It’s a girl! At 9:23, November 22, 2004, Holly Marie was born! Amanda labored for 17 hours, and the end result is pretty fantastic. Holly is doing wonderfully - she sleeps, eats, and sleeps some more.

At 3:11 am, I woke up, and saw that Amanda wasn’t in the room. I found her watching Anne of Green Gables in the living room, timing contractions. She also had told me that her water had broke. Uh. So. Let’s do some more timings, and see what’s up?

We called the doctor, and she said to come on in, because it’s time! Here’s Amanda in the hospital bed:

It turns out that Holly took a minute or two to establish a stable respitory and normal heart rate. Lots of nurses got involved…

Holly was taken to the nursery, where she was monitored until things became more normal.

Afterwards, she was brought back to the room, where Dr. McCann checked up on us. Here she is! Also, here is a movie showing the room (5.7 MB; 0:27) .

The next evening, a nice dinner was brought to us:

Ok, so during a report on Fox News… what is wrong with this guy’s hair?!

Amy and Nathan Christensen brought us some nice flowers.

Bundled up for the car ride home! The Popeye look never gets old… Here’s another INCREDIBLY cute video showing Holly as she prepares for the ride home (7.3 MB, 0:36).

Home in the bassinet!