Or Audrey's sleepy smile?
Not to brag, but man I make some cute kids!
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Lighten Up
After all my feelings in the last post, let's lighten things up around here! I think I know just the thing to do the trick...
How could you NOT love that Grayson face?!?
Or Audrey's sleepy smile?
Not to brag, but man I make some cute kids!
Or Audrey's sleepy smile?
Not to brag, but man I make some cute kids!
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Grace
Having babies born 16 weeks early has changed my relationship with God.
That seems like a given, doesn't it? A "duh" statement, because something this big, something as life-changing and earth-shattering can't be without spiritual ramifications, can it? What has surprised me though, is how deep and complex my feelings towards Him have been.
I am angry. I rage and lash out and question His plans, because how could he do this to my babies?
I am heartbroken. I watch my tiny babies fight just to stay alive and I beg and plead with Him to save them, heal them, make them better.
I am weary, tired in every sense of the word. I cling to His promises like life perservers and there are days when I just have to say "this is as far as I can go today, Lord, I need you to drag me by the collar through the rest."
But I am also grateful. So very very grateful. There was a time, in those early days in the hospital, when it was questionable if I would even have babies to worry about. The fact that they are here at all is enough to bring me to my knees with thanks.
And I am hopeful. I believe, wholeheartedly, that He can save them, that he will save them. I believe in His miracles.
My grace is enough; it's all you need. 2 Corinthians 12:9
That seems like a given, doesn't it? A "duh" statement, because something this big, something as life-changing and earth-shattering can't be without spiritual ramifications, can it? What has surprised me though, is how deep and complex my feelings towards Him have been.
I am angry. I rage and lash out and question His plans, because how could he do this to my babies?
I am heartbroken. I watch my tiny babies fight just to stay alive and I beg and plead with Him to save them, heal them, make them better.
I am weary, tired in every sense of the word. I cling to His promises like life perservers and there are days when I just have to say "this is as far as I can go today, Lord, I need you to drag me by the collar through the rest."
But I am also grateful. So very very grateful. There was a time, in those early days in the hospital, when it was questionable if I would even have babies to worry about. The fact that they are here at all is enough to bring me to my knees with thanks.
And I am hopeful. I believe, wholeheartedly, that He can save them, that he will save them. I believe in His miracles.
My grace is enough; it's all you need. 2 Corinthians 12:9
Monday, April 25, 2011
One Month Old!
Audrey
Birthday // One Week // One Month
Grayson
Birthday // One Week // One Month
To my sweet babies,
Today you are one month old! Yall are going to read this one day and not get why one month deserves an exclamation point but it so deserves one, if not more than one - I'm showing restraint here.
Look at how much you two have grown since you were born! At one month, you are still on your vents (but there has been talk of trying you off them soon!), your feedings are being increased almost daily and you have both gained more than a pound from your birth weight! Your personalities are really starting to shine and it makes me giggle at how different you already are. Grayson, you are going to be so laid back, just like your daddy, and Audrey, well... they call you Sassy for a reason!
The last 31 days have been terrifying, stressful, wonderful, incredible... there are no words that can adequately describe how I've felt. But I will tell you this: the two of you have captured my heart, wholly and completely. You barely weigh five pounds combined but the weight of your presence in my life is undeniable - my universe has shifted, tilted, and is now centered entirely around you.
Audrey and Grayson, I am infinitely proud of you, of how hard you are fighting and how strong you have proven to be already. I cannot wait for many many many more months together.
I love you two, all the way to the moon and back-
Mommy
I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness. I will build you up again -Jer. 31:3-4
Grayson
To my sweet babies,
Today you are one month old! Yall are going to read this one day and not get why one month deserves an exclamation point but it so deserves one, if not more than one - I'm showing restraint here.
Look at how much you two have grown since you were born! At one month, you are still on your vents (but there has been talk of trying you off them soon!), your feedings are being increased almost daily and you have both gained more than a pound from your birth weight! Your personalities are really starting to shine and it makes me giggle at how different you already are. Grayson, you are going to be so laid back, just like your daddy, and Audrey, well... they call you Sassy for a reason!
The last 31 days have been terrifying, stressful, wonderful, incredible... there are no words that can adequately describe how I've felt. But I will tell you this: the two of you have captured my heart, wholly and completely. You barely weigh five pounds combined but the weight of your presence in my life is undeniable - my universe has shifted, tilted, and is now centered entirely around you.
Audrey and Grayson, I am infinitely proud of you, of how hard you are fighting and how strong you have proven to be already. I cannot wait for many many many more months together.
I love you two, all the way to the moon and back-
Mommy
Friday, April 22, 2011
At Long Last
Ladies and gentlemen, it's been four whole weeks in the making, but here it is...
The Lee Family, in our very first family photo!
My heart has never been happier.
The Lee Family, in our very first family photo!
My heart has never been happier.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
An Ode to Pumping
Who has two boobs and an infection in both??? This girl.
At first I thought it was a plugged duct. Then maybe it was mastitis. The Lactation Consultant said maybe a yeast infection. My OB cultured my milk, and it came back positive for an infection called klebsiella.
Ugh ugh ugh. Let me tell you all the reasons why this sucks so bad. First of all, it makes it really painful to pump. Pumping is about a negative 32 on the 1-10 scale of fun to begin with, so adding pain in the mix makes it EVEN WORSE.
(For those of you not in the know, pumping is an alternative to breastfeeding, except instead of a cute cuddly baby doing the eating, you hook yourself up to a machine that expresses the milk for you and stores it in bottles. The thing with pumping though, is you have to do it on the same schedule as a newborn would feed to establish your milk supply. Read: 20 minutes, every two to three hours. All day. All night. And I can GARUNTEE that waking up at 3am to plastic parts is not near as fun as waking up at 3am to that cute cuddly newborn. Buuuut they tell me that breastmilk is absolutely the best thing I can give my babies, so I pump my brains out anyways.)
(Wait, can it be considered an "Ode to Pumping" if I'm talking about how much I hate it?)
Reason numero dos the infection sucks: I have to dump all the milk I make until I finish up my antibiotics. I still have to do all the work, because otherwise my supply will tank and I won't make as much milk, but all my efforts are down the drain. Literally. And we're currently in the process of testing all the milk I have in the freezer to see when exactly the infection set in. We're all the way back to APRIL THE FOURTH and it is STILL COMING UP POSITIVE OMG. Everything that comes back positive has to be tossed. We're talking hours upon HOURS of work here, enough bottles to feed my babies for weeks, IN THE TRASH. It breaks my heart.
But really, the absolute worst part of the whole thing is that I unknowingly passed the infection to my babies. They both have had blood cultures that came back positive for the klebsiella and I feel terrible. Really, I kind of feel like DFCS should just go ahead and step in and take them now because I'm obviously the worst mom in the world. IN. THE. WORLD. And I know logically that it's not my fault and that I didn't know and that there was nothing I should have or could have done different but still... I got my babies sick. My teeny tiny struggling fighting babies, who have it hard enough as it is, are sick because of me.
This "Mommy Guilt" is something serious, yall.
Luckily, they don't seem to be TOO affected by it. Their platelet counts have been low, which is easily remedied by transfusions, but they're both still active and their oxygen needs haven't changed much. The doctor said that he is really pleased with how the babies are handling it because this is an infection that has the potential to be kind of scary so we're hoping, praying, pleading and making deals with God that we've seen the worst of it and they won't get too sick.
When you say your prayers tonight, say a little prayer that my babies get better. And while you're at it, say a prayer that my boobs get better, too. We'd all appreciate it!
At first I thought it was a plugged duct. Then maybe it was mastitis. The Lactation Consultant said maybe a yeast infection. My OB cultured my milk, and it came back positive for an infection called klebsiella.
Ugh ugh ugh. Let me tell you all the reasons why this sucks so bad. First of all, it makes it really painful to pump. Pumping is about a negative 32 on the 1-10 scale of fun to begin with, so adding pain in the mix makes it EVEN WORSE.
(For those of you not in the know, pumping is an alternative to breastfeeding, except instead of a cute cuddly baby doing the eating, you hook yourself up to a machine that expresses the milk for you and stores it in bottles. The thing with pumping though, is you have to do it on the same schedule as a newborn would feed to establish your milk supply. Read: 20 minutes, every two to three hours. All day. All night. And I can GARUNTEE that waking up at 3am to plastic parts is not near as fun as waking up at 3am to that cute cuddly newborn. Buuuut they tell me that breastmilk is absolutely the best thing I can give my babies, so I pump my brains out anyways.)
(Wait, can it be considered an "Ode to Pumping" if I'm talking about how much I hate it?)
Reason numero dos the infection sucks: I have to dump all the milk I make until I finish up my antibiotics. I still have to do all the work, because otherwise my supply will tank and I won't make as much milk, but all my efforts are down the drain. Literally. And we're currently in the process of testing all the milk I have in the freezer to see when exactly the infection set in. We're all the way back to APRIL THE FOURTH and it is STILL COMING UP POSITIVE OMG. Everything that comes back positive has to be tossed. We're talking hours upon HOURS of work here, enough bottles to feed my babies for weeks, IN THE TRASH. It breaks my heart.
But really, the absolute worst part of the whole thing is that I unknowingly passed the infection to my babies. They both have had blood cultures that came back positive for the klebsiella and I feel terrible. Really, I kind of feel like DFCS should just go ahead and step in and take them now because I'm obviously the worst mom in the world. IN. THE. WORLD. And I know logically that it's not my fault and that I didn't know and that there was nothing I should have or could have done different but still... I got my babies sick. My teeny tiny struggling fighting babies, who have it hard enough as it is, are sick because of me.
This "Mommy Guilt" is something serious, yall.
Luckily, they don't seem to be TOO affected by it. Their platelet counts have been low, which is easily remedied by transfusions, but they're both still active and their oxygen needs haven't changed much. The doctor said that he is really pleased with how the babies are handling it because this is an infection that has the potential to be kind of scary so we're hoping, praying, pleading and making deals with God that we've seen the worst of it and they won't get too sick.
When you say your prayers tonight, say a little prayer that my babies get better. And while you're at it, say a prayer that my boobs get better, too. We'd all appreciate it!
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Time marches on
It's been a few days, huh? The babies are three weeks old now (well, three weeks and two days), holy moly! Which puts them at 27 weeks (and three days) gestational age.
Here's a quick update on my munchkins:
Grayson
-We have a two pound baby!!! They weighed him yesterday and he was 2lb 11oz, but the paralytic he was on last week has made him retain a LOT of fluid and his nurse said he was probably closer to 2lb5oz or so. BUT STILL! Two pounds!!!
-And they were able to weigh him today because HE IS OFF THE OSCILLATOR!!!!!! His blood gases have been good so they tried him back on the traditional vent and so far he's been doing pretty well. (Minus an episode this afternoon where his lung secretions plugged his tube and he had to be reintubated. Scariest. Thing. EVER. to witness, at least from a mom standpoint. But I digress...) They warned me that he might have to go back on the oscillator BUT TODAY HE IS OFF. Hooray!
-He finally kicked his first infection but now they think he might have another. They repeated his blood culture and we're waiting to hear back from it... pray for a negative result!
-He's still such a laid-back baby. He hardly ever gets riled up but he makes the CUTEST faces. And I swear, he looks more like Chris every day.
Audrey
-She's still my tiny girl, her last weigh in was 1lb14oz. Not far behind her brother, and she's knocking on the 2 pound mark!
-She was diagnosed this week with a PDA. A PDA is a heart problem that is common in premature babies. Before birth, a large artery called the ductus arteriosus lets blood bypass the lungs because the fetus gets its oxygen through the placenta. The ductus arteriosus normally closes soon after birth so that blood can travel to the lungs and pick up oxygen, but in premature babies it sometimes doesn't close. They can use a medicine called Indocin (which, ironically, is the same medicine that stopped my contractions) to close it. Audrey's really isn't affecting her too much right now, and sometimes they can close on their own, so the doctors have decided to take a wait-and-see approach with her. Pray that it closes easily and doesn't cause andy problems for our baby girl!
-Her oxygen requirements have been really low lately (which is good!) although the number of breaths she needs from the ventilator is still pretty high. We're going in the right direction though, hopefully she'll be off the ventilator sooner rather than later!
-Miss Thing is still just as sassy as ever. The nurses all get the biggest kick out of her, they'll position her just right with all these rolled blankets and gel pads and she'll wiggle right out of it as soon as they're not looking and get right into however SHE wants to lay. Usually, that's with her knees pulled up and her hands up over her head, regardless of any tube or wire that may be in her way. She's set off many alarms by getting wrapped up in her tubes. She's also discovered her feeding tube, and has pulled it out no less than four times in the last three days. Girl is a MESS.
I think that about sums it up... we've been busy around here! It's still very two-steps-forward-one-step-backwards and it can be SO exhausting at times. I'm SO proud of my babies though, they are such little fighters. I'm a lucky mama!
Here's a quick update on my munchkins:
Grayson
-We have a two pound baby!!! They weighed him yesterday and he was 2lb 11oz, but the paralytic he was on last week has made him retain a LOT of fluid and his nurse said he was probably closer to 2lb5oz or so. BUT STILL! Two pounds!!!
-And they were able to weigh him today because HE IS OFF THE OSCILLATOR!!!!!! His blood gases have been good so they tried him back on the traditional vent and so far he's been doing pretty well. (Minus an episode this afternoon where his lung secretions plugged his tube and he had to be reintubated. Scariest. Thing. EVER. to witness, at least from a mom standpoint. But I digress...) They warned me that he might have to go back on the oscillator BUT TODAY HE IS OFF. Hooray!
-He finally kicked his first infection but now they think he might have another. They repeated his blood culture and we're waiting to hear back from it... pray for a negative result!
-He's still such a laid-back baby. He hardly ever gets riled up but he makes the CUTEST faces. And I swear, he looks more like Chris every day.
Audrey
-She's still my tiny girl, her last weigh in was 1lb14oz. Not far behind her brother, and she's knocking on the 2 pound mark!
-She was diagnosed this week with a PDA. A PDA is a heart problem that is common in premature babies. Before birth, a large artery called the ductus arteriosus lets blood bypass the lungs because the fetus gets its oxygen through the placenta. The ductus arteriosus normally closes soon after birth so that blood can travel to the lungs and pick up oxygen, but in premature babies it sometimes doesn't close. They can use a medicine called Indocin (which, ironically, is the same medicine that stopped my contractions) to close it. Audrey's really isn't affecting her too much right now, and sometimes they can close on their own, so the doctors have decided to take a wait-and-see approach with her. Pray that it closes easily and doesn't cause andy problems for our baby girl!
-Her oxygen requirements have been really low lately (which is good!) although the number of breaths she needs from the ventilator is still pretty high. We're going in the right direction though, hopefully she'll be off the ventilator sooner rather than later!
-Miss Thing is still just as sassy as ever. The nurses all get the biggest kick out of her, they'll position her just right with all these rolled blankets and gel pads and she'll wiggle right out of it as soon as they're not looking and get right into however SHE wants to lay. Usually, that's with her knees pulled up and her hands up over her head, regardless of any tube or wire that may be in her way. She's set off many alarms by getting wrapped up in her tubes. She's also discovered her feeding tube, and has pulled it out no less than four times in the last three days. Girl is a MESS.
I think that about sums it up... we've been busy around here! It's still very two-steps-forward-one-step-backwards and it can be SO exhausting at times. I'm SO proud of my babies though, they are such little fighters. I'm a lucky mama!
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
The NICU Shuffle
A couple days ago the NICU was a roller coaster. Today it is a dance.
Two steps forward, one step back.
Grayson is doing MUCH better. Still not "out of the woods", but much much better than he was. His oxygen requirements are way down and his lung x-rays are improving. Turns out he has a little infection which is what was throwing him out of whack, so they started him on antibiotics and that has helped tremendously. The oscillator is also still working its wonders, as his blood gases have been almost perfect since he's been on it.
But like I said, he started off haaaating it and never got better, so they had to put him on a paralytic drug so he would stop fighting it and let it do its job. After a couple days he wasn't fighting as much so they let him come off it, but then he started trying to breathe over the ventilator. So he's back on it. And the paralytic messes with his blood pressure, so he had to go on Dopamine to help regulate that.
Like I said... two steps forward, one step back. Round and round.
We're just working towards our big finale number, where the four of us finally waltz OUT of the hospital and INTO our home.
Two steps forward, one step back.
Grayson is doing MUCH better. Still not "out of the woods", but much much better than he was. His oxygen requirements are way down and his lung x-rays are improving. Turns out he has a little infection which is what was throwing him out of whack, so they started him on antibiotics and that has helped tremendously. The oscillator is also still working its wonders, as his blood gases have been almost perfect since he's been on it.
But like I said, he started off haaaating it and never got better, so they had to put him on a paralytic drug so he would stop fighting it and let it do its job. After a couple days he wasn't fighting as much so they let him come off it, but then he started trying to breathe over the ventilator. So he's back on it. And the paralytic messes with his blood pressure, so he had to go on Dopamine to help regulate that.
Like I said... two steps forward, one step back. Round and round.
We're just working towards our big finale number, where the four of us finally waltz OUT of the hospital and INTO our home.
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