hi (re: Karatz)

[Guest guest]

Hi Everybody--

I just have a quick moment and a small bit of energy, so I am writing a

group email to all of you to say--thank you so much for your encouragement and

congratulations. We came home from the hospital last night, and is doing

great. We saw the doctor today and she seems to be healthy and wonderful at

this point. A huge relief. I haven't had a chance to share the whole story

with everyone, but in a nutshell, we had our c-section one day early due to

increased contractions, the procedure went fine (other than the pain of the

spinal anesthesia and the nausea--but both were not that horrible). However,

shortly after her birth the doctors noticed that was having difficulty

breathing properly on her own, due to fluid in her lungs (probably because of

the

c-section and breech positioning). She lived in the NICU for the first 5

days of her life, as they gave her oxygen (CPAP?) and worked at clearing the

fluid out of her lungs. Their efforts succeeded and she did great (despite the

extreme fear and anxiety for all of us)--then she developed jaundice and

needed phototherapy for a couple of days. All was resolved and she was released

yesterday and here we are at home, beginning to adjust to our new life

together. The first night was pretty horrifically sleepless, and we are hoping

to do

better tonight--or at some point in the future. She is a good breastfeeder

(a bit on the vigorous side) and has a nice calm temperament so far, she will

probably just need some time to adjust to her new setting and like all new

babies, it will take awhile to learn to regulate her eating, sleeping patterns,

etc. So far we are hanging in there, and so incredibly grateful to have our

beautiful daughter healthy and safe in our arms.

Thanks for your freindship and for listening.

Wishing you well---

(p.s. --for those of you who have mentioned coming to visit, we would love

it, but could use a couple weeks to get ourselves adjusted and healed. We'll

talk soon-)-

Jen