Our new bundle of JOY has finally arrived!

Scott & I are proud to announce Brock Richard Parks to our family. He arrived July 23, 2008 at Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach. He weighed 9 lbs even and was 21 1/2 inches long. We got home from the hospital yesterday, and we are much more exhausted than we thought and it's only been one night on our own.

The Labor was much worse than I would've ever imagined. My labor started at 2:00 a.m. and in my mind I thought labor pains would start small and work themselves stronger. By 2:45 I told Scott we needed to go to the hospital. I would say the contractions were a 8 on a pain scale of 10. When the nurse checked me into a room at 3:00 she said I was dilated to a 5. I was very excited when I heard that now I could get my Epidural. Wrong. In the chaos of trying to start my IV lines ( took 6 tries) my body had started "shaking" and did not stop till 30 minutes after delivery. My stat blood levels showed that I was severely anemic and needed blood transfusions and that I also had severe low blood sugar count of 30. My blood pressure had jumped to 166/110 ( I'm usually 112/72). Well the blood samples they re-ran 3 times and they were wrong my they had been infiltrated by the saline of the IV. When the doctor finally cleared me for the pain meds I was dilated to a 10 by 5 a.m. He decided it was best to lets "push" and get baby out safely. I know that my behavior was straight out of a movie scene. I screamed at Scott and screamed in general out of having little pain tolerance. It really only took about 30 minutes to push my little guy out and the sense of relief was pretty euphoric. The after care was WONDERFUL & the nurses were just great to me. It has been such a blessing having this baby and would do it all again...I would've taken Xanax before I left though.