Gage Nicholas Koel - #1 of 3

He's arrived! Gage Nicholas Koel was born last Saturday, January 9, at 12:05 p.m., only twelve hours after his due date. His first name has no particularly special meaning to us, but "Nicholas" was my Grandma Borger's maiden name, and I really wanted to honor her in naming him. He weighed 7 lbs 10 oz and was 20 inches long. (A mother never forgets these stats, does she?) His birth story was so different from Gavin's. This time we checked into the hospital at around midnight on Friday (or was that already Saturday?) to find that I was already 7 cm dilated. The nurses scurried around to get me to a room to make sure that I could still get the epidural, though I will say that I had a brave/insane moment of thinking that I could do it without one since I was already so far along. (That's when I thought that the baby might be coming the same night and not the next day at noon.) My contractions slowed down significantly during the night, so the doctor decided to break my water early Saturday morning. When that didn't speed things up either, they started me on a low dose of Pitocin. Then, just before noon, I pushed for about fifteen minutes, and this is what appeared:

Look at those tiny feet! There's nothing like a newborn baby, huh?

Look at that proud daddy. It seemed like just yesterday that I was taking this same picture when Gavin was born. And Gage, by the way, looked SO much to us like his big brother within about fifteen minutes of being out of my womb.

Daddy got to see Gage's first bath. I'm bummed that I missed that...again.

What a precious piece of God's handiwork! I was so thrilled to see him, not only because I was anxious to meet him after nine months but also because I was starving (hadn't eaten anything since 10 o'clock the night before) and ready for a nap in a major way.