Matthew Juan Thurman has arrived!

Matthew made his arrival on 8/31/2007 at 6:22am, weighing in at 7 lbs 6 oz, and measuring 21.25 inches long. His early arrival was a bit of a suprise - I had my weekly check up on the morning of 8/30 and was not dilated at all. I was really bummed after the appointment, thinking I had at least another week of being hugely pregnant ahead of me. But, at about 6:45pm that evening, I got up from the couch to answer the phone (Juan calling on his way home), and my water broke!

The phone conversation went something like this:
Emily: "OhmygodmywaterjustbrokethebabyiscominggethomeNOWahhhhhhhhh"
Juan: "What???"
Emily: "MY WATER JUST BROKE!"
Juan: "So, what does this mean?"
Emily: "Didn't you pay any attention in the class? This means, we're having a baby tonight!!!"

Contractions started shortly thereafter, and we arrived at the hospital at about 8:30pm. It's a good thing we got there when we did - the combination of a full moon and a low pressure weather system apparently sent every pregnant lady in Houston into labor that night and we got the very last private labor & delivery room.

We were joined by our labor support crew of Angela Ho, Christa Robbins and Jamie Lee. I cannot thank them enough for staying up all night with us and providing lots of comfort, comedy and support! You ladies rock!!

With the exception of the SEVEN tries it took for the nurses to get my IV in, everything went smoothly after that. I was 2 centimeters at around 9:30, 5 centimeters by midnight (I also got my epidural at that point, which was AWESOME), and 9 centimeters by 2:30am. But, things slowed down after that. Matthew took his own sweet time moving into position, and his heart rate dropped the first time I tried pushing, so we had to wait awhile before trying again. But, by 6:22am, we had our beautiful little boy.