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Like most new parents, we can honestly say that nothing we had ever experienced before could have prepared us for the resulting changes to our lives, and she has completely re-centered our existence, our priorities, and viewpoints.
Before her birth, being a couple of a rather analytical nature we did a full court press in researching nutrition, health and well-being during pregnancy as well as all of the available delivery options. We decided to try a natural childbirth using "The Bradley Method," and had a wonderful water birth in September 2001. (Chris, being a fisherman, likes to say he "caught an 8-pounder that day")
We decided to breastfeed Annah, but after weeks of unsuccessfully trying (and non-stop crying by Annah), we decided to exclusively pump and bottle-feed. Through much research, effort and just plain stubbornness, we figured out how to pump and produce enough breast milk to keep Annah exclusively on it until she was 18 months old
(we added it up and by the end of 18 months, Suzanne had produced over 120 gallons of Breast Milk -- enough to fill our aquarium twice over. Now there's a visual...)
We definitely count this as one of our proudest accomplishments and Suzanne looks forward to having a great answer ready when Annah is older and spouts off something like "You've never done anything for me!"
'Our Little Juel' is not only named after our daughter, but is a direct result of her birth. As Yogi Berra once said, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it", and after having Annah, we came to realize that too much of our focus had been on our high-stress corporate jobs, our high-strung careers within them and things that - really - are secondary in life. From the difficulties we encountered as we learned our way along, we felt we could help smooth the way for others and saw this as the perfect opportunity to begin a business focused on just that. And, of course, to spend more time with our own family.
We were blessed again in 2005 with the birth of of son, Ian David Juel. With all the trials Suzanne had with nursing Annah, our experience with Ian has been absolutely opposite. Suzanne had built up such a wealth of knowlege of how to make breastfeeding work, and Ian took to it like a fish to water. Now Ian is 13 months and still going strong.
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