Welcome Aaron!

Meet my beautiful baby boy, Aaron Jay Nickel. He was born at 7:57pm on 09/12/12. He weighed 7lb 1oz & was 21.5 in long (he had a bit of a cone head, his length went down when the swelling went down). 

Here's a recap filled with lots of pictures: 

Bryan & I went in to the hospital at 10pm on Tuesday, 09/11/12. Here we are getting ready to leave.

I was all hooked up to the machines by about 10:30pm or so. The nurse gave me a pill to help speed things along. They wanted me to progress as much on my own before giving me Pitocin. 

Around 4:30am my water broke. I was still only around 2-3 cm dilated at that point. Once my water broke, my contractions really started picking up. Since I wasn't on Pitocin yet, and hadn't had an epidural, I was able to move around. I tried rocking in the rocking chair to help take my mind off the increasing pain. Needless to say, I didn't sleep. Contractions are period cramps on steroids. But they were still manageable at that point. 

Around 8:30am I got my epidural and started the Pitocin since I wasn't progressing very quickly on my own (still a 3 at this point). Once I got the epidural, all I could do was just sit around and wait. My favorite nurse, Danielle, thought I would deliver by 3pm. I was too excited to sleep, even though that's what I should have been doing. I think I took a short nap. Our families started showing up late morning/early afternoon. And we all just waited. 

I finally got to a 10 and was able to start pushing around 5:30pm. It wasn't too bad....at first. Then my epidural wore off.  Holy hella pain, Batman! OMG. Running the 1/2 marathon with tendonitis in both ankles was a cake walk compared to this. They got the anesthesiologist back in to give me a booster dose of the epidural. This helped for a little while, then I began puking. I was a hot mess, literally. I kept apologizing to all of the nurses for being so disgusting. They told me I did some of my best pushing when I was puking. After 2.5 hours of pushing, he finally arrived! He was a little stunned when he came out; it took a bit for him to "wake up". But he finally did, and was just perfect. Even his swollen, bruised cone head was perfect to me. We loved him immediately. 

Proud Daddy

Finally relaxing after working so hard

I cried the day we left the hospital. I didn't want to leave my security blanket. 

We've been home over a week now. We're figuring out how to function on little sleep, eat very quickly,  do things with one hand.....you get my drift. I find myself staring at him all day long. I feel like Holly Hunter in "Raising Arizona" crying while exclaiming, "I love him so much!". We're learning a lot about him every day. His favorite thing to do is to poo in his clean, just changed diaper. Without fail, he will wait until I change his diaper, and then have a massive explosion. Sometimes his explosions are so loud that Bryan has to ask if it was him or me. They startle him awake most of the time. It makes me laugh so hard. 

This is his gas grin. It usually means an explosion is soon to come.

He also hates, HATES, bath time. 

After all the bed rest, going overdue, and then having a long labor, it was the best experience of my life. We have this perfect angel in our lives now. I am so in love. I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.