Baby Levi's Story

So Levi will be a week old tomorrow...allow me to enlighten you all about his appearance :)

At my 37 week appointment (on a Tuesday), the midwife informed me that I was progressing nicely and she "wouldn't be surprised if I had a baby within the week." So needless to say, as the following Monday drew to a close, I was pretty disappointed. Lucky for me, I awoke at 3 AM thinking to myself, "oh yea, this is it." I labored at home until about 6:30 when the next door neighbor (whose baby was only a week old) came over with her little family to be with Mara. I had hoped to labor in the jacuzzi tub at the hospital, but by the time I arrived at the hospital, got checked in, and had the mandatory 20 min monitoring of contractions, I was getting to the breaking point. I received my epidural around 8- remembering suddenly all of the reason why I got one last time. I took a nap, started pushing just before 11, and by 11:15 AM, I was holding my cute little boy in my arms. Waiting for that moment was the longest 8 hours of my life! (except the 23 hours it took to get Mara...)

As he was lying on my chest, the nurses were cleaning him off and chatting with me. I don't remember exactly what I was asked, but my response surprised me more than it did Ian. I said "With Mara ...(it was this way)... but with Levi ...(it was that way)." I caught myself and with bulging eyes, turned to Ian and said "I guess his name is Levi!"

We hadn't chosen a name before going to the hospital. We like to have multiple names that we like, and then after seeing the babe, we pick the one that looks right. When Mara was born, we had 5, but with Levi, we only had 3. Levi David, David Graham, and Christopher David. Ian was leaning towards Levi, and I was leaning towards Christopher.

David is a family name, courtesy of Ian's Father, and we knew we wanted to use that name somewhere since (a) we like him and (b) this is the first of his 20 grandchildren to carry on the Pierce family name.

Levi was actually put on the list before we even knew what gender Mara was. We were watching the Giro d'Italia (cycling- think Tour de France, but its in Italy) and one of the American riders Ian was rooting for was Levi Leiphemer. Ian asked how I liked the name Levi, and we joked that if it was a boy, his name would be Levi. Instead, it was a girl, so Levi was filed away until we were looking for boy names. (The funniest thing about the name Levi is that my brother and his wife also liked the name Levi. After they chose not to use it for their first son, we joked that it would be a race to see who had the next boy... I guess we won, sorry guys! Hehe)

Graham was just a name we heard in a movie, and we both liked it. Eventually though, I had a hard time thinking Graham without following it with cracker.

Christopher is Ian's middle name, so I thought it would be fun to use it to kind of chain the fathers and sons together. I wanted to avoid a name that was too popular, but when it would have significance like that, I didn't mind.

So anyway, Levi David Pierce was born at 11:12 AM on the 16th of August; weighing in at 7 lbs 9 oz, and measuring 21.5 inches long.

He's been on photo therapy since day 2, and according to the Doctor's orders, he's got to be on there 2 of every 3 hours. That basically means feeding time and then back into the lights, so hopefully today will be the last day and we'll get to snuggle him more.

Either way, we all love him!