One Year Later

On December 21st, 2013, I was fairly convinced I was dying of something. I hadn't felt well in a week. I confided to Brian that I thought I had cancer. He thought I was pregnant. And then he drove me to the grocery store and bought a test.

When I saw that second line appear almost instantly, my heart skipped a beat. I was in total disbelief. One year later, I still can't quite believe it. Elodie, you are the best Christmas present ever.

Four Months!

Yesterday Elodie turned four months old! It's been a slightly difficult month with her reflux issues and lack of interest in eating, but aside from that she really is one of the happiest babies I've ever met! It's a rare occasion when she gets upset and cries for any other reason than being overtired. This month started out with celebrating Thanksgiving with my dad. The last time he visited he got sick and didn't hold Elodie at all. This visit he got lots of snuggle time in. I dressed her up in a blue velveteen dress that my mom made for me as a baby (I was born August 6th so Elodie is wearing things around the same time as me). Who wore it better? ;)

We have enjoyed a break from lots of doctor appointments and have spent most of the month of December around the house. With her reflux though, this kind of peaked my anxiety by not getting out enough. I'm trying to make sure I get out at least once a week, but I hate messing up her nap schedule. It's hard living so far outside of the city. Running simple errands to any place other than the grocery store requires a 40 minute commute one way. Not ideal with an infant!

Heading to the mall one day

When at home we have developed a loose routine. Elodie wakes up between 8:00 and 9:00 most days. I give her her reflux meds, then wait 30 minutes before I feed her. Then I have to keep her elevated for another 15 minutes or so. I then try to play with her and practice tummy time if she isn't too tired. 

Without the boppy, she mostly face plants still.

After about 1.5-2 hours she is ready for a nap. She usually naps 2-3 hours, and then it's eat, play, and sleep again for another 1-2 hour nap. She takes one more 30-45 minute nap after dinner and then has one last bottle for the night. She usually goes to bed around 9:30. I have to say, life with two kids is WAY more hectic than I anticipated. I feel like I have so little downtime. When I'm not feeding or entertaining Elodie, I'm either entertaining Noah, eating, pumping, or washing bottles and pump parts. I usually get to enjoy one hour of quiet time in the afternoons. I cherish those moments!!

Elodie had her 4 month appointment yesterday and tipped the scales at 12lbs 5.5oz (13th %ile). She made it over the 10th percentile! I was so excited about that! She measured almost 23.75" (20th %ile), and her head circumference increased to 16.25" (71st %ile). I completed the Ages and Stages Questionnaire and Elodie was considered "Average" in the area of gross motor, and was a little behind in all other areas. The pediatrician said we will check again at 6 months, but based off of what she saw from her at the appointment, she felt that Elodie is doing really well and she wasn't too concerned. Elodie has seen her occupational therapist a couple of times this month and she is also happy with her progress. I know in my heart that she's showing some delays, and when I compare her to what Noah was doing at her age, it's pretty clear. BUT, I am so thankful that she is doing as well as she is, and at this point I believe that she will prove those original doctors wrong! She may take longer to meet her milestones, but I have faith that she will!

Now for the bullets:

• Elodie outgrew her newborn clothing. She is now wearing 0-3, 3, and 3-6 month clothing depending on the brand. As with Noah, her length determines this, and not her girth. I make skinny kids. She continues to wear size one diapers.
• She continues to eat 14-17 ounces of breast milk fortified with formula to 30 calories each day. She eats 5 bottles consistently. I have to wake her overnight around 4:00am to make sure she gets all five in. She almost never wants to eat more frequently than every 4 hours. I think the extra calories make her feel fuller longer. Because she continues to climb the percentiles, the pediatrician referred me to the nutritionist to discuss reducing her extra calories. Next week we will probably cut down to a 25-27 calorie recipe.
• Elodie is still very smiley and has started to giggle! It started just a few days after she turned three months. I was tickling her and then kissing her cheeks, and she let out a few squeals. In just the last week, she has started to do this more often. Sometimes all I need to do is giggle or smile really big and if she's in the right mood, she'll squeal and laugh in delight. No real belly laughs yet though.
• I feel like she doesn't coo as much, but she still uses her voice plenty. She grunts, squeals, purrs, and squawks a lot! If she's not getting enough attention, she lets us know with loud yells.
• She continues to suck on her hands like crazy. Sometimes she tries to shove them in her mouth as she's eating, which isn't very helpful. Elodie is starting to reach for toys held just above her tummy as well. She tries (and usually fails) to get them in her mouth, and then drops them fairly quickly. This is definitely a skill we are working on a lot with her. I truly feel her visual system has been slow to come online, so I am not surprised that she is showing some delay in her visual motor coordination.
• Her eyes are still blue and I see no sign of them changing yet. Could I have a blue eyed baby? I remain skeptical.

Goodbye, mohawk.

• Elodie got her first "haircut" this month. She was born with a lot of dark, long hair right on the top her head. When the majority of her hair fell out, this patch remained. I finally admitted to Brian one day that I thought it made her look like one of the pinheads from American Horror Story: Freak Show, and he was so glad I said so. It turns out he hated her hair too. So we cut it off. She still has some long hair on the back of her head, but that looks normal so we left it in tact.

I'm really looking forward to what this month has in store for us, and can't wait to celebrate her first Christmas! We are so blessed.

Reflux

Reflux is going to be the death of me. For whatever reason, eating has always been the biggest stressor for me when it comes to my kids. With Elodie I feel like it's magnified times a million because it triggers a lot of the yucky feelings and worries I had for her in the NICU. About two and half weeks ago, just before Thanksgiving, Elodie began refusing to eat her regular 3.5-4 ounces per bottle. She would suck down 2 ounces and then just stop. Nothing I did would get her to eat more. I talked with the pediatrician and she asked me to bring her in. The doctor was fairly certain that she is struggling with reflux, and I tend to agree. When Elodie had her feeding evaluation in early October, the SLP warned me that with silent reflux some babies will simply stop eating at 3 months or so. She explained that up until that age eating is kind of a reflex, but once that reflex goes away they will start to refuse to eat because it doesn't feel good. We started her on the generic version of Prilosec almost two weeks ago and I still see little improvement. Prior to her eating strike she was consuming between 17-19 ounces per day. Now it's a struggle to get 14 ounces in within 24 hours. It's making me completely crazy. I worry about her enough to begin with, but now I have fears of dehydration, constipation, brain growth, weight gain, and overall development related to her feeding. I also have a lingering fear that eventually people will talk about a gastronomy tube again. We were so happy and relieved that we avoided that in the NICU, and felt so hopeful that it was a good sign for her development. I really hate watching her regress. I think she was getting close to the 10th percentile in weight, and now she is just backsliding. It is so depressing.

Does anybody have encouraging stories to share about their experience with GERD? Or does anyone simply want to commiserate? Thanks for listening, as always!

On Bonding

From the moment I found out I was pregnant with Elodie, it was hard to let myself get excited. Everything about pregnancy was different for me after experiencing a loss. I was terrified of something going wrong, and I didn't want to get my hopes up too high. Losing Junebug was one of the hardest things I had gone through up until that point, and I felt like I had to be mentally prepared in case it happened again. Once I hit twenty weeks and our anatomy scan showed a healthy baby developing right on track, I started to feel a little less uneasy. We chose not to find out the baby's sex at that appointment. Although I was really excited about the idea of being surprised at delivery, in some ways I think it prevented me from feeling as connected to the baby growing inside of me. I didn't know what to call him or her, and I didn't want to shop or prepare much because I didn't know if I should buy boy things or girl things. So the second trimester was more relaxing, but I still wasn't feeling totally connected. Then I hit the third trimester, and even though I was now at the "viable" stage of pregnancy, a whole host of concerns hit me including frequent ocular migraines, constant and intense braxton hicks contractions (I think I probably could have been labeled with an irritable uterus), and symphysis pubis dysfunction (and if that's not what I actually had, then I'm glad I never did because whatever I was dealing with was bad enough!). I was constantly worried about preterm labor and the health of my baby should he or she be delivered early. For almost the entire third trimester I was too nervous to really feel excited for our baby. I felt like I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. And then boy did it ever.

The day of the ultrasound that changed everything, the perinatologist and neonatologist sent us home believing that our baby was going to be either incredibly disabled or unable to survive. He or she may even have horrible facial deformities. The words "cyclopia," "proboscis" and "cleft palate" were all mentioned as possibilities. It was without a doubt the saddest, scariest day of my life. Brian and I were in complete shock and had no idea what to feel. On our drive home we actually admitted to each other that if things were truly so bad, we kind of hoped that mother nature would take over for better or worse and prevent us from having to make any difficult decisions. At this point, we still didn't know if we were having a boy or a girl, and with the new information we had about our baby, not knowing the sex made me feel like I was carrying some kind of alien or monster. I had to find out. I had to connect to this poor little baby in some small way so that I would stop feeling that way. The next day we called back and found out she was a girl! It really did help a lot. It was exciting to think we could use the name I had adored for years, and I really was shocked. But it was still incredibly scary and I spent the next two weeks wondering if we would actually be bringing home a baby, and even if we did, what that baby would be like.

The day Elodie was born, I was in such denial! Despite being almost certain that I was in active labor, I kept hoping that somehow I would make it to my scheduled c-section on the 18th. Something, anything, had to go according to plan damn it! And to be honest, I was also really scared. I had no idea what to expect. What would she look like? Would she even survive? Having a c-section was a very different experience than a vaginal birth. I didn't see her emerge from my body. I didn't get to hold her right away. My head was spinning so fast from everything that happened and I was still in quite a lot of shock. It was three hours from the time she was born that I really got to spend any time with her. And even that was chaotic and foreign. My baby was in the NICU. So much to wrap my head around. In the five weeks that followed, things were a total rollercoaster. The NICU is not for the faint of heart! It was hard spending so much time away from my baby, and in many ways she didn't even feel like my baby. Brian likened it to adopting a baby animal at the zoo. You can visit her, you can hold her, you even get to name her, but at the end of the day she isn't yours to bring home. It's a strange feeling and I think a hard one to understand unless you've been there.

I really wanted to breast feed. Despite the stress I experienced with Noah, I had mostly fond memories of it and hoped for a good nurser. Well, that didn't happen. With the strict three hour feeding schedule they had us on, and the fact that logistically I just couldn't be with her 24/7, it was inevitable that she needed bottle feeding. And with the need to bump up her intake with added calories through formula, it started to feel like nursing was not in the cards. The NICU staff tried their hardest to encourage me to nurse, and believe me, I did try. But Elodie would either fall fast asleep in my arms or would fuss and refuse to latch. She was making slow but steady progress with the bottle, and I didn't want to slow that process down. The sooner she ate well, the sooner she could come home. So I eventually gave up on any hopes of nursing. That was really unfortunate because I believe nursing really helps to solidify a bond with your baby. For us, feeding Elodie was usually the majority of the time we got to spend with her, and it was usually stressful and left me feeling a lot of pressure to get her to eat in their 30 minute window. This often resulted in me feeling frustrated by the time she was back to sleep. I hardly enjoyed the time I got to spend with her. I felt guilty, and still not very bonded. I also worried that she wasn't very bonded to me. She only got to spend about 7 hours a day with me, so I wondered if I was just like another nurse to her.

After Elodie came home, things started to get easier. She started to feel like my baby. Her eating continued to improve. I could actually enjoy a lot of the time I spent with her. And it finally started to happen. I started to fall deeply in love with this little baby. And now? Well, I think this picture says it all.

Bonding was definitely different this time around, and it's hard to admit some of the feelings I had along the way. However, it's all a part of our story, which had a drastically different beginning than I anticipated, so I think it's a little to be expected. And in case you ever read this yourself someday, Miss Elodie, there is no doubt that I love you fiercely. To the moon and back, my love. 


(For those of you with more than one baby, did you find the bonding process to be different with your second baby?)