Oh BOY!!

Maggie has a brother!! After 9 long months we are so excited to add baby Charlie to our family. He is the sweetest little guy and we are so smitten with him already. Maggie has been a huge help and loves to hold, change and tickle her little brother. He is eating and sleeping very well and we are surprised how well everyone is doing. As some of you may know, Maggie was a pretty high maintenance little lady so in comparison Charlie seems so relaxed! Rob has been off of work for the past week and thanks to the Army's new paternity leave, he gets to spend another week with us! It has been awesome to have him home, as well as help from Aunt Bridget and Aunt Erin (the first weekend) and meals from our playgroup and church friends. Thanks to all of you for the support and love since Charlie's arrival. We are truly grateful!! For those of you interested in the birth story, it is posted below. If not, check back again for more pictures soon!!

Charlie's Birth Story

I should have know what was coming when I wanted to eat BBQ for dinner! After a few days of on/off contractions I had a huge craving for BBQ and called Rob at work on Thursday (the 15th) to ask if he was interested in going out for dinner. We ate at Red, Hot and Blue and joked that we would be having a baby soon since we also had BBQ for dinner the night before Maggie was born. Little did we know that we would be in the hospital just a few hours later!

We were laying in bed reading when I felt a weird "pop". I remarked on it to Rob and a minute later I felt the gush. "I think my water just broke" I said. I was not having contractions yet so we calmly got our things ready to go and called Beth who was kind enough to come over to the house to stay with a sleeping Maggie.

We checked into the hospital around 11:30 and after some initial tears at the unfortunate start to my labor (I did NOT want my water to break first) and a few contractions, the Dr checked me at midnight to find I was contracting and at 3cm. I was not able to walk around like I wanted b/c they were worried about cord prolapse but I was able to sit on the ball for awhile. Unfortunately baby's heart rate kept dropping after my contractions and I had to move back to the bed. Knowing that I had not progressed much and that laying down made the contractions WAY worse, and that it was the middle of the night and Rob and I were getting pretty tired, I asked for the epidural. Because I was GBS+ they wanted to keep things moving and gave my some pitocin after the epidural. Needless to say, I was ready to push in about 2 hours! After 3+ hours of pushing with Maggie, I was totally surprised that Charlie slipped out in about 90 seconds!! Literally 4 pushes! He was pink, crying and they put him on my chest immediately. Rob was able to cut the cord and he nursed right away. While it was not my *ideal* birth, it was so much quicker, less painful, and more joyful than Maggie's arrival. I am so happy with how things went and thankful for the great hospital staff that helped us. Rob was an AWESOME coach and did a great job of helping me all the way. Charles Patrick was born at 4:50am on Friday April 16th. He weighed 7lbs 2oz and was 19.5 inches long!

We were able to leave the hospital on Saturday afternoon (whoo-hoo) which was awesome since we were sharing our room with another family and nobody got any sleep. Bridget came down from New York on Friday morning to take over from Beth and Erin arrived on Saturday just as we got home from the hospital. It was so great knowing that Maggie was home with her Aunt in her own environment while we were at the hospital. THANK YOU BRIDGIE!!