Good Day!

Kairi slept through the night again last night! Yesterday we went to the Food and Wine Festival at Epcot. The evening started with Bertito, Kairi, Maureen, Tristan and I. After a while, we finally met up with Susan and Asia around Morocco. The food and Sake was really good in Japan and Margaritas in Mexico were excellent!!! My favorite food of the evening though was definitely the Cheddar Cheese soup in Canada. We finally met up with Janet, Mike and Merideth during the fireworks at the end of the evening. We were all in complete shock that not only was Kairi not scared of the fireworks, but she was actually watching them!!! The highlight of the evening was by far when Kairi got to met the famous Winnie the Pooh. He was thrilled to meet his biggest fan, and she was in awe when she saw him! It was love at first sight.

She did it again!

The night before last she didn't, but last night Kairi slept through the night again!!! Actually, Bertito and I were both shocked because he fed her at 9 pm when I was still at work, and when I got home she was fast asleep. So just like every night, around 11, we went to sleep too. When I finally heard her fussing to be fed, it was 5 am! I again was in complete shock. This actually is probably the longest she has ever went between feedings! Hopefully this will become a pattern, although 5 am is pretty early. I guess I'll have to adjust. Well, I'm coming to Maryland for Thanksgiving, and so far, I think my parents might be coming down for Christmas. Either way, it's good that Kairi will be able to get to know my side of the family too. Today, we are going to the Food and Wine festival at Epcot, so this will officially be Kairi's first trip to Disney. I will be sure to take lots of pictures!

Frustration

This is a picture of the beautiful angel sleeping on her daddy. Today, I'm going to use my blogging time to vent about something. I am sick and tired of people asking for my address and not doing anything with it. Why do you need my address? Are you going to mapquest me and come visit? I don't think so. And the funny part is, there are people who have asked me several times! Why? Or my absolute favorite is the people who keep telling me, I have a gift for Kairi that I have to give you. Honestly, whether you do or whether you don't is fine. But I loathe when people make up things they have no intention of doing. If you don't have a gift for her, it's really ok! But please stop telling me you have a gift for her almost everytime I see you or everytime I talk to you when you really don't. That's all I have to say about that.

My bad!

Kairi is 2 months old!!!!

Judging from the email I got this morning, I guess I will have to keep my blog going. I guess I never thought about that, you not being a big poster... sorry. I will keep the blog going, if not for anyone else, just for you. You are too far away to see Kairi and you need to be updated on her, Titi.

So Kairi news of the day: SHE SLEPT THROUGH THE NIGHT LAST NIGHT!!!!! Well, since I have been back to work for the past couple of days in the evening, as soon as I leave, Kairi gets a little fussy for Bertito. Someone at his job suggested that he swaddle her really tight and put her in a swing or something. So he tried it last night, and she behaved like a perfect angel all night. So when I got home from work, she was having a feeding, and Bertito and I talked about leaving her swaddled for the night because it kept her calm. So we went to bed at about 11, and when I heard her fussing to be fed, it was 5 am!!! When we first brought her home, she was waking every 2 hours. I got it spread out to every 4 hours. Now 6 straight hours of uninterrupted sleep is just heavenly!!! Hopefully this swaddling will continue to work.

How much longer will it last?

Yeah, I'm talking about this blog. It seems like these days, the only one who pulls up this blog is me! The whole purpose of this blog was to keep my "loved ones" updated on my status and the status of Kairi. Well, I figured that pretty much the only people that really need to know anything about us, I already keep in contact with one way or the other. The only good thing, it is nice to be able to pull up adorable Kairi pictures where ever I am that has internet... but for that, maybe I will just change to a different blogging site. Besides, I don't want any unwanted visitors here at all anymore.

Kairi update, she had her 2 month shots a couple days ago. It was horrible. I had to hold her while they gave her 4 shots!!! She looked up at me and just cried, as if to say, "Mommy! How could you let them do this to me?" I felt horrible and cried too. So far she has blue eyes!

Part 3

Despite the fact that emotionally, July 31st was a horrible day for me; I had a hope that the Brady that Kairi had that morning at 1 am, was going to be her last one. Sure enough, when my mother and I arrived at the NICU on August 1st, they told us she had not had a Brady since. The rule is, preemies with Bradys have to wait 5 days from the last Brady to go home. Before even if she went a couple of hours, we would always calculate in our heads when she would be able to go home. On August 2nd, when we came in, there were still no Bradys! I nearly died when the nurse came over and said, "The doctor thinks that Kairi will be able to go home today." Of course, my mom was super worried about the Bradys. The reason they were letting her go was because she was old enough and not way too premature. They felt that the last Brady she had on the 31st was truly her last one... and it was. She had all of her final tests, and a little later was wheeled off to a room where they took her first portraits! SO CUTE! Unfortunately, all of the take home clothes I had for her were WAY too small. Up until then, all of the clothes they put on the babies are supplied by the hospital and most of them were actually taped up. You have to imagine, some of these babies are so tiny, there is no way they could make clothes that small. Kairi was actually one of the bigger ones. There was a boy in the incubator next to Kairi's that was about a month old, and weighed about three pounds. (Story about his family, they were actually on vacation at Disney and the mom went into labor! She actually had him in the hotel elevator! He was about three months premature. And she has to stay there with him until he can go home. Which will probably be around her original due date. POOR THING! Thank God for the Ronald McDonald house to give her a place to stay or else she would not have been able to do it.) I can not even verbalize how thrilled we all were to have Kairi come home with us that day. She woke up at first every two hours on the dot to be fed. (Now it's almost every four hours) Due to the fact that she was premature, she is really not supposed to be around other children for a while, but it's been hard with small children in the family. We were not allowed to take her out in public at first because of germs. Anyone that comes over to visit her is supposed to wash their hands before touching her, but actually that's the rule no matter if they are preemie or not, you don't want to jeopardize the health of the baby for something that miniscule. A small cold that someone might pass onto the baby could easily become pneumonia to such an underdeveloped immune system. Speaking of visitors, Kairi wants to know when you are coming over again Amy and Susan. My mother is completely in love with Kairi. When it was time for her to finally go back to Maryland, we were all so sad. She was such a blessing and a tremendous help. I know I would not have been able to do it without her helping me. Even after I came home from the hospital, it was still hard for me to get around due to the pain I was in and the amount of stairs in my house. The big question, will I be doing this again? It's obviously way to soon to think about that, but I have to say the love I feel and the whole experience is definitely worth repeating. If I do have another baby though, I do hope it would be a little less complicated. I know if I have another, it will have to be through C section again. Which is fine by me... I didn't have to go through labor! No contractions, no watermelon out of a keyhole metaphors; just give me an IV and roll me to the OR! ***I know this post was way more than a day later... but I'm on a different computer, and was waiting for the pictures to put with my post.

Part 2

I was put in a room to recover and my visitors stayed with me. They were allowed to leave (and they did constantly) to go visit Kairi. I wasn’t really upset that I couldn’t go, due to the horrendous pain I was in… plus I was still paralyzed for a while. The night of my surgery, I was alone by seven pm. Everyone was tired and wanted to go home to sleep. It was then that the nurses changed shifts. To my dismay, I happened to get the nurse from hell! She seemed like something out of a Stephen King novel, even evil looking! At around 2 am, that night, she came into my room and was like, “Get up you’re going to the bathroom.” I was pretty horrified to see her battered face at that time of the night, not to mention that she had waken me from my peaceful sleep. After removing my catheter, she pulled me out of bed and we headed toward the bathroom. I laughed to myself as blood gushed out of me and onto the floor knowing that the witch would have to clean it up. The next day, I was only able to make one visit to see Kairi in a wheelchair, but fortunately, they had taken those LARGE tubes out of her nose and were replaced with smaller ones. She looked a little less gooey, but was still beautiful. I prayed all day that the witch nurse would not be back that night, but she was. As a matter of fact, for my whole stay, she was my night time nurse. It was so hard to get up and down, or maneuver at all. The day after my surgery was definitely the worst pain I have ever felt in my entire life. During the day the lactation specialist brought a breast pump into me, since I did plan on breast feeding. The best way for me to describe what that feels like, is someone trying to slowly cut your nipple off with a spoon. Every time I would sit in bed and it would be time to pump, I would sit there with my finger on the ON button dreading having to start. (It does eventually get better, it’s just starting is THE worse!) Not only that, but lactation encourages your uterus to start to shrink back to it’s normal size which is extremely painful. Again, probably feels like period pain times 10, plus with the C section and everything, just agonizing; all I can say is thank God for Percocet. One the third day, Kairi was doing better, so they moved her into a different NICU, a level down from the first one. In this one, she had her own room and her own nurse. This meant she was a step closer to being able to come home. The only scary part was she kept suffering from Brady’s, which is fairly common in preemies. A brady, or bradycardia was when her heart rate fell below what is normal. It usually was related to a desaturation where the oxygenation of the blood fell below normal also. Usually, a brady would follow an apnea spell, which was when she would forget to breathe for 15 seconds or more. As long as she was on the respirator, these spells weren't a great concern. But due to the fact that Kairi was improving, she wasn’t on the respirator anymore. When she would have a brady, you would hear all kinds of bells and alarms and someone would have to rush over to her and shake her a little to remind her to breathe. That was completely horrifying! That night, I was sent home. It was really hard to be away from her, knowing that she was on the other side of town, and I was at home. I planned on coming back the next morning and staying all day, and as long as she was in the hospital I would do the same. I wasn’t allowed to drive though, so again, thank God for my mother. We were able to get there super early and stay all day with her. On July 31st, she was five days old. I went early to the hospital in a SUPER good mood. It was my birthday and I kept telling my mom, all I wanted was to have Kairi come home, that would be the best gift ever. My mom dropped me off at the front of the children’s hospital so that I wouldn’t have to walk a long way. I went up right away to the area where her room was. There was a security lady at the desk who was there everyday and watched me as I washed my hands. When they were dry, she unlocked the door so that I could come in. When I got around to Kairi’s room, I saw a hospital staff woman telling two new parents everything about the room. No Kairi, no Kairi’s incubator, none of her stuffed animals that we had brought for her. I was confused and scared; I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone. Everyone turned around and just looked at me as if I was disturbing them. They closed the door to give themselves privacy as I just stared at the room in horror. Finally, a short little nurse came over to me and asked with the biggest attitude, “Can I help you with something?” As if to say, “What the hell are you doing just standing here?” I stayed with my eyes fixed on the room still in shock as I answered, “My daughter was in this room, where is she?” The nurse looked at me like I was completely insane and I burst out in tears. As I sobbed hysterically, she rushed off to the desk to find out what was going on. When she came back, she led me all the way to the other side of the hospital to another step down from this NICU, it was level three, which means, the next step from there was going home. This was a good move, it meant that Kairi would be coming home soon. But I was so frustrated and angry that no one had told me that they moved her. I’m sure this is well known, but after you have a baby, you are very emotional. I think I was even suffering from post partum depression, and my early morning birthday surprise left me crying the entire day. I could not stop, even when I was able to hold Kairi. Actually, holding her probably made me cry more. I was thinking all of these crazy things of what could have happened to her, and it was really upsetting me. Tomorrow I will write part 3.....