Such a sweetie.  We’ve only did a really quick session with her so far, and I need to design the birth announcements, maybe here in a minute.  But soon there will be actual family pictures for them.  We’d better get with it, I’m anxious to fill the three frames I got for them…

She’s still so tiny, of course, and she slept through the whole thing, so I still haven’t seen her eyes, but it was amazing!

I know I’m slow on responding to people about stuff, everywhere, left and right, but I’ll catch up eventually! I feel like I have no time for anything these days. Hopefully starting tomorrow things will turn around a bit as we settle into a schedule and I’ll start to be able to breathe!

My body is all beat up, to say the least — red bumps and damaged hair follicles on my arms due to the blood pressure cuff, big red marks on my back and upper thigh from tape, skin irritations on my belly from all those days of constant ultrasound gel, holes in my arm/hand from giving blood and the IV, and 3 holes in my back from those crazy epidurals — but really, I feel a lot better than I did a few days ago. At least I don’t feel like that whale that swallowed Jonah anymore. My back is really the only thing that hurts, thanks to the epidural and epidural attempts. I feel like a question mark. I know it won’t last long, I just have to limit my standing time for a bit.

But Kayleigh, she’s the real trooper. Such a tiny one and she’s already been through so much and has a long road ahead of her. She has so many tubes and cords, it’s really overwhelming. Slowly but surely, though, I am learning what they all are and do as well as the machines. She has the breathing tube that works with three large machines.

Her IV goes in through her belly button and she’s always wearing a very tiny blood pressure cuff. Last night it was on her ankle, all today it was on her arm. There are more cords and what not that I don’t know what they are yet. They probably told me, but I just can’t seem to retain it all. Maybe I should start carrying a notebook to write things down. Sounds crazy but, wow. She gets red spots on her chest and abdomen from the monitoring pads they have on her that are moved every so often. The plastic piece that holds in the breathing tube is adhered to her face and it seems like it leaves her skin there sort of dry and cracked. The plastic piece pushes on her nose.

Last night she started showing signs of jaundice so they have had her under the light all day and will be under there all night until re-evaluating in the morning, though the nurse said that most likely that still won’t be enough time and she’ll need to be under it for several days. So she wears these dark eye patch things over her eyes. They did turn off the light for a few minutes though and removed the eye patches so we could see her whole face.

And that’s really where I get to the story I want to tell.

Her nurse raised up the bed cover and took the eye pieces off. While the top was off, I reached over and put my finger near her left palm. She grabbed it tighter than she’d done it thus far.

I would have held her little hand longer but that top doesn’t stay off too long. The bed is temperature and humidity regulated and I know it needs to stay closed. So after a little bit, I started to gently pull away a bit and she grabbed my finger harder and her face turned towards me and crumpled up for a split second like she was going to cry!

I melted. A few moments later, I started to pull away again and she grabbed my finger again. This happened three times total, but the face crumpling only happened the first time. Then I talked to her a bit and said that we had to close the top now, that we’d come see her later and I started to pull away again. This time she didn’t grab my finger.

It’s all overwhelming but slowly I am learning. I know this whole process is going to take time and it’s going to be more frustrating than me being on bed rest or even bed rest in the hospital was. But we’ll make it.

And here’s Steve with one of her diapers. They had a hard time digging these up, apparently, and need to get more, but they gave us one to take with us. Normally they’d just fold up a diaper or roll it down or something but they managed to find these which should be more comfy for her.

And much thanks to all the visitors we had today! Great to see you all and sorry for harassing you with the camera. As a warning to future visitors, I plan to get your picture – Kayleigh’s going to have lots of pictures of the time she was in the NICU, including her visitors, in her baby book!
Karen, April, Michelle, Erin, Jim, Sandy, Jon – thanks all of you for coming!

It was about 10:30 am I think when I first said to my nurse, “I feel weird.” I was having tightening and such in my lower abdomen and I was thinking, “contractions??” But the monitor was showing nothing, absolutely nothing, as far as contractions go. So I was really confused, and so were my nurses.

They sent for a resident doctor and ran blood and urine tests on me. I was pretty aggravated, neither test was fun. And when the first chick tried to get my blood she missed the vein completely and that is never fun. The second one got it first try though. The tests came back normal, no infections. The resident doctor said she thought that if I was having contractions, the pain or pressure would also be up higher, at the top of my uterus. So they just kinda backed off and said we’ll watch it.

I got a shower about 2pm, finally, and it was while in there that it started to become painful. At this point, I’m thinking I must have the worst gas in the history of gas or something since they’re thinking no contractions. When I got out and got ready to get back on the monitor another nurse came in who had never seen me before and didn’t know my situation. I had some pain when getting back on my bed and I told her what was up and she said she didn’t agree at all with the resident doctor’s statement that the pain should be higher too, she said, “I think you’re in labor.”

They called the doctor on call who’s from the specialists’ office I’ve been seeing. He said, “you’re in labor, you’d better call your family now.” So I drug Steve out of work a half an hour early (but I don’t think he minded lol). I got an ultrasound then with the portable machine and I tell you what, the kid they said they didn’t think could move from breech to vertex (head down) position with so little fluid has now moved THREE TIMES. She’s gone from breech to vertex then to transverse (sideways) last weekend and then with this ultrasound I was so relieved to find she was vertex again. He told me that as long as she tolerated it, they’d let labor progress naturally. But it was clear that with every contraction, her heartbeat would drop.

So they moved me across the hall to a birthing room and I got a surprise. The whole time before they moved me, I was SO close to freaking out because I’m going… I’m all alone. But then, my aunt was there! By “chance” she and my cousin had come to visit and showed up at exactly the right time and I was so thankful for that familiar face. She helped me with my breathing because apparently, even though I’ve been through this before, I forgot everything in the heat of the moment.

From the moment I was aware of the contractions, before they were painful even, they were about 5 to 10 minutes apart. I was already dilated to 3 cm before moving over and a half an hour later was 5 cm.

Since the monitor still wasn’t picking up anything they actually put one in my uterus. Strange, and sounds painful but I didn’t even know they did it until it was done. They also put in a tube to give the baby fluid. It’s not something they can do all the time because eventually it will introduce infection but they can do it for a few hours. It was so freaking weird. I could feel her pushing on the tube. Not to mention when he checked me and I was 3 cm, he said then that he felt her head.

So they were telling me, if you’re going to get an epidural you’d better do it now before it’s too late. And I kept saying I wanted Steve to get there. But then they said, no, now. Thankfully he showed up just in time and I’m so glad because the epidural really really freaking sucked.

It took a half an hour and three tries. Yes, three. I’ve seen the spots on my back. Ugh.

The first guy took 20 minutes with his two tries. I was getting so mentally freaked out. I kept apologizing and saying I didn’t know what I was feeling and I was getting really upset. When he was done with his 2 tries, I said, “just forget it!!” And that I wanted to go home LOL. They sent another woman in and she got it on the first try. Good thing too because if she failed I probably would have started snapping people’s necks.

They laid me back down and everyone but one nurse left. That nurse started walking over across the room to the bathroom. Steve was at my right holding my hand.

I started yelling. And, lol, of course, this was at the moment my mom was at the door so she probably thought I was dying. But I’m yelling, “pressure, lots of pressure!” because they’d told me to tell them. And then, “NOW, SHE’S COMING NOW!!!”

And that she did. I am not delusional!

Technically, no one delivered that baby!

She just came right out on her own, no pushing nothing (heck, I was trying to keep her in there), right onto the bed. So yeah, I’m freaking out, going, “she’s out, she’s out!”

It all happened SO fast. Steve didn’t think even a minute had passed since they’d laid me back down. The nurse turned and started running and people started pouring in the door. I heard Kayleigh squeak a bit which was a great noise to hear and I started to cry. They started checking her and they took blood from her cord for testing and they took her to the bassinet thing to immediately get to work cleaning her and getting her a breathing tube.

After what seemed like forever, they let Steve come over and see her which is where those clearer pictures are from. Then they brought her by and I got to see her face (the rest of her bundled) for a little bit before they took her to the NICU.

She’s been here for several hours now and I’m alone in my room and wide awake and she’s down at the NICU and stable. We got to go in and see her for a little bit, even Elijah did. They explained some stuff but it’s so overwhelming. No matter how prepared you think you are, the NICU is pretty darn scary. But since we were even down there, they said that they’ve been able to reduce her oxygen percentage some. They are trying to wean her down to “real” air which is 21%. Last I heard she was at 38%, down from the 40′s when we were down there. So from what I know and am told, she’s doing really good. I expect her to be in there until about the end of June, though, more around her due date.

She’s 2 pounds and 8 ounces (not 6 like I accidentally told some people) and 14 inches long. Born at 4:29pm.

Shew!

And I tried to do some of Elijah:

I think by now you all know how he is. :P It took me all day but I finally got one that I like:

But that’s still not our photo to be used for Christmas cards. I got another idea for those!!

Well this post has been 3 days in the making, I’ve just never found the time to finish it so I’m just going to stop talking and press Publish, after posting this little bit of fun:

Yup, I was pregnant. Nope, we didn’t really tell anyone. We were going to tell our parents this weekend via way of Father’s Day and birthday cards. Then it was free-for-all. But, unfortunately, I didn’t make it that far. This may be TMI for some people, but I really don’t care, sorry.

According to the ER doctor I saw today, my pregnancy should have been at 7 weeks tomorrow. But the night before last (Wednesday) I started spotting a bit. That wasn’t good for my psyche considering I’d had a really bad feeling concerning all this for several days already and that I’d never ever had any of that when I was pregnant of Elijah. Yesterday, I thought it was going away but this morning it seemed to come back with a vengeance.

I called the doctor this morning and was told to go to the emergency room. The ER I went to, however, is actually a half an hour north, not our own here. I went up there for a few reasons, one being that’s where the doctor is.

Most of my four hours there was spent waiting on this or that but right off they took some urine, blood pressure, temperature, pulse, etc., then my blood. Ugh, my hand still hurts. She took like 4 tubes out of my left hand! I have a bump under my skin now and it’s somewhat purple. Halfway through the procedure, too, I started to feel very nauseas and cold all on the inside, hot outwardly. It was really weird and I had to lie down for a while after that, I thought I was going to puke.

Much more waiting and then the nurse came and did vitals again then we waited some more and the doctor came in. He asked lots of questions and left for some reason, I can’t remember, then came back almost immediately with the results of my blood test.

My hormone levels should have been in the 1500′s but they were in the 400′s, something like 436. Not good. At that point he seemed to change his mind from about three different possibilities to saying that I had probably already miscarried and my body was just now getting around to “cleaning up” (my term, not his).

That was the theory then that he held to from there on out. He did a pelvic exam and that was rather inconclusive. In other words, he didn’t find any fetal material to prove a miscarriage at that point. I was then released with a prescription for something else (found something else in my samples) and told to keep my appointment with the doctor. I actually moved that appointment up from Wednesday to Monday as that guy said it would be better to go Monday or Tuesday.

I turned my prescription in and my mom and I went to lunch around 3:30pm. I had had practically nothing to eat all day. Just some Twinkies Mom got in the vending machine and a little bit of water.

I don’t know if the doctor was telling me that he was pretty sure that was what had happened because he thought there was a little bit of hope or what but I personally have lost all hope. I’ve had a bad feeling for several days. Just yesterday I was talking to my long time friend and I told her that I was terrified I was going to miscarry. “Why?” She said. “I just am, I don’t know.” “You’ll be just fine,” she said. But I’ve especially lost hope since I’ve been home as, er, I’ve had something else happen that just… confirms everything I guess. And that really would be TMI, so we’ll just leave it at that.

This morning I was an emotional wreck. I’m still sad now. I mean, it’s not a bunch of tissue to me. It’s not a fetus. Not anything like that. My baby. And my baby died. And yeah, I’m upset. But I’m calmer now. I understand that these things happen, I understand it’s not my fault, but I’ll still be sad for a long time. Nothing will change that. I just need to mourn in my own way.

So there you have it, folks. Friday the 13th has finally sucked for me. I don’t think I’ve ever had a bad 13th before. But now, now I think this is the absolute worst day of my life, hands down.

Good-bye, Little One, may I see you in the next life.