Amelia Diann is here!

We are now a family of four.

Amelia Diann Gerlach arrived 2 weeks early on August 6, 2007. In the last week we've learned that God has a sense of humor and incredible timing. We had a false alarm on Thursday Aug. 2 in which we thought my water had broken, rushed to the hospital after dropping Caley off with some friends, only to be sent home 2 hours later.

They say that second labors are usually half as long as the first, but for me it was 3x as long. My water broke at 4am on Monday morning and she was born at 5:36pm. They started me on a pitocin drip after a few hours of non-progress, it was like my body needed to be reminded what to do. It was actually a blessing because the biggest fear I had of this labor was that it'd be so short there wouldn't be enough time to get the antibiotics in my system to guard the baby against Group B Strep. Bill and I took naps and watched some TV, and he ate the lunch from the hospital since I wasn't allowed to. And Caley got to visit us, which was really nice. Once my body was in active labor, it took about 3 hours for Amelia to be born. She was 6lbs, 14ozs and 19.5 inches long. We chose Amelia because it was a name we both liked (actually we considered it with Caley but it got bumped) and Diann as a combo of our mom's names Diana and Ann.

The first week is going really well, Amelia's sleeping a lot which is easing the transition for all of us. Caley's a little blindsided, but always asks to hug and kiss the baby, and has even been waking at night and yelling, "See baby!" Cute, but not at 3am...

So enjoy these pictures and more on our Shutterfly site (link to the left). Jesus is good to us!