Bath Time!

Julia's been keeping us quite busy, and has been awake a lot more (mostly at night, but sometimes during the evening too). We love playing with her when she's awake and looking around. For being so tiny and young, she seems to be really alert! We also finally gave Julia her first full bath tonight too! Up until now we've just been giving her sponge baths. She never seemed to like them, so we were a little nervous to fully submerse her in water! She actually seemed to really enjoy her bath tonight. It was a lot of fun to get her all sudsy and splash a little bit with her.

Cutie Pie

Sleepyheads (she was a little too bundled up...one of our new parent moments!)

Totally relaxed

Sleepy Jules and a tired Mommy (it's a theme!)

Daddy time!

All bundled up to go shopping with Grandma and Mommy

I think she's going to be a blonde kid...

Shopping is exhausting!

Here are some random photos of our beautiful Julia in her first few weeks (She'll be 3 weeks old on Saturday!). Everything is going really well, especially now that Grandma is here! At Jules' last weight check she was about 8 lbs. She also had a hearing test that didn't go too well, so we're going back on Monday for a follow-up appointment. Hopefully she was just congested and everything is ok. Other than that, she's growing lots and keeping us busy! Enjoy the photos :).

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone! Today is also Julia's original due date, but she's now 10 days old :). Grandma and Grandpa Bryant sent a really cute "Kiss me I'm Irish" outfit, so I got her dressed up this morning and took some photos. The other ones are just random ones of her being cute. In the one of her in the yellow blanket you can see how much really blode hair she has. Tom and I think she's going to have his hair, and it looks like she has his forehead, eyes and ears too! I think she has the Bryant mouth though. Things are going well for all of us! She's such a joy, not so much in the middle of the night...but we're really enjoying being parents, despite the weird sleep schedule!

Welcome to the World Julia Hope!!

Feeling great, thanks to the epidural

Fetal heart rate (top) and contraction monitor (below)

Julia Hope, 1 hour old

Julia and mommy

Daddy changing her diaper

Just about 24 hours old

Baby blues!

Kiss from daddy

Julia is full and sleepy

Being burped by daddy

Fussy girl!

Feeling a little tired..

All ready to go home!!

Starting Tuesday night (of last week), I started having contractions that were waking me up, but weren't very frequent. All day Wednesday at work I was having contractions that were getting more regular, but were still tolerable. I finally asked Tom to drive me home in the afternoon, and later that night we called the hospital. they said we could come in, but when they checked, I was only dialated about 2cm. The same thing happened Thursday, all day contractions and a trip to the hospital, and I began to get very uncomfortable. By Friday, I was in so much pain that Tom stayed home with me, and we just tried to do things to distract me and were trying to avoid another false alarm at the hospital. Athena called, and then I called Mom, and Mom convinced Tom we should probably go to the hospital anyway. Once we got there, the best thing we heard from the nurse was "good news, you're going home with a baby!!" I was admitted about 10 pm, by 11:30 pm I had an epidural (amazing!!), and was pushing by 4am. Julia Hope was born at 5:08 am, and came out screaming. They immediately put her on my chest, Tom cut the umbilical chord, and they gave us about 2 hours to ourselves to hold her and breastfeed. I feel extremely blessed that the delivery was relatively painless and quick. I also had none of the common delivery "battlewounds:, so I think my recovery is going to go very fast! The next couple of days we spent in the hospital learning how to nurse, change diapers (ok, I have to give Tom credit for doing 98% of the diaper changes!), and calm down our gorgeous daughter. It was an absolutely amazing experience, and undoubtely worth all the months of discomfort :). Enjoy the photos! There will be tons more to follow...we can't get enough of our baby girl! For right now though, we're enjoying our first night at home as a family :).