Arrival!

Sorry for the belatedness of the post (I hope that most people have already heard from Facebook or Twitter) but Gavin Paul Potterveld is here! His birthday is August 30, 2011 (4:42 pm) and his statistics are: 7 lb, 14 oz, 20.5 in long. There's some debate as to whether he is blonde or red haired/strawberry blonde--apparently it depends on the lighting. We'll have to wait and see what it settles on once he has a little more actual hair. Thanks to everyone for the well-wishes; we're planning on printing out all the congratulations from Facebook and Twitter so we can show Gavin someday that people from all over the world were rooting for him!

He was a little past due, so my OB decided to induce. I went in on Monday night, and he was born on Tuesday afternoon. Everything went smoothly from my vantage point (thanks to the epidural) but he was only just barely small enough to fit through the normal channels. In his early pictures there are marks on his head that look like a forceps delivery, but apparently those came from my pelvis bones. They had to take me to the OR afterwards to fix all the damage, and kept me in the hospital an extra day. But the Dr and nurses were awesome: they waited until I got a chance to hold him for a few minutes and start nursing a bit before whisking me away.

We brought him home on Friday, and he's really been incredibly mellow about everything. We got him into the car seat and he barely even woke up. He didn't see any of the car ride home, either. He's a little charmer, all adorable.

Since then we've been learning what works and what doesn't in terms of feeding, diapers, sleeping, etc. The grandparents have been visiting and have just been wonderful, especially with making sure us adults get fed. There are more (and better) pictures to be had on Facebook, especially if you follow any of the Potterveld clan, who know what they're doing when it comes to cameras.