Welcome Julianna!

Early Tuesday morning we received quite the surprise when I awoke to the sensation or impression or something of that kind of feeling that prompted me to RUN to the bathroom. I made it just in time. David heard the “splash” and followed me quickly and asked what had just happened. I was sort of in a disbelieving state as I analyzed the situation and determined that my “water” must have just broke. David then asked what we do. Still in a bewildered state, I said that I guessed we call the midwife.

So, we did. She asked whether I was feeling any contractions. I wasn’t, but reminded her that when I had Adam, the OB broke my water for me and that within a half-hour I was in active labor. So, all of us wondering how fast our little girl would come since she “did the honors” this time, made haste for Methodist hospital.

David and I arrived at the hospital at about 4:30 AM after a brief detour to drop Adam off at grandma’s house. I was paying close attention to what few contractions I did have, though they seemed a bit scattered and not enough to produce our darling little girl.

Sure enough, after monitoring them at the hospital, the nurse confirmed that they weren’t very strong and what I did have was coming about every 4-20 minutes. YIKES! So, from 5:30 AM to 10:30 AM I began the standard practice of hall-walking hoping to engage the baby and get something going. In that time, I got to know the other 5 laboring mothers at the same time. One woman’s experience was nearly identical to mine – her water had also broke at 3:30 that morning. We were all fairly chipper (at that point, anyways…).

Finally, at 10:30 AM, the midwife offered that she had a few “tricks” up her sleeve to help mother nature along using mother nature’s own bag of tricks (i.e. not true medical intervention or drugs, etc…). Well, within 15 minutes, the bag of tricks was working and I suddenly found myself with contractions that were STRONG and right on top of each other. Unfortunately, within the hour, the little girl went “sunny side up” and my first-ever experience with “back labor” began.

What an evil little misnomer “back labor” is! Again, I thank a very knowledgeable and skilled midwife because I have no doubt that it was made much easier with her help. Finally, at the literal last minute, the little girl turned the right direction and she was born about 10 minutes later!

Was she early? You be the judge. Either she was truly 2 and a half weeks early, or about right. She came out at 8 lbs 0 oz, and was 20.5 inches long. Either way, I think she came at exactly the RIGHT time (I don’t even want to imagine having a 10-pound baby!).

We named her on the way to the hospital. We had briefly talked about names in the week prior to her birth, but as we drove there, confirmed that for both David and I, the only name that seemed to “stick” was “Julianna.” Glad to know that we were on the same page with that name was pretty cool. David’s family had a German girl named “Juliana” (pronounced Julie-ah-nah) and she was such a delightful girl, and we just really liked the name. However, we watched as time and again, people here called Juliana “Julie-anna” (anglicizing the name), and so, we decided that we would just follow suit and give our daughter the anglicized version. It’s taken some getting used to for us, but we’ve found that even some of the nurses, who never knew our German girl, use the German pronunciation, anyway. I’m about 50/50 about how I pronounce her name. Hey, at least I’m calling her “Julianna” or “Juliana” all of the time… I kept calling Adam the wrong name for about the first 2 weeks of his life! : )

Her middle name is “Deloris” after David’s maternal grandmother who passed away a few days before we were married. He was extremely close with her and it also just seemed to fit better than any other middle name we were considering.

She is such a laid-back little girl. Probably a good thing with a big-brother as fastidious as Adam. He’ll be a great big brother and take good care of her, no doubt. However, he’s pretty stressed out right now. He is trying (much of the time) to be upbeat and positive, but he is sort of manic in his behavior as he switches from snuggly to fairly poorly behaved (throwing things, breaking things, etc.). We’re doing what we can to help see that nothing has been taken away from him – only added to his world, but it may take a little while. In the meantime, we keep plugging away with lots of personal time (trips and time alone with his grandparents, and personal time with either David or I without the baby seem to help somewhat) and pray for help and suggestions to facilitate this transition a little better for him. We know he’ll survive - - we all do (except for the babies of the family).

Out of the mouths of babes...

Oh the logic of a two-year-old… Unfortunately for me, it’s usually pretty sound. We have a pretty smart kid. I’m not sure where he comes up with this stuff, but enjoy it when he does. : )

A couple of weeks ago, we were feeding the missionaries at zone conference, and as I was in charge of the money, I was trying to figure out the reimbursement for those who had done the shopping. I was given four $50 bills and needed to make change out of one of them, but of course, who has change for a $50 bill? Adam piped right up and said, “somebody rich.”

Why would he know that?

Of course, a day or two before that, we went to visit a sister in our branch who’s been stuck at work at Burger King every single day for nearly two months, now. So we went to cheer her up. While we were there, he started crawling on the ground like he was looking for something. I asked him what he was doing and he replied that he was “looking for money.” Oh – a kid after my own heart! Unfortunately, his efforts got him nowhere except a free meal…

He’s pretty doggone smart, though, and just about everyone we meet is pretty amazed at his vocabulary and gift for gab. He will talk your ears off, but since he’s usually got something interesting to say, it’s worth a listen… He knows his upper-case alphabet pretty well (he gets a little tripped up on the “V, Y, and X”) and I haven’t been actively teaching him (homeschooling is going to be a BREEZE with this kid!), is pretty solid on numbers 1-20, and just has a total thirst for learning.

Recently, though, he began “seeing” someone in the corner of our basement. I was concerned that there really was someone there that he said was a “nice guy” but occasionally he would run to David or I acting a little spooked by the “nice guy.” But he was consistent about the location of the “nice guy” – so much so that my mother-in-law even starting breaking out pictures of dead relatives and asking him if he recognized any of them.

Then, last Monday during Family Home Evening, David went downstairs to print off a couple of pages for our activity (the “nice guy” apparently sat on the printer) when Adam asked me if I “heard it.” I told him “yes” to which he replied that it was the “nice guy” talking. After some probing Adam told me that the nice guy was the printer. I’m still wary, but somewhat confident that we have an imagination at work rather than an ability for little children to see spirits. Mostly confident, anyway…

We had fun in Family Home Evening last week. David really is a champion teacher and comes up with great activities. We made origami bunnies. Of course, he also found plans for an origami Stegosaurus (Adam’s dinosaur of choice these days), and a Star Trek Enterprise origami spaceship, but those both proved beyond our skills at reading origami instructions. However, I’m now all inspired to get to work on those flower balls that my sister-in-law, Cristiane, made.

This week we start potty-training boot camp. Pray for both of us! : ) I’d rather have the baby, but we’ll see what she decides to do…