The Blancher Bunch: Welcome to the world Baby Evan!

One of the most exciting things we were awaiting in 2010 was the birth of our second baby in December. We couldn't wait to meet baby Evan Martin Blancher and become a family of four! My due date was December 19th and as the due date became closer and closer, many predicted that he would arrive early. As it was pointed out by my aunt Gigi, if he's truly a Middleton, then surely he won't be early...or even on time! It is a well known fact that the Middleton family is void of the "being on time" gene...we call it "Middleton time." Anyways, fast forward to Sunday, December 12.

That Sunday, we were celebrating the 3rd Sunday of Advent and I was going to sing "Breath of Heaven" at church. I've always loved that song and was very honored that Jonathan and Jill had enough faith in me to sing it. The song also had a more special meaning to me on this particular Sunday because I was "about to pop" pregnant and I kept thinking about the feelings that Mary had before the impending birth of the Son of God. It darn near brought me to tears on multiple occasions! Plus, we were joking about how funny it would be if in the middle of the song, Evan decided to make his appearance...that didn't happen by the way! We actually had a plan in place. Surprise, surprise...I actually had a plan! Our plan was to induce on Friday, December 17 because it didn't appear that Evan was anywhere near wanting to come and this would allow Adam to utilize his time off from work best along with his time off for the Christmas/New Years holidays. Adam was in town that weekend and as he got ready to go back to Jackson on Sunday evening, I was weirdly emotional. I usually get upset when he leaves anyways and I know my hormones were probably all out of whack but I thought it was weird because I was going to see him earlier that week on Thursday evening as he had planned on taking the last few hours off of work and come in to be ready to go with me to the hospital at 5AM that next Friday morning. I must have been having a premonition or something! Anyways after he left, the remainder of the evening was pretty normal. My mom and I made about 15 large jars of homemade tomato basil soup for Christmas gifts and we went to bed. Fast forward again to about 11:30 that night...

I woke up with a weird feeling. It didn't feel like contractions pains but it was definitely weird and not something that I had felt before. I sat up and tried to decide if it was related to labor for about 30 minutes and ended up deciding to wake my parents up. My mom got up and sat with me in their living room for about another 30 minutes and suggested that we start to time my contractions that I was having...just to see if they were regular. They ended up being about 3 minutes apart so then the decision was made to go up to the hospital to see what was going on. I thought that this was the smartest decision, just in case I truly was in labor so that I could give Adam plenty of time to get back to Shreveport. However, I fully expected to come back home. I packed the minimal things and headed up to the hospital with my dad. On a side note, I was so grateful to my parents that night...that my dad was there to take me to the hospital in the middle of the night and endure a sleepless night with me and that my mom stayed home with Thomas also not getting a lot of sleep since we kept calling every hour with updates...they're the best! Once we got there, I was monitored from about 1:30 to 5AM and it was then that Dr. Shattuck decided to admit me because I was making progress. The progress was slow and it was the initial stages of labor, but it was progress nontheless. So after keeping poor Adam in limbo throughout the night, he was up, packed and on the road by about 5:30 heading BACK to Shreveport to meet our baby boy.

My labor progressed pretty normally and Evan arrived that evening at 5:18 PM weighing 8 lbs 12 ounces and was 20 1/2 inches long. Our lives were forever changed and we all fell totally in love...even Thomas! He was so excited and kept wanting to go to the nursery to see Baby Evan. He actually got a bit confused, as it was the Christmas season and we had been talking a lot about baby Jesus, and he said a few times that he wanted to go see "baby Jesus" instead of "baby Evan!" So now our family of three is proudly a family of four and we can't wait to watch Evan grow into the person that he's going to be along with watching Thomas and Evan's relationship grow. It was a truly magical and blessed day!

Here are a few pics of our new bundle: