Cade is here!

He's here!

I guess all I had to say was "please" because Tuesday night the ball got rolling on Mr. Cade's arrival.

(I'll give the short, PG version of labor and delivery here. If you want the rated R version, give me a ring.)

Tuesday evening we thought my water broke and instead of taking any risks went into the hospital to check it out. After some testing it was confirmed that some of my water had broken so it was off to labor and delivery with me. Tuesday night was pretty uneventful; I had contractions but they were so mild I didn't even feel them. Since Ross had worked Monday night and fought a 7 hour fire resulting in zero sleep, he eventually crashed at home and Mom stayed with me on the off chance that things got more interesting (they did not).

Wednesday morning we started me on pitocin to increase the contractions and move things along. I started getting uncomfortable during contractions but nothing I couldn't handle. Until one. I was so surprised by it my first thought was the position I was in must have pinched a nerve in my back. That was when I said bring on the epidural ASAP. Thank goodness. Because real labor, as in active pushing labor, did not begin until 3:30p. And lasted FOUR AND A HALF HOURS. Ladies, if you have had a baby you know that pushing for 4.5 hours is not quite normal. I didn't know how not normal it was until after the fact (probably for the best). In short - big smart genius baby head and a fairly small mama are not a match made in labor-and-delivery heaven. Ross was by my side the whole time, less about 5 minutes during our one break when he persuaded me that he should tell our parents I was still alive. He was a champ and worked just as hard as the delivery nurse.

Cade Daniel Black; 7 lbs, 3 oz and 20.75"

Then at 7:52p our baby boy entered the world.

That night he met most of his Texas-based immediate family and his godfather. Thursday he met more of the important people in his life and today we came home.

We're all doing really well. A little tired as you can imagine but happy to be home and slowly starting to settle into our new routine (as much as anything with a newborn is routine). He's feeding well, sleeping well and is under Lexi's watchful eye most of the time.

I'll share more of the post-delivery goodness later. For now, I am going to spend time with little Cade, relieve my Mom, and get ready for the 10 pm-ish feeding.

Enjoy the pics!