D-Day Has Finally Arrived!

I can't believe our baby girl is 3 days old already. It's amazing how quickly you can't imagine your life without her. As I'm sure all you mothers know, being a mother is truly an indescribable feeling. She is absolutely perfect in my eyes.

I hadn't had a chance to fill everybody in on the birth, so here it goes...On Monday, June 7th, we had an 8:20 am appointment with Dr. Nyhus. I wasn't feeling much for contractions up until this point, but I was 2 cm dilated. He stripped my membranes and sent us home with another appointment set up for Wednesday morning. All day Monday I started to feel some mild contractions. Initially they were pretty close together, about 7-10 minutes apart, but then they decreased to about 20 minutes apart. By the time I was ready for bed, they were 10 minutes apart again. Oma came that night, just in case. We were settling into bed around 10:30 that evening, when everything changed. The contractions quickly became more intense and were a consistent 5 minutes apart. We timed everything for about a 1/2 hour and then decided to go to the hospital. We arrived around 11:15 Monday evening. Everything took off from there. I quickly was dilated to 5 cm, when they were finally able to try to get the epidural started. I went from 5 cm to 8 cm in 45 minutes, so I was already at 8 cm by the time the epidural was in, and it didn't fully take effect until it was time to push. Greta Mary entered this world at 2:53 am on her Daddy's birthday! We spent one additional night in the hospital and came home the next day. We've been so blessed to have all the support of our friends and family. We've so appreciated all the nice e-mails, phone calls, and texts. We also can't express how nice it's been to have Gramma and Grampa Gillespie, Oma, and Auntie Kathryn come and visit and help out with our bundle of joy.

Attached are some more pictures from the hospital, Greta's first bath by Mommy, and her homecoming.