(yoga the day before)

Dear Jessica and the Prenatal Kula,

I know it's taken me a long time to write you all with my birth story, but it's just amazing how these six weeks have flown by.

As you all know, we had a cesarean birth scheduled since our little baby was breech. (We had tried all sorts of things to get her to turn-manual version, moxibustion, inversions!) Finally, we came to peace with the fact that we had done all we could and we scheduled the cesarean for the morning of September 16th.

On Tuesday, September 14th I went to prenatal yoga class, and felt pretty good, but a little crampy. That evening Roger and I did lots of stuff to prepare for the baby-we installed the car seat and put
together the swing. Then I went to bed about 10 p.m.

At 11:15 p.m. I suddenly woke up and felt strange. I got out of bed and - woosh-my waters had broken. There was literally water everywhere. Roger was still up, so I called to him-Honey, my water broke. We were
both a little surprised! Well, we hadn't wanted a scheduled birth anyway :)

At the time I was a little nervous because there was meconium in the water. Since she was breech, we had to go to the hospital right away, anyway, so we got our bags together and left within 15 minutes. On the way to the hospital I called everyone, including my doctor. She had promised to come in and do the cesarean no matter when I went into labor.

We got to the hospital around midnight, and waited around for about half an hour. And then things went really fast. They confirmed that she was still breech with an ultrasound, so they started preparing for the cesarean delivery. Little Daniella Jane was born at 2:03 a.m. on Wednesday, September 15. She weighed 6 lbs and 3 oz. Such a little girl! But she had lots of hair.

I was awake during the procedure and Roger was with me the whole time. Unfortunately I had a bad reaction to some of the drugs they gave me, and was shaking very hard for about two hours after the surgery. I was shaking so bad I didn't trust myself to hold the baby, but Roger held her right away and held her up to me. And as soon as I stopped shaking I got to hold my
little girl! And she stayed with us the whole time, rooming-in. We had a private room with two beds, so Roger also got to stay with us the whole time at thehospital.

Some thoughts about the cesarean-I was really disappointed when it first began to look like we would have to have a cesarean. We tried so many things to get her to turn, and then we realized, instead of
fighting this, we should come to peace with it. And I feel I was able to do that.

The surgery was stillvery frightening for me. Being in the operating room
right before they started I was very scared. But I wasn't alone-I had amazing support from Roger and from my OB. And most importantly-Daniella needed me to do this for her and I did it.

All along I thought I had been preparing for a natural birth experience, and it turns out I was preparing for this instead.

So, it's been six weeks and Daniella Jane is doing great. We've got breastfeeding down now. I'm getting used to being a mom. Some days it's pretty hard, especially if I haven't slept the night before. But
it's only sleep! She's starting to really look at things now, and smile at people, and copy faces. It's amazing how much she's changed in such a short time.

I miss everyone from class and I hope to stop by and say hi soon.

If anyone ever is in the situation where they have to have a cesarean and want to talk to someone, feel free to give them my number and email.

If you want to see more pictures of my little squirrel, you can visit her website: http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/grads/lillehaugen/DJS.htm

Lots of love and best wishes to all of you!

-Brook