Thankful

In light of everything that has gone on this Summer and Fall with our family, I have made a list of things I am thankful for. It can be easy to fall into the "woe is me" feelings, and I always want to remember the things I have to be thankful for.

Here it is:

• A beautiful, healthy daughter.

• The baby being bottle fed so Joel can get up with her in the middle of the night during weekends.

• 2 beautiful healthy sons.

• A husband who has a new resolve to seek the will of God for his and our life.
• An immediate and extended family who has been a support to me physically, emotionally and spiritually.
• The realization that God is the perfect Father and yet His kids mess up all the time. I can take it easy on myself that my kids aren't perfect (Thanks Lindy!).
• A roof over our heads, Joel's great job, cars to drive and food to eat.
• Being able to say I experienced "natural" childbirth.
• 3 weeks of sleeping through the night after Olivia was born while the nurses took care of her.
• John, JohnPaul, Jesse and Josh.
• A bi-polar roomate that helped scare reality back into our family.
• Living Hope Church and Pastor John Bishop.
• That the boys 'colored' on my cedar chest with my deodorant and NOT crayons or markers or something else I can't get off!

Three kids...it's an adjustment!

Olivia has been home now for 4 weeks and is doing really well! She is 7 weeks old now and weighs about 7lbs. She's eating like a champ and growing like a weed. We are so happy to all be at home together getting to know each other and learning to be a family of 5. My doctors are still having trouble stabilizing my platelet count so I am finishing up the 4th (of 4) i.v. treatment of Rituxin tomorrow. Hopefully, this medicine will do the trick and we can REALLY get to being a "normal" family again.

Hunter is now 2 and has really gotten BOSSY! We are constantly reminding him to talk nicely to Mommy and Daddy and Will, and to use his kind words. He's stinking cute though, so we have to make sure to turn around before we laugh at him so he doesn't think his behavior is appropriate!

Will and I are going to start doing "school work" since we weren't able to get him started in Preschool this fall due to all the baby/health stuff that was going on. We're going to try to get him in to the pre-k. class at our church this January.

Both boys really love their sister "Baby Olivia" as Will calls her and "Eeyah" as Hunter calls her. This girl does not lack for attention!

She's Coming Home!

A message left by the Doctor on our voice mail this afternoon said that we would most likely be able to bring our baby girl home tomorrow. I cannot even begin to say how excited I am to have her home with us. The last three weeks have been so trying and while I have totally realized God's amazing grace in a brand new way, I am ready to have my family together so we can all get to know each other.

I assembled Livi's dresser today and Joel painted the bed we bought for William so that we can work on moving the boys in together and changing the nursery over from trucks, cars and primary colors to all things pink and "vintage". I am totally nervous about the boys sharing a room. I'm pretty sure they'll think it's 24 hour play time and not sleep time. The good news is that we have a fourth bedroom that's just being used as a playroom right now, so we can separate them if we need to.

I have so much left to do before we bring Olivia home so I better run for now!

Olivia is here!

Olivia Jenee Fahndrich was born on October 6th at 7:52pm. She weighed 5lbs, 7oz and was 17 1/2'' long. She was born 7 weeks early and as a result is up in the N.I.C.U. until she learns how to eat from a bottle and/or nurse all of her feedings. Sucking, swallowing and breathing all at once for a 33 weeker is hard work! Right now she is "nippling" every other feeding and the alternating feedings are being gavaged. We have heard differing reports but the most common is that early babies tend to "get it" somewhere between 35 and 37 weeks gestational age. Olivia is 35 weeks gestational age today, and two weeks old tomorrow. She actually has done a great job at her last couple feedings and I am hoping she just gets stronger and better with each one. As she does better, she'll move to nippling two and gavaging one until she is strong enough to nurse or bottle feed at each feed. She'll need two to four days of nursing and/or bottle feeding the amount they want her to eat at each feeding before she can come home.

I know a couple people have been asking for my birth story, so here's the story!

We had Joel's sister Jenee and her boyfriend Drew over for dinner with Drew's brother and sister in law (Matt & Amber). We wanted to meet them and since I was on bed rest (And what do you know...had free food being brought in) we figured we'd have them all over for dinner and a quiet night in. After dinner, we were settling in with dessert to watch "The Office" and as I sat down next to Jenee, I felt a tiny "pop" and realized that my water had broken. Not wanting to cause a scene in front of the company that we were just meeting for the first time, I went to the bathroom where the "gush" happened. My water had for sure broken. We threw some things in a bag (don't forget...we weren't expecting her for at least another 4 weeks!) and told Jenee she was in charge of the boys and headed to the hospital.

At the hospital, they told me that since I was so early they weren't going to do anything to supplement labor, even though my water had broken and that "There had been women who stayed in the hospital for 3 weeks with ruptured membranes before". Fantastic. My platelet count was still seriously low as I had only had the first half of my IVIG dose that day, so they decided to run the 2nd half over night rather than the next day as originally planned. At some point on Saturday, my OB decided it would be best to augment my labor and get the baby delivered because of my low platelets. She wanted to do a platelet transfusion simultaneously so that I would have enough platelets to get through delivery. That transfusion got me up from 17k to 55k, but you still have to be 100k and have been stable around that number for 24 hours before they'll give you an epidural. The anesthesiologist (who looked younger than me and has NO children of her own) came in to tell me I couldn't have an epidural (which I already figured) but she kept making comments about me being a "little uncomfortable" rather than being paralized for life. A little uncomfortable? After about 10 minutes and her having said that about 5 times in those 10 minutes, I gave Joel a 'look' and he, way more kindly than I would have, asked her to leave. I guess the doctors and nurses gave her crap when she used the same phrase with them. A little uncomfortable. So...I dialated to 5 and was pretty much ready to die (it was about 7 at this point). At that point with the pitocin (which they started at 4pm), I was about 3 hours in and really in pain. My nurse decided to give me one more dose of Fentanyl (I was only dialated to 5 after all) and let me get in the tub hoping that would relax me. About three contractions into the tub, I had that uncontrollable urge to push and pulled the call cord hanging next to the tub. About 10 people came running! 2 nurses for me, several Neonatal doctors and nurses and eventually, the two OBs on call. That was super awesome since I had been in the tub and was totally naked, and trying not to deliver my baby in the bathroom (We would have had to name her Rian!). I was hoisted out of the tub by my wonderful husband, and put on the bed (a blanket thrown over the top of me) just in time to barely push twice and deliver Olivia's head. The doctor got there and put her gloves on in time to deliver the rest of the baby --barely.

Olivia had a little bit of trouble breathing at first because of the fentanyl (which they typically won't give you within an hour of delivery for that reason) but she was fine after that wore off. She's breathed like a champ ever since!

Conversation Overheard

Today, driving to church, we stopped at Starbucks. Because we often run out of time on Sunday mornings, the boys are treated to bagels and chocolate milk (or vanilla milk if they're wearing light colored clothes...but I digress). As we pulled into the drive-through, we overheard this conversation in the back seat of the car: Hunter - "Brubruh? You want egg-bowl (bagel)?" Will - "Yes, I want a bagel". It just struck us funny that 1) Hunter can ask a question in a full sentence (almost) at less than two and that 2) William understands what Hunter is saying! Hunter followed that up with "Brubruh? You want chocolate mulk?" and before Will could answer, clear as day we heard "Daddy? Please have chocolate mulk??" So...that was our cuteness for the morning so far.

Baby Bump & Blood Update

Well, still no laptop, which means no pictures, but in case anyone is reading and hasn't been updated on what's going on, I thought I'd share!

My hematologist has had an insanely difficult time controlling my I.T.P. this pregnancy. We were using the steroid "prednisone" to get my platelets to jump up then they plummet rapidly when I start to taper off the medicine. After a while the treatment was not working as effectively and my platelet count hovered in the 25,000 area for three weeks. I had IVIG done three weeks ago as an alternative to the prednisone which caused my platelets to respond beautifully (They jumped to 477,000) but had massive side-effects. The treatment took 14 hours for two days (total of 28 hours) rather than 3 hours for two days because they had to run it so slowly to control migraine headaches. I ended up spending one night in the hospital and leaving the next night at 2am. Three weeks later, however, my count was down to 5,000 which is basically low enough that I could spontaneously start bleeding for no reason and poses a huge risk to myself and the baby.

I am back on Prednisone and in 12 hours I jumped from 5K to 12K so we're rechecking the count on Monday. If I can stay in the 30-40K range until closer to delivery, we'll all be happy campers. EXCEPT - Prednisone completely messes with your blood sugars. I go in on Wednesday for my glucose screen which will likely come back positive for gestational diabetes. I will probably have to be on a diabetic diet and quite possibly insulin for the remainder of my pregnancy or as long as I'm on prednisone. As of right now, the course of treatment will be to adjust prednisone to keep my count up and closer to my due date, do one more round of IVIG and schedule an induction within the following week so that my count and the baby's count are high for delivery and to ensure I can have an epidural if I want one! (Platelets have to be over 100K for an epidural)

I will keep you all posted!

Update

Our laptop suddenly died a couple weeks ago and that is where we keep and upload all of our pictures. In the meantime, Joel and I are sitting on our boys' miniature chairs and checking our email etc., on the huge old desktop that the boys use! It's fun times...for real. We should have the laptop up and running soon and I'll get some new pictures up then!

Beautiful Boys

Our friend Natasha met us down at Esther Short Park to take pictures of the boys. They turned out SO GOOD! This is just a few of the pictures.

Fun at Klineline Ponds

Hunter checking out the tunnel.
Baywatch, Baby!
Splash!

The boys and I headed to Salmon Creek Park today before it got too hot and played in the water with some friends! I didn't realize the park was only 2 1/2 miles from my house, and though you have to pay $2 to park, they have a great fountain for playing in and the "lake" to swim in. The boys had a blast!

A Few More Pictures...

Not my kid, but isn't she cute?
"These crazy kids!"

Hunter doesn't quite get Ring around the Rosies.

"Should I have another cupcake?"

My Sweet William.

The Day After...

Well, I've been looking at this blog thinking I should totally start it at some point and decided today should be that day even if it's just a short post.

Yesterday we headed over to Aunt Lynette & Uncle Dan's house to have a BBQ and watch the fireworks from their driveway. For those of you who have never been, they have a super nice driveway that's shaded all afternoon. And from the driveway, we have a perfect view of the fireworks show done at Happy Valley Park! It's great! We set up our lawn chairs and watch the show, then try to beat the traffic home right after. This was the first year Hunter got to stay up for the show and he was NOT interested. He really wanted to get down and do ANYTHING else. William sat and watched for a while (until then he finished his candy), then crawled up under a blanket with "Uncle" Charlie and snuggled until it was time to go. He had his eye on that blanket from the moment Candice brought it out of the car (it was so not cold out)! The day was pretty uneventful, but restful and fun to be with family. It's one of those days that is laid back and we look forward to every year. We also really look forward to having a bathroom close by and not having to use port-a-potties! Unfortunately, I left my camera in the car, and this is the only picture I have from the day. Poor Hunter at like 10:00 pm, exhausted and sweaty, ready to go nite-nite.

Coming Soon