last week

A quick recap of our big day last week. Early early Wednesday morning (the 28th) Laura started having contractions. They were fairly intense and fairly regular, so we thought maybe we'd be headed to the hospital later in the morning or afternoon. Austin took the day off work just in case, and Laura's contractions got a little less frequent. Later that night though, Laura started to have intense and frequent contractions and it was go time.

We checked in at the hospital around midnight (Thursday the 29th) and Laura was at a four -- it wasn't busy and she was scheduled to come in later that afternoon for an induction anyway, so they had us stay. Laura was given an epidural and was at a five in less than an hour and about an hour or two after that, she was already to a ten and ready for the baby. She actually ended up having to wait for some antibiotics to go through her system before she could really get our baby on the way. The nurse and the staff that attended to Laura were awesome -- we couldn't have been more comfortable and content.

After maybe 90 minutes or so of pushing, our family grew by one at 5:44 in the morning. We were unsure of the name we were going to pick -- we wanted to wait until we saw her to decide and we both made the same pick. Brooklyn has been one of our favorite names for a girl ever since we got married and it has a little extra meaning since that's where Austin lived for a few weeks during his internship in New York the summer before we got married and was where Austin started thinking about maybe dating Laura when he got home.

Our little soccer girl was perfect and cute and tiny! Brooklyn weighed in at six pounds, two ounces and 19 inches long. Austin watched as they took all the measurements and checked all her vital signs and then got to hold her for a couple minutes. Mom got to hold her close for a minute before they had to do some extra surgery (on Laura). Dad went down to the nursery with Brooklyn.

Down at the nursery they did more check-ups and bundled her up to keep her warm. While Laura was being attended to by several doctors for quite a while longer than expected (no fun!), Austin spent time between the nursery and being on the phone in the hallway with immediate family members sharing the great news and all the details.

Brooklyn and Laura finished up at about the same time and we were moved into the room where we'd be staying post-birth. It had been a long night and an even longer time for Laura who hadn't gotten much sleep the night before either -- and Thursday was just beginning! It was baptism by fire into this new world of sleep deprivation. :)

We couldn't be happier -- we are so excited to have Brooklyn with us. She is a cutie and we're happy to officially be a family of three, even though it has kind of seemed that way for eight or nine months now.

Don't worry, we've got plenty more pictures to share, but for your sake and ours we thought we'd break it up a little bit. We've probably taken more photos this week than we did all last year, and we imagine that pace will carry over to the blog as well.