Almost Four Weeks!

It's crazy how fast the time is flying! Reilly has survived us being her parents for four weeks now and it's looking like we're all going to be okay. She really is a great baby (although I have nothing to compare her to, I've read horror stories!) and we're figuring out the tricks that really work to get her sleeping. Most of the time now, we just lay her in her crib and she falls asleep on her own! I'm one proud mama. It's so nice watching your baby peacefully sleeping and then taking a nap yourself. We're hoping that within two more weeks she'll be sleeping through the night. She only has one feeding in the middle of the night right now, so that should be a good start.

I'm so thankful that we have a washer and dryer at our house because we have been doing laundry six days a week! When spit up happens, it gets on everything. She does a good job with it coming out the other end as well. With baby stuff strewn all over the house it's easier to throw it in the laundry than try to figure out what happened to it!

I'm also thankful that my whole family (minus Uncle Josh) was able to come out and meet Reilly, and my mom actually made a second trip out this week. It was very nice having her here to help (I was actually not feeling well for a couple days and it was so nice not having to do everything myself!) The rest of the family will get to see her again when we fly to AZ for my grandma's wedding. Hopefully we won't be THOSE people on the plane, but what can we do about it? We have places to be! If anyone has airplane advice, that would be great! Cheers!

New Pictures!

Reilly Bun!

Our Little Bun is One Week Old!

We're counting up now. Our new little baby girl is now one week old. It feels like this last week has been a blur. Reilly, apparently, is a great test taker. First off, her APGAR scores after one minute and five minutes of being born were 8 and 9, respectively. Our nurse swore that she would be a ten if she had been born somewhere with a little more oxygen. The next night Reilly aced a litany of tests thrown at her by her medical team. She aced the most stringent hearing screen, got a 1.1 on her jaundice test where the nurses were looking for a number less than 10, and only lost 5% of her body weight in the first 24 hours (anything less than 10% is considered good). On Friday she was reweighed and we found out that she was almost back to her original birth weight, something the nurses didn't expect to happen for another week. Obviously, our little Bun is eating like a champ.

Reilly also got a healthy dose of friends and family this week. We feel so blessed to have so many of you who are excited for us and our little girl and we are so grateful for the time that we have been able to share with you over the last week. Reilly was able to meet most of her family this week and is really looking forward to meeting Aunt Lindsay soon.

Reilly has continued with some things that she did while she was in the womb. She used to get the hiccups every night around 11 p.m. and coming into this world has not slowed that down at all. We are also assuming that she was this adorable in the womb and she continues to show everyone what a cute baby she is.

Nicole is doing really well and has felt better each day this week. She is still tired (waking up multiple times at night will do that to you) but has managed it well, taking naps when Reilly is napping.

We continue to fall more and more in love with this beautiful little girl and learn more about her daily. For example, most of the time when Reilly sneezes, she sneezes twice. Nicole and I are so blessed to have her and it feels great to have our own little family started. It has also been amazing for me how watching Nicole go through a difficult labor and then already seemingly know how to be a great mom has grown my love and affection for her. I feel as though I have married this astoundingly strong and beautiful and proud woman who wants nothing but the very best for her family. I love that God has used our newborn baby to teach me how to love her mom more than I ever had before.

Thanks for continuing to read our blog. We really do look forward to updating you on our family. Thank you for your prayers and support.

REILLY MARIE IS FINALLY HERE!

Yes, yes, yes! It is true. Reilly Marie Loyd made her way into the world last night, August 1, 2010, at 7:43 p.m. She weighed in at 7 lbs. 5 oz. and was 20 inches long. Coincidentally, those statistics won pools for Grammy Lori, brother-in-law Troy, and cousin Caleb. Congratulations and you're welcome to the three of you. We expect a cut of your winnings.

Labor and delivery was not as easy as pregnancy for Nicole. Her waters broke in the gushing fashion on Saturday night and we were forced to head straight for the hospital. Now, this wasn't part of our plan. Nicole was really looking forward to being able to labor most of her time at home. She knew she'd be more comfortable there and that it would really be able to prepare her mentally. However, when your water breaks you run a much higher risk for many things from uterine infection to a distressed baby. We had no choice but to labor at Good Samaritan Hospital. Saturday night wasn't too bad. Nicole didn't sleep for hours on end but was able to rest, waking up occasionally during contractions.

After laboring for 12 hours and making no progress on her cervical dilation, our doctor thought that it would be best to start Nicole on pitocin, a drug that helps to increase the strength and frequency of contractions. They felt like this was very necessary because her water had broken and we did need the labor to move on so that Reilly could be born and Nicole would be safe.

Six hours later Nicole was at 9.5 cm. She had one small part of her cervix that just did not want to finish dilating. She had to go through an hour of really painful contractions for that last 1/2 cm. At this point, she had been laboring for 18 hours and was just exhausted. She was able to only snack on small things and that had stopped hours earlier.

Finally, at 6:45 Nicole got to start pushing. She did amazingly well. I am not at all ashamed to say that I get choked up (read: cry) when I think about how unbelievably strong she was. Her determination, her ability to fight through huge amounts of pain, and the strength that she finished labor with was, and is, unreal to me. I am in awe of her and I will never view my wife in same light. She is so much stronger than me. She is doing well today. She is very, very sore and was very, very hungry until 5 minutes ago when her breakfast arrived. She is tired but is so excited to finally have our little Bun here.

We had about 10 family members at the hospital who waited around all day long (from about 11 am on) to meet our little Bun. Little miss Reilly Marie did not disappoint. She stole the show when everyone finally got to meet her.

We'll get more pictures and some video up soon of our new baby girl.

Thanks for sharing in this journey with us, everyone! We truly appreciate your prayers and support. We'll continue to post about Reilly Marie and our lives together. We'd love it if you continued to share in our lives with us. We love you all so much. Thanks again!