Giggle's Zoo: Koala! Her Birth and First Weeks

Whew!! I'm not pregnant anymore!! My tiny, adorable, sweet, calm, wide-eyed, beautiful, darling daughter has arrived!! Koala joined our family at 10:04 pm on Tuesday November 30th, 2010. She was a tiny 7 pounds 10 ounces. Not my smallest baby - that was Tortoise at 7 pounds 2 ozs, but MUCH smaller than the other 4! Zebra was a whopping 9/13! - I tell ya! delivering a 7 pounder is easier by far! ;-) She was 21.25 inches and has black hair and DARK clear Blue Eyes. She's gorgeous ~ but I'm not biased or anything!

Lion holding me through a contraction...

Our 5th Home-Birth went off without a hitch... if you ignore that my Mom Eclectus was unable to make it (oh she tried!! she left my home state Tuesday morning and BOOGIED for 13 hours straight to get here on time, but missed the birth by a scant 2 hours *frown*). And Lemur was sick so was also unable to help as a birth assistant to Stork, but Stork had help in the form of a midwife-in-training (who will not receive a zoo name), who was pretty awesome :)

Me meeting Gorgeous Koala for the first time :)

My Beautiful Koala - just 1 hour old

My Mom Eclectus meets Koala. She is 2 hours old here.

The next morning, Koala's brothers and sisters got to meet her for the first time....

Here she is!! Your new baby sister!

Vixen is a Big Sister!! And she LOVES it!! ~ I know this picture doesn't LOOK like she loves being a big sister, but she NEVER misses an opportunity to kiss Koala and ALWAYS wants to help by throwing out her diapers. :)

Hello Baby Sister!

Silly Monkey got to hold her "All By Myself!"

Zebra was fascinated by yet another baby sister :)

Biggest Brother Elephant holds Tiniest Sister Koala

Tortoise LOVES her sister on sight!

Koala's first week was a bit trying as she developed a pretty severe case of newborn jaundice (both Tortoise and Zebra had it as well - both required bili-lights). After 5 days and nights under Stork's Bili-lights (thank God we were able to have them at home!! - unfortunately the lights had the added side-effect of migraines for Mama, but we dealt as best we could. Lion and Grama Eclectus were awesome taking care of me and helping give me a break holding tiny girl for a few hours at a time under the lights. You guys ROCK!)...