In case you haven't heard yet wintermute and I welcomed our daughter into the world on December 14th. Her name is Isabella Grace and she weighed in at 7 lbs, 7 oz. and was 21 inches long.

I was due on January 9th, but when I left work for a routine appointment with the doctor on the 12th of this month I found out that my case of swelling wasn't as "normal" as I thought. It was severe -- I'd gained 30 pounds since the last visit 2 weeks ago!! And my blood pressure was high as well. They told me that I had the symptoms of Pre-eclampsia and needed to go straight to the hospital. Of course it scared me half to death and I'm sure I didn't drive well, but I made it to the hospital unscathed and got signed in right away.

Long story short, they scheduled me for a C-section on Thursday and at 11:36 a.m. Isabella was welcomed into the world.

The baby is doing really well. She had low blood sugar at first, but that was the only thing that was "wrong" considering she was nearly 4 weeks early. We're very lucky and blessed for that.

I'm healing well enough, having now had the staples removed this past Thursday. And as of today I've lost 58 pounds (most of that was the swelling I had). It was really insane and looking back on it I'm lucky I had that doctor's appointment scheduled for that day. Any longer and I was putting myself (and the baby) in serious danger of a stroke or worse.

We're adjusting to life with a baby now. It's amazing to see what has changed verses what has stayed the same. Mostly things just take a lot longer to do and of course there's the whole lack of sleep thing. But it's worth it, of course. No complaints here. :-)

And thankfully my family stepped up and helped us finish the Christmas shopping that we were going to do the week I gave birth. Merry Christmas to you all!!!