Introducing.....

Tyler Rex 

Our little Tyler was born on Christmas day! He came at 12:15 pm, weighed 8 lbs 1 oz, was 21 inches and as perfect as a baby can be!

Labor and Delivery Story

I want to preface this story by saying that I spent my WHOLE ENTIRE pregnancy saying "As long as he doesn't come right on Christmas day....". Welp, I guess Heavenly Father was reminding me who is in charge- and its certainly not me :) Now on the details.... 

Christmas Eve- Go to sleep at Mike and Erin's house anticipating the arrival of good ole St. Nicholas and  having absolutely no clue that I was going to have a baby the next day.

5:30 am Christmas day: Woke up with a start and felt like I was peeing!!! I tried to stop it but couldn't. Started to get nervous and waddled to the bathroom. As I got up to go to the bathroom, a sizable gush of fluid came out and I started to get REALLY concerned. It took a good ten minutes for me to convince myself that this was really happening and that my water was indeed broken. After I finally accepted reality, I woke Steve up from a deep sleep and the conversation went something like this:

Me- tapped Steve on the shoulder: "Steve, I'm pretty sure my water broke..."

Steve- immediately sat bolt upright in bed and urgently said: "We have to get to a hospital right now!!!!"

It was just like in the movies :) I convinced him it wasn't quite time to go to the hospital but decided to call my midwife and ask what exactly I should do considering we were in Parker (about an hour away from our hospital). She reassured me that it would probably be a good long while until I even started laboring let along need to come to the hospital. She told us no rush- to have our Christmas morning and call about 8 am and update them on my progress. So, we decided to do just that. We woke up the family, and let them know our news and we started Christmas morning! 

6:30 am: About the time we got everyone gathered to open presents, I started having contractions. Luckily, I had downloaded an app to help me keep track of them. They were lasting about 20 seconds and 9 minutes apart at this point. I felt pretty good still and quite calm and maybe a little in denial :)

7 am: We were still opening presents when the intensity of everything amped up quickly. My contractions were lasting one minute about six minutes apart and I told Steve, we had better just finish opening up our presents and get out of here. 

7:30 am: We finished opening our presents and started getting packed up. Steve, Mike and Brent gave me a blessing before we left that all would go smoothly

8:15 am: Unbeknownst to me, Mike and Steve decided that they need to print of directions from google "How to deliver a baby in the car"- you know just in case. 

8:45 am: We finally get in the car to start driving to the hospital, and I start puking my guts out. The family tried to convince us to go to the nearest hospital but we decided to press on and go to Boulder to our hospital. Did I mention that there it snowed about 4 inches the night before and road conditions were less than favorable?!?

8:45-10:15 am: The drive to the hospital was pretty excruciatingly long and painful. I was having contractions that lasted a minute or more about three minutes apart. Poor Steve was trying to drive on snowy roads and coach me through the contractions. He did a great job maintaining his cool - I was not quite so able :) I'd say this had to be the longest car ride of my life! 

10:15 am: Get to the hospital, hooked up to the monitors and immediately get into a warm bath where the contractions got more intense and more painful very quickly. I don't remember a whole lot of details after this  point because I became some kind of delirious. It was almost like I had an out of body experience and I can remember kind of what happened but forget that it was happening to me- does that make sense? 

11 am: My midwife asks if I want to have my progress checked for the first time since I had arrived. I said of course- I needed to know how much longer I was going to be in pain! I was a little in shock when she said I was dilated to a 9 and would be ready to push soon. Right after she checked me, I'm pretty sure I hit the peak of transition labor- I was in so. much. pain. Luckily, I had my trusty husband right there beside me coaching me through each contraction and continuing with his calm encouragement.

11:15 am: I had to get out of the tub and move to bed to start pushing. It took a couple of positional changes to figure out where I would be most 'comfortable'. I did a couple of practice pushes and then the real thing came. Holy Moly. They talk about a 'ring of fire' but it more like my whole pelvis on fire! It hurt when I pushed and when I stopped. Once again, Steve kept coaching me and my nurse and nurse-midwife were great. They just kept encouraging me through the whole thing.

12:15 pm. Tyler Rex Hale made his grand appearance in the world. I was greeted by the most perfect little person laying on my chest. He was absolutely calm right after and just laid there looking around at his new surroundings. Steve and I were in awe of our perfect little man. 

I have to admit I didn't have euphoric moment that everyone says immediately follows a natural birth- more of a calm shock and happiness. It was crazy how in an instant all of sudden Steve and I were parents! 

Tyler has long feet and big hands. He loved having his hands right up by his face. He stayed perfectly calm and alert most of the afternoon and eventually fell asleep. Steve and I spent a good portion of our afternoon staring at this baby in awe. 

Later in the evening, Steve's parents, came to the hospital to meet their newest grandson and best Christmas present ever! 

We LOVE our baby and are just over the moon with how sweet and cute he is. Can you tell we are new first time parents?