Sunday, August 2, 2009

Julia Louise Sharp

We have a new addition to our family! Julia Louise Sharp arrived on Monday July 27th at 5:21pm. She was 6 lbs. 7.7oz. and 19 1/2 inches long. She is a healthy and absolutely beautiful (no bias there) baby girl. She is tall, but very skinny. So skinny, in fact, that the new born diapers kept slipping off of her little rear, so we had to put her in preemies. She has really long fingers and toes, black hair, and her daddy's nose.

The delivery went really well. Actually, we had one scare. I had a really big contraction at exactly the same time that my water broke, which I guess tripped out the uterus because the contraction just would stop. Julia's heart beat dropped to 35 beats per minute, which is about a third of what it should be. They had to give me a shot of medicine to stop the contractions. Her heart beat came back up, but it took her a little while to stabilize. The doctor decided to give me an epidural right away in case she didn't stabilize and they had to do an emergency c-section. It was really strange to be getting an epidural when I wasn't even having any contractions. Anyway, they watched her for about an hour and a half and then decided she was stable enough and started me on pitocin to get the contractions to start up again. Labor was pretty easy after that since I couldn't feel any contractions. I did have feeling in my legs still so they actually let me use different labor positions to help the baby drop faster. When it came time to push, the doctor told me I was actually pushing too hard and was going to tear. He told me to just laugh really hard and what do you know, I laughed her right out. Through it all I only ended up having to get two stitches, which is way better than last time. The epidural was mostly worn off by the time Julia was born so I could feel everything as she was born. It was a very interesting experience. With Ethan I never really got the urge to push or anything else for that matter. This time I could feel everything, although I suspect that I had enough of the medicine still left in my system that I still didn't feel the full amount of pain that I would have without anything. They gave the baby to me right away so she was able to nurse within 15 minutes of being born and she ate for nearly an hour that first feeding. Overall it was a really great experience.