Cheryl and Josh dot Net

She is here! Lilia Lynn Reeley born at 17:56 on 09/29/2008. She was 8lbs 1oz and measured in at 19.5 inches.

This has been a very exciting time for us and we are very happy to share this with all of you. We have very much enjoyed all of the calls, text messages, facebook wall posts, emails, guestbook signings, and visits. It is great to see the outpouring of love and well-wishings that you have all sent to us and our new little girl.

I am sure that mom will write an update when she gets some time (I usually do my updates to the pictures while Lilia is eating), but until then I will try and give you a rundown of our last 30 hours or so. Cheryl started to have contractions yesterday at about 11:00 we ended up going out to lunch at Chili’s to help out St. Jude. After we got home (at about 13:30) we started timing her contractions, they were about 4-5 mins apart and were lasting about 45 seconds. We called after about an hour and were told to go into the Clinic to get checked out. Once we got to the Clinic they looked her over and found out that she was 4cm. They told us that we could go over to labor and delivery to get ready if we wanted. Cheryl said that she did so we walked over there. When we got over to the Hospital (~a blocks worth of walking) Cheryl was in quite a bit of pain and was ready for her room, except her room wasn’t ready for her. The nurses saw how much pain Cheryl was in in the hallway and got her into another room. They got her hooked up to an IV and had me sign some papers. After that they went to check how far she has progressed to see if she could get an epidural and she was already 10 cm and clear so she had to go straight to pushing (no time for the epidural). She pushed for about 45 mins to an hour when the doctor came in because she hadn’t move down the canal much after the initial moves. The doc noticed that she had her hand up by her face which was making it harder for her to come out. The doctor helped guide her out and with lots of great pushes little Lilia was here. I got to cut the cord which was an amazing experience, the whole thing if you ask me is a miracle. Cheryl was in pretty hard labor for about 2 hours. We had lots of family ready to greet us in the waiting room.

Everyone is doing great, Cheryl has had a smile on her face for much of today which is a good sign in my book. Lilia is already done with all of her tests and everything is good. They will let us out at the 48 hour mark and we can not wait to get home. Thanks again to all of you for everything. At this point Cheryl is asleep but will have to be up in an hour and a half to feed her again. Lilia is almost off to sleep, she still squeaks from time to time. So I guess I should follow their lead and try and get some sleep. Love you, Josh

Another week down… The good news is that I will get paid for working all week!

Thumper seems to be mighty comfy in my belly. We had an appointment with the nurse practioner today. Things are changing but nothing that will give us an estimate of when she is coming. Thumper’s heart rate was a little slower today and averaged 130-140s. The nurse said that it just means that the baby is getting bigger. On top of that my blood pressure went up, it has been extremely steady throughout the pregnancy so that was a bit of a surprise to me…although it probably shouldn’t have been considering that I ate a fish sandwhich and fries at Red Lobster for lunch. It was probably just a coincidence. The nurse practioner was not concerned about it at all. My belly measured 40 cm which apparently means she is supposed to be running out of room.

We are still 3 cm and her head is “right there.” Still just waiting for contractions… Its a little weird knowing that I am waiting for pain. Not just any pain, but really painful pain.

Well we went to the Chocolate Extravaganza on Friday night. It is a fund raiser for Big Brothers Big Sisters here in Champaign County. I’m hoping to start my own new wives’ tale of eating chocolate to induce labor, but it hasn’t worked yet! Wish me luck!

We have our next appointment on Wed Oct 1st at 7:30am! By then, I believe that everyone’s requests will be fulfilled. Oma will be in town, its a weekday and its October.

Well… we are still waiting. I know I shouldn’t feel this anxious since we technically have 2 weeks to go, but really she could come at any time. We had an appointment with the Dr this Friday. She said I was the same as last week and that I could go into labor at any time, but also reminded us that we have known that for 2 weeks now. She gave us some ideas to stay busy, such as putting wipes in the wipe warmer and making a belly cast. We will see how busy that keeps us… We scheduled two more appointments. The first is next Friday the 26th with the nurse practioner again. After that, we have an appointment on Oct 1st with the Dr. If we make it to that appointment, we are going to have another sonogram and a non-stress test which will give us a little more information about how the baby is doing. We will also be having a little conversation about inducing at that appointment because I am way too excited to wait any longer for this baby!!! Our Dr is not a fan of inducing, so my guess is that it wouldn’t be until the following week anyway. We’ll just have to see how it goes… this baby is teaching us patience already!

My belly measured exactly 38cm which means Thumper’s growth seems to be right on target. I have barely gained any weight in the last couple of weeks so Thumper should be a “normal” size once she decides to join us (unlike PJ’s 11 pounder ). Her heart rate was pretty fast this week and ran around 165 bpm.

Today we had our car seats inspected; that was such a good idea, and I highly recommend that everyone with a car seat does it. Josh had installed our bases a couple of weeks ago and he followed the directions and they seemed a little loose to us so we decided to get them checked. The car seat techs were super friendly and spent about an hour with us between our two cars. Josh’s base had to be moved over to the side from the middle because they couldn’t get it tight enough. Mine can stay in the middle but it was inserted a little differently than the instructions said. They are not loose any more, that is for sure!

Now that we are getting so close to the due date everyone tells me when I should or shouldn’t have the baby… as if I have any control. I’m not supposed to have her on the 21st because her Aunt and Uncle will be out of town and it’s a weekend and they want to take the day off of work. I am supposed to have her on the 22nd because its a couple of my co-worker’s birthdays. But then, Oma isn’t planned to come until the 28th, so we need to wait for her. I’ll see what I can do to accomodate all of these requests.

Finally, thanks to all of you who are guessing Thumper’s real name! Hilarious!!! I get a kick out of some of the creative names you all have come up with. We will keep on posting and keep on guessing!!!

want to start out by apologizing that it took so long for us to get another Our Life posting, I am still getting used to this. I have always had a knack for making websites, but never a knack for having the information to put in them. So what is going on in our life? A lot has happened since
the last post. As most of you know we are having a baby, we thank you for all of the showers and gifts that you have got for us and our little girl. Other than that we have kept you up to date on the baby so I will move on.

This is the first full summer that we have lived in this house so most of the stuff we have been working on has been outside work to the house. I replaced the mailbox that got knocked over by a plow in the middle of last winter. We did a lot of landscaping in the front which involved planting around the mailbox, light post, by the front walk and next to the garage. We will try and get some pictures up. We built a shed in the back and have moved most of the seasonal stuff from the garage to it. Now that all of that is out of the garage there is so much more room in there to do projects. I think that I want to install a deep sink in the garage, but we will see if I get around to it or not.

Let me know if there is anything that you would like to see on the website. I have added a place for you to vote on what we are going to name our baby, you can get to that from the front page. We keep adding different pictures to our gallery’s. Some things to keep in mind about the gallery, you can leave us comments on our photos if you login. You won’t be able to see the comments others have left unless you login as well. Thanks to those of you that have left comments for us on our guestbook!

Work has been pretty busy getting ready for the students to come back but things are starting to slow down. Last week at work we had a salsa cook-off and they had 3 categories: Hottest, People’s Choice, and Most Unique. I am proud to say that my salsa won People’s Choice. I am sure that there are things that I am forgetting but that is all I can come up with for now. Hopefully I won’t take so long for the next post. I imagine we will have our new addition to our family by that time so wish us luck and keep us all in your prayers.

Well we made it to our 37 week appointment with the nurse practioner on Friday. Not too much to update this week. Thumper’s heart rate was 147 bpm, so that was great! I seem to be measuring on target still and she said everything else was good. I am still at 3cm but have progressed to 80% effaced. Our next appointment is next Friday with the Dr.

We have added some new pictures of my belly. We decided to get a little creative and they turned out great! Josh is an amazing photographer and I can’t wait to scrapbook these pictures! We also added a place where you can guess the baby’s name. Some of them are pretty creative already! We figured since everyone keeps trying to guess we might as well record what you all come up with! I think that’s all for now.

Everyone keeps asking how I am feeling… I’m doing pretty well. I’m not completely uncomfortable yet, so that’s good. Some things in life have become a little more challenging such as getting out of bed and putting on my socks. Luckily, none of my shoes have to be tied, so I don’t have to deal with that. I am fairly prepared to wait until the due date for Thumper to come and join us, but I am not prepared to go beyond my due date. Its pretty weird to know that any time now she could be here! We, as always, are really excited!!!