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My 3 girls

 

Sometimes I wonder what my life will be like in 10 years.  Then I get a little overwhelmed and decide not to think about it anymore!!  I have enough to think about right now.

 

 

 

My wonderful Amelia has decided that being the middle child is an awful deal and is getting attention in another way- by disobeying as many times a day as possible (seriously, she may hold a record).  Whether it is taking her diaper off (a lot) or pouring cough syrup all over.  She is constantly up to no good.  I try to stay on top of it and hope that this is a quick phase.  Phew.

 

 

Annie is a big helper.  She has moments of insanity, but nothing like Amelia.  She is loving school and both of her sisters.  I’m loving the 4 year old stage.  It certainly beats 2!!  There can be quite an attitude, but I can deal with that.

 

 

 

Evie is doing great.  She has gained a ton of weight in the last week.  She is eating like a horse and is much less orange!  She does really well at night and is on a great schedule.  I’m very thankful that the meds seem to be working so well and she’s turned around so quickly.  Thank God for modern medicine!!  Her prognosis without medication is so extremely sad that I can hardly even wrap my mind around it. 

 

I’m so thankful for all that all that God has blessed me with.  What a great life!

Lately…

It’s been a busy week!!  There is always something going on in our house!! 

Evie is doing pretty well.  She’s still very orange and I’m not sure she’s gaining much weight (she goes to the Dr. tomorrow), but she’s eating a ton and acting like more of a normal baby.   (Slow weight gain is a big characteristic of congenital hypothyroidism)

 

So far she’s a good baby.  She does like to be held, particularly from midnight to 5 in the morning :-)  I’m thankful that she seems to be tolerable of the car seat though.  The other girls had absolutely no tolerance for it.  Miss Evie will be spending a lot of time in the car seat taking her sisters to/from places so it’s very important that she is alright with it!

 

 

We haven’t had to do as many blood tests this week.  Her poor feet were covered with heel prick scars.  I think she ended up with 4 on each foot.   And then she had a full IV in her arm at the hospital on Friday.  I don’t know how they get anything in those teeny tiny veins!!  She is quite a trooper.

 

 

 

 

My other sweet girls had a fantastic Halloween.  Amelia was a very cute ladybug and Annie was tinkerbell.  Amelia went to one house and got one piece of candy.  She could have been done after that.  They went to a few other houses together, but their favorite thing is always handing out the candy to the other kids.  Unfortunately, they weren’t much on smiling for the camera.  Ugh!!  They had other things on their mind :-)

 

 

Evie

It looks like my sweet Evie worked so hard on becoming a beautiful baby in the womb she forgot to grow a thyroid gland.   Tests confirmed that our sweet bundle is missing it entirely. 

Thankfully, however, this is a completely treatable problem.  She takes a small pill every day for the rest of her life and she should be just like any other kid.  It does make me a little sad that she has a chronic condition, but I am very thankful that it was caught early (extremely important) and the treatment is so easy.

We’re starting her meds tonight and hopefully she will start gaining more weight and look a little less orange very soon!

We appreciate all of your prayers and support over the last few months.  Hopefully the future will be full of health for our family!!

Evie update

This has been a crazy week!

Evie came home healthy and well last Saturday.  We went to the pediatrician Monday for a well check.  Everything was fine, but she was looking pretty orange so we went for a bilirubin test that afternoon.  It came back pretty high so we went back Tuesday for another test.  It was getting even higher so all day and night Tuesday and Wednesday she was in a phototherapy bed.  We went to the doctor on Wednesday and she just wasn’t gaining much weight.  In 2 days she had only gained 1 ounce and we had been feeding her like crazy.

Luckily her bilirubin went down a little on Wednesday and today so we were able to stop the phototherapy bed.

Then today we got an unexpected call from the pediatrician saying that her newborn screening blood work had come back (blood work done right after they are born) and her thyroid levels were very abnormal.  She has very low thyroid hormone and extremely high thyroid stimulating hormone. 

We are going to Kosair in the morning for nuclear image testing to see exactly how well her thyroid is working and to make sure she has a thyroid.  Then we see the pediatric endocrinologist in the afternoon to start treatment.  For now it looks like this can all be treated with thyroid replacement hormone which she will take for the rest of her life. 

Turns out that this is also what is causing her slow weight gain and her jaundice. 

Please pray that we will know the results tomorrow and we can begin appropriate treatment soon. 

Evie at home

The hospital wore us out!  Actually, I thoroughly enjoyed having a little night time help with my little bundle of joy.  After a week of the swine flu I will take sleep however I can get it.  Evie acted like a typical newborn and ate and slept through her first few days of life.  I still haven’t seen her awake for more than a few hours.

 

Saturday was our day to go home.  I was ready to get back to my other girls!  They weren’t allowed in the hospital because of H1N1 so they hadn’t met their new sister.  It was so nice to leave the hospital feeling like a human being.  The other 2 deliveries were much harder than this one.  I still can’t believe how good I feel.

 

 

Annie was SO excited to meet her new sister but Amelia wasn’t so sure about it at first.  She came in with this stunned look on her face. 

 

 

 

This was Amelia’s first reaction.

 

 

 

This was Annie’s first reaction. 

 

 

 

 

Amelia came around though and has been way more interested in Evie than I thought.  This baby gets more kisses and pats on the head than any other baby.  Unfortunately it has also created little monsters out of my 2 big girls.  They want to hold her ALL the time which doesn’t work very well.  The newness is starting to wear off and they don’t get quite so frustrated when they can’t hold her.  

Evelyn Grace- Day 1

We finally have our 3rd little girl! 

After last week with the swine flu I didn’t expect to continue with our October 22nd induction.  I was still SO tired from that week.  I went to the OB as scheduled on the 21st and for some reason my blood pressure was very high.  That bought me a ticket to be induced the next day. 

We got right in on Thursday morning at 7:00.  It was very nice to get started so early.  We started pitocin at 7:45.  I was still only 2 1/2 cm & 70% effaced.  Since I am a VBAC we have to do inductions very slowly, so I knew not to expect a really fast delivery.  I was able to get a nap in before things really started going.

At 9:30 my OB came in to break my water.  I was 3 1/2 cm.  It was nice to know that my body was progressing for now…  We waited and waited and waited and not a lot seemed to be going on.  Finally around 1:00 things really started picking up.  The contractions got very painful, but weren’t really spacing out very well.  She checked me again at around 2:00 and I hadn’t dilated any more!!  So- after staying the same for 5 hours I decided it was time for the epidural.  It’s one thing to be in pain while you’re progressing and another thing to do it while you feel like your body isn’t doing anything it should be!

3:45 came and I was still only 4 cm.  I was getting a little nervous now because it seemed to be going so slow.  I had really wanted to deliver before my nurse left at 7 and it was looking very unlikely.    At 6:00 I was finally making some progress at 5 1/2 cm.  It was just nice to know that by body was getting the message!  And boy was it getting the message!  By 6:30 I was fully dilated and ready to go!

They called everyone in and I pushed through one contraction. They told me to stop because she was coming and called the Dr in.  After about 3 more contractions she was here!  10 minutes of pushing!  It seemed to good to be true after my last 2 deliveries!  She came at 6:58 pm.  2 minutes before shift change :-)

She weighed in a 7 pounds, 1 ounce.  She’s 20 inches long.  She looks quite a bit like Amelia, but she has some features that are all her own.

So far she is the sweetest thing ever.  Hopefully she won’t grow out of it!!

 

October… you’ve got to be kidding me

September was a very busy month.  Birthdays, ER visits, very sick Amelia…    Early October was supposed to be our recovering period before Miss Evie showed up.  Ha ha ha ha ha

Well- the beginning of October was nice and restful as planned.  We got to enjoy the beautiful fall weather.  First we went to My Aunt & Uncle’s beautiful farm in Winchester, KY.  The girls had never been around any big farm animals, so it was fun to get to take them out there.

Amelia is much more of an animal lover than Annie, so she jumped right in when it was time to see the horse.

 

 

 

 

 

We did get to see some of their cows.  Annie wants to go back in the spring when there are lots of little calves.  She would probably help them deliver if she could. 

And, of course, what day isn’t awesome when you have a golf cart & a super nice golden retriever to play with. 

 

A few days later we went to Huber’s to celebrate Phillip’s birthday.  We went in time to pick pumpkins, which was a first for our little family. 

 

 

Somehow we ended up with 4 pumpkins.  I think that 2 are Annie’s, 1 is Amelia’s and 1 is Evie’s.  Hmm

 

 

We also got to enjoy some of the other things that Hubers has to offer.  It was all in all a great day!

 

 

 

October continued to go as planned until last weekend.  Then, BAM, I got sick.  Saturday I wasn’t feeling great, but Sunday I really knew something wasn’t right.  We went into the immediate care center Monday morning and got the dreaded swine flu diagnosis.  Here I was at 37 1/2 weeks pregnant and now we had the swine flu to deal with.  Our first priority was to get me away from the girls and to clean up anything in the house that may have been contaminated.  We did also end up spending 7 hours in the ER just to make sure that this wasn’t becoming pneumonia, since that is a huge risk with third trimester pregnant women & H1N1.  My chest x-ray was clear & we were sent home.

Thankfully, Phillip and the girls are still healthy after a full week of sharing a home with me. Until today I was in bed 23 hours a day and they weren’t allowed in our room, but it’s still a minor miracle.  I am technically not contagious anymore since I’m done with my tamiflu and haven’t run a fever in a few days, but I am not myself yet!!  We were going to schedule to be induced on the 22nd, but we’ll have to see how that goes.  It depends on how much rest we can catch up on between now & then :-)   I lost 5 pounds over the week, but it looks as if Miss Evie still gained the weight she needed, so I’m thankful for that.

So now we just try to rest and see what the rest of the month holds.  Maybe we’ve reached our crazy medical crisis quota for a few years.  I could live with that!!

Annie’s Birthday- a little late

 

I was SO glad that we weren’t at Kosair with Amelia for Annie’s birthday.  Amelia started recovering just hours before the big day. 

Amelia, Phillip & I were able to go see Annie at school for her celebration.  Amelia would go to school with Annie every day if she could.  She jumped right in with the big kids.

 

 

Annie chose sprinkle cookies for her snack.  Amelia was too busy playing around to eat the snack, but they did pull up a set for her!

 

 

 

 

 

 

When we got home Annie got to do a scavenger hunt to find all of her gifts from us.  She LOVES to do this and it makes 10 small gifts seem a little more fun.

 

 

We ended the day with Annie’s first trip to Chuck E Cheese.  She had a great time. 

 

 

 

The best part is that I got to play a few games of ski ball.  Why is it so much fun???

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The rest of September was fairly uneventful.  I think we had already packed the month full!!

Miss Evie

Little Miss Evie is already being a very good girl.  She is officially head down and “in position”, she posed very well for her photo session this morning, and she measures perfectly.  Hopefully this good behavior will carry on after she’s born!

She has quite the cheeks even though she’s only weighing in at 5 lbs 14 oz.  It also looks like she may have a ton of hair. 

I can’t wait to meet my new little miss and was very glad to hear that it was definitely still a “miss”.  That always gets me a little nervous!  Only a few more weeks!!!