Cassandra Lynn was born at 7:22 AM on April 28th. She weighed 5 pounds 15 ounces and 21 inches long.

DH and I had taken a Bradley class, written a birth plan, and planned to have a drug free birth. After 27 hours of labor, my midwife recommended oxytocin to speed up contractions and an epidural so I could get some sleep. After all that time I welcomed the pain relief and will probably do it sooner next time. 5 hours later Cassandra was born.

While in the hospital, the baby had trouble maintaining her body temperature and her heart rate was slightly slower than average (140 average - hers 135). Our pediatrician order extra blood work to rule out infection and an EKG to make sure the heart was okay. Everything looked fine when we took her home 48 hours after birth.

We visited the pediatrician 2 days later because he wanted to check the heart rate again. She was undressed for about 5 min. so they could get a weight check. This was enough to chill her and again her temp was low. We then had to check and record her temp several times a day for the next 2 days. When we returned to the pediatrician to report our temp checks, he noticed her jaudice and tested her bilirubin levels which turned out to be 17. He perscribed home photo therapy for her. While on the photo therapy, her levels rose to 19.8, and during this the state mandated galactosemia test came back with an extremely low level. The pediatrician switched her from breast milk to soy formula and admitted her to the NICU at the hospital.

The baby is now home and we are still waiting for the results of the retest for galactosemia. She acts like a normal, healthy baby, but no doctor has been able to figure out why various strange things keep coming up in her blood work.

DH and I have always been extremely healthy, and there are few medical problems in our family history so the last 2 weeks have been quite unusual. We are optomistic that she is fine, since she acts fine has already gained half a pound.

Sorry this got so long, but it has been a long two weeks.