Baby Luke is here!!

What an experience! We are so happy to have our little guy here. And here is the story...

On Wednesday January 18th I went to class like any other day, it is a 4 hour long class in the same room, and I was feeling the weirdest stomach pains. Until that time I hadn't felt any pain like that and since I didn't know what contractions felt like I had NO idea what was going on. It took me until 1AM in the morning to finally believe that those "weird stomach pains" were actually contractions. Anyway, I kept going through the day feeling these pains and I had my routine doctor's appointment at 3PM. I went and told the doctor about the pains I was feeling and he said it must be some pre-labor thing going on because nothing had changed from the week before. He told me that if I didn't go into labor before 41 weeks then we would start talking about an induction.
At this point I thought I would never go into labor. Here I was feeling all this pressure and these pains and yet NOTHING had changed. The day continued and I kept doing my homework and the pains kept getting stronger and stronger. So Dustin said we should time them... sure enough they were about a minute long and about 5 minutes apart. But I REFUSED to believe they were contractions because of what had happened at the doctor. So... I just kept doing my homework through the pain until I finally accepted that there was no way I would ever be able to sleep through the pains so at 1AM we went to the hospital and what do you know... I was admitted!
Now that was a surreal moment. The nurse asked me if I wanted an epidural and I just asked if I could get one at that point and she said of course so I said... "send him in!" I think epidurals are heaven sent until they wear off. For about 3 or 4 hours I felt great but then it started to wear off and I never had full relief after that. Also considering he was posterior (his head was facing up) I had insane amounts of back pain. Wow. That really hurt. Then it was just the waiting game. I dilated about 1 cm each hour until I got to an 8 and then it just like jumped from an 8 to a 10 and the doctor was ready to get me pushing. After about 1 hour and 40 minutes of pushing and Dustin patiently counting from 1 to 10... Luke was born!
That made it 12 hours of total labor. He was born on January 19th at 1:03pm and he weighed 7 lbs 10 oz. and was 20 inches long. I still can't believe he was somehow fitting inside of me. He had the cutest rolls and he has been an absolute sweetheart from that moment. :)

Today he is 2 weeks old. He has done so well. He had to get over some jaundice which stressed me out but he handled it like a champ. He has seriously been an angel these past two weeks. He hasn't exactly mastered the whole idea of sleeping in his crib at night but I have decided I will cut him a little slack. He pulls the funniest faces, loves to grunt, and kick off his socks. We love to stare at him, hold him, and snuggle.
We are getting by on a lot less sleep than we are used to. I have only hallucinated a couple times at night so I feel I'm not doing too bad. haha... Two nights ago my grandma was staying with us and I went out to her bed rocking what I thought was Luke in my arms and told her she could take him and get him back to sleep. She looked at me and told me he was sleeping in the swing and I looked down at my arms and realized I wasn't holding anything. I definitely went back to sleep after that. Whew... sleep deprivation is quite the state to be in. :)

We just love our little sweetheart. He is getting used to his mommy smothering him with kisses. I am so excited because I don't have school tomorrow so I can stay home with him all day and maybe even get in a nap! What a thought. But now that I am finally caught up with my assignments in school I feel that the sky is the limit! He is already changing and growing so much and we feel excited and blessed to have him with us.
And... that's the story!