My Mini Me!

Newborn Marika

Newborn Juliana

Jack's Question of the Day

Jack and Nathan were climbing down the stairs when Jack stopped, looked Nathan in the eye, and pondered aloud, "Where's Jack's butt?"

Nathan laughed.

Jack reached around, put his hand on his rear end, and said, "There it is."  He paused then added... "Jack doesn't have any poop in it."

Jack's Question of the Day

Jack is full of questions these days. 

Tonight, while sitting at the dinner table, Jack reached up and felt his forehead, just above the eyes.  Then he asked us, "What are those eyebrows doing up there?"

Juliana's Birth Story

After weeks of anticipating her arrival, Juliana Avery made her appearance on the first day of summer... and this is the story of how it all happened.

Nathan and I awoke the morning of Wednesday, June 20 and, with packed bags in hand, said good-bye to Jack and headed to the hospital for our scheduled c-section.

 We checked in to the hospital a couple of hours before the operation was scheduled and waited patiently as my nurse prepared me for what was to come.  Admittedly, I was quite nervous.

As we waited, Nathan and I talked quietly about the excitement and anticipation we felt and I thought a lot about the last experience I had giving birth to Jack.  We made a voice recording for baby Juliana, letting her know how we were feeling less than an hour before her arrival.

The doctors performing the surgery came by to see us before the operation.  This included the anesthesiologist.  I told him about the spinal headache I had after giving birth to Jack and my almost overwhelming concern that I could experience another one.  It was a great comfort to me when the doctor shared that he'd had a spinal headache himself after a hernia operation.  He said with assurance that he wouldn't let me have another one.

I was wheeled into the operating room and, while Nathan waited outside, the anesthesiologist gave me my spinal.  Within seconds, the lower half of my body was numb and Nathan was allowed in the room.  I'll never forget the moment when I was told that Dr. Weary had already made the incision and the operation was well under way.  I hadn't felt a thing!

It was surreal lying on the hospital bed feeling nothing yet acutely aware of what was happening.  It's hard to think about this experience without comparing it to Jack's birth and the c-section surgery for Jack was such a blur.  I had been pushing for so long and must have just been so exhausted that I really don't remember much.  With Juliana's birth, I was sharply aware of everything happening around me.  My doctor talked about how this was the second c-section he had performed that day and commented that a brother of the first c-section patient had been on the news for saving a life while on vacation recently.  The song "Pumped Up Kicks" came on the radio in the operating room.  Nathan's emotional eyes frequently peered at me over his mask.

There was some trouble getting Juliana out of me.  There was a lot of tugging and pulling and jerking until I heard the nurses and doctor exclaim simultaneously as they finally yanked her out.  One of the nurses waved her in front of me for a second before taking her to another part of the room.  I could hear her wailing and crying and I nodded at Nathan to go join her.  She cried and cried and cried.  Nathan popped back and forth across the room between us while the doctor was sewing me up.

From where I was laying, I could see the nurses and Nathan hovered around Juliana and I could hear her crying, but Juliana herself was just out of sight.  I was so anxious to hear that Juliana was healthy so I quietly asked Nathan, "Is she okay?" when he came back to where I was laying and he nodded assuredly.  She kept crying.

A couple of minutes later, after he had sewn me up, I watched the doctor walk over and take a look at Juliana.  I was so envious that everybody else could see her and I strained to look over at them.  I still couldn't catch a glimpse of the baby girl.  The doctor came over before leaving the room and said everything had gone really well with the operation and Juliana was doing okay, but she did have fluid in her lungs and would need to go to the NICU until it cleared out.  Her crying was good for her because she was working out the fluid by crying so much.

I was wheeled to recovery without seeing Juliana again.

I stayed in the recovery room while the feeling returned to my legs.  Nathan came to see me for awhile and then rejoined Juliana in the NICU.

After a couple of hours in recovery I was taken to my room where I waited for Nathan.  He texted me a picture of Juliana and I asked for more.  Eventually Nathan rejoined me and we waited for the rest of the day for Juliana to be released from the NICU.  Nathan would go back and forth between us but I had to wait to see her.  Seven and a half hours after she was born, Juliana was released from the NICU and able to join us in our room!

She was even cuter in person than in the pictures I'd seen on the texts Nathan had sent!  She was perfect in every way and I was happy to see for myself that she did seem to be healthy.

We spent the next three days in the hospital healing and getting ready to come home.  I was sore from the operation but was told by one nurse that I had a high tolerance for pain.  Of course, later in my hospital stay, gas from the surgery caused extreme nerve pain, but an hour of pacing back and forth across the room (i.e. movement) helped to ease the pain.

Jack came to visit us twice while we were in the hospital.  He was excited to meet his little sister and the first moment he saw her was precious.  He gently touched her hand.

However, a few minutes later when we wanted to take a family picture, Jack was less than happy to oblige!

On Saturday afternoon Juliana and I were ready to leave the hospital.  After about a half hour reminding ourselves how to safely put such a tiny baby into a car seat,  a nurse escorted Nathan, Juliana and I downstairs with two other families and their newborns. Somehow in the confusion of three families leaving the hospital with their belongings and new babies, my pumped breast milk ended up in another family's car, heading out of the parking lot.  Almost immediately, I noticed that it was missing and Nathan and I waited in the parking lot of the hospital while the frantic nurse tried to figure out how to get the milk back to us.  Eventually, we left with the promise that we would be contacted just as soon as the other couple returned the milk to the hospital.

On the way out of the hospital with our beautiful new daughter, I looked out over the city and saw smoke rising in the distance.  "Is that another fire?" I asked Nathan (we'd had a lot already).  "It looks really close!"   That was the start of the Waldo Canyon Fire that ended up destroying over 350 Colorado Springs homes.

We would spend the next week holed up in our basement, trying to keep cool and avoid the smoky air while watching footage of the fire and snuggling our beautiful newborn.

Sweet Dreams

Yesterday morning, I went into Jack's room to get him out of his crib.

"Well, hi!" I said to him as I opened the curtains and let the light stream into the room.

"Well, hi!" he responded.  (This is the beginning of our normal morning greeting.)

"Did you sleep good?" I asked him.  "Did you have sweet dreams?"

"Yes," he nodded.

"What did you dream about?" I asked.  (This is the point in our morning chat that Jack knows he is supposed to respond by saying "Mama" but often chooses to respond by mischievously saying "Daddy" to get a reaction out of me.)

Today, Jack responded quite seriously with a brand new answer.

"Juliana."

Fuzzy Slippers!