Judah is Here!

I know it's been a long time. A really long time. But our lives have been completely turned upside down the past month. Yep, that's right, we've added to our family. Judah Samuel was born on Friday, May 4th (his due date!). We've been adjusting to having Judah in the house and loving every minute of it. However, having a newborn and a toddler leaves little time for blogging so I have a lot to catch up on! For now I'll just give Judah's birth story and leave you with some pictures. Hopefully, I'll be able to blog some more later this week. Earlier in the week I had been having regular contractions that were about 3-5 minutes apart, but they were not very painful. I ended up going to the hospital to get checked and was admitted because I was "in labor." But labor stopped and I was sent home. Thursday night when we went to bed I told Brad that I was pretty sure we'd be having the baby that night. Of course, there were storms predicted to come through the area, which would make getting a baby sitter for Micah difficult. Sure enough, I woke up around 1:45am. By 2:00 I woke Brad up and told him I thought we needed to start timing my contractions. After 15 minutes we called my parents and told them they needed to head over. This was a slight problem because we were in the middle of a pretty bad thunderstorm, but my dad left the house right away. Then, we called the midwife and she told us to go to the hospital (duh!). So, as soon as my dad got to the house we left for the hospital. Once we got there we found out that we got the last available room. The place was crazy! The nurses didn't even check in with us until I'd been there over an hour. As soon as we got there, we started walking the halls because I needed to keep moving. Our midwife came in around 5:00am because no one had called her to tell her we were there or what was going on. She checked me and I was 5cm. So, we kept walking around. At 6:30 I was 7cm but my blood pressure was up. So, we decided to break my water and get the labor progressing quicker. My plan was to not get an epidural and really I never felt the need to ask for one. Until it was time to push. That by far was the worst part for me. Up until then, I was laughing and talking with the nurse and our midwife. They kept making comments about how I was smiling and talking between contractions (this labor was so different from my first--makes me hate pitocin even more!). Once I hit transition it was a whole other story! But I knew it was too late so I had to suck it up and push that baby out! I pushed for about 40 minutes before our beautiful little boy made his entrance into the world. He was 8lbs exactly and 21 inches. We were expecting him to look like Micah, but he looks nothing like him. He has hair, but not nearly as much as Micah did and his features are just so different. He's a very sleepy baby, but he knows that he has to be loud if he wants to be heard. Fortunately for us, his temperment has really calmed down since his first couple days--he doesn't cry nearly as much (we were seriously worried because Micah rarely ever cried--we thought Judah was making up for it). We're adjusting pretty well. Micah loves him. There have been no signs of jealousy or anger. He loves to give him hugs and kisses. It doesn't upset him when I'm feeding Judah. Life with two is definitely more difficult. We have to learn how to balance our time between the two. And still get things done. But we're getting used to it and learning what works for us. Brad had off the first week that we were home which was really nice--especially for Micah. And I've had friends bring us meals so I don't have to worry about making dinner. I'm slowly easing back into cleaning the house--with Brad's help. And I'm getting out with the boys by myself. I'm loving being a mom of two boys and I can't wait to see who these two beautiful little boys grow up to be.