By the way...Baby Schallmo is HERE!

Hi friends. I know you all have figured out that "HE" is here. Phew! It was not as easy as I thought it might be to hop on and do a quick blog post! So let me go back in time a little bit and I will share with you the sweet sweet details as much as I can as our precious boy sleeps or is cuddled by some other loving hands!

Saturday, after I posted about our morning, I was feeling a little icky. I didn't really know what the deal was. That evening our church choir sang in a beautiful service for a choir member that passed away last week. We had planned to have dinner with the Jones' and I headed right home to put it in the oven and whipped up an apple crisp (reason #1 for loving fall?). We had a great dinner but I continued to feel a little uncomfortable, kind of a crampiness. Jonathan got to bed early as he has to be at church by 6:45am on Sundays. I got into bed around 10:30 and was reading a book and realized that my stomach pains seemed to be coming in waves. Uh oh. I started counting the minutes and then hopped out of bed and checked that everything we needed was in our hospital bags and tidied up a couple things I was working on in the nursery. Jonathan woke up at 12:30 wondering where I was and when I told him how I was feeling he was wide awake! We tried to go back to sleep for a while but I continued not to feel well and we called the doctor around 3am - they said head on over to the hospital!

We arrived at the hospital at about 3:30am, feeling anxious but excited. They hooked up a monitor for the baby's heartbeat and to measure contractions - which I told them I couldn't be sure were really contractions. After many questions and watching the monitors, it was decided that it must be very early labor, and either we could hang around and walk the hospital for a couple of hours to see if labor progressed, or we could go back home and see if these small contractions would go away.

We picked go home.

They didn't go away.

Jonathan went to church in his shorts and t-shirt (instead of his suit and tie) to get some things set up and warm up the choir before the 1st service. Everyone knew something was going on then! He came back to a wife feeling more "pain" than "cramps" and we spent the day trying to breathe and keep moving and try to figure out exactly when we should call the doctor again!

We made the call around 6pm and were back in the hospital, all hooked up again, by 7:30pm. Our nurse recognized us from the morning, when her previous night's shift was ending. She checked to see if my labor had progressed - and proceeded to gasp and say, "You're almost 8 centimeters! You must have been working hard at home! I'm going to go call your doctor." Thankfully we hadn't waited any longer to make the call to head over.

I'll spare you the rest of the details, but I'll just say it was past the point of painkillers and I didn't want an epidural, so it took some time and concentration and then Daddy Jonathan got to say "IT'S A BOY!" - and he cut the umbilical cord - what a great dad!

Baby Boy Schallmo was born at 11:45pm on September 19th, 2010. He weighed 7 pounds and 12 ounces. He was 20.5 inches long. He scored a 9.0 on his 1 minute and 5 minute APGARs. I think that is all the "stats" I have - but all I can tell you was that he landed on my chest and Jonathan and I saw the most beautiful thing that we had ever seen in our entire lives. We are so in love! We were still making a final decision on the name and finally we both knew the right one about 18 hours after he was born...

CONNOR JONATHAN SCHALLMO!

So there is the beginning - we are taking lots of pictures and I will post every chance I get. THANK YOU for all of the messages on facebook, calls, texts, e-mails, cards, prayers, and all the love that has been sent our way. I promise that we will be returning messages as soon as we can and can't wait for everyone to meet our sweet sweet son. We are doing well at home and all of the grandparents are visiting within the next couple of weeks - and Otto is adjusting to our new family addition just fine!

Right when Connor was born.

First bath and sucking his cute thumb.

More pictures to come. :)