Afton Jayna Payne was born on Tuesday, 10 April at 1622 hours. She weighed in at 6 lbs. 14 oz. and was 19 inches long (I saw the doctor round up though).
Michelle did an amazing job. We arrived at the hospital early Tuesday morning and Michelle decided after fighting contractions all day Monday and through the night that she wanted the epidural.
Two thumbs up for epidurals!!!!
With the epidural in place things proceeded fairly smoothly. After about 12 hours in active labor, Afton Jayna Payne showed her face.
She is absolutely adorable and we are so glad she has joined our family. We truly feel blessed to have the opportunity to raise such a special little girl.
Freshly Bathed
This is actually the earliest picture of Afton we have (I was busy cutting the cord and hugging and kissing her and Michelle was obviously stuck in bed)
On Monday we took Kathy to Rita's for family night. We had high hopes all day of rushing into the hospital because Michelle was having sporadic contractions. No such luck. A trip to Rita's was a pretty good consolation prize. Unfortunately they were out of vanilla custard and Swedish Fish flavored Italian Ice (fortunately though, that means we will have to go back one more time while Kathy is still here).
On the first day after due date, fate had given me:
A "parade" complete with Roman soldiers and Jesus actors as well as thousands of followers that filled our street that we got to watch sitting on our front porch. (Seriously thousands of people walked past our house, and most looked at us like clueless white people since everything was in Spanish). It wasn't really a parade--it was more of a mass exodus. Good Friday indeed.
On the second day after due date, fate had given me:
A lucky encounter with a cop who pulled us over for having expired tags and let us off the hook since they just expired the day before. He also looked at our car seat in the back because it wasn't secure and he was worried about our baby. It was okay when he saw that it was just random things sitting in it and the baby was still in my belly.
Ok, so we didn't actually get pulled over by Shawn Spencer, we just didn't get a picture. We almost asked the cop if we could, but figured we maybe ought to not push our luck.
On the third day after due date, fate had given me:
An Easter egg hunt! and a lot of condolences at church since I didn't anticipate being there today. However, in other good news, I can still have an Easter baby. And the longer she waits (and still shows her face today), the less hours that means I'll have to be in labor.
Even the baby got some Easter stuff... the bunny planned ahead, but apparently the baby did not.
