Introducing Our Newest Blessing

Our hearts are filled with joy to introduce the newest blessing to our family. Baby Lincoln entered the world on Friday and our hearts are exploding with love for this sweet little one. I can’t even begin to express how thankful and blessed we feel to have a healthy baby boy. God is so good.

I always love hearing birth stories, so I thought I would share a little bit about how Lincoln entered the world.

My original due date was July 22nd, but after a couple ultrasounds, they decided to change it to August 1st very late in pregnancy. I always thought my due date might be wrong, but it’s not fun hearing your due date is 10 days later. I felt like I had been pregnant forever! In the last weeks of July, I had a lot of false labor contractions. They were so confusing to me! One night I thought for sure I was in labor, but then they suddenly stopped. So I had a lot of time just waiting. July 22nd passed and so did the rest of July.

I was concerned that baby was still in the “face up” or in posterior position, like he had been all throughout the last weeks of pregnancy. My oldest was the same way and it was a very difficult delivery. So I continued to pray for him to rotate and did exercise to help him do this. On Thursday night, I felt a ton of movement and wondered if he had gotten into the right position. The next day was my due date and I had an appointment with the doctor. We looked at the baby on a small ultrasound machine and saw that he had turned into the right position. Praise the Lord! My other concern was that my baby was going to be a big baby (my first was 9 lbs, 6 oz, and my second was 8 lbs, 4 oz). My belly was measuring 3 weeks behind, but I had a feeling I was still going to have a big baby. After talking with the doctor, we decided to break my water and induce labor.

So I headed home (very excitedly!) and got packed. My mom watched the boys and my hubby and I headed to the hospital. My midwife tried breaking my water, but the bag wouldn’t break! So they started me on Pitocin at 1:30 to get contractions going. Around 3:45, the midwife checked me and I was dilated to a 6. She broke my water and then things really progressed fast! I felt such strong contractions almost immediately. With my other labors, I had epidurals, so I planned on doing that again. I asked for one, but the anesthesiologist was so busy he couldn’t get there until 5. He got there and we got set up (which seemed to take forever since my contractions were very strong!). After he got it going, I still felt no relief from the pain. My epidurals in my other pregnancies never fully worked (I could always feel my left side), but this time I could still feel everything. In fact, I felt like pushing! I called in the midwife, she checked me and said I was about to a 10 and it was time to push! I pushed 6 times (which were terrible, by the way!) and our little baby boy was born! He entered the world at 6:11 pm. Immediately, they laid him on my chest to bond with baby. It was the best feeling in the world!

Baby Lincoln weighed 8 lbs, 14 oz. He was 20.5 inches long. I’d say he is pure perfection!

Newborn babies are seriously a slice of heaven…how they smell, how they feel! I am always overwhelmed at how amazing God is after giving birth. Babies are beautiful miracles.

Here is our first family photo of the 5 of us!

We are SO in love with little Lincoln!

My 3 sons!

We are home now enjoying (and adjusting!) to being a family of 5. Posting will be a little slower on the blog for a little bit, but I’m sure you understand why. Thanks for praying for our sweet little guy. We are so thankful he is here!