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!