Our Luke Isaiah is Here

The fourth of July will never be the same for us (in a wonderfully great way).  We will be celebrating our little boy's birthday on that day from now on.  Luke Isaiah was born at 5:36pm on July 4th!   We are so happy and thankful he's here and healthy.   Here are a few pics documenting the time around his birth.

This was the about four days before he was born and one of the last "pregnant" photos taken.   Love the expression on Samuel's face.  What a stinker!!  

 Once again we delivered at the birth center where we had Samuel.  This was actually the exact same room Samuel was born in.  You can see by the smile on my face that labor hadn't quite kicked into high gear yet.  We had been so worried we wouldn't be able to get Samuel dropped off with friends and get to the birth center in a timely manner.  My contractions were about five minutes apart when we got there (and in this photo), but I can laugh about our concern now considering we had about 14 hours to spare by the time we got there.  This labor was even longer than our first!  I was really banking on 4 to 5 hours max.  Not so!!  Talk about readjusting your expectations!

We are going to fast forward fourteen hours to the great part of seeing our boy for the first time.  He was actually born at 5:36, but we didn't get a pic of the clock for a few minutes.  

So thankful that Luke was a champ throughout the labor process.  His heart rate did not waiver once from beginning to end.  So thankful!!  He cried right away as soon as they laid him on my chest.  What a sweetheart.  Oh yeah, he weighed 8 pounds and 1 ounce.

 He was 20 1/2 inches long.

A special first moment with Daddy.  Luke was just minutes old still "pinking" up a bit in this picture.  So precious.  I love that his first moments were skin to skin with Mommy and then skin to skin with Daddy.  Such a bonding time.  

Notice anything here?   How about me stuffing my face with pizza!  I had to post this one.  Luke's getting a newborn exam as Mommy is downing some food.   Funny story there was we had already decided where we wanted to order out once he was born.  Then after he was born, we realized it was a holiday and most places were closed.  That's when it dawned on us our kid was born on a major holiday.  :)  Thankfully Whole Foods was open, so Tyson went a picked up fresh pizza and salad for us and the midwifes and nurses.  

Our support team was A-mazing!  We were so blessed with the folks surrounding us and supporting us non-stop from start to finish.   Emily was our midwife.  I love the shirt she had on.  "Midwives help people out."  Ha!!  Yes they do.   Tyson said afterwards that Emily was his new midwife crush.  It was Maureen, the woman who delivered Samuel, but now Emily has taken her place. :)  

It's funny how you can laugh about things afterwards.  At one point Emily was encouraging me through a contraction and she said something like "You can do this, there's no one else inside of you." And I quipped back "There better be someone else inside of me!"  She was shocked that I had a little dry sense of humor to spare during the nitty gritty.  That's me!  

We stayed overnight and went home the next day.  We all got a decent amount of sleep which was nice.  These sweet photos were taken the next morning.  

   Thank goodness I packed a muslin blanket in my duffle bag because the diaper bag I had packed with diapers, wipes, and clothes for Luke got left behind.  We actually just wrapped the little bundle in a blanket to bring him home.  So much for the special going home out fit I had planned.

                                  

                                      

Here we go.  We're officially a family of four and so so happy to have our Luke Isaiah here with us.  What a priceless treasure.