All in a week

TUESDAY: We visit the 4F clinic and get another non-stress test and an anatomy ultrasound to see how the baby is growing. Dr. Mueller lets us know that although lots of test results are coming back normal, the baby's growth is just not where they want it to be and she would probably be better served in the care of the NICU. My C-section is scheduled for 9am the next day.

WEDNESDAY: Ready to go! We are terrified, excited and hopeful - we have no idea what to expect with this baby at 33 weeks and 4 days gestation.

anticipation

9:53 am - the NICU team working on the baby in the O.R.


and into our lives on two tiny little feet
walks Margaret Hanae True
1420 grams - 3lbs 2oz

THURSDAY: Maggie's doing amazing. No need for breathing tubes or any other real life support other than an IV for nutrition and her feeding tube. She is remarkably stable and is enjoying her feeds. We can't believe how well she is. It's so strange to sit in the NICU with a baby whose alarms never go off -- she just needs to eat and grow.

FRIDAY: Maggie's feeds keep going up and they let us know that if she keeps doing well she'll probably be transferred to St. Catharines for level 2 care as soon as there's a bed.

SATURDAY: I go home and have to leave my Maggie in the care of the NICU nurses.

SUNDAY: She just keeps doing fine! feeding and growing.....

MONDAY: Maggie weighs in at 1475 grams -- more than her birth weight.

TUESDAY: In record time, she is transferred home-ish...to the General Hospital in St. Catharines. We are so relieved and proud of her and we can't wait for everyone to meet her. She is so cute and cuddly and seems to have Kie's laid back personality.

There are no words to say that will mean as much as how it feels to have her close to home, to have her in our arms and to know that she's well and safe and coming home to us forever....soon.

Keep on keeping on.....

So we had our usual Friday visit to the 4F clinic today. (the 4F clinic is the high risk pregnancy clinic at McMaster) The good news is that everything is still looking OK so far. Baby is doing well enough to not need to be born yet and the doctor said that we won't know what the future holds until we see what kind of trend is happening with baby's growth. We won't know any more about how she is doing until we get another ultrasound on Tuesday to check her growth over the past 2 weeks. I've had so many ultrasounds in this pregnancy I feel like I should be bringing my own gel to my appointments. All of this just reinforces how glad I am to be Canadian and not have to worry about health insurance or the cost of these procedures.

Anyway, so it's back on bedrest. I'm trying to find ways to feel productive while I can't do anything. I knitted my first sock. My life is pretty simple right now. Just moving slowly through the days....getting further along than I ever thought I would.

Bumpy Road Ahead

So here we are in week 32 of the next pregnancy. Quite honestly, I'm amazed that I've gotten so far without too many problems. At the 27 week 3 day mark, I exhaled -- but we've hit some rough road.

I've been diagnosed with pre-eclampsia, again, though this time it seems to be holding off. My blood pressure is well contained with medication, and I haven't had any other side effects. The big concern this time is that the baby doesn't seem to be growing as much as she should. I've been going in to McMaster for ultrasounds to check umbilical blood flow and non-stress tests (where they monitor baby's heartrate) twice a week for a while now. They are waiting until next Tuesday to measure the baby again to let us know if she's still not growing, and then a decision will be made about how to progress. In the meantime, I'm supposed to be doing kick counts every few hours to ensure that the baby is OK and still moving around. I have been seriously hyper vigilant and find myself pretty much constantly checking. I feel like they've handed me a glass egg on an uneven spoon to hold in my mouth....terrified that I'll drop it, or miss something, or that things will go pear shaped while I'm not paying attention.

Kie has been amazing, and has taken on all of the responsibilities of the house and Sophie's care so that I can be on bedrest. I wouldn't have gotten this far without him.

So we wait, again, to see what's going to happen. And our hopes for a birth where the baby gets to stay with us in room and we all leave the hospital together are dashed, but we know that whatever happens we've driven this road before....and we got through it. It's just not the path we wanted to take again.

Wink!!

What I did on my summer vacation......

Hey everyone!

We had a great summer and Sophie did so much growing and changing....she is getting so big and she learns something new every day.

In July she started to get up on her hands and knees and loved to play on her tummy...around this time we got her into a little kiddie pool at her grandma and Jiji's house.....she absolutely loved it. I watched her dip her face into the water and come up with a look of surprise on her face....then I was surprised to watch her do it again....and again....without fear. She's so crazy sometimes how she will just do something she's never done before and not be afraid. She inspires me to try to be more brave.

In August, we went to a cottage up north and spent a whole week relaxing and playing with lots of Sophie's cousins. She loves to watch kids play. She gets so excited - it's like you can see the fire in her that makes her want to get up and run and join in the games. Sophie loved relaxing and having afternoon naps in the hammock under the tree. It was the first time I traveled with a baby...difficult, but fun. Daddy had to stay behind to work so it was really hard for him to have his first week away from his girls.

I've been counting the days down to getting back to work, not gleefully, but with some hope that I can regain some of my spirit from being able to do more creative work all day. It has been hard to draw or paint or design much with a busy girl in the house. She wasn't doing great napping, either...until this month. Suddenly it's like she is on a perfect nap schedule and I have some time in the day to myself that I can count on. I'm really glad for this, because she needs the rest to grow, and because when she goes to her Grandma's (who is THANK GOD taking care of her for us when I go back to work) she will be on a pretty good schedule.

Sophie loves to pet the kitty...and to our amazement, Ophie (the cat) takes what she can get. So, ear pulling, eye poking and even spitting up on the fur has become tolerable to our kitty.

We haven't been to the doctor for a long time...mostly because everything is perfectly normal and she is doing so well. I think she must weigh about 12 pounds or so, and she has doubled her intake of solid food in the past week! She loves her peas, squash and yams....not so much my homemade applesauce (reacted with a choking sound and then spit it out and stuck her tongue out) but we try lots of new things all the time. She loved the avocado/banana concoction I gave her for lunch the other day, and I've never seen anyone gobble up swiss chard faster than her. She finally learned (thanks to Grandma R) to open her mouth for the spoon, so feeding her has become much easier and cleaner...no more fighting for the spoon. She does, however, try to drink her food from the bowl.

Last week, Sophie's rocking and backwards push style crawl was replaced with an honest to goodness, hands and knees coordinated - I'm going over there and you can't stop me - crawl. She hasn't stopped since. We knew this was going to happen but I still get a little pang in my heart when I see how quickly she is growing up and moving and getting more and more independant.

I am so proud of her. She is just such a force. One day Kie and I watched her reaching for something that seemed impossibly out of reach for her little arms...she didn't give up and just kept grabbing and grabbing until finally she managed to graze it with her fingers. This determination and strength is probably what kept her alive and fighting through the pregnancy and her extremely early beginning. I told Kie that we should have named her Will.

I am greeted every morning by her gigantic smile and big dimples (like daddy's). She has even (please knock on wood for me) started to sleep 12 hours lately. She's leaping and bounding right to her first birthday....less than one month away.

On Solid Ground!

It's hard to find toys that both entertain and fit an eight month old baby who has the capabilities of a five month old baby, but is the size of a newborn baby....

we adapt. we make do......

But FINALLY........


Sophie has grown so much so quickly and is constantly making sounds.... She loves her activity centre and is now tall enough to use it without the phone book!

I used to hate it when my parents' friends would look at me and sigh, "they grow up so fast...."

now I understand what they mean.

Sophie is almost 10 pounds. She is starting to eat solids and is teething like crazy (although no protruders as of yet). Her hair seems to grow by the minute and she is getting a temper that shows itself like a cross between me on a bad day and a land bound shark who is trying fervently to shimmy himself back into the water. We love every ounce of everything she is doing, and we are trying so desperately to drink it in...but it all seems to be with a sense of foreboding......am I really seeing RED hair on her head? is she ALREADY making growling sounds when she's angry and grimacing at me? Did she really just try to stand up on her own?

tonight she grabbed my glass off of the living room table and tried to drink out of it.

I think we're in for it.

we can't wait.

Milestones

wow....

6 months have gone by since the terrifying and amazing day when our Sophie was born. In six months, I don't think a single day has passed without us realizing how incredibly lucky we are to have gone through it all relatively unscathed. When I am feeding her and I happen to catch a glimpse of the little scars on her hands from her IV, or when she stretches a certain way and looks like a giant version of her formerly tiny self that we used to stare at for hours...we are so grateful.

This month, Sophie hit the 8lb mark! She is fitting into her 1 month clothes and her little toes reach all the way to the ends of her sleepers. We moved out of newborn sized diapers and into the stage 1 size, and she finally got to wear the sleeper that my mom bought for her before she was born - when she found out I was pregnant. I used to stare at that sleeper and think that I couldn't imagine the GIGANTIC creature that would fill it out, and I surely couldn't imagine snapping those little snaps all the way up to MY baby's chin. It was moment for me. I have them every day. I think that probably every mom does.

Sophie met with some play therapists whose job it is to gauge her development and suggest play activities for us to try together. They were really impressed with her muscle strength and focus...she follows objects all around the room and looks for where sounds are coming from -- exactly the things she is "supposed" to be doing. They judge her by her due date - January 4 - so they tell me that she should be doing the things a 3 month old should be doing - and she is. More that this, though, she is doing things that WAY bigger babies do, and it looks so crazy, because she is the size of a newborn but has the ability to sit up with support and she holds her head so steady. She loves to play with her floor gym and hit the things to make them play music.


Earlier this month, I put her down for a nap on her tummy (I KNOW -- not the recommended position but she was hospital trained and is on a monitor so it's OK with her doctor) anyway, I put her down for a nap on her tummy and came in later to look in the crib at her giant grin smiling up at me. She rolled over.



Every day she changes so much and brings so much joy to my life. She makes me want to be a better person. She makes me want to do the things I need to do to be a happier person. She makes me feel like all of these things are possible. All in all...she is the best thing that ever happened to me. I just hope that I can in some small way repay her the favour.