The New Addition, and how it's been going

Hi everyone!! It has been sooooooooooo long since the last time I posted. I deleted my old posts just because life is sooo different now than it was then; and that was only a year or so ago. My son, just turned 6 in April, he is growing up way too fast. He just graduated Kindergarten and his teacher talked so highly of him through-out the year and even more so on the last day. She is now 3 months pregnant with her first child and told me that out of her 8 years of teaching, my son has been her favorite student to date. Not only that, but she also said that if she has a boy, she wants him to have the personality my son has. Made me tear up a bit. I just love him soooo much!! My daughter is two and a half now, and she is mommy's little drama queen. She just graduated speech therapy (she started due to not pronouncing consonants on the ends of her words) and, boy, she is talking up a storm now!!!! And.... surprise, I had my youngest daughter in November of last year. She is 7 months old. She is so stinkin' adorable... no, really. She is. Ha ha. She has the sweetest laugh ever and there is almost never a moment when she is unhappy. God really has blessed me with 3 of the most amazing children on this planet!! But, one of the reasons for me re-starting this blog is to kind of have a place to go, during my down time. (what little down time I do have, anyways.) When My youngest was recently born, it was one of the scariest things my husband or I have EVER been through. And it's been a difficult road since. My due date was November 3rd, 2010. I had been trying for over a week before that to do everything I could to get the labor process going. I walked and walked and walked. I ate spicy food. I cleaned and cleaned and cleaned, and walked some more. Nothing was working. I knew I was carrying a beautiful baby girl and wanted nothing more than to meet her for the first time. Halloween night we went trick-or-treating around the neighborhood. It was my husband and I, my son, my 2 year old daughter, my in-laws and my sister-in-law and her husband. Yes, quite a big group just to take our 2 kids trick-or-treating, but the more, the merrier, right?!? We walked around our never-ending neighborhood for maybe 2 or 3 hours, or it least it seemed. I could tell towards the end that I was having some sharp pains in my lower stomach, so I decided to call it quits and we all went back to the house. No worries though, the kids had TON of candy. ha ha. I sat down and realized I was having contractions. But they were like 10 minutes apart and they weren't any where near unbearable. So, I decided to go to bed. Around 2 am, I woke up and told my husband they were much stronger and much closer, that we probably needed to go ahead and have his mother to come over so we could get ready to go to the hospital. We left the house around 4ish, I believe. And when we get there and sign in, they tell us my doctor had already scheduled me an induction that morning anyways, just in case, because rooms tend to fill up very quickly at this hospital. They check me and I am 2 cm dilated, but its going very slow and after a short while, they stopped. They tell me they can go ahead with the induction if I want to, but I have always heard bad things about being induced, like how fast and strong the contractions come and how much more painful it is. Both of my other children came naturally, so induction was completely new to me. I told them I really did want to, because I wanted her here so bad, but I was terrified at the same time. So they told me just to go home and get some rest and that they had an opening at 7:00 that night and I could come back then if I still wasn't progressing at home if that's what I wanted. Yes. I went home, took a nap, cleaned the house until it was completely SPOTLESS! We left the house around 6:30 and got to the hospital around 7:00, but I believe it was between 9 and 10 that they finally inserted the cervidil. It wasn't long and I went into labor myself, with out the help of pitocin. Everything started going pretty quickly. It was around 3, I believe, that the Dr came in and told us to get ready because were having a baby. I started pushing, and after several times, she tells me her head is out, but not to push any more because her cord was around her neck. She clamped it off and cut it, and I was able to push once or twice more and out she came. Many moms know that sometimes in the midst of excitement, your brain kind of becomes a bit fogged and it takes a moment or two before you really realize what is going on. They laid her on top of me and I remember looking down at her. She didnt look like she was breathing. And she sure wasn't crying. By the time I got a glimpse of her and to think that quick thought, the doctor had ordered a nurse to grab her and rub her back. It seemed like forever, but I believe it was maybe about a minute before I heard her first very short very tiny cry. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes as I thanked God for getting her through. She wasn't breathing. They had to resuscitate her. From my understanding, the cord was pretty tight. It wrapped around her neck twice, her body and one of her feet. She weighed in at 8 lbs 3 oz and was 22" long! Once they got her cleaned and wrapped up they brought her to me to see for all of, MAYBE, 15 seconds. They wanted to take her to the NICU to monitor her and make sure she was ok after enduring all that stress. It was 3:27 a.m when I gave birth to my beautiful baby girl. And I didnt get to see her again until around 5:30 that night when I got to hold her for the first time and give her a bottle. They ran several tests on her just to make sure that everything was normal after having the cord around her neck. An EEG, an echo-cardiogram, and an ultrasound of both her head and chest. Everything came back completely normal. Then the hospital's pediatrician did the overall physical exam and noticed her pinky fingers were a bit turned in, so she ordered a blood sample to send to genetics. And also told us that she would refer us to an Orthopedic Dr. because she believed she had hip dysplasia (meaning her hips were easily dislocated). We were released on time, after a normal 48 hour stay. The ortho clinic called just a day or two after we got home and we had an appointment a few days after that. They did an exam and confirmed the hip dysplasia and put her in a Pavlik Harness. They said she had to stay in it 23 hours a day for 6 weeks and then 12 hours a day for another 6 weeks to mold the sockets for her hips.

Genetics called about a week later and let us know that there is usually a 6 month wait to get an appointment, but I would be put on the cancellation list, so that if someone cancelled, I could get an earlier appointment. I ended up having an appointment for her when she was 4 months old. They had already run all the blood work that the hospital had sent and found that she had a duplication of gene 2q32.3 in the 2nd chromosome, but they weren't sure what if any the outcome would be because they didn't have any records of that particular gene being duplicated before because the testing they used was fairly new (within the last five years). So they wanted to test my husband and I to see if we had the same duplication. If one of us did, then because we are healthy, then she more than likely would be too, but if neither of us did, then it would be "of clinical significance." So my husband had his tested first because he has insurance through his work, and I have none. In the mean time, the geneticist referred us to a neurologist for more testing and an ophthalmologist because she wouldn't make very good eye contact and she had a bit of nystagmus. And we would also need to get an ultrasound of her kidneys because it is common for people with a duplication to have kidney issues. The ultrasound that we had a few weeks later came back normal. We also had a Barium swallow test done since she seemed to be choking a bit during feedings. It too came back normal. At the neurologist appointment, she scheduled us an MRI of the brain and spine to make sure that they were formed the way they should be. All came back normal, although her corpus callosum was a bit small (this is the piece that separates the left side of the brain from the right side). They told me that this wasn't really an issue because there are actually a lot of people that don't even have a corpus callosum , and many don't even know until they end of having an MRI for other reasons ( car wreck, etc). My daughter was 5 months old when we finally had eye ophthalmologist appointment. The Dr. there said that she had the vision of a 2-3 month old and we would need to work with her on building up her eye sight by stimulating her with black and white images and with bold primary colors. Her nystagmus was barely noticeable at this point, but still there. The Dr assured us she would more than likely grow out of it. At about 6 months, we noticed her left eye was turning in, so I called the eye Dr. and she said we could go ahead and bring her in the following week. The Dr. diagnosed her with pseudostrabismus. This is false crossing. It appears to us that she is crossing her eyes, but because light reflections in both eyes were at the same spot on each pupil, she wasn't truly crossing her eyes. But, she told us then that she does gaze more with her right eye, she tends to look out from the corner of her eye when she is looking at something, and she sometimes, jerks her head to the either side to get her eyes where she wants them. No diagnosis for that yet. But she goes tomorrow for a test that will measure her brain waves to see if she is seeing better or worse in one eye than the other, because it is important that any one sees equally with both eyes. My husbands blood test for the geneticist came back in the mean time, and praise the Lord, he has the same duplication as our daughter. So that means she will probably be ok too. At this point a lot of what is going on with her is just a "wait and see" or "only time will tell" deal. She is beautiful and so happy all of the time. She is a bit smaller than other babies her age. She is 7 months and weighs 16 lbs. And she is physically delayed, not hitting quite all of the milestones she should be hitting. Rolling over has come slowly, and is still something she is working on mastering. She has low tone through her core, but with the help of our physical, occupational and play therapists, she is becoming stronger every week and we have very high hopes for her. All the therapists love working with her because she is always so smiley and happy and never gets upset with any of them. And of course, we love her so much, our other kids adore her, she has daddy wrapped around her little finger already and boy, does she know her mommy. God blessed us with all 3 of our beautiful kids, and it is him that we thank each and every day. I'll definitely try to post updates frequently, but if I do forget, just know I am a VERY busy mommy, but I will get around to it!