Here she is!

Well, for all of you that have been waiting for a post on our sweet little angel here it is! I give you Brylie Alyse Sperry 7lbs 14oz 21in.

After a long week of worrying that our angel might come early while Austin was in one of his many finals but also wanting her to come on Friday, Aug 7 after he took his last final so that he could spend the weekend at the hospital with me before having to return to school the following Monday, and after a LOT of prayers that just maybe a miracle would happen so that I would miraculously go into labor on Friday after his finals and have the baby that weekend, it actually happened!! I have to thank all of you that put in prayers on our behalf that she would come that weekend...I have no doubt in my mind that those prayers are what brought her into the world on Saturday morning.

I had a doctors appointment on Friday morning where I found out that I was dialated 2 1/2 cm and officially in "early labor". The doctor said that since I still was just having irregular contractions that I most likely wouldn't have the baby that day or the following day but little did she know that I had already had a very nice little chat with my Heavenly Father about how we really needed this baby to come that night so that Austin wouldn't have added stress to his already overwhelmingly stressful school career. This appointment was at 9 am. Austin was in his last final at this point, only a few hours before he'd be done. I got home from the doctors and sent out a text message to some people asking them to pray that my labor could continue and we could have this baby this weekend. Noon rolled around and Austin called letting me know that he was out of his final and wanting to know how I was doing. I informed him that I was feeling my contraction become regular and that I wanted him to come home for a while to be with me and that it is actually possible that we could have our baby this weekend. I don't think Austin has rushed home that quickly ever in his life. I started timing the contractions around 1 pm and they were about 8 minutes apart as long as I was on my feet moving around, otherwise they would go to about 12 minutes apart when I was resting. So of course Austin wanted me up on my feet walking around so that we could make this happen. So what did we do...we went to the grocery store and got all our grocery that we needed for the next week! When we returned home I decided that it was definately time to pack the last few things into the hospital bag that I needed and also clean up the house a little bit since my dad would be flying in the next morning to come stay with us for a few weeks! Austin was recently called to be the ward mission leader which means he has to meet with the missionaries every week. Well, this meeting is set up for every Friday afternoon at 4 pm. On top of this he had a meeting set up with the stake mission rep at 3 pm that day, because honestly we didn't think we would be having the baby that weekend. It came time for him to head to the stake center for these meetings and I looked at him and said that my contractions were now about 6 minutes apart and I didn't feel comfortable with him leaving me now. So we packed everything up for the hospital and I went to his meetings with him. When the stake mission rep found out that I was there because I was in labor and we were just waiting for my contractions to get close enough for us to go to the hospital to have our baby, his eyes nearly popped out of his head (he's a 3rd year med student) and he asked if we were sure we wanted to stay and do the meeting because he had no problem with re-scheduling. I let him know that I was still doing ok and that the contractions weren't close enough for us to go to the hospital yet and that it was fine to do the meeting now. So there I sat in the back of the room while they had their meeting with my little kitchen timer in hand and a piece of paper and pen keeping track of my contractions! This poor guy turned around just about every 10 minutes just to ask me if I was still ok. He was really sweet. Their meeting ended and we had 20 minutes to kill before the missionaries would arrive. So what did my husband do...he got me into the gym where there just so happened to be a basketball laying on the ground. Yes, that's right...I played a game of basketball with my husband while in labor, running over to my kitchen timer sitting on the floor ever few minutes to figure out how close the contractions were at this point. Well, I guess I got a little too active because my contractions jumped up to being only 2 1/2 minutes apart. This is when I looked at my sweet husband and said it was time to stop the basketball game because he still had another meeting to sit through. So I calmed down and did nothing but sit still for the next hour to try and slow the contractions. It worked. I got them back down to 5 minutes apart. We were finally done with the meetings at 5:30 pm and I decided since we live in L.A. and traffic is absolutely horrible that we needed to start heading to the hospital now because my contractions had been 5 minutes apart for over an hour now.

We arrived at the hospital and the doctor checked me, I was dilated to a 4 now so they officially admitted me! However, this happened to be an absolutely swamped night at the labor and delivery unit. They had 16 women delivering ahead of me so they kind of put me off for a while and hoped that I wouldn't progress too quickly as they had so many other women delivering at the same time. And since all of the delivery rooms are private and were full I was in a little waiting area that they had set up multiple beds (seperated by curtains) to monitor the baby. So I walked the halls of the hospital for a few hours as we made all the calls we needed to to inform everyone that we were having the baby. Finally around midnight they got me into my delivery room, which happened to be the biggest private room they have. It was more like a suite, it was absolutly HUGE! Which was really really nice since Austin's entire family came to the hospital at 1 am and hung out with us the entire night/morning while I progressed. It was actually a lot of fun to have people there to entertain me and keep my mind off of the pain. They started me on pitosin around 3 am, I got an epidural around 7 am and then they broke my water around 8 am when I still wasn't progressing much. My dad likes to think that since he was flying in at 9 am that Heavenly Father was allowing time for him to get there before the baby was born. My dad made it to the hospital at 9:45 am and at 10:15 am I started pushing. I have to admit, even though I had to labor all night long, everything worked out absolutely perfect! At 10:59 am (Austin and I both swear that it was 11 am on the dot, but we're not the ones that get to call it) Brylie Alyse Sperry was born.