One HOT mama

Like many women before me and many to follow one of the first things I did when I found out I was pregnant was google and read everything I could get my hands on and of course, sign up for my weekly updates from "The bump".
And as you know, I now have a 6 week old preemie and find these updates a little... well annoying. It's not your fault "bump" how are you suppose to know that my precious little girl couldn't wait any longer to met me and came early. When I got home from the hospital and finally checked my email, you were there and I was mad. But now I'm seeing the brighter side. Week after week as I read your updates, I'm starting to think that maybe there's a good side to missing the last 3 months, triedness, more weigh gain, pains, hot flashes, etc. Your not making it sound like much fun!
Today I would have been 33 weeks and this is what "The Bump" had to say...

Your Pregnancy: Week 33

You are one hot mama -- literally. A 20 percent metabolic rate increase throughout pregnancy can leave you begging for a cool breeze no matter what the weather is like. Distract yourself with an exercise in blind identification. Try to distinguish between baby's feet, fists, knees, and elbows -- all doing some major pushing and nudging inside of you.

So this Thanksgiving Eve, after visiting with Abby (now 3lb 3oz, by the way) and having to leave because they were getting an admission I went across the street to Target and got myself a fountain Diet Coke and enjoyed some shopping time. So 3 refills later (yes, I really did refill) I had found some good stuff.
A dress for tomorrow

I might not be literally one hot mama but who says I can't look like one.


A new Christmas movie, so funny saw it last year and they JUST released it on DVD this week.


"Think of stretch marks as a pregnancy service stripes" ~ Joyce Armor

The Early Bird

These days I spend a lot of time staring at this little girl...

and dreaming.

At night I go in her room and stare at the empty bed and envision what it's going to be like when my little girl is lying there so peaceful, the afternoons when she'll be in there laughing and playing instead of napping and all the morning/night time kisses that will take place there.

I rock in rocker and dream about the moments that we'll share here, bedtime stories, prayers and sleepless nights.

I can't wait, but I am.

When I first got home from the hospital I thought that her room would be hard for me to go into, a reminder that she's not home with us, but instead it has become a place that I find peace and hope. I look in her closet and pick out her first Church dress, her Valentine's Day outfit, etc. Her stroller reminds me of the many walks that we'll take together.

When I first started planning the nursery and after I found out I was having a girl, I thought I would do something a little different, like a yellow and green color scheme but later changing my mind, thinking that this could be my only girl and I might not ever get the chance to have pink everything again...so my colors became light pink, bright pink and of course green. And I'm glad I did, now knowing that we won't be able to have anymore.

Here is the bedding
(my BFF got this for me and I'm so grateful, I love it)

And anyone that knows me IRL knows that wall decorations are almost impossible for me to decide on, so of course, this is the last thing I have to do in Abby's room. And I need help, what do you think?

And this...
The designer can change the colors to fit my scheme, I love the verse, I think it's a good reminder that he's the creator , he had her birthday planned before she was even conceived.
And the second print, will have our names on it. I'm thinking that I will put these over the changing table and I was thinking I would put this over the crib

I'm going to see if the designer can change the Big letter to something not so curly.
Do you see my bird theme.
My early bird.

" Life is always a rich and steady time when your waiting for something to happen or hatch"
-E.B. White (Charlotte's web)

Edit** Just realized that the links aren't working, if your interested the name of the esty store of the first 2 prints is emrick123
and the decal is also from esty the store name is decal monograms

Every time I begin a post, I never really know where to start. My feelings, thoughts and emotions are all over the board. They tell you that the NICU is a roller coaster, they aren't lying. Every time you take 3 steps forward, you take 2 steps back. She is back on high flow oxygen, after she was having a difficult time breathing. But other than that she is doing well. She has become so much more alert and is starting to smile and follow us with her eyes, every time she smiles Brad and I start yelling and snapping pictures, the nurses probably think that we are crazy! I like to think she's going to be such a happy baby, a happy little girl. She is now 2lb 7oz and about 16 inches long. She is starting to look like such a big girl and not so much like a preemie anymore. Every time I walk in to the NICU and they have Abby all dressed up, I want everybody around to come see her and how pretty she looks, so I must share with you too.

I could just eat her up!!!

When my girlfriend Jane's five year old was looking at Abby's pictures with her mom she wanted to know why Abby gets to wear a bra and she doesn't...
I have laughed about this for over a week now and shared this with all the nurses, she thought the monitor leads were a bra.


This week I have vowed to myself to get out and go for a walk at least once a day and to do something I enjoy for a least an hour a day, so given my love for crafting, I'm going to start making headbands and sewing again, making things for Abby, it will give me some time to clear my head and time to do something I enjoy. It's hard to find things preppy and monogrammed for such a small baby, so I'm going to make them. So what for my crafts to come!

The moment a child is born,
the mother is also born.
She never existed before.
The woman existed, but the mother, never.
A mother is something absolutely new.
Rajneesh

Moving right along...

I've been wanting to write this post but every time I go to to so, something changes and I give up, I think I have about a dozen drafts. So where to start...first thank you for all your prayers and thoughtful words. Second we are doing great...now. After I wrote the first post, we had a few setbacks, they tried to take Abby off the ventilator but she wasn't having it and after walking in and seeing how hard my little girl was breathing, I wasn't having it either! They reintubated

( breathing tube inserted) her and told us they would try again in a few days, two days later they told us that her chest xray showed a "cyst", a pocket of fluid in her lung and they were going to "watch it". These are all hard words to hear when you want your little girl to be the one that "flys" though everything. The next day I started having back/flank pain and went to the ER thinking (hoping) that I just pulled a muscle. This pain was aweful, the C-section was nothing, I took motrin twice, but this pain was doing me in....after a CT scan was done, I heard the doctors talking about me outside the room, how the nurse needed to put me on the monitor and I looked at my husband and knew it wasn't good. Diagnois: bilateral pulmonary Embolus, yeah, my OB told me that she had only seen this once before in 11 years and I could tell in her voice that the other mother didn't have the same outcome. I went to the ICU for 3 days and was scared to death. But the morning after I was admitted the NICU nurse and doctor came to see me and brought me a picture of Abby to put up in my room ( but hubby had already taken care of that) and told me that the "cyst" was gone. There is a song that I've grown up singing at church that goes a little like this..."I just want to shout thank you Jesus...."I have sang that song almost everyday, it's funny what comes to you at different moments in life. Here I am lying the in the ICU and my 1 lb. baby girl one floor below me in her own ICU, and we had so much to be thankful for.
I went home 5 days later, with a Rx for high blood pressure medication and a blood thinner called Coumadin, CVS must have thought it was for my 80 year old grandmother...hehe
AND
2 days later Abby was off the ventilator and on nasal cannula and 2 days after that she is breathing on her own and taking the max amount of feeding that she is able to. We went from 3cc every 6 hour to 24cc every 4 hour in a week. She had her first eye exam today and they told us that it was "perfect", which I find crazy, considering one nurse had told us a few weeks ago to be prepared, most premiees fail the first test. She is now 2lbs 3oz.
We still have a long rode ahead of us but as of this hour ...we are VERY good.
Please keep us in your prayers.

And I promise to post more often and share lots of pictures!

On the day that they took Abby off the ventilator, we walked in to see her in this cute gingham dress.
Here she is off the oxygen, I was trying to catch her smile but I kept missing her.

"A new baby is like the beginning of all things, hope, a dream of possibilities."