Monday at 12:13pm Benjamin Thomas was born into this world weighing 8 pounds and 2 ounces ane meausring 21 and 3/4".

Mother and baby (and father ;) are doing wonderful. We are all recovering nicely from the 12 hours of labor, lack of sleep, and sheer excitement of the entire experience.

Here is the short story...

Sunday
1:00pm - Slight contractions
6:00pm - More frequent contractions
11:00pm - Hard contractions - Hospital time
Monday
12:00am - Jessica was admitted to the hospital
11:00am - It was time to start pushing
11:50am - Stop pushing - Little Schmitty still didn't want to come out
12:00pm - Two more pushes, he's almost here
12:13pm - Our bundle of joy arrives!

We'll post photos as soon as humanly possible :-D

So here it is, 3 days after the due date and still no baby. Can you even believe it?!?! Jessica does have early signs of labor but nothing to write home about. Her contractions are slight...few and far between...but contractions nonetheless. The spicy food, bumpy car rides and other wive's tales appear to be paying off. Should Little Schmitty not surface by Tuesday at 7:30 am Doctor Taynor will take evasive action and induce him forth ;-) Stay tuned for more news.

Just wanted to give a little update. We had our 39 week appointment on Wednesday. The doctor did an internal exam and I am not dilated at all, but I am 50% effaced. He couldn't do the procedure to stir things up because I haven't begun to dilate yet. The baby is still very active and is getting more and more cramped everyday. It will be interesting to see how big he is!! We are all doing fine. We will just be hanging out at home this weekend, enjoying some beautiful weather here. :)

We had our 38 week doctor's appointment on Friday, 6/10. It went very well, the baby's heartbeat is around 138, which is perfect for how old/big he is. Unfortunately, the lab misplaced my Strep B test results. This is a test which is done usually before 37 weeks to see if the mother is a carrier of the Strep B bacteria. This bacteria isn't harmful to the mother - 1/3 of all adults actually carry it - but it can be harmful to the baby as it passes through the birth canal during labor. So, I had to be retested. Our next appointment will be Wednesday, 6/15. If the test comes back negative, the doctor will be able to do a pelvic exam to see if I have begun to dilate. He can also naturally try to induce labor by "sweeping the membranes." This process usually works in about 2/3 of women to help induce labor within one week. So, who knows...it may work, it may not. But in any event, we will keep everyone updated about the next appointment!!

We're all anxiously awaiting the arrival of the "Little Man," but so far he seems quite content in his little home. Our next doctor's appointment is Friday afternoon, though we aren't sure that he will do an internal exam, which would give us an idea of any progress. I don't think the doc is very keen on being invasive if he doesn't have to be. I am fine with that though, no reason to get anxious and excited for 1cm dilation! So meanwhile we will just wait patiently and will update all of you when we have some news!

Our Minnesota baby shower was this past weekend. I have added some pictures from the event onto our webshots account: Familie Schmitt

The nursery is full of everyone's generous gifts and we are working hard at trying to get things organized before the baby arrives. There are also some pictures of the nursery on webshots that my mom took while they were up here visiting. I painted the words on the walls (various nursery rhymes) and all of the decorations are going to be in primary colors. Mike is going to be painting a shelving unit that has ABC's cut out of the side panels, it is very cute!