Baby Cole has arrived!

We have a son!

On Monday, May 31st (Memorial Day), we greeted our son, Cole Michael Casteel, at 10:36 p.m.

I guess I should start at the beginning of the story. On Monday morning I woke up at 7:30 a.m. with some back and lower abdominal pain. The past two nights I had been up until 1:30 a.m. for not specific reason. I had a feeling we were getting closer to delivery but didn't know that we were that close! I got up and started walking around the house. I had read that with false labor sometimes if you different things it can make it go away so I figured I would try some different things. After walking, taking a little nap, and showering the contractions weren't going away. Michael and I decided to start timing them to see how far apart they were. They were six minutes apart. At that point we were trying to decide if we should cook our BBQ dinner that we had to do (we had helped the school I work for by offering to cook a BBQ dinner as part of the silent auction and we had talked to the people who bought it and they wanted it Monday). I told him to go ahead and cook it. We were supposed to have it ready for them at 4 p.m. and I just wanted to know that we were done with it. So Michael started the meat for the dinner and then mowed the lawn. I called my parents and told them they might want to bring a bag. They had already planned on coming up that day with my aunt to visit. My parents arrived at 10:30. I decided to call the hospital at 12:30 and asked them at what point I should come in. They told me when my contractions were two and three minutes apart. I called my boss around 12:30 and told her that I was in labor and I wouldn't be coming in on Tuesday for our meetings. I ended up going to school around 1 so that I could enter grades. My mom came with me so that she could do some organizing. I was laboring the whole time I was entering grades. I know my mom thought the whole thing was pretty comical! Michael texted me around 2:30 to see how I was doing. At that point the contractions were three minutes apart. I called him and told him he needed to head home so we could go to the hospital. We got Michael's mom to make the mac and cheese for our BBQ dinner and we were at the hospital between 2:30 and 2:45. When we got there I was at a 4 and 100% effaced. The nurse informed me that my "bag was bulging" and the doctor would probably want to break it. That's exactly what the doctor did. Once she did that my contractions got a bit more intense. They asked what I wanted for my pain and I gladly told them to get me an epidural. Somewhere between 4 and 5 I received my epidural. I was much more pleasant upon receiving that! I was a little disappointed because I was ready to "eat" actually drink my chicken broth and I asked for it and they informed me that because I had the epidural I couldn't have the broth! I was really hungry at that point because I hadn't ate since about 8 in the morning. We continued to labor throughout the early evening. I began pushing around 9:15 and at 10:36 Cole Michael Casteel entered the world. Of course anyone who knows us knows that Michael and I aren't really straight laced or anything so it probably isn't a surprise to find out we were listening to music during the majority of the labor/delivery! I listened to Lady Antabellum for the majority of the labor and then at the end Michael switched to the Black Eyed Peas! :) My mom and Michael were both in the room to help and they were wonderful!

I will post more pictures later of our lovely little munchkin later but here's one to appease anyone who hasn't' seen him yet!