Cade's Arrival

Cade finally made his appearance on Tuesday, December 17 at 12:53 p.m. He weighed 6 lbs 5 oz and was exactly 19 in long.

My contractions started on Monday night/Tuesday morning around 1:30 a.m. I knew right away that these were the real deal. I got up, told Brian he was coming but it would be a while so to get some sleep, showered, ate, and cleaned the kitchen between contractions while I waited. I eventually laid down for a bit but was never able to get any sleep. Most of my night was spent timing contractions.

Finally at 4:30ish I woke Brian up again because they were about 4 minutes apart and had him start getting ready. I then called my mom and we headed to the hospital. We called Brian's mom on the way. When we got there, we weren't sure if they would keep us. They put me in a room, checked me, and told me they would check again in an hour to see if I was progressing. At this point I was at a 3.

My mom couldn't wait so she headed on up. They came back in an hour later, checked and said that I was at a 4 and they would be moving us to a room. This is when it all got real. We started telling everyone since we knew he was really on his way, and we were beyond excited. We were thinking it would be that night before he arrived so told people to go on to work and come up after. Little did we know, this would be a fairly quick and easy labor.

Every time they came to check me, I was dilated one more centimeter. They asked about the epidural and I said YES as soon as I can get it. They did that and that was the worst part of the whole thing. From then on, labor was smooth sailing. And really up until that point, things weren't too bad. I had a lot of back labor but I really can't complain. Things went great! 

Our 1st family picture

Finally she came to check me and said I was at a 9 then I started feeling a lot of pressure (as they had said I would), so we called for her to come back, she checked again, I was at a 9 1/2, and next thing I knew she said we were about to start pushing. This was right around 12:20. I pushed with 2 nurses for about 10 minutes until we got me crowning then they called in Dr. Bell, then it was about 20 more minutes of pushing and our sweet boy was here!

Brian, who has said for 9 months that he was not going to look, ended up delivering him! And the whole thing was just a wonderful experience. I could not have imagined any of it going better. After he got here, they gave us 30 minutes alone, which killed our families who were patiently waiting, so we could breastfeed. He latched right on and did wonderful!

Finally they let Brian go get our family, and they passed Cade around and took pictures as he got his first bath.

I was so glad to have everyone there to see him.

They then left to get me some food and let me shower then we had a night full (and 2 days full) of visitors.

Brian was pretty proud

We are in love with him

Honestly, I have to say this whole experience from pregnancy to labor to delivery all went so much smoother and easier than I ever could have imagined. I am hoping our transition into parenthood goes just as smoothly!

Finally on Thursday 12/19, they released us to go home! We were so excited to get our baby boy home! I will blog soon about our first week with him and the craziness of adjusting to parenthood.

And just for fun, here is the last picture of me pregnant. This was at work on Monday. I went into labor that night!