Presenting Michael Rory van Brackel

Our son Michael Rory was born this evening at 5:03 PM. He's 21.5 inches long, 8 lbs. 15 oz. and absolutely beautiful. But I'm biased of course so I'll let pictures speak louder than text.

Michael was Heather's father's name, and is her brother's name.  Rory is my (Jason) father's name.
Michael is of Hebrew origin and means "Who is like God?".  Rory is of Irish origin and means "Red King".

The baby's already messing with me

Heather and I spent the late afternoon, and early evening at labor and delivery last night. We went to the OB's office to have Heather all checked out again. Heather's blood pressure was little high so she laid on her side for a few minutes. After a few more minutes they checked her blood pressure again and it had gone up a little bit. So, the baby decided to raise Heather's blood pressure and so we were sent us to the hospital.

We met a wonderful nurse at the hospital who took wonderful care of Heather. So we sat there for a couple hours while they did a non-stress test on Heather and the baby. Every once in a while her blood pressure cuff would go off. It was nice just spending some time together.
That LB decided to get me all excited about meeting us, and then our little blessing allowed Heather's blood pressure to go back down, so the doctor sent us home. No baby for us, yet. We did get some nice Braxton Hicks contractions to watch on the monitor, so that was exciting. Suffice it to say, I'm really really excited about the baby coming and can not wait to meet the baby.

So Heather and I are resting peacefully in the bedroom watching season 3 of the office. It's a lot of fun just getting to hang out.

Note: LB is a term of endearment & respect in my family.

12 Week Photos of our Goat, I mean child

Heather went to have her sequential screening test with our child this week. We did not realize that more ultrasound pictures would be taken. So here are pictures (2D and 3D) of our child. And yes I know the 3D pictures are scary, but I promise our child is human, and not some half-human half goat-alien hybrid. Heather will be 13 weeks on 8/21 and has been mostly without nausea since last week. Also, she seems to have gotten a spurt of energy! Now we begin plans to make our guest room into the nursery. We'll most likely work on doing that (with the help of wonderful volunteers) after our trip to Disney World the first week of October with Heather's family.

Goat Baby!!!