Our Brand New Baby Girl

After 40 weeks of pregnancy and two long days and sleepless nights of labor our baby girl has finally arrived!

Joanna Elise
Born 1:07 PM Thursday August 6, 2009
6 lbs 6 ounces, 19.5 inches

Getting weighed. She's such a tiny little peanut.

Spending some quality time with her daddy.
She already has him wrapped around her tiny little finger.

Getting some snuggles from mommy.

Now we're a family of three. Don't we look happy?

Granny Dixie meeting her very first Granddaughter.

Getting all checked out before her bath.

Look how alert she is less than an hour after birth.

Such a happy, pretty baby.

So curious.

The arrival of our little girl has been a long awaited event and we feel so blessed to finally have her join our family. She's such a pretty little baby, and already so full of personality. She's very curious, very cuddly, and melts her mommy's heart every time she refuses to calm down until mommy holds and snuggles her. She was very alert for the first several hours after birth, but now that she is catching on to nursing she is sleeping for big stretches and trying to recover from birth. I'm trying to recover from her birth also so she's spending a lot of time in the nursery with the other babies. Some time soon I'll type out my experience with her birth for those of you who like all the gory details, but right now I need to rest and it's quite the story. It was a very long labor with my contractions starting in earnest at about 5pm on Tuesday August 4th (I did get a little break thanks to some pain meds on Wednesday morning, but more details later) and not ending until she was delivered at 1:07 PM on Thursday August 6th. In spite of a perfectly complication free pregnancy we had a pretty tough labor with a few touch and go moments and a few big scares, but she's here now, happy and very healthy.

I have wanted to be a mother since I was a very, very tiny little girl and Joanna is an answer to my prayers and dreams. Joanna means "God is gracious" and it perfectly describes the way we've felt about her from the time the pregnancy test came back positive. She's a little miracle and proof positive to me that our Heavenly Father loves us. I feel incredibly blessed to be entrusted with raising such a precious daughter of our Father in Heaven. I can't wait to watch her grow and learn and become the little person she is destined to be. She's such a blessing in our lives and we already love her more than I thought it was ever possible to love someone you just met.