Introducing.....

Eliza Mae Allred

She's here and she's perfect!!!!! I can't even type right now without getting insanely teary thinking about how in love with her i already am!!!


She arrived at 8:36 this morning, weighing 7lbs 1 oz, and she's 19 inches long. She's got some hair, a big Allred head, and we feel so incredibly lucky to have her in our family!!she's named after 3 great grandmas. Both my mom and my dad have a grandma Eliza, and Reid's Dad's mom is Alta Mae--so she's got a bit of history to her name, PLUS she's our first child to have a name on the day she was born!!


We got to the hospital around 5:30, by 5:45 in Triage i was dilated to a 5, half an hour later, up in Labor and Delivery i was at a 9!!! i mean, i knew that it was starting to hurt more than ever, but when i heard 9 cenitmeters, i started freaking out!! i wasn't ready to do this without an epidural--which is what i kept screaming with every contraction. And by some small miracle, i WAS able to get my epidural in, my contractions slowed down enough to let it take it's full effect (LOVE IT!!!) and by the time she came, i felt that awesome pressure, but with so little pain....oh, it was perfect! There is nothing in the world that is as amazing as those last pushes that bring that little babe into the world. that is the part i could do over, and over, and over again :)

I really was screaming at the top of my lungs--the type of screaming that i'm pretty sure no movie has ever shown. I kept yelling "i wanna die" and "i can't do another one" or " i'm jumping out the window if the anesthesiologist doesn't get here now!!!" We all laughed about it after the epidural started working. The whole floor was talking about it, and when the shift changed, all the new nurses knew that i was the "vocal" one...how embarassing!!!

Eliza came just at the right time, too. We finished painting at 11pm last night. It's tricky painting and having contractions, and with some of them i just couldn't do it, but i knew it was a "now or never" situation, so we just kept working at it, and now the first of many projects in our kitchen is done!!!! (i'll post some better before and after pictures of the kitchen later)

Here i am with Eliza just a few moments after she was born

This girl loves her fingers....















--but she takes a binki, too--thank heavens :) Here she is about an hour old, just after her first bath. I made this cute little blanket for her so that she'd have something that isn't a hand-me-down :)