Esme Est Arrivée!

On Tuesday January 6th at 7:00pm, Jill started to have the contractions that would end some 38 hours later, at 9:02am on Thursday January 8th, with the (natural) birth of Esme Bogart Gavin:

Weighing in at 8 lbs 12 ounces, Esme was almost a full pound lighter than Milo was (9 lbs 11 ounces) at birth ("practically petite in comparison," said one nurse). To round out her stats: she's 20 inches long, has a remarkably circular head (the nurses are all confused when they find out she was not a c-section baby), and seems to have quite long feet and fingers...

Jill and I spent the morning getting to know Esme:

and others:

showed up later that afternoon to play:

While there might have been one or two "Lennie moments":

...overall, Milo was amazingly nice and compassionate (and really seemed to understand and enjoy what was going on!):

Just before leaving this afternoon, Jo Ellen snapped this shot of me, Milo, and Esme:

Thanks to everyone for the many well-wishes, etc. I'll post more photos (including a Christmas backpost) in the coming weeks. Cheers and happy 2009!

Addendum: Jill has instructed me to provide more information surrounding our arrival at the hospital and the delivery. Hmm...what should I say...well, I'll start with noting that the fact that I insisted that we stop for Dunkin' Donuts on the way is understandable considering that just 24 hours earlier we were on the way to the hospital and were promptly sent home. How was I to know that this time we would arrive and Esme would be out and the whole matter completed in about an hour? As an aside, I probably would not have been as good of a support person without the coffee. If I had known how many people would ask me some variation of , "Wow...you stopped for coffee?" I might have done without. Probably not, though. So yeah...an hour after getting to the hospital; a half hour after getting into the room; upon pushing 4 times; and after screaming (the epidural made her much nicer with Milo) at me and Freyr, Jill gave birth to Esme (who decided to enter the world "sunny-side-up," which, apparently makes for a much more difficult and painful labor/delivery process).