So, yeah, we had a baby girl this morning...

Yesterday Mary had a check-up and she had dialated to a 5 since her last appointment, which signaled to us that we were pretty ready to have this baby. Though with Nathan, Mary was dialated to a 6 for a few days before we broke her water and that put her into active labor. So I went and taught my last lecture for the class I'm teaching on Monday night and got home around 10 pm last night. We stayed up chatting and making sure we were on the same page for plans and all. We had planned on going in on Wed morning to have her water broken if nothing happened before then. We went to bed around 11:15 pm last night. At 3:29 AM this morning, Mary woke me up and said "Jeff, get up, we need to go". I called our pre-arranged friend and she came over to our house. I still am not sure what time we got to the hospital... it couldn't have been too much before 3:45 AM... and Jane Azreal Hamm was born at 4:02 AM... so yeah, it went pretty quick! They didn't even have time for her to do anything before she was on that bed and ready to go. As is the typical fashion, Mary performed better than I did and I think I was pretty close to fainting and had to stay seated... it all came pretty quick. Jane weighs 7 lbs 5 oz and measured at 20 inches in length. And, yeah, it is 6:15 AM and I'm home so that our friend didn't have to wake Sarah and Nathan up to take them home so her hubby can go to work. We'll let the kids get a little more sleep and then I'll do breakfast with them and take them back over to our friends. I left right after they did their first feeding and Jane seemed to have a pretty good appetite! She was sucking on her hands, thumbs, fingers right after she came out, it was pretty cute. She seems healthy and seems a little smaller than Nathan and Sarah was. Mary, of course, did an amazing job and seemed very in control and was able to be patient with the nurses when they were wanting to do the typical mandatory things when she knew there wasn't time for that. Anyway, I left the camera at the hospital, so I don't have any pics to post, but I thought I would let everyone know... and come on! My wife just had a baby like 2.5 hours ago... I'll try to get the pics posted in the next day or so.
Oh, and her name is Jane Abigail Hamm... I didn't give her a middle name after Gargamel's cat from the smurf's, don't worry!

Can I just say that Mary is amazing... like with everything! There were three main goals with regards to the timing of the baby, some obviously more important than others. First, we wanted this to happen after my last lecture class (which happened last night, I just need to administer a final next Monday), second- we thought it would be nice if it happened a day or two before my mom gets here (she comes on Thurs afternoon), and third- just for funsies, we thought it would be fun for us to have Jane on a birthday in the 20's. My birthday is on the 21st, Mary's on the 22nd, Nathan's on the 25th and Sarah's on the 26th, and now Jane's on the 29th... not that big of a deal obviously, but kind of cool. Oh yeah, and we wanted to make it to the hospital, and we did... barely! Nathan just woke up... he takes after his dad... up with the sun!