Charlotte Joy!!

First off I have to say that I am sorry that this is coming so late!!

Charlotte Joy is here!! She decided to enter the world on January 31st, just 53 minutes after midnight.  Coming in at 7 pounds, 0.6 ounces and 20.5 inches long... she is perfect!

I have to admit that labor is nothing like I expected. Well I did expect pain, and I got lots of that. No worries though, I also got an epidural! I never thought that labor would take two people, but that is not something that I would have wanted to do without Mathis there. He was awesome! He was my distraction to all of the pain, my strength through all of the pushing, my hands when I wanted to push my epidural button and couldn't.. needless to say I am so thankful that he was there. I also didn't realize how important my labor and delivery nurse and corpsman would be. The two of them stayed with Mathis and I from the start, answering all of our questions and putting up with me constantly wanting to push too early.

So as different as labor and delivery was from my expectations, surviving week one was even more mind blowing. Sleep is something that neither Mathis nor I have gotten much of. We find ourselves sleeping in shifts, and as Mathis has said, we sleep while we blink. It really feels somewhat like college again.. awake all day and night, just lots of short naps here and there. Thankfully we have awesome family and friends, we haven't had to prepare a meal for ourselves yet! As minor as this seems, I am sure that we would have starved by now if we were expected to take care of ourselves, baby, puppy, and food. My parents we here walking us through all the unknowns until February 5th.. since they left we have had amazing people on base bringing us dinner each night.. and the Jennings are coming this weekend! YAY for help!!

We have discovered that What To Expect The First Year is a must have for all new parents. We were given this book as a gift but didn't think much of it since we didn't really use the What To Expect When Expecting book that we had. But, oh am I glad that we have this one... we seriously look everything up in there. It is like Charlotte's owners manual!

So that is what is going on with our family right now... we are all adjusting to one another!!!