Julia has arrived!

Sorry for the delay, folks, but it has been a whirlwind since we came home from the hospital. Julia Katherine joined us on Tuesday, March 9, weighing in at 7 pounds, 6 ounces, with a length of 20 1/4 inches. The due date was March 8, so she was only one day late, which is awesome for a first-born.

How She Got Here: The Big Night (and Morning)

My mom came to visit from Michigan during her spring break, March 5-12, which overlapped with the due date, and we were all hopeful that she would be in town for the big event. The first weekend of her visit came and went with no baby, but we had a lot of fun celebrating my birthday on Saturday with Tom's family and then shoe-shopping and running errands on Sunday. I was pretty sure something would happen labor-wise when we went out to see Tom's family on Saturday, since we would be more than an hour from the hospital, but alas, we had dinner and cake and nothing happened.

On Monday the 8th, my due date, I went to work as usual. While there, just for fun, I Googled old wives' tales about what can trigger labor. I had heard all of the stories about driving over bumpy roads (not hard to do this time of year), castor oil, spicy food, etc., but one thing I saw on the list that I hadn't heard of before was pineapple. It sounded pretty good to me, so I stopped on the way home and picked some up. That evening, a few hours after eating the pineapple, my water broke! I woke Tom and then my mom and we got ready to go to the hospital.

On Tuesday morning, after 11 hours of back labor (which means that every contraction feels like you are having a mammoth back spasm) and being able to stick to my plan of delivering drug-free, Julia joined us. Only she wasn't called Julia until the next day. Since we weren't finding out the gender, we had a short list of names for both boys and girls, but we hadn't finalized anything. Poor Julia spent almost an entire day with no name. Early Wednesday morning, we had two grandmas and one great-grandma coming to visit, so we figured we'd be in big trouble if they had to keep calling her "baby" instead of having a name. Julia was the name of one of Tom's great-grandmothers and it was a name we both loved. Katherine is a nod to both of my sisters and to a great-aunt on my dad's side. We didn't tell the grandmas the name when they got to the hospital that morning, but we wrote it on the dry-erase board in the room and they spotted it when they arrived.

Nocturnal Baby = What Sleep?

Sleep deprivation is used as a torture device in some countries, and I completely understand why. Julia sleeps really well during the day and doesn't sleep at all during the night. This has resulted in two very exhausted parents who do strange things! On our first trip to the doctor earlier this week (and my first time out of the house after being released from the hospital), I forgot to bring the diaper carrier/changing pad. This is important to have when they need to weigh the baby and she has a dirty diaper! (Oops!) They had some diapers at the doctor's office, but no newborn sizes, so the diaper we got to change her into was a little big for her. She then proceeded to show the doctor her impressive skills at demonstrating why you should always dress a baby in a diaper that fits them. The result: her first public blowout. We're so proud. The good news was that the doctor said that Julia checked out just fine, other than a little jaundice, which has since subsided considerably.

On Friday, when leaving the house for another appointment, I forgot to change out of my Birkenstock "house shoes" (Tom makes fun of me for this, but my German-speaking friends understand what my Hausschuhe are) and into real shoes. So I am driving down the highway and I realize that I am wearing sandals and socks when it's 32 degrees outside!

Tom has been amazing and has brought me flowers (twice) and done the dishes (too many times to count) and has sacrificed his manliness (multiple times) to go shopping for diapers. Plus he just looks amazing holding his daughter.

It has been difficult adjusting to a new schedule, and it's a huge accomplishment to take a shower and/or get dressed in a day. Last Thursday, I managed to get to Trader Joe's and home again between nursing sessions, and Julia was an angel at the store, sleeping the entire time (and I don't think I've ever shopped so quickly). I had three employees offer to help me carry my items out to the car--that has never happened before. I had other errands planned, but that was as far as we got that day. Of course, once getting home, it took another hour and a half to be able to put the groceries away, but it got done, eventually.

We're most blown away by how many diapers we've gone through and how a baby's smile, even if involuntary and probably caused by gas, can make your heart melt. More pictures are, of course, coming soon! We'll soon be posting a link to our new webpage, which will have a few albums of Julia pictures. Thank you to everyone for the emails, calls, cards and flowers! We're trying to get back to everyone as time permits. If I have a choice between sleeping for 20 minutes or going online, you can imagine what my priority is!

Loads of love from Minnesota!!