Welcome to the World, Jacob Nelson Auer!

7 pounds, 5 ounces

20.5 inches

37 weeks, six days

Jake was in a hurry to meet mom and dad!

Wednesday evening was fairly typical at the Auer household. We arrived home from work, ate some dinner, and watched the Mizzou game. Sometime during the basketball blowout, I became overwhelmed by the strongest nesting sensation felt to that point in her pregnancy. I even asked Kris to paint the closet nursery this weekend! Luckily he took it well, and was bailed out of that chore shortly thereafter . . .

At midnight, I woke up with what she thought was a contraction. That was confirmed just five minutes later when my water broke. Once Kris figured out what was going on, he finished packing our bags and took care of Spice while I received instructions from the doctor on call.

We arrived at Overland Park Regional Medical Center around 12:30 Thursday morning, and went straight to a labor and delivery triage room where they confirmed a few things and checked my vital signs. I was 3 cm dilated when we settled into our labor and delivery room at 1:30 a.m.

Our nurse, Kristen, was phenomenal! I wasn't allowed to walk around the halls at first (apparently that's taboo before 38 weeks), but she did everything she could to keep me comfortable. That included making sure I had the consent form and a pen nearby in case I wanted an epidural! I got the o.k. to get up and walk around, but quickly figured out my blood sugar was borderline low. Not only was I very sick for a while, I was sent back to bed again. A few popsicles bumped up my blood sugar, which helped immensely. I was 5-6 cm dilated at 3:00 a.m.

I opted to wait another half-hour to decide about the epidural. Kris was helping me work through contractions pretty successfully to that point. At 4:00 a.m., I asked for the pen and clipboard, and handed the consent to Kristen. It was too late though - I had already progressed to 9 cm! Dr. Heit, the same on call doctor I had spoken with earlier, was called and I began pushing at 4:30 a.m. Jake was born less than 30 minutes later!

Kris was asked to announce that baby Auer was a boy, and then cut the cord before we got our first good look at him. How amazingly perfect! We quickly narrowed our list of three boy names to two, and agreed that he looked like a Jake - Jacob Nelson Auer.

We are so blessed to have this beautiful, healthy baby boy in our lives!