Claire Bear

I'm kind of tired tonight, so I don't know how long or coherent this post will be. Here it goes anyway.

Claire Bear. Where do I begin? Claire Diane Hawkins is the apple of my eye. I know that most dads love their little girls, but I doubt that any dad could love their baby girl as much as I love mine! Just my opinion.

After Stephanie and I had Max, we were a little scared to have another child. We cherished Max of course, but we weren't sure if we wanted to take a chance on bringing another child with a disability in to the world. Before making the decision to have another baby, Stephanie and I decided to get some genetic testing done. We figured that if the geneticist found a recessive gene, we would not have another baby and just enjoy Max. We were living in Chattanooga at the time and were told that there was a great geneticist at Erlanger. The appointment was made, the tests were taken (ouch) and the results came in. No recessive gene was found. The geneticist told us however, that we still had an 8% chance of having another child with a hearing loss similar to Max's. We figured we could handle these odds and decided to go for it! Surely the odds would be with us and a second child would not have a hearing loss. Surely Max's hearing loss was caused by a stomach bug that Stephanie had during her first trimester.

Well, Stephanie became pregnant again during the summer of 2005 , much to my surprise. (just kidding) What a summer. We were in the process of moving back to Nashville and I was in the process of switching jobs. Have I told you guys that I am never satisfied? We somehow sold our house in Chattanooga and bought a new house in Brentwood. The move went fairly smoothly and our family was back in Nashville. This was something we had longed for over several years. We were happy, Stephanie was very pregnant and life was good.

Fast forward. Claire was born on January 10th, 2006 at Baptisit Hospital. The delivery went well, Stephanie and the baby were healthy and everything seemed well. Only one scary item loomed over the horizon, Claire's hearing test.

OK. I don't want to leave anyone "hangin'" as the kids say these days, but I am tired and I want to do a good job with this next part. I'll try to finish tomorrow night. Sorry.

God bless....