for recognizing that she could give Eliza a better life by placing her baby with us and giving us the gift of letting us become her parents. Lauren has sacrificed so much for us and we love her for that.
On Wednesday morning at 7:30 a.m. we got the call that Lauren was in labor and at the hospital to stay. We packed up as fast as we could, called our jobs and told them that we would be gone for a couple ofweeks, and we were on the road by 11:00. We got to Albuquerque about 9:00 p.m. thinking that the baby would already be born, but it wasn't--so we got to see Eliza when she was just a few seconds old.
We got to be in a delivery room right next to Lauren, so once the baby was born we heard crying and no more than 5 seconds later the nurses were bringing our crying baby into our room. They put a hat on her head, wrapped her in a blanket, and put her in my arms. We got to be with her for about an hour and a half before they took us all to the nursery to clean her up. They bathed her and did a bunch of different tests on her. She was a little low on oxygen and over the next few hours they took x-rays of her lungs and discovered that she had pneumonia. So they started her on antibiotics immediately and she was on oxygen for a couple of days. She's doing great, though. She has to be on antibiotics for 7 days, so she won't be released from the hospital until probably Thursday afternoon and then we have to stay in NM for a few more days while the NM courts talk to the Utah courts and get everything worked out. I imagine we'll be going back home in about a week and a half around Wed Aug 13th.
Lauren is very dedicated to placing this baby with us. She always referred to the baby as "Josh and Mari's baby" and told people she was carrying the baby for a couple that wasn't able to have a baby on their own. She will appear before a judge on Tuesday and sign the papers that state that Eliza will then belong to the state of NM.
We have spent a lot of time in the hospital--Eliza is in the "Intermediate" nursery because of the antibiotics. She has a nurse that is in charge of only 2 babies at a time, so she gets lots of attention. We get to hold her, feed her, change her, and I even gave her her 2nd bath on Sunday night. Josh absolutely loves her and she loves Josh, too. Josh had her little fingers wrapped around his index finger a couple of days ago and he tried to pull it away after a few minutes and she just held on tight and pulled his hand back down. She did it later that day again, too. I tried to do it with her that evening and she couldn't have cared less about my finger. She only likes her daddy's fingers I guess :). She is such a sweetheart.
We are so happy to finally have her in our family. We've waited for a long time and feel so thankful for this miracle that Heavenly Father has blessed us with.
Eliza is a name Josh and I both love.
Nicole is Lauren's middle name.
