Mikayla Renee is here!

Well, many of you may already know that we have a new addition to our family!

Mikayla Renee Veale was born Thursday morning, April 22, 2010 at 7:41 a.m. via c-section. She was 21 inches long and weighed 8 lb., 15 oz. (or as I've taken to saying, she was a deep breath and a teaspoon of salt short of 9 pounds!).

She came out screaming and was quite displeased about the change in her environment! The c-section has been scheduled for quite awhile but I was actually having some pretty good contractions from dinnertime on Wednesday throughout the night, etc., so I'm sure that we would have had a baby on Thursday whether we were scheduled or not!

I brought my laptop to the hospital with grandiose dreams of writing the birth experience down in great detail so that she will have the memory and I won't get everything mixed up in my head.

As it turns out, though, the combination of excitement to get to know her, exhaustion – I've gotten now about 6 or 7 hours of sleep total since Wednesday, and pain management (i.e., the drugs! Thank God for the drugs!) has made me groggy and just grateful that I'm writing anything at all right now!

So... in lieu of details I've got some photos. I can also tell you that Mikayla has lost a little bit of of the NFL linebacker look, but not the double roll of neck fat, she is so pleasant and sweet that she really hasn't been crying unless her diaper's dirty (and my husband, God Bless Him!, has changed a LOT of diapers so far!), and she's a good little eater! She also has more hair than Mia or Maggie had at birth.

Now, since I'm literally dozing at the keyboard as I write this and have a little baby on my lap I'm going to sign off for now. I'll be trying to send stuff on as we get it – Mia and Maggie are both LOVING their little sister so far! And we think she's not too shabby ourselves.


JJ