A few thoughts on the past week

This past week has been incredible and I just wanted to chronicle a few things I have been thinking about everything that has happened...

Becky is amazing. We checked into the hospital on Sunday night at 6 and Hudson was born Wednesday at 11:31 AM. During that entire time Becky was incredible, prompting the various nurses and midwives to repeatedly comment on how amazed they were that she was able to maintain such a wonderful attitude throughout a very long and difficult labor. By the time Hudson finally joined us the entire nursing staff was rooting for Becky and checking in on her status with our nurse.

My sister is hilarious. She did such a great job as our guest-blogger, and I'm sure she had more readers on our blog than we have ever had due to the great interest in Hudson's arrival (and her great writing!). We actually enjoyed checking our own blog when we had a chance during labor to read her latest updates.

Nurses/doctors/midwives are awesome. This was the first time I've spent the night in the hospital since I was born. During our 5-days in the hospital we must have encountered over 40 different nurses, doctors, and midwives, and every single one had such a strong desire to serve and make our experience as good as it could possibly be.

Dudes could never give birth. I thought about this several times during the nearly 3 days of labor. If God had chosen us to do it it would have been the end of humanity...so clearly he made the right decision there.

Hudson recognized my voice. Shortly after he was born they took him over to the warming table (or whatever that thing is called) and he was just screaming like babies do right after delivery. For the first time I leaned in and just said, "Hey Hudson," and for a just a few seconds he was perfectly still and quiet. That will forever be one of the coolest moments of my life.

We are loved. It has been kind of overwhelming to see all of the prayers, love, and support that we have gotten over the past week. Having once again moved to a new place we have often felt a bit lonely, and it is easy to forget how many people do care about us. We were very much reminded of that this week, so if you're reading this...thanks.

Being a dad is much better than I expected. I know everyone tells you this, but you almost think that people feel obligated to say things like this, because it just doesn't make any sense that losing your freedom and sleep for a little baby that just cries and poops (a lot) could be all that great. For many years I've kind of secretly felt that being a dad will be fun once our kids turn somewhere around 7 or 8 years old, and everything before that will be just something to get through. As it turns out, just holding my son is far more interesting than anything else I can think of.

And if you are reading this, you're really probably just interested in more pictures of Hudson...I should be posting some soon!

_