I think it's safe to say that I'm a terrible blogger. 5 months since my last post?!? Yikes! And now that our baby is here, I'm supposed to have MORE time to keep up with this? Who am I kidding? So, I'll just apologize in advance for the amount of time that I'm sure will lapse between blog entries. Hopefully it won't be 5 months, but I'm pretty sure blogging won't be a daily occurrence. Time will tell, I guess. :)

I should probably do a brief re-cap of the past 5 months, but it seems like there are much more important things to write about, so I'll suffice it to say that the rest of my pregnancy went pretty smoothly... I ended up with signs of preeclampsia towards the end, and really started feeling like the hippopotamus for Christmas from that children's song... but the end result was a beautiful baby boy, and like I'd been told so many times by friends and family, all of the misery of the 3rd trimester is a distant memory now that Micah Robert is in our arms. I was induced around 8:00 on December 30th, and after a LONG day of lying around and waiting (thanks to the wonders of the epidural... it was a fairly pain-free day), Micah was delivered via c-section at around 6:41 p.m. on the 31st. The doctor gave me the option of going ahead with a c-section or waiting and seeing if things would continue to progress naturally. At that point, Micah's heart rate was slowing with each contraction, and as time went on it was taking longer for him to recover, which indicated that he was getting tired. Since there was no guarantee that I wouldn't end up needing a c-section in the end anyways, I decided it wasn't worth it to put Micah through the stress of more labor, and we were whisked off to the operating room. Literally, it wasn't more than a half an hour between the conversation with the doctor and making the decision to go ahead with the c-section, and hearing Micah scream for the first time. What an amazing sound! I think as soon as I heard the words, "it's a boy!" the waterworks started and all the pain and discomfort I'd been feeling just evaporated into thin air. Our son was here!

He's a strong little guy too... and proved it by rolling onto his side almost as soon as he was placed on the table to be cleaned up. I think everyone in the operating room was amazed by that and we heard, "I've never seen anything like that before!" and "wow! Did you see that?!?" over and over again. That's our little guy! He'd been quite the acrobat in my belly for the past 9 months.... why not show off for the outside world? :) Aaron got Micah's footprints stamped on his arm... what we affectionately refer to as the "daddy tat"... and he didn't want to wash his arm for a few days after Micah was born. :)

The rest of our time in the delivery/operating room is kind of a blur for me, but once we made it up to recovery and they asked me if I wanted to hold Micah, I snapped out of whatever drug-induced fog I'd been in and enjoyed every second of recovery. :)

One of the best parts of having Micah on the 31st... in addition to the tax break everyone talks about... is that my sister and brother-in-law were still in town and were able to come see us and meet Micah before getting on a plane 12 hours later. That had been a prayer of mine since they got here... that our baby would come while they were still around. Praise the Lord that worked out! We had a little too much on our minds to be thinking about snapping pictures at this point, but between Lisa and my parents, there are a few I can post... :)

Pops T surrounded by daddy, Uncle Matt and Auntie Lisa... sleepy mommy is in the background

Auntie Lisa and Uncle Matt with Micah

The proud papa on baby's first New Years :)

I know there are more pictures out there somewhere, and no doubt more to blog about, but for now I'll leave it at that. I'd better leave something for the next post... 5 months from now ;)