And now we are four

Hello friends!
Porter Mackenzie German was born on Thursday, September 17 at 3:25 pm. He was 20.5" long and weighed 7 lbs 15 oz. He has a crop of long, thick dark hair and his daddy's chin. :) We're all home now and doing great!

Here's a time line of my labor/delivery:
8:00 am Arrive at hospital, change into fabulous and oh-so-alluring hospital gown.

8:45 am Doctor breaks my waters, hoping contractions will begin on their own. They don't.

9:45 am Pitocin is administered. That does the trick! Contractions--owie.

11:45 am My new BFF the anesthesiologist arrives to give me the blessed epidural. JOY!

1:00 pm Nurse checks my cervix--I have gone from 5 cm to 9 cm in an hour because I was able to relax. Nurse gets doctor in there in a hurry to check on me. She checks me and says I'm getting close to 10 cm, but realizes that baby is face-up. Whoops! She has me do some pushing while they try to get baby to flip over. Doesn't work, so they let me rest for a while to see if the contractions will get him to flip on his own.

3:00 pm Nurse checks me again--I am now fully dilated, fully effaced. Baby is still sunny-side up but he is *right there* and the contractions are telling me to PUSH so they decide to just proceed anyway.

3:10 pm I begin to push. Epidural keeps me from being in pain but boy, can I ever feel the pressure!

3:25 pm Thanks to a handy vacuum assist and a talented doctor, I only have to push for 15 minutes and baby is born, still face-up. Doctor finds that baby has an extremely short umbilical cord, which is probably why he couldn't flip over to be face-down. This may also explain why I was dilated with no progress for so long, and why he always kicked me in the *same exact place* all pregnancy long. Poor kiddo couldn't move!
Although I was technically in labor for about six hours it seemed like it all went so much faster than that--it really caught me off guard when the nurse came in and said it was time to push already! Better quicker than I anticipated than slower, right?

Maren is besotted with her baby brother and has already been a fantastic little helper. My mom was here before the birth and my dad was able to fly in the next night, and I'm thrilled that they were able to spend a few days with us getting to know Porter before they had to head home. The Mister gets paternity leave from work so he is home all this week and I'm so thankful to have him here. I feel pretty darn good and am so thankful to be able to bend over again. Oh, I missed having a waist! LOL Baby Porter is sweet and smells delicious, like all newborns do. Last night he even slept a bit between ravenous feedings, for which I am thankful.

Hope to be back later with some better photos!