Central Texas baby born during The Great American Eclipse

WACO, Texas (KWTX) - A local mom says it wasn’t planned but she has quite the birth story to tell after her daughter was born in the middle of the total solar eclipse.

Iris Morena was born to proud parents Angelica Enriquez and Daniel Moreno, of Waco, April 8 at 2:50 p.m. at Baylor Scott & White Medical Center in Waco weighing six pounds, four ounces and measuring 19 inches.

Angelica’s labor ended up being right at the height of the total solar eclipse across Central Texas.

“We started the night of the 7th, and it went all the way to during the eclipse,” Angelica said.

Angelica says while she did get to experience the feeling of totality as her hospital room darkened through the shades during her labor, she never saw a thing.

“None of it,” she laughed. “I ended up getting an epidural so I couldn’t get up.”

Angelica’s family, on the other hand, didn’t miss out on the chance to experience both the delivery and the eclipse.

That included her mother-in-law who had some nurses to help.

“I was kind of in the middle of having contractions and my mother-in-law was looking out the window. She was like ‘oh my gosh.”

“She didn’t have her glasses on either and so one of the nurses was like ‘we have the eclipse glasses.’ So, the nurse went out and grabbed her some. They were all just looking out the window with the little glasses,” she said.

Angelica says that was a moment that included some humor.

“I was pretty okay with it because it was my mother-in-law so I said ‘as long as you’re not looking here, you can look at something else over there, out the window.”

Angelica joked that the eclipse also provided her husband a nice reprieve from the stress of the delivery room.

“I think it relieved him,” she said. “It gave him something else to think about, but he’d still come check on me.”

While some suggested the new mom name her baby something related to the eclipse, she says she’s happy with their choice of Iris.

“We had a name picked out, but some were like ‘you should have named her lunar or something like this and I was like ‘no I’ll stick with ours.”

Iris and mom are enjoying their first few weeks at home together and both are doing great.

Angelica says during her downtime she’s had a chance to watch videos of the solar eclipse which she says “were nice.”

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