She's Here!!! She's Here!!!

Ladies and Gentlemen,

After virtually 20 hours of labor, my beautiful wife gave birth to Charlotte Marie Hall at 11:40 pm on Saturday, January 19th, 2008. She weighed in at 7 lb. 8 oz. but 12 hours later actually weighed 7 lb. 14 oz., so we think she weighed around 8 lb. at birth due to a miscalculation because we were in a brand new wing with a scale that hadn't been used before. As biased as I am about my own child, I think she is so wonderfully beautiful (as you can tell from the pictures below). What a story to tell by the way! We left around 10:30 to come to the hospital, luckily before it started snowing like crazy. The snow didn't stick too bad to the roads, at least not in downtown Winston-Salem. BUT, when we got home 2 days later, snow was still covering a good portion of the ground. After Charlotte was born, it felt like forever before we were able to take her home. I guess we got a little cabin fever. After "the delivery" we moved to the old maternity wing, one of the boilers gave its last gasp thereby leaving some rooms without heat (including ours). It got down to about 60 degrees in our room, so Charlotte had to sleep in the nursery-------we were freezing but at least she wasn't. By the way, I can't stand the hospital's loud, reclining, pleather chair------horrible to sleep in----dreadful. Other than that, the hospital was great.


Monday finally comes and time to take our little bundle of joy home (yes that's cliche-ish but she really is). She has been great. Her first night here was a little difficult to get used to, but I have been going on straight adrenaline for like 3-4 days , so it didn't bother me. Erin might tell you differently though, I did sleep through an alarm for about 45 minutes that was right beside of me. Yeah, right afterwards I said I didn't hear it but an hour or two later, I definitely remember turning it off after I heard Erin say my name from the nursery. Since the first night, it seems like we have gotten on a pretty good schedule and any prayer for that would be appreciated.



One last thing, and then I'll post the pictures. We have only had this child for 4 days now, but it is really a lot of fun. I can't put into words how much fun fatherhood is. I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT.