Welcome Emory Lea

The story began on Friday night. I began having some contractions during the night Friday and on Saturday they began around 9 am. They came pretty consistantly every 15 mins. I made Aaron stay close to home after checking on his cows early that morning. Around 5 pm the contractions began coming every 5 mins and was more painful. So we monitored them for an hour and a half and decided to go up the hospital around 7. When we got up there I was dilated to 1 1/2 cm so they decided to monitor me for a couple of hours. I did not change any in those hours so they gave me the choice of whether or not to go home. We all decided it would be a while longer and I would probably be more comfortable at home. So we came home around 9:30.

It was a very long night. On the way home my contractions started becoming more intense and stayed close together. The dr gave me pain meds before sending me home, but they did nothing to ease the pain (well it probably would have been worse, but I was still hurting). They did however make me very sleepy. So all night I would be completely out of it and wake up every 3-5 mins with a minute worth of pain. I kept waiting for my water to break or some sure sign that I was in actual labor before going back to the hospital. Around 9 am I could not stand it any longer and we went back to the hospital.

I was dilated to 4 cm when we got back to the hospital and Dr. Holt (my dr was not on-call) came in fairly quickly to break my water. After that things moved pretty fast. It took a while to get my lab work done so I had to wait on an ephidural, but was given more pain medicine in the mean time. So I stayed out of it for the remainder of the labor pains. Once I had the ephidural it was smooth sailing. I was dilated to 7 cm around noon and grandparents began making their way up to the hospital. At 1:30 or so the nurse said I was at 9 cm and told Aaron he better hurry to get the camera. I started pushing around 1:45 or 2:00 and she came at 2:15 without any problems.

The nurse and dr both said everything went so smoothly, they were impressed. They told me I was born to have babies which was good news for Aaron since he wants a complete football team. (Yeah right, we'll see how his mind changes.) Here are a few pictures from moments after. She is just beautiful and everyone is doing well.

You know me I can't keep from crying and still want to cry every time I look through the pictures.

Dad shared in some tears as well. I think most of it was the overwhelming joy of his new daughter, but I'm sure some of it was all the things he just witnessed. :)

6 lbs 15 oz - 20 inches long

All the things I was not able to see since they took her away without much of a glance. I did not like not being able to see what they were doing to her, but Aaron stayed right beside her making sure they did everything right.

We have been home for 24 hrs and I will post more later about our first days home.