What's been going on

So, it's been a fairly uneventful week since I last updated. Thank goodness. Sadly, Wade and I have had terrible colds - causing more sleeplessness than having a newborn I think. Thankfully, Mallory has seemed to avoid getting, which I really have no idea how. Yes, we are psycho about hand washing and sanitizing here, but the coughing has really been non-stop. Wade seems to be over it and I am close to over it at this point, so let's hope Mallory stays healthy.

On the sleep front, aside from the cold issue, it seems we are getting a little more these days. Mallory, for whatever reason, hates her bassinet. We put her down in it and she almost instantly wakes up and throws quite a fit for a little girl. We have found however, that she LOVES her bouncy seat. So the bouncy seat it letting us get sleep. Probably a bad habit to get into, but I could not deal with another night of being awake from 2:15 to 5:15 am.

Keira is still doing well with Mallory - loves her bunches and consistently wants to hug and love on her. She is getting better about being more gentle, so that is good.

Mallory is started to have longer periods of wakefulness - she is kicking her feet, stretching her arms, and finding her fists to get them in her mouth. It's pretty cute.

Anyhow, just wanted to update you all and let you know we are surviving! I'll try to get some more pictures up this week!

Just Pictures

Home

has never felt so good. I know most of you are out of the loop, solely because there just wasn't time/energy to call everyone and tell them the situation. But here is what we have been doing the past week. Last wednesday night (a week ago), Mallory started acting fussy. Not terrible, just couldn't get her settled down. This continued through the night to the point that she didn't want to be touched with out screaming. I tried to burp her and she went nuts - we stripped her down thinking something was wrong with her back and it was covered by large red rash. So off to the doc we went. Thankfully our doc has walk in hours every morning from 8 - 10 am, we were the first ones there. Sadly, Mallory was running a fever - 100.8. Doctor basically said, with 9 day olds and fevers, we send you directly to the children's hospital. What? I was thinking they were going to tell me she was colicky or gassy or something and now we are headed to the children's hospital. Not really something you want to hear. Of course, I started bawling instantly. This was the start of many episodes of crying. So we get in the car and head to the hospital. Thankfully, we still had family in town, so there was someone to look after Keira. Get to the hospital and they tell us that they will have to take blood and urine (she had to be catheterized) for cultures and do a spinal tap. A spinal tap? On my 9 day old child? OMG. Seriously, I have been a wreck before, but it didn't even compare to this. So they take her from us to go and do these things. Oh and they have to place an iv because they will preventively treat with antibiotics while waiting for test results. This should all take about 30 minutes. Doc comes back after 30 says they got all blood, urine, spinal fluid they need and will start to try to grow the cultures - it takes 48 hours. Means we will be here at least 48 hours. Ugh. Says they are still trying to get iv in, she'll be back soon. 2 hours later they finally bring her back, extremely apologetically - they couldn't get the iv in. Had to take her to an anestesologist to get it in. She is bruised all over - both hands, on arm, both feet. Finally got it in the side of her foot. And now we just wait. She ends up having to go on oxygen because her pulse ox was in the low 80s with out it, they like it to be above 92. The doctor doesn't really give a lot of guesses as to what it could be, but said it could just be a viral infection or some kind of bacterial infection. Could also be the flu, and they give her tamiflu preventively as well as that test takes 24 hours. So again, we wait. She is still feeling miserable, doesn't want to be held, she is hooked up to all kinds of machines, it is just the saddest thing ever. I will spare you all the details, but after 48 hours, the test showed nothing growing, which indicated virus. Which was really the best case scenario. Then we just had to get her off oxygen to go home. But at about 50 hours they came back and said, well, something started to grow now. WTH? Doc said could be a contaminate from drawing the sample, so we have to wait another 24 hours to see. And they have to take more blood so they can see if it is an infection, if the drugs they have been using are treating it. UGH. I just wanted to go home and thought we were so close. Anyhow, long story short, it was a contaminate, so just a virus she had. We finally got to go home with a much happier and fever free baby on Sunday. We couldn't leave fast enough. So so so so glad to be home. Now we are just trying to be normal again and enjoy our two little kiddos. I hope to post some pictures soon. We are just trying to get into a routine.

So I really should be napping ...

but I'd rather just talk about this beautiful little baby girl instead ;) So here's our story so far ...

Night before the scheduled section I didnt' get a lot of sleep. Went to bed about 10 and woke up at 2:00 AM and that was it. I was just too anxious. Not really about surgery, just about having a healthy baby. I guess now that she is here, I can admit out loud to worrying every single day about having a healthy baby. It was a struggle on a day to day basis to convince myself that her birth day was ever going to get here. And as the day got closer, it actually got harder. I didn't want to get my hopes up I guess. We have waited a long time for her. And are so happy she is here. She truly is our little mircle. Anyway, so, didn't get a lot of sleep monday night. Arrived at hospital bright and early - 5:30 AM. We had to be there 2 hours before surgery. At that point, they start IVs, put baby on monitor (yeah!), draw some blood, mostly just wait around. 7:30 finally rolls around and things start moving. They take me back to the OR to get my epidural/spinal - wade has to wait until they place this before they will let him come back with me.

Let's just say the placing of the epidural was not good. With Keira, I had no problems, or I should say the anestesiologist had no problem. This time, ugh, they stuck me 5, yes 5, different times. I am not exaggerating. After the 4th time, I said, I don't think I can do this. I was ready to say, we are not having a baby today, I can't let you do this to me again. I was in tears. It hurt, badly. I had an episode of dizziness and came close to passing out. Had this been my first experience, we may not have had more kids - seriously, it hurt that bad. They finally called someone else and he got it in on his first shot. You should check out the bruise I have on my back from it - it's fairly nasty! So, they finally get it placed and Wade gets to come back. He of course has been freaking out because he has been out there by himself for this long not having any idea of what is going on in the OR. I was very glad to see him, even if he did look funny in his scrubs.

After the epidural issue though, everything else went super smooth. It is an amazingly quick procedure - she was out about 10 minutes after Wade got back in the room. We heard her cry before we saw her and boy does she have a set of lungs on her. She screamed for a good 15 minutes. Through all her weights and measurements and such - screamed. But believe me, that was music to my ears. Apgars were 8,9, and 9. There were lots of tears of joy in that OR. Wade got to hold her while the finished stitching me up. She has LOTS of hair. I thought Keira had a lot of hair ... but she's got nothing on this kid!

They get me stiched up and then send us back to recovery. The plan is to be there for 2 hours. They monitor all my vitals, etc and watch baby closely too. Mallory is doing perfect. At this point, I have some blood pressure and heart rate issues. Blood pressure is way too low and heart rate is way too high. I feel fine, no light headedness or anything like that, but nurses/docs not liking it anyway. They have to finally give me some meds to bring the blood pressure up which they are hoping will bring the heart rate down. It works for a period of time, but then it sorta goes back to where it was. Finally, at close to the 2 hour mark, the vitals get close enough to normal that they are trasfering us to our permanent room. The great thing at this point is that Mallory has not left our side. I was nervous that this one would have NICU time like Keira did, so it was such a relief to keep her with us the whole time.

The rest of the hospital stay was uneventful really. Still had some residual hr/bp issues, but after 24 hours they seemed to go back to normal. Mom and Mark brought Keira up and she immediately loved her baby sister. It was funny because she saw Mallory, hugged her, and then came over to me and asked me if the baby was out of my tummy! It was cute. Keira did really well at the hospital until it was time to leave and that did not go so well. She didn't want to leave me and that broke my heart. Mom said she was fine after getting out of the hospital, which I am sure she was, but it was hard to watch her cry as she was leaving. Since being home, we are still dealing with a bit of seperation anxiety from me - she doesn't want to go anywhere that I am not going - even school, but it seems to be getting better every day.

Keira has been doing great with Mallory, wants Mallory everywhere she is, loves to hold, hug, and snuggle the baby. While I am extremely happy with how well she is adjusting, it is a little nerve wracking because she isn't always as gentle as she needs to be. But she is learning!

Mallory is adjusting to the real world too. We've had one really rough night of sleep where she was awake from Midnight to 1:30 AM and then from 3:30 AM to 6:00 AM. That was none too fun - she wasn't fussy really, she just didn't want to be put down. And really, I am not complaining, I don't really want to put her down. :) But other than that night, she has slept as well as can be expected for a newborn.

Just a cute pic!

Keira is definitely going to be a reader like her mommy! This was how she fell asleep in bed the other night ...

Painting Pumpkis

Keira much prefers painting pumpkins to carving pumpkins! So she got to paint one and Wade carved one. She started out very daintily painting using a paint brush and just dabbing paint on the pumpkin. That soon turned into dipping the whole hand into the paint and slathering paint on the pumpkin!! Here are some pics!




My Delta friends ... I hope you noted the shirt! :)

Slacker

Yes, I am a total slacker. I know it. I have pictures to post and everything - but they are upstairs inside the camera and I am downstairs. And well, getting my butt upstairs is just not going to happen until I go to bed. Sorry. I'll get them posted eventually.

So we are in the final countdown here. Three more days and we couldn't be more excited! Everything is as ready as it is going to be. I have no energy left to do anything else. Mom and Mark have arrived so I can go into labor at anytime and not have to rouse the neighbors or friends. Sadly, I don't think it will matter - tuesday is going to be the day. Wade and I will be having a final date night tomorrow :)

We've got to be at the hospital at the lovely hour of 5:30 AM on tuesday and surgery is scheduled for 7:30 AM. That is assuming we don't get bumped for any emergencies. After surgery, there is 2 hours in recovery and I'm not sure the rule on cell phones in recovery. So, that is the schedule, I would say you should definetly hear something from us by early afternoon at the latest, hopefully sooner.

Talk to you all soon!