In love for the 4th time...

Yes, I now have 4 loves of my life. Of course, as per the usual for us, the 4th love of mine does not yet have a name, but that will surely come soon.

Our new perfect little boy has arrived!! He showed his cute little face at 2:21 am weighing 8 lbs 3oz and measuring 21 inches in length. I guess I could call him my runt as Luke was 8 lbs 11 oz and Mikey was 8 lbs 14 oz :) But he is surely anything but a runt compared to most babies.

Yes, there are millions of pictures here--what do you expect? I'm a new proud mama and I think every picture is worth seeing :) But the question is pictures first or story first....?

Well, first look at these few of his literal first few moments of life. This was straight from the womb to my chest.

Always the best moment of my life. *Sigh* Oh how I love him.

Now if you don't care so much about the labor and delivery story, I'm not offended (nor will I have any way of knowing) so go ahead and scroll below to our fabulous pictures. But I always love to hear the stories, plus this is partly done for posterity/journal sake so I will tell the story.

So Wednesday morning I was just over 39 weeks. That night before I hardly slept because of all of the contractions and cramping I was having. This has happened before (as I start getting painful contractions at like 6 months). But then at about 6 am Wednesday morning I noticed that they were consistent--very hard and every 5 minutes. I waited a good hour timing each one. So a little after 7 we all started getting ready. Long story short, once at the hospital they stopped. I was only dilated to 2 cm and really not feeling in labor anymore. *Sigh* If you've experienced this, you know how much it sucks to go to the hospital thinking you're having a baby only to go home still with child. So my doctor actually scheduled me to be induced on Friday and did a rather painful membrane sweep to hopefully move things along before Friday.

I went home with ruthless cramps and continuing, but inconsistent contractions. However, in all my three pregnancies, I had never felt contractions that hard. That continued throughout the day and by the end of the day each contraction was accompanied by lots of screaming and sometimes even tears. At 7:45 while enduring (and yelling through) a particularly bad contraction, I thought I felt a little something weird, a pop maybe, inside. And as the contraction ended I felt a little trickle come out. But that was kind of it. I started wondering if my water had broken, but I really couldn't tell for sure. There was no gush. So for the next hour I kept going back and forth trying to decide if it had broken. I talked to the doctor and he said it's usually a gush. But of course now and then it CAN be a slow trickle. He said it never hurts to go to the hospital, but I was thinking otherwise since I had just been there that morning! I was determined not to go back unless I was sure!

Well, Lance was just gathering the kids from my parents' house so I called him and said maybe he should leave them just in case. He came home and we were trying to decide what to do. Within the next 10 minutes of him getting home the "gushing" started. As uncomfortable as that feels, I was so relieved to know for sure! So off we went.

By 9:45 we were getting settled at the hospital. I was now dilated to almost a 4 so that was encouraging. Unfortunately the contractions were getting more and more unbearable. The epidural was supposed to be right around the corner, but it ended up taking until after 11. That was the worst hour and half I've ever had of labor. I welcomed the pain of getting the epidural by then.

So by 11:30 I was blissfully numb. Unfortunately I hadn't progressed at all during all those contractions, so we settled in for a long night. I wasn't surprised as with both Mikey and Luke I took a good 7 to 8 hours to get from a 4 to a 10. So I tried to snooze a little. I was a little nauseous, but I never threw up! I threw up like 8 times with Luke, before AND after he was born.

The nurse said she'd give me an hour or two and then she'd probably start the pitocin. So I woke up at 2 am feeling intense pressure and wondering if I should remind the nurse to check me. Right then she walked in expecting to give my labor a pitocin boost. She checked me and said, "whoa, he's right there! Just don't push." She called the doctor and he was there in 15 minutes. I told them I had pushed for less than 10 minutes with my first and pushed through about three contractions with Luke. So he said, "let's see if this one will be faster!" They were getting me all situated to push and I said, "I think I'm having a contraction." The doctor said, okay let's try pushing." I pushed for about as long as it took them to say, "Push, push, push!" Then the doctor said, "well this time it was only one!" The little guy was out! And so beautiful and perfect :)

Here he is getting all those first moment things like cleaning and measuring.

A little swollen, but so perfect! I just love him.

Dad getting to know the little guy...

...and loving it :)

Oh wait, perhaps this is how he really feels. (Actually, he was looking all cute and having a moment that I was about to capture and just as I clicked, our new little man experienced his first sneeze...all over dad. :) tee hee

Did I mention I love him? (And back off a little, this is 2:30 in the morning after a very long day! I know I've looked better)

Awww, just all wrapped up and cute.

After not really seeing his sleepy little eyes all day, this evening all of a sudden he just woke up! He just took it all in for awhile and it was so cute to see him awake finally.

But it was still a little work to keep those eyes open.

And his first visitors! Bampa with his 11th grandchild born on his 38th wedding anniversary. I know, no one will ever be able to top MY gift to them :)

Mikey...Just...Loves...Him! He couldn't hold him enough and I had to practically strip the child so that he could see every inch of him and check out his hands and his feet and all that. He was so disappointed tonight because he wanted to take him home so badly!
Luke was excited to hold him for one minute and then just ran around and played. We didn't really think he even noticed him much. But then the nurse arrived to take his new brother off to get some blood work done...Luke just BAWLED! He started screaming, "Baby! Baby!" and cried and cried. It was so cute! Well sad about the crying, but cute that he cared.
Oh, and Luke is also a little crazy. Just kidding! But this was so funny. Lance was trying to get the picture above with Luke just looking at the baby. So he kept telling him to look at the baby not the camera. Luke finally looked down, but could not resist the lure of the camera. Trying to do what he was told he kept him head down and only used his eyes to look up--and thus the creepy picture. :)

Just a proud big brother

Brothers so enamored with their new punching bag.

And mama with all her little boys. How'd I get so lucky? :)

This one was cuter of the boys and less cute of me. So just ignore me and look at their cute little faces.

And now let's play: Who Does He Look Like?
First can you guess which one is Mikey, which is Luke and which ones are our new man?

1.

2.
3.
4.

If you guessed 1: baby, 2: Mikey, 3: Luke, and 4:baby, you are right!

Right out of the gate he did look like Luke, but I think that was more a product of having just been through birth. After all the swelling and cleaning up, he actually resembles Mikey a lot. But babies change! So we'll see!


And I thought I'd throw in a little video for good measure. Newborn cries are so cute!



More to come for sure!