Little Monkey Home

so, there's no getting around the fact that we're lame. Several months without a monkey update is truly bad form. To sum up the past few months.

Baby is growing & healthy
Lots of contractions over the past few weeks
Baby is still a boy
Names are still a secret
Baby is still internal

We're four days past the official due date but he's clearly not paying attention to the calendar.

There are two popular theories:

1. Given the parents, he's bound to be headstrong & uncooperative: get used to a lifetime of this
2. We both work for Microsoft and have a track record of missing our ship dates - why should this be any different?

In any case, the nursery is ready, we're eager to meet the little guy and we'll keep y'all up to date with the progress.

Barring anything significant in the next couple days, we'll post some pictures of the nursery, Karrie's belly & the dog.

take care,
-M

Hopefully everyone with access to this blog received an email announcing the birth of our beautiful little boy: Cooper Sullivan Stedman Ayers

In case you missed it, the highlight of the event is that Cooper arrived at 3:02am on Saturday, August 11, 2007. He was a healthy 7 pound, 8.8 ounce baby boy, 20 inches long, and he came out screaming. (My motherly instincts kicked in right away, and I tried to calm him down, but the nurse said that we should test out the lungs to make sure they work. After about 15 mins of volume, she then sheepishly said, "oh, ah, I guess they work- you can calm him down now.) Matt and I are proud to tell you that he scored a 9 out of 10 on his Apgar, (he missed a point for having purple feet... we thought that was a pretty cheap shot... who wouldn't have cold feet after going through what he just did!)

For those of you following the labor saga, you know that Cooper was practicing the whole labor thing for weeks ahead of time. For that reason, we were suprised that he not only made it to his due date (which was supposed to be Aug. 4th), but he decided to hang out for a whole extra week in utero. My parents were in town keeping me company for the wait. They will vouch that I wasn't, shall we say, "happy" about the delay, but in hindsight, after seeing his chunky little arms for the first time, I ended up feeling pretty pleased that he had an extra week to fatten up a bit.

At some point in time I may detail the labor story, but at a high level, it was a pretty amazing experience. Key to this outcome was my "pit crew" which consisted of my very loving and patient husband Matt, and our doula, Jennifer. Together with Cooper, we managed to get through the painful process in about 9 hours total... not bad for a first baby.

For those of you who haven't had a chance to see him, I have attached a couple pictures: