Colton Brooks Cornett!

WARNING: Brace yourself for the longest post ever... even if most of it is pictures.

So the transition into parenthood is even more exhausting and time-consuming than I tried to imagine (surprise, surprise!). I'm thrilled that I finally have time to tell Colton's story. Here goes:

Once upon a time.... just kidding. None of that.

Sunday, August 21, 2011 (38 weeks, 5 days): Mom is in town. We head up to Morgan, UT to hear my cousin Jeremy's homecoming talk. We stick around at Grandma's to eat food and play games with all the aunts/uncles/cousins for a while. I sit on the floor doing MAJOR stretches because about a week prior my back started killing me any time I sat in any kind of chair. Here's proof:

Monday, August 22, 2011 (38 weeks, 6 days): I think my water has started leaking. I try all the little at-home tricks to see if my suspicions are correct and according to those, they are. About a day after it all starts (which is 9:00 pm) I'm told I need to go to the hospital to get checked out. Well, it turns out my water ISN'T leaking... and no, I haven't peed my pants. :) The nurse tells me I'm dilated to 1 cm and 80% effaced and sends me on my way.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011 (39 weeks): Routine doctor's appointment. The Doc tells me there's about a 2% chance of me having my baby before September. This news encourages ME to want to cry. This news encourages SPENCER to accept an invitation from his friend to have an all-night Lord of the Rings Marathon. So Spencer heads over to the Muehlmann's at around 10 p.m. and I hit the sack. I snapped this little gem sometime earlier that day:

Finally in the 40th week of pregnancy - HOW am I still smiling?!

Wednesday, August 24, 2011 (39 weeks, 1 day):

4:00 am - I get up to use the bathroom (for probably the fourth time since 10) and realize that I have uber-fun cramps. Haven't had THOSE joyful things since last November...

4:05 am - Whilst still on the throne, Spencer comes back home. He informs me that he and Mike fell asleep halfway through the Two Towers. I inform him that I have cramps and I'd forgotten how much fun they aren't. We both go to bed.

5:00 am - I wake up because the cramps are now bad enough that I can't sleep through them. Spencer and I have an "aha" moment... "Holy cow, am I having contractions?!" Spencer whips out one of his two smart phones and pulls up a pregnancy app with a contraction timer. Sure enough, they're pretty consistent at 8 minutes apart. Spencer teaches me how to use his phone to time my own contractions so he can try to go back to sleep.

6:00 am - We're both still trying to sleep but it's totally not happening.

7:00 am - Yeah... we're STILL trying to get some sleep and it's STILL not happening. And the cramps/contractions are definitely worse. SO... I ask Spencer, "what now?" Spencer calls the hospital and they say, "run a hot bath; it'll either stop the contractions or intensify them."

7:15 am - We run a hot bath. I'm SO not complaining. I love me a hot bath.

8:00 am - Guess what? They intensify. Now I'm positive that I'm having contractions rather than cramps. I'm having them every 4-5 minutes and they're bad enough that the only thing I can do while I'm having one is breathe. We call the doctor's office again and they say, "pack your bags, you're coming in."

9:00 am - The overnight bag is in the car, I'm all clean after my bath (which turned into a very painful sit-down shower), the carseat is installed, and we're off to Orem Community Hospital.

9:30 am - I'm all checked in and the monitors are in place timing contractions. I'm apparently 3 cm dilated and 80% effaced. The nurse says she'll check me in an hour to see if I've progressed or if my contractions have worsened.

10:00 am - This, ladies and gentlemen, is by far the WORST part of labor and delivery. Every 3 minutes the only thing you can do is breathe because your contractions hurt so bad and yet you don't even know if you're in "active" labor for another 30 minutes. Boo! Oh, and I had to pee but didn't dare move because of the monitors. The cherry on top: no epidural yet.

10:30 am - The nurse checks me and sure enough, I'm 4+ cm dilated and 100% effaced. The nurse says I'm officially "admitted" to labor and delivery so I'm singing praises of glory. The nurse makes a call to the anesthesiologist and I make a very tearful phone call to my mom because I'm thrilled that this is the real thing and I'm finally going to have my beautiful baby boy.

Word of advice to future moms: Contractions are SO manageable. Yes, they hurt, but if you just RELAX and breathe through them, you'll be fine! The worst thing you can do is tense up or try to talk/move. Just breathe. And breathe. And breathe.

11:00 am - I move rooms and the anesthesiologist arrives (fast, right?!) He gives me the quick run-through of epidural pros/cons and I sign a paper. That needle goes in and I don't feel a THING. Seriously. Nothing. He warned me about the "slight burn" that comes with general anesthesia... yeah, still nothing.

11:15 am - The epidural is in full effect, I can't feel my legs, and I'm officially in heaven... until it turns out Colton does NOT like the epidural and his heart rate plummets from the 140s to about mid 60. When it doesn't go back up after 5 minutes they call in a bunch of nurses to flip me over into the fetal position and strap an oxygen mask to my face. I'm officially in angsty/hormonal-mommy-freak-out mode when his heart rate starts to creep back up to normal very quickly. I have to wear an oxygen mask for the next hour but I couldn't care less because the baby's fine.

This is obviously post-epidural and post-heart rate scare. Like the water retention? Yeah... me neither :)

Okay, the timing of everything else is still a blur to me but the following things all happened:

• My mom, Becca and Paige came over from my side of the family
• DeRue, Kirstin, James, Rigby, Chase, and Emily came over from Spencer's side of the family
• I got like... an hour of sleep
• Everyone made guesses about what time the baby would come and how much he would weigh. Our times were all WAY off so DeRue convinced us all to re-guess. Yeah, we were all WAY off again. Can you guess who ultimately won? The nurse. It was as if she has had years of experience with labor and delivery or something... :)
• A valve in my vein burst because of my IVs and I had a huge, lovely bulge on my left arm for the next few days. It left a gnarly bruise that didn't go away for three weeks! Yowza.
• With Petocin and the epidural, the contractions actually became less consistent (not that I could tell) so I just relaxed and waited until Colton was ready to come.
• I progressed steadily and was fully effaced/dilated/anxious far before the baby was in the right station for delivery.
• Daddy called me from AUSTRALIA because he was there on a business trip! He wasn't supposed to be able to call at all for a few days but he got a patch of good cell phone reception and did it anyways (seriously, look up Alice Springs, Australia on Google Maps... holy landlocked, Batman!). The last thing he'd heard was that my doctor told me I'd have a September baby. Needless to say, he was pretty shocked and excited to hear that his grandbaby was less than an hour away from making his grand entrance.
• I ate jello... and then threw it all up.
• The Doctor had to use forceps because the baby was posterior and still not descending after I'd been fully dilated for several hours.
• I pushed for a grand total of 10 minutes and then... he was here!

Colton Brooks Cornett was born on August 24, 2011 at 9:40 pm. He weighed 8 lbs. 11 oz. and was 20 1/2 inches long.

My first skin-to-skin moments: priceless.

Spencer couldn't be more excited to be a daddy

The forceps did QUITE a number on Colt's little face. A month later, he still has a scar by his left eye.

Here you can really see the bumps and bruises all over his entire body. As the Doctor put it, "Moms are lucky. Babies have to go through labor and delivery as well and they DON'T get an epidural."

Spencer picked this outfit out MONTHS ago and couldn't wait until there was an actual baby to wear it. So naturally, we brought Colton home wearing it!

The new, happy family right before getting discharged from the hospital.

The baby's already throwin' up signs...

Now, I love Colton's wide-mouthed, tongue-out smile, but the mischevious crooked grin holds a special place in my heart.

My eyes ARE open in this picture even though it looks like I'm trying to "fake sleep." Trust me, when I'm actually asleep, I drool. Oh well, the point is that I have a cute baby. :)

Colton has worn his jersey during 2 football games--the two that BYU has won! My BYU-obsessed, superstitious husband thinks he has BYU sports all figured out, now :)

Seriously, Colton's smiles are my weakness!

Okay, so when Colton was 9 days old we drove up to Mary Clark's home in Murray, UT for some baby portraits (DMC Studios). Mary's the same photographer who took Rigby's newborn photos so Kent and DeRue wanted the two cousins to have equally cute baby pictures. Click here if you want to see some of Mary's other stuff... she's AMAZING! (So that link's not working too well for me... it's photographybydmc.com if you're having trouble as well). She'll be taking our family photos around Thanksgiving and I'm excited. Here are a few of our favorites from Colton's photo shoot:

Spencer and I can't even begin to describe how blessed we feel to have Colt in our lives. We've prayed him here for FAR longer than 9 months and he's been completely worth the wait. I feel like so many of the things I used to invest time and effort into before he came along just aren't important anymore. Being a mom is the greatest thing that's ever happened to me. So I'm sorry I've been off the radar for the past month; it's been a busy one! I've never laughed so much, cried so much, smiled so much, or done so many loads of laundry but I'm loving every second of it. Thanks for all of your love and prayers - I feel like this pregnancy/delivery could not possibly have gone smoother. We love you all!

'Til next time...