HE is here! Finally! :)

Announcing Levi James Schad! 7 lbs 14 ounces, 20.5 inches of perfect little baby boy! We are so excited!

What a day! I'm so thankful and relieved to have him OUT sleeping on my chest as I write this, with labor and delivery behind me. I'm also so thankful to my doctors for working with me and letting me try for a vaginal birth. I'm ALSO thankful for my parents who are watching Owen now and have welcomed us back home to Colusa the past three weeks so we could try to make this happen.

I want to get a little bit of his birth story down before I forget--the day is already such a blur!

This morning they started me on pitocin after the catheter they tried to use to help me dilate only dilated me a half cm in 12 hours. I started feeling contractions almost right away. About three hours later they broke my water to speed things up. They also increased the pitocin drip. I went into this delivery hoping to do it naturally--no drugs no epidural. Since I hadn't experienced contractions with Owen I wanted to get the full experience. So I thought... Two hours of bawling through contractions and very little dilation changed my mind. I'm so glad I went through the few hours of pain I did because it gave me a glimpse of what people experience when they do it naturally. But I am also SO glad that I got the epidural! :).

A couple hours after the epidural I was still dilated to 5 cm. I had been there for two hours. I was a little discouraged and anxious when I heard that nothing had happened in two hours. But about an hour after my discouragement I started to feel some strong contractions through the epidural. So she checked me again and I was fully dilated--ready to push! I think my jaw dropped to the ground when my nurse said that. So she got the room ready and about twenty mins of pushing later we had our little Levi.

I'd better go--the baby is crying. :). Lots of pictures to follow of course but here is one of Levi with Daddy. :)




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