My little Hanley

She's one month old and weighs 6 lbs, 17 ounces and is 19 inches long. I love her so much!
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For Comparison

Just to show you, and for me to remember, here is a comparison of Hudson and Hanley in their car seats going home.
Hanley is 4 lbs, 11 oz in this photo:


Hudson is 6 lbs, 3 oz in this photo:



It's the same car seat and same pad underneath them.

Update on the kids

So my little girl has had zero problems since her little hospital scare. Last Wednesday, 2 weeks old, she weighed in at 5 lbs even and 18.5 inches. I was so excited when they weighed her!

She's doing fabulous. Her face is filling in more, she is now in newborn (the smaller ones anyway) clothing and diapers, no more preemie. Her hair is growing in more and it is a shade somewhere in between dirty brown and dark blonde. Her eyelashes are long and light and her eyebrows are light. She's gorgeous. I'm so so so in love with her.

She eats about every 2 hours on the dot which helps her grow but makes for tiring nights. The nights are hit or miss whether she wants to sleep at first or not. By 4 am I'm usually completely beat.

Hudson is doing good. At the doctor as well he weighed in at a whopping 25 lbs. His eye lashes are long as ever (see photo below) and he is so gorgeous. He always gets the old ladies attention at the grocery store or restaurants. He's doing pretty good with the baby. He likes to go up to her and rub her head and say, "baby". When he walks in a room she's in, he always wants to look at her and says, "baby". We've been taking him on walks, or should I say runs....he runs the entire time, wants to play in the dirt, throws rocks, such a boy. He is however, as I like to call him, a tornado. Goodness that child wears me out!

Makayla is doing good as well. All A's and B's so far except one grade that should be a B when her teacher posts the grade. Report cards come out at the end of this month and I know she's excited to have such good grades. It hasn't been easy to keep her at A's and B's and she's been very frustrated with me. But she did what was needed and succeeded. She has joined a Bridge Club (the card game) at school. She loves it! She's been going to birthday parties and slumber parties and talks about how much she loves having her friends.

Caleb's been struggling lately. He has always been the child that requires more attention and he so doesn't go with the flow easily. He also gets overwhelmed very easily. I have changed the saying from, 'if mamma ain't happy, nobody's happy' to 'if Caleb ain't happy, no one is happy'. He has been so disrespectful to us lately. I'm trying so hard but it doesn't seem to be working. He did this some when Hudson was born and so I'm sure it has a lot to do with Hanley being born. His grades are great, he has A's and B's. His have been easy to keep up, he's very smart and loves getting good grades. He's starting the Bridge club as well and is pretty excited about it. I'm very proud of him too.

So anyway that's our update for now...big little one wants lunch and little one is crying.








Scary!

So Friday my little girl scared the crud out of me!

Shortly after she fed she spit up. Then she proceeded to choke on the spit up...I got the bulb syringe and sucked out her mouth the best I could. It was really mucusy. Well after she quit choking, she quit breathing. She didn't breath for about 15-20 seconds and then would gasp for air. She did this over and over. She did it for about 10 minutes and then once she started to recover a bit she would hold her breath and then gasp for air some more (Not quite as intense as the first 10 minutes). She was rushed her to the ER. And let me tell you, when you show up with a premature 4 lb baby with breathing problems, you get seen IMMEDIATELY.

By this time she was back to breathing normally. They hooked her up to the monitors to watch. She They ran tests of RSV and the flu and took a chest x-ray, which all came out negative for anything thankfully. Her oxygen kept going down so they did supplement her with some. They were debating on whether or not to keep her overnight. I was so nervous to bring her back home. The doctor's were debating because even with her oxygen dipping some, she was doing good. And up in the Pediatric part there were several babies with RSV and the Flu and they didn't want her to get it. We ended up going home.

The Pediatrician thinks that because her body/nervous system are still immature, when she choked she "overreacted" and didn't quite know how to handle it.

I have never been so scared with my kids. Caleb did something similar once, which scared the crud out of me too, but he was a bit older and ended up having RSV.

I cannot tell you how thankful I am she is fine. And how tired I am.


I got my pictures off my camera! Yeah! Lot's more to come!











A Birth Story

Tuesday went over like any other day. Went to work and surprisingly did not have a stressful day, it was calm rather. I came home and hung out thinking about everything I was going to accomplish this week to get ready for Hanley. Went to get some Chinese food  and I went to lay in bed about 8:30 that night.

About 9 pm I got sick and proceeded to puke my guts out. I laid back in bed about 9:30 and went to sleep. I woke up sick again at 1 am thinking it was going to be a long day at work if this turned out to be a long night.

About 1:30 or 1:45 I woke up with a contraction but thought it was all in my head. I had been having braxton hicks a lot. Two days before this they really started to kick up at dinner and Monday they continued to happen a lot but they didn't hurt at all and weren't consistent. I went back to sleep and woke up to another one. I was thinking oh they are moving into the more painful braxton hicks, I just need to relax and go to sleep. Well they kept coming and when I timed them they were 7 minutes apart. Then they proceeded to take my breath away and come about every 4 to 5 minutes. Me being me still thought it was all in my head.

I called my mom to see if they'd drive over here. I figured they'd be here in an hour and dad could stay with the baby and mom could take me to the hospital if I was still having contractions. Well I had about two more contractions that I couldn't talk through and decided to call the sitter....I'd drop Huddie off and drive myself to the hospital. This was about 3 in the morning. I figured I could go get checked, and would be told to go home. Ya still wasn't convinced I was in labor.

I start the car, realize there is very little gas in it and was thinking, "crap out of all the times to have no gas". I put Hudson in the car and drove over there. My sitter's husband, bless him, comes out and says, "I'm going to drive you to the hospital". I didn't argue, hurt too bad. I knew better.

My contractions were coming, painfully, about every 4 minutes. I got to the hospital, walked up to labor and delivery and could barely talk through my admission. The nurse takes me to the room, hooks me up to the monitor and after my next contraction I say, "so are they really contractions or is it all in my head?" I know...I know...I just couldn't believe I was in labor. She tells me they're contractions and then tells me she could have told me that without the monitor hooked up. Then she checks me. I was dilated to 4 and 100% effaced. Shocked!


Less then 10 minutes later another nurse came in to check me, they wanted to be sure she was head down. I was at a 6. (Told you they go quick).  I was in a lot of pain at this time and my contractions were coming, oh I don't know how often, but it was a lot.

When I first got to the hospital I asked for an epidural cause I had already done this twice naturally and really didn't want to again. She said I could get one but had to go through a bag of IV's, get my labs back and go through a thing of antibiotics since I hadn't been tested for step b yet.

My doc was on call that night thankfully and when he came to check me I was at a 7/8. He broke my water and all I could think was oh no these are going to hurt so much more. About this time I finished my IV and the nurse said I could have an epidural. I said screw it I had made it this far and figured she'd be born quick since with Hud I went from a 7 to 10 in like 7 minutes or so.

I was so so so nervous having her 6 weeks early. I kept asking what would happen, about how much she'd weigh, it was scary. They told me 34 weeks is borderline so it could go one of three ways...they'd rush her to the NICU, she'd have to go to the nursery right away to receive some extra oxygen and observation or she'd be fine and stay right there with us. There would be a respiratory and NICU doctor/nurse in there and he wasn't going to put her on me after she was born, he was going to give her to them. The nurse was so encouraging. The doctor said she'd weigh probably somewhere around 4 1/2 lbs.

So the time came and I was fully dilated, it took me about 2 pushes to figure out how to push and then I figured it out and she came out in 1 push. The doc held her up for me and then handed her to the nurse. About 3o seconds later she cried...talk about relief. She received no oxygen and got a clean bill of health. They wrapped her up and I held my precious baby daughter.

The only issues she had was keeping her temp up that night. Once they got it up good, she managed to keep it up. At first she nursed great but then got really wiped out. When her temp went down they had me pump and gave her some in a bottle to help give her energy. Once she ate and got warm she nursed like a pro and hasn't stopped.

Because she was so little and early, before I took her home she had to pass a car seat stress test. If she couldn't pass we would have had to get a different car seat, I guess one that lays down more. They made her sit in it strapped in for an hour while they checked her vitals. She passed with flying colors. If she was any smaller though she would not fit in that thing. She barely does.

I can't tell you how blessed I feel. All those mamma's and daddy's who have had preemies must have been so emotional. I am extremely thankful that she is healthy. I kept praying over and over she would be. Her brothers and cousin are loving her being here. And her mommy is very happy.

She will go to the doctor tomorrow and I'll try to be good about posting updates. Huddie goes as well, I'm excited to see how much he weighs but wish he didn't have to get shots.

Look what I got for Christmas!

Well shortly there after anyway.

Hanley Madeline
12/29/2010
6:43 am
4 lbs, 14 oz
17.5 inches long
5.5 weeks early
Head: 12 inches


My tiny tiny girl.

Lots of hair on her little head. It looks like it's a light brown with maybe a touch of strawberry.



 

And she found her thumb.
These are all cell phone pictures, I still have to get a camera cord and once I do there will be many more pictures to come!