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!