Our precious baby Riley is here!!!

Riley Madison arrived at 3:31pm on July 6th. She weighed in at a hefty 5 lbs 7 ounces and measured 18 1/4 inches long! She is so beautiful and absolutely the most precious thing we've ever seen!

Our prayers were answered with the safe arrival of this little sweet thing. She stole our hearts!

For those interested, below is the birth story:

Our day started very early Monday morning. We arrived at Labor and Delivery at 5:00am. We got checked in and the nurse started Pitocin about 6:30am. At 7:30 am, Dr. Levin came in to check things out (I was 1 cm dilated, 80%) and she broke my water. At about 8:00am I started feeling contractions slightly and continued to progress slowly.

Around 11 ish I was pretty uncomfortable with each contraction and I was just about to ask for an epidural when Dr. Levin checked on me again (2.5 cm dilated). She said an epidural might help me relax and progress the labor. So bring on the needle!!

Feeling good after the epidural

I was checked again at 1:30 pm and was only 4 cm dilated. We were sure it would be quite awhile before delivery. But at about 2:15pm I started feeling pressure and mentioned this several times to the nurse. She just dismissed it and said that it was likely the babies head dropping.

Luckily about 3pm I had a nurse shift change and I mentioned the pressure again to the new nurse. She decided to go ahead and check things out. Her eyes were so wide when she said "Your there, the babies head is right here. Lets have this baby." Then she immediately called for Dr. Levin and started moving quickly to get the room ready. Once Dr. Levin arrived I did 3 ten second "practice" pushes with the nurse and then with the next contraction I pushed again 3 times and at 3:31pm we saw our precious baby for the first time!!! What an amazing, beautiful moment for both Clay and I! It happened so quickly! What a blessing!

Proud papa!

Even her preemie going home outfit (mostly the hat!) was too big!

Going home!!!