Julie Erika is here!

The last week has been a complete whirlwind! I will post a more detailed birth story in the coming days, but here is the readers digest version.

- Friday afternoon around 4pm, started having contractions.
- She was born at 12:05pm on Saturday. So, total labour was 20 hours.
- In the end, she was delivered with the help of a vacuum extractor since she was not making much progress down the birth canal and she was starting to show signs of distress. So, a doctor came and did the assisted delivery, but he said that I did most of the work, he only needed to help a little.
- I did need a small episiotomy, but everything is healing up nicely.

And, I did this all with no drugs of any kind. I think that gives me the right to brag ;)

Details: Julie Erika T., born 12:05pm, weighing 8 lbs, 11.4 oz, 20 inches long. She is the most beautiful baby I have ever seen in my life!!!! Completely love at first sight!

Because she was delivered by vacuum, she has a cranial hematoma on her head, which is nothing to be concerned about, she just looks a little funny. It will go away in 2-3 months, which is a long time to wait!

We were having a bit of a rough start breastfeeding since my milk didn't come in until yesterday. So, she was severaly dehydrated. She had lost almost an entire pound! Luckily, we caught this early. The dehydration in combination with the hematoma caused some severe jaundace and we had to take her back to the hospital on Tuesday evening where she underwent phototherapy. They put her under special lights to clear the jaundace. Apparently jaundace is very common, but her case was quite severe. But, they caught it in time and she is just great now. She went off the lights at 8pm last night and we were able to bing her home around 11am this morning.

I hated having to take her back to the hospital, but at least we had a private room and Carlos and I were able to stay right in the room with her (they brought in 2 cots for us). So, that was amazing... I literally did not leave the room except for a half hour yesterday morning to go to the caf to get some breakfast. Other than that, Carlos went down and brought me food.

It was really scary to have to take her back to the hospital. Especially when I was watching them try to put in an IV, they tried many times and all over her body before they finally got one in. That was too hard for me to watch, so the midwife took me out of the room and calmed me down a bit. But, she is doing great now, so I am VERY relieved.