Welcome Baby Emmett

Wow time flies, and our little man is already over a week old. Things have been so busy since his arrival, which is odd, since I've only left the house twice. Though I'm still quite sore and, by doctor's orders, really limited in my activity (limited stairs for three weeks? I live in a split level!), I must admit I'm starting to get cabin fever and am jealous watching my husband exercise. With my bump now gone, I am eager to start losing this extra baby weight so that I can fit into some jeans again (seems I'll be wearing sweats for quite awhile). But I've still got five weeks to go before my doc will even think about clearing me for anything. At least I'm allowed to drive again. I wasn't allowed to do that for a week either. Wow!

I guess I promised an update on little Emmett's arrival. The morning of July 25th, our anniversary, we went up the canyon with Josh's family to eat breakfast and celebrate the 24th of July holiday. I was having mild contractions, which wasn't unusual, other than the fact that they were a bit more frequent than I was used to. Later that afternoon we took a trip to Walmart and the contractions started to become more painful, and even more frequent. Yikes! I decided at dinner, celebrating our 2-year anniversary, that I'd better start tracking them. Sure enough, by 9 or 10 pm they were extremely intense, but not close enough together to go to the hospital. We finally did head in to the hospital and got there at 1 am. They monitored me for 3 hours, during which time I made VERY slow progress, before admitting me at 4 am and giving me pitocin to try and speed things up.

Contractions suck, I will say that. By 8 or 9 am on Tuesday morning I was over that and asked for an epidural, though the thought of getting one terrified me. Soon after that I was blissfully numb, but going crazy because I literally could not move my legs. Meanwhile, lots of family, including my mom, my in-laws, my grandma, and my aunt's entire family (a nice surprise) came to visit. Finally, around 12:30 my doctor came in and said we were ready to go. I kicked everyone out of the room - no need for them to see that - but they waited just outside in the hallway so that they could hear everything. That I didn't mind. I thought it was quite funny and I could see my mom's feet pacing beneath the curtain. It was nice to know I had the support and I know it made it more special for everyone that had taken the time out of their day to come and be there for us. Mom even had EJ and Kathrine, who couldn't be there, on a conference call so that they could hear when he finally came.

And yes, "finally" is the right word for it. I pushed for almost an hour and half, which was exhausting! My doctor called him a "little rascal" because he kept trying to move back in. When he did finally come out and he started crying, I was instantly in tears. What a perfect little guy! It was surreal though, thinking that he had just come from my tummy. How did he fit? He's actually quite small, at 6 pounds 10 ounces (but tall at 20 inches), and all of the newborn clothes I thought would be too small within a few days still drown him. Here are a few (gazillion) pictures of our first days together: