Introducing Oliver Dean

Baby is finally here!!!

Riley and I checked into the hospital Monday morning at 7:00.  By 9:00 the nurse had started the pitocin.  Because of my heart condition, my doctor decided that I should have an epidural early, so I received that at 11:00.

Dr. Roles broke my water at 12:45 when I was dilated to 2 cm.  I was hopeful that this would get things moving along, but by 5:30 I wasn't quite to 5 cm.  Riley and I had prepared to have a late night or early morning baby at this point.

A little after 7:30, I was feeling uncomfortable and mentioned to Riley that I didn't think my epidural was working right.  Little did I know, we were ready to welcome baby!  The room quickly filled with people and we were ready to go.

Oliver Dean was born on February 9th at 8:21 pm!

    

We think he is perfect! 

Baby Bump

I didn't document and photograph my growing baby bump each month, but my little sister, Haley, jumped at the opportunity to take maternity photos for us.  She used our fancy new camera and got some pretty good shots.


I decided that since everything is brown and dead outside, the baby's room would be the best place to take photos.

Once Riley got home from work, we convinced him to go outside for a few minutes to get a couple last shots of us before becoming a family of three.

Baby Shower

On Saturday, my sister-in-laws, Jaime and Heidi along with my best friend from high school, Krista threw me a baby shower.  

The three hostesses did an amazing job and everything was so adorable.  

They went with a sock monkey theme which I absolutely loved.

We had lots of family and friends in attendance.  It was wonderful to have so many people help prepare for baby Richling.

Lots to be Thankful for this Thanksgiving

On Wednesday, I had my oh so fun glucose test.  I had to drink some not so delicious lemon-lime drink and sit around the doctor's office for two hours.  I was thankful when it was over and happy to know that I passed.

After the glucose test and scarfing down some McAlister's I headed to Hobby Lobby.  Baby Richling officially has a name!! I bought the letters of his name to hang over the crib.  We are keeping the name under wraps until he is here, but I'm relieved that we finally decided.  Now we just have to be careful not to call him by name in front of other people!

This Thanksgiving we went to Horton and celebrated with both of our families.  We spent Thursday stuffing ourselves, Friday shopping ridiculously early in the morning, and the rest of the weekend overeating.

Revealing the Gender to Our Family

Since we found out the gender on Thursday, we didn't have to wait long to announce it to our families.  Friday evening we told both of our families.  First we stopped at my parents' house and announced our new to my parents.  We shared our news with blue frosting filled cupcakes.  My mom was very surprised as she thought it was a girl.  Eric and Haley missed out as they weren't around.

We headed to the Richling's next.  My sister-in-law, Jaime captured this photo of everybody's reaction.  (Please ignore my lovely husbands attire.  He was digging out "treasures" out of his closet at his parents house and insisted on sporting that gem of a hat.)

After sharing our exciting news with our family, I posted this photo on Facebook :)

We're Having a . . .

Finding out the gender of our child was a long debated topic for Riley and I.  Riley wanted to find out the gender and I wanted it to remain unknown until the birth.  I wanted it to be a surprise and felt that the sock monkey nursery idea was gender neutral enough.  Riley argued that he didn't want to wait and I finally gave in to the pressure from him along with other family members.

To be honest, I'm glad that we decided to find out.  I realized how excited I really was, when we had to reschedule the sonogram appointment due to heart issues (story of my life!).  The sonogram was suppose to be this past Tuesday, but I spent the prior weekend (my birthday!) wearing a heart monitor because of rapid heart palpitations.  I had an appointment at the Heart and Vascular Center in Topeka the same Tuesday as the scheduled sonogram.  So anyway, the sonogram got pushed back to Thursday.

The second that the sono lady got started, our little one bared it all...

Yay!

Riley thought it was going to be a girl, but wanted a boy.  Needless to say, he couldn't stop smiling after we saw boy parts.

I thought it was going to be a boy.  I'm not really sure what I wanted... part of me wanted a girl to dress up and do girly things with...part of me wanted a boy because I felt that the sock monkey theme goes a bit better with a boy and I think boys are easier.

Here are a few more sono photos of Baby Boy Richling:

The Name

Coming up with a name for our little bundle of joy has been one of the most difficult tasks that we have had.  As a teacher, the names become more limited each year that I teach.  I don't want to name our child the name of a previous student.  It doesn't even have anything to do with the student, it's just that I think of the student when I hear the name.  Obviously some names have negative feelings if s/he was a difficult student, but I'm even turned off about using names of my best students.

Riley rarely suggests names and when he does he is frustrated by my constant veto because about 99% of the time he suggest as name of a previous student.  He is also vetoing my names as he claims that I am "just putting letters together to make up names that aren't really even names."  Like every other parent, I want my child's name to be unique without being weird.  I'm sure that not everybody will like the name that we choose, but that's okay.

We have a girl name that we agree on, but the boy name is still a struggle.  At this point I am glad that we have decided to find out the gender of our baby.  If we are having a girl, this whole name issue can end.  However, if it is a boy.... we are in for a several more months of name disagreements.

No matter what name we decide on and when we make our decision, we are choosing to keep it a secret until the birth.  Since I agreed to find out the sex, Riley has agreed to keep the name a secret.  However, the way that we are going right now, if it's a boy we will need all the time we can get to decide on a name.

We have a sonogram scheduled for the end of the month.  We are both very excited and anxious to see if we will be welcoming a boy or a girl to our family!