Sunday, February 17, 2008

Victoria Julieanne Nielsen was born Feb 4th at 11:50 pm. She was 7 lbs 14 oz and measured 21 inches. Tim liked the name Victoria (he pronounces it with a spanish accent) and Julieanne is his sister's name. She is so cute. We can't stop kissing her.

We went into the hospital around 6PM after Josselyn’s doctor told her she was dilated to 5 cm. At around 11:30pm she was finally ready to go and the doctor arrived. With only a half hour till midnight we were convinced that our new addition would come after midnight but the doctor had a different idea. As soon as he arrived Josselyn told him that we thought it would have been so cool to have a baby on 2-4-08, and as soon as he thought about it he said, “Yeah that would be pretty cool.” After getting everything setup it was 11:42 and time was running out. The doctor got ready then calmly told Josselyn to push. After 3 pushes she was out. Josselyn watched through a mirror for the first time and kept saying “wow” as the baby started coming out. As soon as the baby was out Josselyn and I said at the same time “It’s a girl.” This is our last baby so we are really trying to enjoy it as much as possible. I have to say that for anyone thinking about waiting to find out what sex your baby is I have to say that it was worth the wait.
After all the messy stuff was taken care of the baby and I went up to the nursery for her first bath and to do her picture and shots. My poor wife was getting prepped for surgery to, in her words, “tie, cut and burn her tubes.” She received some additional anesthetic through her epidural tube and as they took her to surgery she started hemorrhaging. The doctor gave her some medicine that would help her uterus contract which should stop the bleeding. After the baby was taken care of and sleeping I started getting worried about Josselyn because she had been gone for a long time. I went back to the room she delivered in and she was there still trying to recover from the after affects of that medicine. She was shaking uncontrollably. I cannot tell you how scary it is to see someone you love so much in a situation like this. The nurse told me in her condescending tone that “The shaking is normal because of the pills she took.” I’m sorry but shaking uncontrollably is never normal. I tried to do whatever I could to try to help her relax but I refused to relax myself. After an hour and a half the shaking subsided and she started to seem herself. At about 2AM we moved up to the recovery room and settled in for a long night of waking every two hours to try and feed our new daughter.

The next two days kind of all blurred together as we tried to juggle Sydney and Alejandro from grandma’s house to friends houses and then to the hospital. All this time we kept trying to figure out what we were going to name our daughter. About two months previous I had a dream about my older sister Julieanne and I had told Josselyn about it and that I think we were going to have a girl. I also told her that if it was a girl I thought we should name her Julieanne. At the time it sounded like a good idea but now that the time had arrived I was not so sure. I love my sister very much but I was really nervous that if I named my daughter after her she would take it the wrong way. In the end Josselyn convinced me that a few months ago I was sure and if it was a good idea at that time then it is still a good idea. So we named her Victoria Julieanne Nielsen, I thought of the name Victoria when thinking of my grandma who passed away a few years ago. Her name was Viola but neither of us liked Viola so Victoria was the next obvious choice :)
I have thought a lot about what kind of person Victoria is going to be and there is one reoccurring word that continues to come to mind whenever I think of her future in our family. One word that I see when I look into her tiny little face. One word that I trully beleive will describe the type of person she is . . .

Peacemaker