Brooke

This was about 3 days or so before Brooke was born.
Proud older cousin, Tyler, holding our doll!

Cool uncle Joseph flew out from San Diego and his cool soon to be wife, Alyssa, flew out too!

Two of the four girl cousins together. Makena and Brooke are bonding for the first time, thank heavens for little girls!

Little feet and toesies!!

Beautiful aunt Joni came and held Brooke!

All my cool family came and visited Brooke and myself in the hospital. It was lots of fun.

Doll baby!

Precious!

First trip home from the hospital!

Daddy has been swept off his feet with his little girl!

The proud Oma of Brooke. This is who she was named after :)

Brooke Heather joined the world and our family on Friday, April 3rd at 10:49 a.m. She was 8 lbs 4 oz. 20.5 inches long. Contractions started at 2 a.m. Thursday April 2nd. They escalated throughout that early morning and into the evening. On Thursday morning I told Luke not to go into work, because I wasn't sure if and when we might need to go to the hospital. I wanted him close by where I knew exactly where he was. I decided I better tell my parents to go ahead and make the 45 minute drive from their house to ours, just in case. Meanwhile it was LJ's birthday on April 2nd (thursday), so while I was in the very early stages of labor I actually went shopping for LJ's presents I had been wanting to get him. I bought a cake, and got his presents all wrapped, etc. We then celebrated his birthday! Not long after that I decided it was time to go to the hospital. It was around 8 p.m. by the time they finally admitted me. (we had to wait in line at the registration office, even though I was pre-registered, that was definitely a first for me! I've never waited in line while I was in labor before!) Anyway, I got settled in to the room and they ended up giving me my epidural later that night. I got to sleep through the night pain free while the contractions continued all night. Only to have them completely stop by the morning time. The Dr. came in and broke my water around 6 or 7 a.m. Didn't do anything to help contractions. Next I got a dose of pitocin and that definitely did the trick! Brooke came so quickly that there wasn't even a Dr. in the room or anywhere near it when she was born. There was one nurse, and Luke that basically delivered the baby. The solo nurse ended up paging for help and about 6 nurses busted into the room at the same time! They all took care of Brooke and then the Dr. arrived. Brooke was healthy and that's all that mattered! Oh and the epidural definitely wore off after I had my pitocin given to me.

Brooke's middle name comes from my mom's first name, who we named her after.

We had lots of visitor's while in the hospital. Brooke is already a very popular girl!

Brooke is an angel! I'm half tempted to go change her name to Angel because it would be so fitting. She has been such a doll. She eats and sleeps and has very little complaining to ever do! The boys absolutely adore her! LJ held her for one hour straight a couple days ago because he refused to give her up! Kyle loves to hold her too, but doesn't quite have the attention span at his young age. We are so blessed and Luke and I have both completely fallen in love with her. She is truly a delight for us!!!