Baby Cole!

Cole Stephen Huffman arrived on Monday, January 10 at 12:25 pm. He weighed 8 lbs., 10 oz. and was 20.5 inches long. We are very thankful for another precious, healthy son.

The morning I found out I was pregnant, the Lord brought a verse to my attention- Romans 11:36- "For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen." It was a reminder to me that our children are blessings from the Lord but that they belong to Him and are created, like all of us, for His glory, not ours!

It's funny how different Cole's birth was from Asher's birth. Here are the brief synopses.

Asher:

At 39 weeks pregnant, we evacuated Galveston because of Hurricane Ike. The hurricane flooded the island and our home 3 days before Asher's due date. We spent the next week scrambling to pick up the pieces, including gathering what was salvageable from our little house on Pompano. I was scheduled for an induction at 41 weeks, since Ashie had not come on his own. I got up at 5 am the morning of September 22nd, did my makeup and headed to St. Joseph's hospital in Bryan, TX. I got an epidural early in the process and waited a few hours in blissful numbness. We took lots of pictures and had lots of family waiting to greet our new baby. Asher was born at 12:47 pm, after 5 hours of labor. We went home to my parents house, where we lived the next 7 months!

Cole:

Like his big brother, Cole was content to stay inside mommy's nice belly. We finally scheduled an induction for 41 weeks. The morning before my scheduled induction felt like every other morning without any sign of impending labor. I had a list of things to do: HEB, one last hard workout at the gym, Hobby Lobby, a few chores, finish packing suitcase. Thankfully, I chose to go to HEB first and not the gym. I started feeling crampy around 8:30 at HEB. I finished my shopping, swung by Starbucks, and got home at 9. I laid down and timed my contractions (after putting up groceries and straightening up a bit!). They came often and were uncomfortable but didn't seem regular, some 7 minutes apart, others 4 minutes. I kept waiting for regular intervals and finally left for the hospital at around 10:45. Thankfully, my mom had come into town the night before, so she stayed with Asher. Now Mark was post-call, having gotten home that morning at 7 after a sleepless night, and had taken 2 Benadryl for his awful allergies. Hmm...maybe I should've driven. On the way to the hospital, the contractions really started to hurt. I finally got up to OB triage around 11:15. When the resident examined me, I was already 7 cm dilated. Then, they had trouble starting an IV. I started to panic, knowing we were running out of time for anesthesia! 30 minutes later when I made it to the delivery room, I was 10 cm and writhing in pain!

"Where is anesthesia?? They have to hurry! Oh, we waited too long. Hurry! Hurry!", I moaned. (I'm sort of embarrassed now.) Anesthesia arrived, Mark's colleagues of course. They decided to do a spinal. When they were working on it, I felt like the baby was headed out, so they stopped to see if it was too late. Wow, was I scared! Fortunately, my membranes were still intact, and there was still time. They got the spinal working, the doctor broke my water, and 15 minutes later at 12:25 Baby Cole was born! Zero pictures were taken up to this point and only a few were taken after delivery. We still haven't taken many! Mom and Asher arrived at the hospital, then Mimi.

I was a little bit in shock because the whole morning was so unexpected and happened so fast!

We will be taking and posting more photos this week, now that Mark is on paternity leave. He had to work most of last week. Not fun.