He is here...Zachary Alexander

God and Zachary decided that this past Wednesday night would be the time to arrive instead of waiting until November 3 for when things were all planned. I had my first contraction at 8:23pm as I was getting in the car at church to go home. Andrew and I made it home and when I got out of the car I think is when my water broke. I was in complete denial that anything was happening because I didn't know what a real contraction felt like. After getting Andrew straight to bed I took a shower and was still having contractions. They were coming about every two to three minutes by that point. At 9:30 I went ahead and called Eric to tell him to get home quick. Still not knowing that I was in labor I thought we could go to the hospital incase it might be false labor. Eric got home about 10:00 and we all jumped into the car (Andrew was really hard to wake back up) to go to the hospital. Eric asked if I wanted to go to the Mansfield hospital instead of where we were registered and I told him no. Even though I was in quite a bit of pain I still wanted something to go right.

Eric did a fantastic job driving and keeping his calm even though he was a wreck inside. The roads were wet and it was still raining. Made me a little nervous because we were running red lights left and right (as careful as possible). Only once did we almost get into a wreck but God spared us all (that was a major praise). My contractions were coming every 30 seconds to 1 minute by this point. We pulled into the ER and Eric ran in to tell them that his wife was in labor. They ran a wheelchair out to me and than started getting me into triage to check my status. I remember the lady saying "Oh, she is ready" and I was thinking "Oh my goodness, this is so painful". I was feeling the urge to push before we even got to the hospital but the staff continued to remind me not to push. Obviously that is easier said than done. The doctor got there just in time and I think once they told me I could take advantage of the urge to push it only took about 4 pushes and we heard Zach's cry.

Through God's grace and mercy I ended up having a VBAC without any meds. Praise God! I was fully prepared for a c-section and a much longer recovery. Eric told me that he got to actually see Zach being born which was something he didn't do with Andrew since Andrew was an emergency c-section. What a neat privilege.

We are all so excited to now have Zach as a physical part of our family now. He is such a sweetie pie. He weighed 7lbs. 14oz. and was 19 1/4 inches long.

I will write more later but wanted to get some pictures up as soon as things were somewhat calm. Here is our new bundle of joy and happiness.

Mommy and Zach.

Daddy and Zach.

Baby Zach.

Big brother Andrew and little brother Zach.

Mommy, after a wonderful shower and Zach .

Andrew waiting to take his little brother home.

Baby Zach ready to go home.

The whole new Stratton Family.

One more cute picture of the super cute brothers.

That's it for now but when things calm down even more I will try to update some more.

Love, Stephany