Riley's Birth Day!!!

Alright here it is, exactly what everyone wants. I will let you look at all of the pictures first, and then I will tell you about our day at the end. I know the pictures are what you're here for anyways.

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Here I am, ready to enter the world of fatherhood. It must be a messy world, because they gave me this sweet scrub/coveralls hybrid.

They gave Sarah a sweet hat to wear to welcome our son into the world.
Our last family picture that only invovles 2.
Sarah had no idea what was going on behind the curtain. Probably a good thing.
Riley is in there somewhere.
There he is. Ignore the exposed manparts.
I'm pretty happy!
Mommy and Baby!
First family picture involving 3.
There's a good shot of Riley and his head of hair.

Proud Dean grandparents.

Proud Smith grandparents.
AUNT Rachel.
Granny.
Here I am after my first night of being a daddy. You can tell how much I love my hospital chair/bed.

Alright, here is the story of how Riley Daniel Smith's birth day went. Sarah and I came to the hospital 4:00 on Monday afternoon, to prepare for an induced delivery on Tuesday. Sarah's nurses came in and told us what to expect during the night and into the next day. Other than some problems with Sarah's IV, it was a fairly uneventful night. At 6:00 the next morning the nurse came in and started the induction process. It wasn't long afterwards that Sarah started feeling contractions. Around 8:30 our doctor came in and checked to see how far along Sarah was. And the answer was, not very. She was only about 1 centimeter dialated. She went ahead and broke Sarah's water, and said we will see what happens. At that point Sarah was hurting pretty bad because of the contractions, she ordered what I believe to be the 8th wonder of the world, the epidural. Wow, Sarah went from being in lots of pain, to sleeping. AMAZING!! At this point everything was going pretty good. But, the next 7 hours were unbelievably BORING. Nobody told me how boring the day would be. Once that epidural kicked in, it was nap time for Sarah. Which meant it was boring time for me. I was expecting some excitement, but instead I would watch some TV, take a little nap, walk to the waiting room, listen to some music. The doctor came in after lunch and checked Sarah. She had made a little progress, up to almost 3 centimeters dialated. The doctor said it was going slowly, but that the baby was coming today no matter what. After the ckeck, it was nap time once more for Sarah, which meant it was boring time again for me. We waited for a while, and not much was happening, which led me believe that we were looking at a C-section. A little after 5:00, the doctor came in, checked, and nothing had changed. She said it was baby time, and we headed off to the OR. I had to put on my sweet scrubs/coveralls hybrid and waited for them to prep Sarah. When it was showtime, I was retrieved, and headed to the operating table. Sarah was there waiting on me, with a big curtain draped in front of her. I sat down beside her, and listened to all the sounds going on around her belly. I was not real excited about seeing Sarah all cut up, so I stayed behind the curtain, and was very happy there. But when it was baby debut time, the anasthesiologist made me get up and watch him come out. I was glad I did. Riley was pretty nasty his first few seconds in this new world, and was not real excited to be here. He was crying, and fussing, but had no choice, he's here to stay. After he came out, I watched them clean him off. If I may, I'm going to go on a tangent for a minute. People always say "What's wrong with the world today?", and I have an answer. Babies are abused when they are born. Riley was twisted and turned and tossed and scrubbed and wiped down with so much more vigor than I would ever think was appropriate. When I told this to my family, they laughed at me and said babies are that fragile. Oh well. After Riley was born we waited for Sarah to be sown up, and then headed to recovery where Riley got to eat for the first time. After about 30 minutes I got to wheel Riley down to the nursery, and got to show him off to all the family for the first time. It was really funny to see them all jump up and run to see Riley smiling. After a couple of minutes of looking at Riley, the nurse took him to the nursery and we got to watch him be washed, and measured, and all taken care of. The family got to hold Riley for just a few minutes before they got kicked out.

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That's Riley's birth day in a nutshell. I hope these pictures can hold you over, and I will do my best to put as many pictures up everyday as possible. Like I said last night, thank you so much for all the prayers and well wishes. We will be in the hospital until at least Friday, so if you are in or around Grapevine and have nothing to do, you can come meet Riley and Baylor Grapevine. Talk to you soon.