Basic and Indescribable

Well I realize it's Christmas week, and that means I"m supposed to be posting pictures of our home decorated for the holiday etc. However, today is also 5 weeks since Elijah was born and that means it's starting to get a bit late to post one more post about his birth...so that's why I'm doing it today. Even though it's been 5 weeks, I still can't get over what an incredibly smooth and awesome day it was. It all was a blessing from God that we were able to do things so naturally. We wanted to lower our risk of complications as much as possible, after all we live in a third world country!

I have lots of pictures of the birth, but not many that I want to post online :) I just wanted to show you back home what a Brazilian hospital looks like (at least the one we stayed in anyway). This is the room where we had the birth and where we stayed. Isn't it so different than the States? You even have to bring your own pillow and blankets!
And you can see in the bottom corner that my hospital bed even had a manual crank to go up and down! I had to keep asking Jeyson to raise and lower the head part of my bed throughout the night so I could nurse comfortably and sleep again. You can also see tiny Elijah in the bed/cart that he slept in. Pretty crazy basic, huh?

But none of that remains in my mind when I remember Elijah's birthday. All that comes to mind is the most challenging and beautiful day of my life when we changed forever with Elijah coming into our lives. This photo captures my emotions and memories as much as they can be captured....tears of joy. In this picture Elijah is literally about 10 seconds old.
I will never forget holding and seeing Elijah for the first time. I love that he is looking right at Jeyson...and the emotions of it all...as you can see from my expression, there are no words! I think my heart exploded out of my chest (and still is!) with feeling of love for this little guy. It was truly indescribable!