8 a.m.

8 pounds, 6 ounces

New York Downtown Hospital

Husband-and-wife architects James and Hayes Slade, both 40, have built quite a family in the 18 years they’ve been married: Ana, 14, Santi, 13, Stella, 2, and now this beautiful little bald, pinkish addition, the news of which prompted cheers and hugs among the older siblings. “Now Stella will have a friend like we did!” happily chorused Ana and Santi. And now their Battery Park two-bedroom is a little crowded. “It would be hard to move,” Ms. Slade said. “We’re just waiting for somebody to put the perfect apartment up for the wrong price.” Aren’t we all, honey, aren’t we all—but we figured, as an architect, that you’d have the extra edge. Anyway, little Margot has blue eyes about to turn brown and a marvelously mellow disposition. “She’s very easygoing,” Mom said. “She gets a lot of attention, because there are so many hands to play with her.”

7 pounds, 6 ounces

New York Presbyterian

Julie Zarou, 31, who until last spring was the director of special events at the Institute of Culinary Education, has cooked up a beautiful, blond, fair-skinned and big-eared son with her husband of five years, Sam Zarou, 34, a trader with Tullett Prebon. In an apparent reference to Dumbo, “we call him Baby New Ears,” said Ms. Zarou, who arrived at the hospital five centimeters dilated and spent a brisk 15 hours in labor. The couple enjoys bundling up small Sam in a pint-sized Patagonia and taking him for walks around Central Park, not far from their one-bedroom on the Upper East Side. Mr. Zarou enjoys sitting with his namesake on the couch. “Until he cries,” Mom said. “Then he passes him over.”

9:55 p.m.

6 pounds, 13 ounces

Pascack Valley Hospital

Gourmet grommet! Nina Planck, 35, foxy founder of farmers’ markets in New York, Washington, D.C., and London, wanted to have a home birth in her Stuyvesant Town one-bedroom, but wound up delivering this brown-eyed, brown-haired sprout by C-section in New Jersey after 36 hours of unproductive labor. “It was very cold and bumpy, and I was shivering and having contractions every five minutes,” said Ms. Planck, a single mother by choice, of the car ride over, which she spent with her head in her mother’s lap. “But we both turned out great. He has a very relaxed personality.” Julian is already potty-training, swimming with assistance at the 14th Street Y and enjoying the sweet sounds of Lena Horne. “When he was little, he recognized all the songs that I played a lot while I was pregnant,” said Ms. Planck, also the author of Real Food. “Which just amazed me.”

6:44 p.m.

7 pounds, 4 ounces

St. Vincent’s Hospital

Such naches! David Adelson, 36, a rabbi at East End Temple near Stuyvesant Town, has welcomed this beautiful little blessing with his wife of three years, Lynn Harris, 37, a Park Slope writer, whose water broke unexpectedly one rainy morning. “It was due to the changes in biometric pressure,” said Ms. Harris, who had assumed her labor would have to be induced, due to gestational diabetes and preeclampsia. After a brisk nine hours, out popped this gummy-grinned girl with a mullet. “Business in front, party in the back,” said the new mom, who’s repeatedly fought the urge to fill out forms with her own mother’s information. “I know I’m her mother,” she said. “I get it. It’s just adding that word to my identity—I’m not used to it yet at all.” Meanwhile, Rabbi Adelson has been philosophizing on the meaning of parenthood. “The reality is so big that I can’t hang on to it all the time,” he said. “It’s very easy to fade in and out of awareness.”

11:03 p.m.

6 pounds, 8 ounces

Lenox Hill Hospital

Erica Lumière knew she’d be pushing it (no pun intended) by attending a centennial weekend gala at her alma mater, Kent, the Connecticut boarding school, three weeks before a scheduled C-section. Sure enough, her water broke at the start of a football game. After narrowly missing giving birth on the Henry Hudson Parkway, Ms. Lumière, a freelance writer and former editor at Marie Claire, was surgically delivered of this dark, Mediterranean, brown-eyed beauty, a striking contrast to her golden-haired older brother Oliver, 2. “He loves his baby sister,” said Ms. Lumière, married for six years to Michael Howard, an investment analyst at Sanford Bernstein (both are in their 30’s). “He’s always saying, ‘She’s so cute, she’s so cute!’” The smitten siblings share a room in the family’s Upper West Side two-bedroom and are looking very fashionable. “When I was on staff, I spent more on myself,” Ms. Lumière lamented. “Now, I’m in jeans mostly. They’re in the fancy clothes.”

2:39 a.m.

7 pounds, 8 ounces

St. Luke’s–Roosevelt Birthing Center

When Cobble Hill resident Gina Schmeling went into labor with her firstborn, Creeley, now 3, she inspired warfare (or a fare war, as the case may be) between two cabbies. “Both drivers showed up and fought on our street about who would take us,” said Ms. Schmeling, 38, a freelance fund-raising consultant married for seven years to Alani Golanski, 52, a lawyer. This time around, they bought a VW Beetle in preparation for the trip to the hospital, and after a 12-hour labor, Ms. Schmeling pulled out her second son … ye-ouch … herself! You go, sister girlfriend! “I slipped my hands right underneath his armpits,” she said. “At the end of a long night’s work, it felt really satisfying.” The birth was “the nice final chapter of 2006” for Ms. Schmeling, who began the year with a cancer scare and ended it mourning the death of her mother-in-law. “He’s really calm and hasn’t absorbed the chaos,” she said of the round, delicate-featured baby.

7:40 a.m.

6 pounds, 13 ounces

New York University Hospital

It’s a writ of baby-us corpus! Court TV copy editor Susie Felber endured 14 hours of unproductive labor before opting for a C-section. “At this point, I don’t care if you take him out of my nostril,” Ms. Felber, who is also a stand-up comic, told her doctors. “My recovery was a nightmare,” she said, “but it doesn’t matter, because I get this great door prize”—an ivory-skinned, lanky baby with a full head of hair that is beginning to fall out. “He looks like an extra in The Day After,” commented the new mom, 35, married for five years to Edward Holland, 42, a Web editor for The Financial Times who’s “really well educated, and very British and serious. The baby turns him into complete goo.” Longtime West Villagers, the couple conceived their son the first week they moved to a two-bedroom in (gasp) Weehawken, N.J. “The office became a nursery—boom!—overnight,” Ms. Felber said.

6:46 a.m.

7 pounds, 6 ounces

New York–Presbyterian Hospital

Bronx bombshell-ette! The Observer’s own David Bendayan, 29, senior account executive of classified sales, has us totally sold on this hazel-eyed, black-haired little beauty, his first baby with fiancée Ida Ramos, 32, a registered nurse at St. Barnabas Hospital in da Bronx (where the family shares a two-bedroom). “She wants what she wants when she wants it,” said the tired dad of the assertive tot, currently being coddled and swaddled by two sets of new grandparents. “But she’s going to be a sweet little girl.” And despite sleepless nights, Mr. Bendayan is working harder than ever. “I’m still motivated,” he said. “She has inspired me!” We’ll tell the boss...

5:56 a.m.

6 pounds, 12 ounces

St. Luke’s–Roosevelt Hospital

It’s a … CosmoGirl! The teen magazine’s deputy editor, Chandra Czape Turner, marked the onset of contractions by heading to the office, having breakfast at Norma’s and getting an eyebrow wax. “The whole time I was doubting myself,” said Ms. Turner, 32, also the founder of Ed2010, a networking Web site for aspiring journalists. “When you go into labor, especially your first time, no one believes you’re in labor.” After 29 hours, she gave birth to this skinny, bushy-haired, prettily pink brunette, whose nursery in a Morningside Heights two-bedroom is decorated with reproductions of Andy Warhol flower prints. “She was a little shrimp,” cooed the new mom—though already quite capable. “I had a nanny the other day say, ‘I’ve never had a child this age poop that big,’” Ms. Turner bragged. “I said, ‘What can I say? I’m proud.’” Dad is Paul Turner, 36, her husband of just under a year and a physicist at Veeco, a technical-engineering company. He has been enjoying engineering his daughter’s stroller around Riverside Park.

10:54 a.m.

6 pounds, 15 ounces

Roosevelt Hospital

For Sarit Ahiel-Clarke, a producer at Northern Lights Post, a post-production company in Chelsea, pregnancy was a snap—“I could walk around with this baby inside and take the subway and do this and that,” she said—but the post-production … yikes! “Once he was out, there was all this logistics and planning,” said the Israeli-born first-time mom, 30, married for two years to Ryan Clarke, 32, a freelance architect from Barbados. By day, their curly-haired babe enjoys reggae and Radiohead; by night, he’s soothed to sleep with Hebrew lullabies. “He has a personality,” Ms. Ahiel-Clarke said. “When you talk to him, you can see how he listens with his eyes.”