Jayla Ashlyn Hamann

This morning started off early for Joy and Brad. They had to be at the hospital at 5 am so Joy could be enduced. Her due date was Tuesday. About 8 am I got the call to head over to the hospital. Joy and Brad are both from Iowa and their families still live there. Since you can have 2 people in the L&D room they asked if I would be with them. I was so honored! Joy works with me at church and she's a big picture person. She's very talented with photography, videography and filming. She put together our wedding slideshow. Since pictures are such a big part of her life she asked if I would video tape (what they allow these days) and take pictures of baby's first few moments. I say "baby" b/c they decided to not find out what the sex of the baby was. They wanted to be surprised! I got to the hospital around 8:30. She was in labor and was about 5 cm. She was doing great and felt wonderful. Her contractions weren't too bad. She got her epidural at 6 cm and then was feeling super duper! Here's what the 3 of us were doing once the drugs kicked in.....
She reached 9 cm pretty quickly and started pushing at 3pm. At 3:12 the baby was laying on her chest! Wow, 10 minutes of pushing? Not bad, Joy! Way to go!!! She was 8lbs and almost 21 inches. I was sooooo thinking it was a boy! Joy was too.

She's beautiful and sweet. Really alert and so happy.




This last picture is a little prank that Greg, our boss, wanted to pull. It was my idea but he really saw to it that it was carried out. When we told Greg that the hospital allowed 2 people in the room with you and that I was going to be one of them he jumped right in and said, "YES! I accept. I'll be the 2nd if Nicole is the 1st person." So, we printed off a giant picture of his face so he could 'be in the room with us'. The hospital staff thought it was hilarious!

Congratulations, Brad and Joy!