I LOVE MY LIFE

Life has changed in so many ways. I find myself viewing things differently than I did before Kara was here. For one, I never...NEVER take things for granted anymore (thanks Kristi for opening my eyes to that on your blog). It's almost just too hard to imagine how I view things in a different kind of way. My main focus now is my child...it's so weird to say that...my child...my daughter.

Speaking of MY DAUGHTER (well Tim had some to do in her) she is growing like a weed. Technically she will be 1 month old on the 28th, but yesterday I gave birth 4 weeks ago, so when people ask how old she is I just say 4 weeks. I haven't posted in a week...ok 8 days, so I thought I would quickly update, before getting back to my cleaning...yes...cleaning...I've gotten motivation and energy back to go crazy in my house...it just feels so cluttery in here with all her stuff! ANYWAY....our WIC appointment was last week and my little Tubby Tubby weights 8lbs 9oz already, we have outgrown our Newborn clothing and are well on our way to 0-3month clothing. Although depending on the brand she does fit into some 3-6month clothing already. I could really go on and on and on on how much I love being a mother, everyday is a new day and new first. I find myself taking pictures everyday. My parents are in Florida for the week and they get 3-4 text message pictures a day (which I don't think my mother realizes that they cost money yet...sorry mom...it's for Kara though). She grows everyday and makes me smile all day long.

She has been getting alot better...along with me...She still gags ALOT, but I have myself believing its because that's all I do...I gag at the littliest things. I don't panic anymore when she starts gagging, I usually just let her do her thing and come out of it. If it's a really hard gag, I may pick her up and pat her on the back, but I usually just glance at her. YEAH for me!!! We monitor her just at night and she is now in her own bedroom at night sleeping, I just don't think she liked her bassenette very much, she never slept. I think it's because of Daddy's snoring, but we will never know! We have started...yes...started (4 weeks later) trying to get into a routine...pattern...etc. We have our nighttime routine almost down...2oz at 730-800 then bathtime, rubby rubby time, try to keep her awake for about 30-45 minutes then 3-4 more oz and she's out around 10ish and sleeps until 430-500a.m. She gets a bottle then and goes back to sleep until about 9-10 when shes up for about 2 hours after her bottle. So I'm kind of liking that a little bit, although I told Tim this morning that I need to get out of the habit of putting her to bed late at night and sleeping late in the morning because it will be really hard for me when I go back to work.

We go back to court tomorrow for more crap...maybe tomorrow will be the judges ruling, but somehow I think it won't be! And then on Thursday is our 1 month check up, so if I remember and things aren't going hectic I will post more then.

P.S. If you people have time could you please pray for our "couple best friends" Joe and MaryBeth lost Joe's dad this morning of Heart Failure, he's been in the hospital for about a month, he was a great guy. He prayed for Kara when she was in the hospital with the minister that came to see him everyday. He will hold a special place in our hearts. Please remember him.

I'm so happy to be a MOMMY!!! I just had to post a couple pictures of me and my princess. My love for her grows daily!

p.s. not to brag, but I'm just so damn proud, after 3 weeks I'm in my pre-prego jeans (the button ones...no stretchy shit)...I'm so happy I'm going to keep going because in 7 short months and 2 days I'm going to be in a pretty white dress at my wedding! But I have to admit the stretchy ones were nice, it didn't take as long in the bathroom, didn't have to fiddle with the button and break a nail, which I did today!

3 Week Update!

Miss Princess Kara is 3 weeks old TODAY! I can't believe it's been 3 whole weeks. I said to my wonderful mother yesterday that I constantly re-live my water breaking experiance. It was so funny and it's something I really don't want to forget. I want to remember every waking day with Kara and especially how she came into this world.

Things are coming along great. My emotions have for the most part seized. Even though I often get teary eyed when I think about going back to work, but hopefully we have FOUND...yes FOUND a babysitter who Tim and I can trust (I trust her enough to do my hair...yes she is my hairdresser). I was asking my friend and hairdresser Kim if she knew anybody, because she knows a lot of people who babysat and that is great. She started asking me all the particulars like when and what times and how much, etc. and I kind of got the hint that she may be thinking about doing it when she was asking these questions but I didn't get my hopes up, but sure enough she said..."well, what about me, I've been looking for a day job" I lit right up and it made my day...I was so excited. I told her that I would talk it over with Tim and the price with Tim and get back to her. I'm pretty sure we are going with her but just have to finalize some budget things....you know me and my budgeting!!! She's great...no pets, non-smoker, drinker, but weekends only..hehe! She has an 8 year old thats in Brandon's class too, so that's great!

Kara, on the other hand, is WONDERFUL as well. We are still dealing with her breathing issues, but hopefully she has grown out of it and everything is fine. We switched her formula to AR (added rice) from the lipil stuff...it's all nasty to me, the names don't phase me. It seems to be helping her gagging, she's not doing it as much, but still is. Her zantac is going well, she's a trooper. I licked some off my finger last night and thought I would die...that stuff is gross! She seems to take it without it bothering her. We go back to the pediatrician on the 28th, so hopefully she won't have to re-new her perscription.

We ventured along Interstate 81 on Tuesday last week to visit the specialist in Syracuse at St. Joseph's Hospital. My opinion he's kind of arrogant, but my mom and Tim thought otherwise, so I went with the flow. I had a lump in my throat the whole time, I wanted to burst into tears pretty much the whole time he was in the room with us. He explained a lot of things (pretty much like we were stupid first-time parents, until Tim started in with his medical lingo and showed the doctor that we weren't just any joe schmo's from off the street) about what is going on and what to expect and what not to expect in newborns. Apparently this is all normal to him, but they were ordering what they call a 3 channel test. The test will be exactly the same one she is on now (the one for her breathing and heartrate) but will add another wire and measure the oxygen in her blood (pulse oximeter)....great...another test...o and it's for 48 hours...2 whole days...what about walmart? Marra's Homecare came on Friday and hooked the test up and by Friday night, I was ripping wires off left and right and was going to throw the machine out the window. Around 430 (about 9 hours into the test) we saw that her heartrate even when she slept was going into the 200's and her pulse ox would drop in the 80's, and it went on for about a half hour...so the nurotic mother I am...called the pediatrician, who told us to call our Syracuse doctor who obviously was out of the office at 430 on a Friday afternoon, so here, please press 1 for the on-call....the on-call was busy press 1 for the St. Joe's NICU Floor, "hi, I'm an RN what's going on...o...let me have you talk to the NICU Charge Nurse....o...well if she's not changing colors, I would give it until tomorrow and call your pediatrician, sounds like it's not an apnea problem. EXCUSE ME...TOMORROW...yes our pediatrician is open on Saturday's but...hello...tomorrow? Well, we delt with this all night, of course I was not in any mood Friday night, but a mood to hold her and watch her and worry. Friday night had to have been the worst night I have ever had with my daughter. Alarms going off all night, her crying, me crying, Tim crying because I'm crying and frustrated...OUT CAME THE WIRES...F$%K this. I am calling Dr. Victoria first thing this morning. Saturday morning came...ring ring to the pediatrican, let me have you talk to the nurse...hello hunny, what's going on...what's going on...well let me tell you! She says well it's definitley not normal, let me talk to the doctor and I'll call you back...3 hours later I call her back...well did you talk to him? nope, but I will....ugh....she calls me back and says I need to call Syracuse and get ahold of him...I explained how I did and what they told me and she says DO IT AGAIN....syracuse...ring ring press 1 for...press 2 to page...well we will page this time!!!!!! paged...waited...waited....waited...we called again press 1 for....press to 2 page...ONE....leave a message and someone will call you back....message left...waited....waited...waited...Dr. Victoria I'm calling you back....I finally broke down to the nurse and she cried with me...hunny it's ok....we are here for you...how bout you call Marra's and see what they think....well Marra's got a hold of Dr. Constentine in Syracuse and he said to turn the alrams off! WHAT THE HELL...just turn the alarms off? Ok...whatever...so they pay some nice gentleman $20/hour to come to my house for 2 minutes to use my screwdriver and turn the alarm off on the monitor...OK PEOPLE I'M GIVING YOU ONE LAST CHANCE. We hook her up at bedtime and we drift off to sleep...5 minutes later...BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEPPPPPPPPPPPP.....I looked at Tim and shook my head...yeah...no one turned nothing off! Daddy got pissed this time and yanked wires out and said enough is enough.

Needless to say the Respiatory Therapist we have been dealing with since the hospital came out today to pick up the monitor and heard the whole weekend story and said he really didn't blame us for what we did, but we should know that Dr. Constentine is not one of their favorite people and he will be mad at what we did. I looked at Chris the nice man and said...well hunny, if he takes it out on you, you be sure to give him my number, here's my cell number and here's Tim's pager also...tell him to call, I will be HAPPY to talk to him. Chris, also has a baby he's 4 mos old who is dealing with this too, he said he found a doctor in Rochester he likes. He was going to go back and download the chip from the monitor and call us if it shows anything...it's been almost 2 hours so hopefully no news is good news.

I'm a little out of order on my events, but you people get the issue.

Well, my spoiled rotten princess is fussing because he is having a little floor time and mommy isn't holding her, so I guess it's time to wrap up and smooch my baby girl.

xxoo to all

p.s. her fussy-ness couldn't be from spending the night with mommy and daddy at Grammie's and being kissed and snuggled and held by Grammie and Grampie the whole time we were there?! could it?

no lie I counted tonight over 400 pictures in 2 weeks, I promise I will go through them and post some more cute ones...enjoy for now

The First 2 weeks

I was just laughing while ready her eviction process, I just told her before I laid her down that "this is what mommy wrote 2 weeks ago tonight!!" I can't believe my baby is already 2 weeks old. So much has happened in 2 weeks that I am in just utter amazement what this little precious girl has been through...I wrote the same thing on my myspace blog, I like to elaborate more, because I feel that people care more on this blog than my myspace blog, people on there are just nosy! Sorry it has taken so long to update but we've been just a little pre-occupied...happy reading

Well, Kara arrived on Monday, January 28th at 1:17p.m. giving her mother a short 12 hour labor and giving me the most wonderful joy in the whole wide world.

My water broke at 12:55a.m. on Monday. I admit it, I gave in and bought castor oil and drank 4 tablespoons of it mixed with orange juice Sunday night about 7p.m. after we got back from dinner at Buffalo Wild Wings. I gaged it down only throwing it back up in my mouth 3 times!!!! At 11p.m. after ever so increasing bowel movements, but no contractions, I went to bed, pissed off and telling Tim that this child will NEVER come out of me. Tim shut the TV off about 12:30 and passed right out (so he tells me) and 25 minutes later I was frantically alerting him and telling him that my water was breaking...all over the bed, floor and a path of it to the bathroom! He jumped up to help me but all I did was sit on the toilet and didn't know what to do next! I told Tim I wanted to take a shower and his response was..uh...NO. He got Brandon up and they were running around trying to get stuff ready and I was just calmly getting dressed, I called the hospital, called the doctor, but of course before that, Tim called my mother whom I had warned not to drink too much 4 hours prior when I had talked to her because I WAS going into labor that night! I got dressed, stuffed a towel between my legs, put my hair up and carried my own bags downstairs. I patiently waited for the boys and checked my myspace and diddly screwed around until we walked out the door. Dropped Brandon off at Tim's brothers house and headed to the hospital. We walked through the ER doors and was met by what it seemed like everyone we knew. Tim looked around for a wheelchair and I argued with him, telling him that I wanted to walk and I would be fine. We got upstairs to an empty Labor and Delivery floor and we sat joking with the nurses while I had a couple contractions (those of which I really wasn't timing) weighed myself, signed my papers and the nurse asked "do you have a pad on"...my response was...no mam' I have a towel on! I got hooked up, Tim broke out the video camera against my wishes, and not soon after that my Mom and Dad showed up all excited. We sat and joked and laughed and I was having contractions, laughing through them every 2 minutes. The nurse checked me and I was 3-4 cm dialted and asked if I wanted an epidural...of course I said...why not! Mind you that this is what I was so freaking worried about throughout my whole pregnancy. I almost did a natural birth because I was more scared of an epidural! The lady started my IV which she blew twice and I started to freak out on her, but third time's a charm and she got it in, started me on fluids which I needed before the epidural and went on her merry way! We laughed, joked and laughed at the girl next door who was screaming bloody murder giving birth. The next thing I know here comes the candy man anesthesiologist. I look at Tim with those eyes and all he said was "relax" (that's all he has been telling me for the last 9 months) Mom and Dad leave the room and leave me to get my drugs. No let me just tell you that my fear was reality and it was the most painful thing I have ever had to go through. I know why they drug people up in the OR before they give people those things. Anyway..it was nothing as I expected I thought I would be completely numb but boy I definitely wasn't. I tried to get some sleep as everyone else in my room tried but I just couldn't. I would doze off and the blood pressure machine was going off. They were monitoring my blood pressure every 5 minutes because it was ooh..quite low. All of a sudden out of nowhere I started feeling my contractions one right after the other. I told Tim to get the nurse because I'm sure that this isn't normal. She came in and gave me 2 more shots of happy juice, I still felt them and as my mother was holding my hand and the boys were sleeping, I said "mom, I really wish someone would come check me I feel "funny" " Just then the world's best nurse walks through the door (I know here quite well from working at Guilfoyle) and says "I'm going to check you" Tim piped up and Dad piped up from snoring and when she checked me and said "ARE YOU READY TO PUSH" my answer was "NOPE". Carla said, well hunny, it's time, my mother flew open the bathroom door where her and Dad were hiding and said...holy shit already? They prepped me for pushing and I began. About an hour and a half later out popped a 7lb 2oz baby girl with lots of black hair. When Kara came out she wasn't breathing...of course no one told me that they all just acted like everything was fine. She came out and boom...everyone was gone from my side over to her side. They took her over to the warmer and got her breathing again, but still it wasn't up to par, she was doing a lot of grunting! She went to the nursery accompanied by Daddy and I got all fixed up. I was so happy, I never tore, he didn't have to cut me, and I really felt awesome afterward. I actually looked at my mother and said, it's really not that bad! I won't do it again tomorrow, but it wasn't bad!

Two days in the hospital went quickly and soon we were going home! What an emotional 2 days those were. No sleep, lots of visitors and a new baby I thought I would break. I really wanted to breastfeed which didn't work and made me really emotional, but we got over that. We came home Wednesday with a doctors appt on Thursday and her first blood draw with Mommy and Daddy going with her. She was a little jaundice and they wanted to make sure her levels weren't rising so they drew blood and then we had to go to the doctors. Everything seemed to be fine and they sent us home. Friday was a lazy day with Mommy not getting out of her jammies all day and holding Kara ALL DAY. We got stuff ready and headed up to Grammie and Grampies on Saturday for the night, and to meet the rest of the crazy family! I had a VERY hard time leaving on Sunday and was EXTREMELY emotional. We got home and finished watching the superbowl when all of a sudden....

while feeding Miss Kara and watching the last 35 seconds of the game she started choking and turned blue on me. I quickly handed her to Tim who spend about 35-40 seconds to get her to breathe. I freaked out and was histerical. She began to breathe again but still wasn't acting "right" I begged Tim to go to the ER and after he got me calmed down he called the doctor and had a long conversation with her and pretty much left it up to us what we wanted to do. We got Brandon up and we headed in. Again, greeted by people we know, who rushed us back and looked at her. We weren't there 20 minutes and we were told that we would be spending the night upstairs on the Pediatrics floor. The admitting doctor came in and wanted me to feed her and see if she would do it again, so I did and again she did it and thats when they decided that she probably had acid reflux but she would admit her and they would do testing in the morning. At 4a.m. Kara and I went upstairs to our room and got settled. They poked and prodded her and stuck thermometers up her butt..it was horrible. I of course was a wreck and Tim had gone home to sleep and take Brandon home. I got ZERO hours of sleep because they also hooked her up to a monitor that measured her breathing because in the ER they saw that she would periodically stop breathing. So the monitor let off this ear piercing screech when she wasn't breathing and even though we were right next to the nurses desk no one would come running, so I jump out of bed and tend to her.

Monday morning (Kara is 7 days old) Grammie came down to see us and be with Tim and I because Grammie knew that I was a complete mess and needed some extra moral support. We had a "syntha-scan" done on Kara which was a scan where they had her drink some crap and then her formula and they took a 27 minute constant scan to see if she had refulx. She did wonderful, slept through the whole thing. The technologist said he didn't see anything, but he wasn't a doctor. So we went back upstairs where they continued to poke and prod at her when at about 3p.m. she had another episode of choking and gagging. I marched my butt out to the nurses desk and told them that I wanted my daughter hooked back up to the monitor NOW. The doctor ordered 24/7 monitoring and she hadn't been hooked up since 7:30 when they took her off because I was holding her! Around 6p.m after waiting all day for an EKG of her heart I asked the nurse when they were coming...her response...what EKG. I said...not so calmly...Dr. Victoria ordered an EKG to be done TODAY...she argued with me and then looked in the chart where it said do EKG. Opps the nurse says...it will be done in the morning. OK...another night in the hospital. The next morning Kara had an EKG and then we waited for an Upper GI series to be done. EKG was normal, went for the upper GI...found out that was normal. Dr. Victoria said well, she has a little bit of reflux, but not enough to blame her episodes on reflux, I'm ordering a 12 hour test...a pneumogram. That was 9a.m. Tuesday morning. At 8p.m. Tuesday night we were visiting my cousin who was admitted on that floor as well when Kara decided that she would have another episode...this one...happened in front of people and a nurse. She projectiled across the room and turned blue on me. The nurse quickly grabbed her from me and got her breathing again. I said my goodbyes to my cousin and we headed back to our room, where again I was alone, Tim was at class taking an exam. I said to the nurse who had told me that the pneumogram wouldn't be done until Wednesday night...that I wanted it done TONIGHT! She called the on-call doctor and within an hour they were hooking my baby up to all sorts of wires and she was being monitored heavily. This machine was even more ear piercing that the last. The next morning it came off at 9a.m. and we waited around for results. At 5pm. we got the results. Kara stopped breathing 12 times in 12 hours. I freaked...and I mean FREAKED out. I looked at Tim who looked at the doctor and said "I want to go to go to Syracuse...I quickly agreed and Dr. Victoria left the room to see what he could do. The doctor in Syracuse who read the pneumogram said she may have a mild case of Sleep Apnea but her heart rate wasn't dropping enough for it to be considered that. I told the doctors that I didn't care, I wanted her in Syracuse where I knew that she would be taken better care of. They tried there hardest to arrange it, but they were full. Dr. Victoria allowed me, I think for my sanity, to spend one more night in the hospital so Kara would be monitored. After a lot of convincing and an appt in Syracuse on Tuesday, I finally told them that I think I was ready to go home. I really wasn't and I honestly was freaking out, but they sent us home with a monitor so we could pretty much do the same thing they were doing at the hospital at home. We came home Thursday night around 6p.m. and I immediately packed for my parents and we came up here yesterday.
Tim had to fix his truck and he also had to work 12 hours today. I didn't want to be alone, so we came up here and are spending the weekend. Kara has only had a few gagging episodes here but nothing significant. I still get really nervous, but I'm getting better, I just have to nudge her if she stops breathing and she will start again. So we go Tuesday to Syracuse to figure out what is going on and to consult with a Pediatric Sleep Apnea specialist at St. Joe's. We don't know if we are spending the night to do the test that day or if this is a consultation. Next week is full of so many appointments and it seems like my time off from work with this little girl is winding down. I get so emotional when I think about it but I know that I need to cherish the time with her. She will be 2 weeks on Monday and she looks so much different now than she did 2 weeks ago. Time is flying and I really don't want it to.

Thanks to everyone for the prayers and the continued support...


Tim, Gabe, Kara and Family