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).