9 months old

Technically, Lucy turned nine months old on Monday, but since we just saw the doctor today, I will update her stats now!

She weighed 17 lbs, 4 oz which is much less than I expected her to weigh but the doctor didn't seem concerned at all so I'm not either. She is 27" long and her head circumference is 17 1/4" (I have NO idea how to gauge if head circumference is normal or not! haha).

The pediatrician was very impressed with how well Lucy was doing after her surgery. I also talked to her about my concern about Lucy's eating habits and she said just to take it slow and keep trying different things and that she would probably get the hang of it really soon. I hope so! They also tested her hemoglobin since she is exclusively breastfeeding at the moment and hasn't really consistently been eating solid food. Her hemoglobin was great, 13.8 or something like that, so the doctor was like, "No need to worry about feeding her iron-rich foods or giving her any iron supplements!" which is great because that is always the thing doctors seem to be concerned about with Lucy since she has been breastfed with some solid foods. It makes me feel good as a mom, too, because it means that I don't have to force Lucy to eat food because she's lacking in iron. We can go slow until she is ready.

She's been wearing her monitor today and doesn't seem to mind it. Only 10 more days to go! :)

Out with the caffeine, in with the monitor ...

So it's coming up on the end of December and that means it's been 90 days since Lucy had her last apnea episode. They told me that she could stop wearing her monitor after 90 days of no unusual activity. And as I may have mentioned on here, we stopped making her wear her monitor a few weeks ago ...

But it's also time for her to either start being weaned off the caffeine or get a new prescription refill, so I called yesterday and the apnea specialist and our pediatrician agreed to start weaning her off the caffeine! YES!!! So exciting. The less exciting part is that they need her to wear the monitor while we're weaning her off and then for 7-10 days after she's completely off the caffeine and then if the download is normal, we can take her off the monitor as well.

So it's great news and kind of stinky news. That means for at least two weeks she has to wear the monitor, and I hate that, just being honest. During the day it's impossible to keep up with her since the monitor cord only goes so far it means constantly moving the monitor around with her as she crawls and making sure she doesn't pull on the wires or try to pull off the band with the electrodes now that she's very able to do so. During the night it means having to wake up if it goes off for a false alarm because she moved too much in her sleep and the electrode stopped touching her body for just a second. This wakes her up (the alarm is super loud) and wakes me up of course. I'm bummed.

I thought maybe I would just let her wear it during the day since she's sleeping pretty great at night now (in five hour stretches) and that means I'm sleeping well, too! But during the day is also a pain in the butt. So you can see my problem... I keep reminding myself it's only for two weeks -- we can do it!

She had her 9 month pediatrician visit scheduled for Monday but I was not feeling well with kidney stones and she's very snotty and congested and coughing, so I rescheduled it for tomorrow. I'm interested to see how much she weighs. At the moment, I'm just breastfeeding her because she seems to be completely uninterested in solid food, both baby food and finger food. I've tried different flavors of baby food, warmed it up, left it cold (if it was a fruit), tried those Baby NumNum wafers, yogurt melts, soft veggies cut up, and over Christmas we tried giving her almost any of the food on our plates and she was just like, "No way!" So I'm trying not to stress too much about it. If she is gaining weight appropriately, I will worry less.

I'll update as soon as we have her pediatrician visit!

Appt. with Dr. Mackay

Yesterday we had Lucy's 3 1/2 week follow up appointment with Dr. Mackay. Again, it was one of those "drive an hour, wait, be seen for 2 minutes, and drive an hour home" type of things. I really am not exaggerating when I say we saw the doctor for about a minute. ;) He said she looked good and that she still had some swelling in her forehead and around her eyes. We have another appointment with him in three months. He also took some pictures of her head from the front and side. It was crazy to see the before pictures when she was only about 2 1/2 months old. She was so little!!!! Such a baby.

She's doing really well. She really is completely her normal self. She still wakes up about 3 times during the night, but I don't really care to do anything to change that. I just feed her and she goes right back to sleep.

I am still being a rebel -- when we went to Thomasville this past weekend, we just didn't put her monitor on her while she slept at night. Then since being back, I just haven't put it on her at all. It has almost been 90 days since her last apnea episode and they said that's when they usually take the monitor off. It's just impossible to keep a monitor on a very very active and mobile baby and during the night it was going off with a false alarm when she would wake up and move around. So I think we're done with the monitor. Now if we could just get her weaned off the caffeine, I think we'd have one "normal" baby on our hands. haha.

It was so nice to see so many people at New Covenant Church in Thomasville this past weekend -- and everyone said, "Oh, we read your blog and we love it!" It made me so encouraged to know that people were reading about Lucy and praying for her and keeping up with our family. I just want you ALL to know that words can't describe how much it means to us that you pray for us and that you support us. It is like a huge family.

I'll post again when Lucy turns 9 months old on December 27th! Until then, have a very Merry Christmas!

Soooooooooo thankful

I also wanted to post and say how incredibly, incredibly grateful I am for Wesley's job. I get to stay home with Lucy even though the budget can often be tight. And the best part of Wesley's job is the health insurance. I was reminded of how great it is to have insurance when the bills for Lucy's surgery came rolling in, and even though we don't have to pay for any of it (because we've already paid our max out of pocket deductible for her this year, due to the many hospitalizations she's already had) ... the cost of the surgery and the recovery days in the hospital is at least $80,000+ from the bills I've seen so far. That is a crazy amount.

A follow up visit to Dr. Wrubel

Sorry for the delay in posting. I can only blog when Lucy is napping or asleep at night and these days it seems like there is always something I need to do first (like eating, or using the restroom, or cleaning up the house) and then she's up from her nap or it's too late for me to blog.

The visit with Dr. Wrubel on Monday was very uneventful. They took a look at this little bump on the side of her temple and he said it was just a plate under the skin and that it would either dissolve or the growth in her face would make it not so noticeable. He wasn't worried about it. He also said we could wash her incision. I had only been washing around it, since Dr. Mackay said not to wash the actual incision. So I've started washing the incision and even before that, a lot of her stitches had fallen out on their own, especially the "knots" where it looks like they started and stopped the stitches.

She's doing great otherwise. She is into everything and I can't take my eyes off her for a moment's notice. I tried to feed her some table food today, instead of baby food, and it didn't go so well. I cooked a carrot and cut it up into tiny, tiny pieces and she put some of them in her mouth but then I guess she's not used to swallowing chunks of things and she gagged and promptly threw up the few pieces of carrot and the breastmilk she'd just eaten. Yeck. So I don't know what to do about that, other than to just keep trying. Eventually she'll get over that gag reflex, I guess.

Here's some pictures of her from the last week.

She likes to stand in her crib!

Before our visit to Dr. Wrubel Monday morning.

Mommy "helping" her stand up.

2 weeks post-op

December 1, 2010 -- 12 days post-op

December 2, 2010 -- 13 days post-op and VERY happy!

"Hi! My name is Lucy! Ooops, I mean ... Salut! Je m'appelle Lucy!" (We're trying to speak a lot of French to her)

December 3, 2010 -- 2 weeks post-op. Her eyes look a little more swollen than usual but I chalk that up to the fact that she did NOT want to sleep last night and did a lot of eye-rubbing, too.

Soooooo. Here we are at two weeks after Lucy's surgery. I vividly remember standing in the hospital room and speaking with Dr. Wrubel's nurse PA, Melissa, and trying to schedule a two week follow up visit with Dr. Wrubel and thinking that two weeks seemed to be so far away. And now it's here!

Our visit with Dr. Wrubel is actually Monday because that's when he has office hours. I'll update after we see him.

Lucy is doing great. She really seems to be very normal. One of her stitches even came out by itself today. I think that's a great sign of healing since we haven't messed with the incision at all at the request of Dr. Mackay. He said we could wash around it, but don't wash or touch the actual incision until he has a chance to see it at three weeks post-op.

I got a little concerned yesterday when she woke up because there was a very hard dime-sized bump on her right temple area in front of the incision. It wasn't red or irritated and it didn't seem to bother Lucy, but it worried me a little since it was so hard and I didn't know what it could be (and since I only felt it on the one side). So I called Dr. Wrubel's office and Melissa called me back and said that she would talk to Dr. Wrubel about it in the morning and she didn't think it was probably anything to worry about. When Wesley came home from work he reminded me that Dr. Mackay had said that he put a plate in that area so maybe now that a lot of the swelling has decreased that plate is more obvious. Melissa called me back this morning to say that Dr. Wrubel didn't think it was anything to be very concerned about and that he would take a look at it Monday when we were in the office. So I hope it's nothing.

Every day it's a little better

Lucy is doing really great, in my opinion. In fact, if it wasn't for the swelling she still has or the nasty-looking scar/stitches across the top of her head, she seems to be back to her normal self. She is laughing, smiling, playing, sleeping MUCH better, and eating great. She is still pretty mommy-needy but that also may have nothing to do with the surgery. I haven't given her any Tylenol since last Tuesday or Wednesday, I think. It's hard not to be impatient and want the swelling to go down, but I keep reminding myself it may be a full month after the surgery until her swelling is completely gone, and even longer until her head shape is in its settled state.

Here's a picture of her from yesterday. You can see her eyes are still swollen and the top of her head is still swollen, but other than that she looks great!

One week post-op

Her shirt may say "Daddy's Little Girl" but don't be fooled -- this baby is a mommy's girl all the way! (At least for now)

There are those blue eyes peeking out! You can see how much the top of her head is still swollen, but that's to be expected. Our plastic surgeon even said that she may still have swelling at 3 weeks post-op when we go back to see him.

I know I have said this before, but I can't believe Lucy's surgery is over and we are a week post-op. I mean, this time last week she was so swollen and bandaged that we barely recognized her. And although she is still very swollen in the front top of her head (basically where they were cutting and moving things around!) she is starting to open her eyes more and is sloooooowly but surely getting back to her old self and her old routine.

That has been the major challenge of being at home. I knew it would be, thanks to the other blogs of cranio parents. I hope my blog can be the same kind of roadmap for other parents just finding out their baby has craniosynostosis and that surgery is in their future. The hardest part of being home has been that she has been very needy and her sleeping schedule was all out of whack. Last night she didn't want to go to sleep until almost 1:00am and then only because I just put the swing in her nursery and let her swing for a while and she finally fell asleep and then I moved her to the bed. She wants to be held constantly and even when she is being held she is very fussy. I haven't had to give her too much Tylenol -- just about 3 times in the 3 days we've been home, so I think that is pretty good. Today she didn't seem to be in any pain at all. She took better naps today and tonight she went to sleep around 7:30pm and has been asleep ever since (it's 9:30pm now). But my favorite thing is that her little personality is returning. Her happy smiles and babbling and laughter is all I need to reassure me that she is doing fine, regardless of the swelling and scarring and all the other scary things about her right now.

These past few days, for the first time since Lucy was born, I can finally imagine a time where Lucy's head is not a thing of concern. Where trips to the doctors are years apart and only for regular check ups, not for emergencies or surgeries or anything. Any other cranio moms reading this know -- you literally can't think of a future after the surgery until it's over, and then it's like all of the sudden your whole life seems to stretch out before you and it's exhilarating.

I'll keep posting pictures every day so you can see her pretty eyes opening and the swelling going down. I think it's great to have all this stuff written down for posterity -- not only for other cranio parents who are going to go through the same thing, but so we can look back a few months from now, or a year from now, and see how far we've come!

We give thanks.

We really have so much to be thankful for. I know so many of you that read this blog and have been praying for Lucy. At the risk of sounding like a broken record -- THANK YOU! You are high up on the list of things we are thankful for today.

Lucy barely slept last night. She would sleep about an hour, wake up crying and was very hard to console. Then after about an hour or so she would fall back to sleep only to wake up soon after crying again. Wesley was up with her for a while but she is very much a mommy's girl these days and I had to come in to take over. I hate that because I like for her to spend time with other people, especially her daddy and her grandparents, but it seems like in the past few weeks and especially since the surgery she only wants to be with me or be held by me. That's hard for me sometimes because I do have things I need to get done and sometimes I just need a break! But I'm hoping it's a phase.

I don't notice any difference in the swelling today but I'm with her all the time so it can be hard for me to tell.

Wesley and I were in her room late last night and she was just playing and not sleeping so we just sat her in the crib and let her play. She turned around, grabbed the crib railing, and just pulled herself right up to a standing position and then stood there bouncing, like she had known how to do that all along!!! We couldn't believe it. It's so crazy!! I mean, one minute they've never done something in their whole life and then they just do it. She never even seemed the slightest bit interested in pulling up/standing up, so I was really surprised. Of course, after that we realized that we needed to lower her mattress because she could just pull herself right on over the railing. So that is always fun to do at 12:30am when you are tired.

Here are some pictures from yesterday and today. Happy Thanksgiving!!!!

Today (11/25/10) playing happily in her swing.

Yesterday (11/24/10) with the balloons and the soft little teddy bear that Wesley's co-workers sent her! Thank you!!! She loves them.

Yesterday morning (11/24/10) sticking her little tongue out. You can see that one eye is more open than the other.

"Mommy, why can't I open my eyes all the way?"

First full day at home

Last night wasn't too bad. She wouldn't nap in her bed yesterday -- she only wanted to be held. But last night she finally went to sleep in her bed, but much later than she normally would. I wouldn't say it was a great night. She was basically awake from midnight until 4am this morning. Wesley got up with her some, and I was up the rest of the time. I ended up giving her some Tylenol around 2am but I'm not sure that helped. She would fall asleep in my arms but as soon as I would lean over to put her down she would wake up and start crying. I think she just slept in her bed finally from sheer exhaustion.

Today she has been in a much better mood. I let her nap in my arms this morning and this afternoon she finally fell asleep in her bed just now. I am hoping tonight will be better.

Her swelling has gone down just a little more and she can open her eyes about halfway now, which makes her really happy. She still seems to be really mommy-needy.

I just can't wait until her swelling goes down all the way! I'll post some pictures soon.

Wesley's mom is headed home tomorrow so we'll be by ourselves for Thanksgiving. We're used to it because Wesley has always had to work the day after Thanksgiving so we've never traveled. I kind of like it that way, though! No stress or packing. We always go to Waffle House. We may get it to go this year but we'll see.

It's over?!

We're at home now! Surprised? haha.

I can't believe it. It's over. I mean, don't get me wrong -- she still has so much swelling and I know that the road to total recovery is a long one. But now we're at home where we can set our own schedule and we don't have to worry about being attached to five wires and weighing her diapers and trying to convince the nurses that 5 - 6 minutes of nursing on each side is completely normal for Lucy.

I think it's completely due to the prayer that was sent up for us. I've been astonished by how easy this whole thing has been. Would I want to repeat it? Heck, no! My baby has been in pain and been frustrated and I'm tired, but we had to do it, and it's over now. I still can't wrap my head around it. This surgery has been the turning point in the timeline of Lucy's life: pre-surgery and post-surgery. I feel like our post-surgery life has just begun, and I'm so excited.

Lucy's eyes are just barely open, like little slits. But she is SO happy to be able to see. She didn't want to lay down in her bed and nap today, so we let her sleep in the swing. I expected as much from reading other cranio baby blogs. But just now I fed her and laid her down in the bed and she whimpered for a second but then she just went right to sleep on her back, which is unusual for her.

Teresa is going to stay here tomorrow to help me while Wesley works and then she is headed home Thanksgiving Day. I couldn't have done it without her -- literally! She came to the hospital at almost every meal time and let me go eat by myself, even if Lucy was really upset or crying or whatever. What are we going to do without our Gigi? :)

Just barely peeking ....

Hanging out with her best doggie friend at home.

A picture post

These pictures are in reverse order due to my inability to understand Blogger well enough to do anything about it. :)

Daddy holding a sleeping Lucy the evening of 11/22/10. Notice she is wearing a onesie now! We happen to own one onesie that snaps all the way down the front instead of having to pull it over her head. I imagine we will have to buy several more of those until Mommy feels comfortable enough to pull things over the scar.

We said, "Smile for the camera, Lucy!" but it's kinda hard to do that if you don't know where the camera is. (sad)

Lucy playing with Gigi.

My baby girl on the afternoon of 11/21/10.

Sleeping all propped up.

With her daddy -- I think this was taken on Sunday 11/20 maybe...

Covered by the beautiful healing quilt made by the amazing Corinne Cramer.

Covered by her blanket from CappsKids.org -- a wonderful organization that provided so much information and support for me through this whole ordeal!

Listening to Nana and PopPop.

Playing with Mommy on Saturday morning 11/20/10.

I was busy loving my baby.

Sorry I haven't posted more today. Lucy has been super needy, which I don't mind, but it has meant either me holding her or me letting someone else hold her while I eat and use the restroom, so there was no time to blog. Or take pictures apparently because I think we only took two pictures today after Wesley asked me if I had taken any and I realized I didn't.

Lucy slept great (relatively) last night. She was waking up about every three hours and she obviously either didn't make a peep in between those times or I was super tired because I got to sleep during those three hours, too. It seems like the only reason one or both of us woke up was because someone was coming in the room. So I felt refreshed today.

Her swelling has gone down considerably. She took lots of naps today and she is just on Tylenol now, about every 8 hours or longer depending on her level of pain. I know when she's in pain when she's just gotten up from napping, just been fed, and just been changed, and is being held and is still crying or acting miserable. They took out all of her IV's which is so nice.

She tried to open her eyes a few times today, and I think she actually succeeded, but she could only do it a tiny bit and only when laying down. She still can't do it when sitting up. We're letting her sleep basically sitting up and hoping the swelling will go down enough overnight for her to open her eyes enough tomorrow that they can check her out and send us home.

We finally made it to a regular room on the floor today!!! Oh, regular room, how I love thee. Let me count the ways:

1. We can eat food in our room.

2. We can have as many guests as we want in our room.

3. We can come and go whenever we want and not have to "stay in or stay out" from 7-8am and 7-8pm every day while the nurses change shifts like we did in the PICU.

4. She only has to wear a pulse-ox monitor while sleeping and the rest of the time she is totally unplugged.

5. Therefore, she can now wear clothes!

6. We can take her around the hospital like to the garden and the playroom now.

7. Nice crushed ice machine in the family lounge. :)

So we are hoping she will go home tomorrow because all they are waiting on is to see her eyes and make sure it's all okay. I'm not getting my hopes up because I know it very well may be Wednesday because we are totally ready to go, but either way it's soon!

Oh my -- there is a SCREAMING child across the hall from us. I do hope this isn't an all-night thing considering it has been going on for about 45 minutes now.

I will just make the next blog post a picture post to catch you all up.

Hope persists...

Well, Lucy hasn't opened her eyes yet today. I know it was a lot to hope for, but I have a feeling at least by tomorrow night she should be able to open at least one eye a smidge. (Smidge is a Southern unit of measurement, y'all! haha)

The rest of the afternoon she did really well. Being the semi-immature parents that we are, we pretended like Nina (our dog) was in the room and we were like, "Nina, go get your ball" and stuff like that BUT we only did it because Lucy LOVES Nina and as soon as we started saying her name, Lucy started smiling and saying, "Hey" and acting excited. Oh, the things you can get away with when your child can't see temporarily. ;-)

Teresa (her Gigi) stayed with her tonight while Wesley and I went and grabbed some Pad Thai from Doc Chey's for dinner, and then again while we ate the Carvel ice cream cake with my parents who had come back to give me my birthday gift. I got some sweet cards and awesome presents from quite a few people, so you know who you are -- THANK YOU! I won't call this my favorite birthday ever, but I have so much to be thankful for.

This is my first birthday with a baby (I was pregnant last year for my birthday but, you know, my first birthday with Lucy outside the womb!). We're in the middle of a process of healing that will hopefully mean no more surgery and no more problems for Lucybird. So for that, and for the amazing outpouring of love and support I've received, I am thankful and humbled and I can celebrate that any day of the year -- no birthday needed! Plus, Wesley promised we could celebrate my birthday again when we get out of the hospital. His birthday is this coming Saturday (Nov. 27th) so we'll have a double birthday celebration ["Double birthday, double birthday, 'cross the sky, yeah, yeah, yeah, so intense."]

Since Lucy is sleeping now I guess I will try to lay down and get some sleep. No word yet on getting into a regular room. I think we've given up on that. Until tomorrow ....

Happy birthday to me...

A rough start to a good day.

Well, first of all, it's my birthday!!! Yay! I love birthdays (mine and other people's, but mostly mine ... teehee) and even though this year is a little different, it's not a big deal. I've gotten a ton of Facebook messages and texts from people, and I even got balloons and gifts and a ice cream cake that I asked for!

Lucy did well last night. She would wake up and eat and then go back to sleep, but she was a restless sleeper. I got about 2 hours of sleep total. She woke up this morning and she was not a happy camper. She was just crying and she didn't want to eat or snuggle. They said they only wanted to give her Tylenol so they did, but then she just kept crying and crying so they ended up giving her more morphine. She hadn't had any pain medicine since yesterday around 4:00pm.

One of the residents talked about sending her home today and I was like, "Excuse me?!" Not even 48 hours after her surgery? But I think he was saying that because they still don't have a regular room to offer us. But the other doctor, his boss, came in and said they want to keep her until her eyes are open at least.

My parents came by and Wesley's parents are still here and she's sleeping in her Gigi's arms now. I have hope that her eyes will open at least tonight or by the morning time. I'll update once that happens or once we get moved to a regular room.

That's our girl!

My parents are here now visiting. Lucy has been sleeping a lot today on and off. Wesley is at the house with his parents getting some much needed sleep after being with her here last night.

She hasn't had any pain medicine since 6:30am this morning but seems to be doing great without it. I really think that any crying is due to her frustration at not being able to see and the skin itching from being swollen. But when she has been awake she has played with her toys and even did a little "singing" and that made me so happy to see her being her normal self in spite of her current condition. What a blessing.

We're still waiting on a regular room (not in the ICU) ... but the hospital is full so there aren't any beds to spare at the moment. We're here until they have a room free. It's fine with me -- the ICU tends to be quieter and the nurses have less patients so I don't feel as bad if I need them to do something for us.

I'll update next whenever I have more information to share. The prayers are working -- we are so grateful to our Father in Heaven and to our friends and family who have been continuously petitioning on Lucy's behalf. What more could you ask for in life?!

First day post-op

Wow, just writing those words "post-op" are amazing. We are post-op now!!! No more waiting around for a surgery to happen and dreading all that comes after it. We are living it, and by God's grace and His faithfulness, we are doing great.

They decided last night to just give her Pedialyte and see how she did, so Wesley decided to stay with her and I reluctantly went home to get some sleep, knowing it would be the only night I would have that chance. So I went home around 10:00pm last night. It was so hard. Lucy had been pretty upset when I left the hospital just due to pain and frustration and probably hunger, too. I got in the car and just sobbed the 6 minutes it takes me to get home. But I also prayed and I felt a peace and I knew she was in good hands with Wesley, of course! :)

I slept until about 12:30am and then pumped. I set my alarm for 5:30am (at least I thought it was a.m. ....) and proceeded to sleep some more. Well, the next thing I know I wake up and it's 8:30am!!! I accidentally set my alarm for p.m. (duh!). I panicked! I got up and Clifton and Teresa were gone and I couldn't reach anyone on the phone so I was so worried. I just threw on some clothes and just as I was leaving Clifton came back and said he had taken Teresa to the hospital so that Wesley could get breakfast and that Wesley wasn't expecting me until 9am anyway. haha. oh well. I still rushed over.

A lot had happened last night. (This is all from Wesley's information since I wasn't here). They took her head bandages off, and she only needed pain medicine twice last night. Wesley said he got a little bit of sleep. When I got back this morning Lucy was in a good mood. I think honestly that the fact her eyes are swollen shut is frustrating her more than anything else. But they finally said I could breastfeed her this morning, so I did. I think that improved her mood like 95%. Afterwards she was saying "Hey" (her favorite "word") and sort of just moving around like her normal self. I had to go pump again since she only wanted one side, and when I got back she was sleeping like a champ. She's still sleeping now and by the snores I hear from behind me, I think Wesley is sleeping, too. :)

They think that she may go to a regular room today, which is great. It allows for more flexible visiting and just generally more flexibility overall. My prayer for today is that Lucy can get into a nice eating/playing/sleeping pattern and that the swelling will continue to decrease and by tomorrow morning we'll see a huge improvement I hope. God has been so faithful and everything we have asked people to pray for He has shown up in a big way. I don't know why I expected any different, though!

I will post some pictures of this morning. Her head looks a lot worse than it is because there is a lot of dried blood which makes it look awful but if you disregard that you can see that her incision is so neat and clean and it looks great. I'll post the pictures below, so just go bye-bye if you think they will bother you. :) Also, I look awful today, so just disregard that, too! haha.

Giving her some Pedialyte this morning before they let me feed her.

Crazy, I know. She looks so swollen -- but it's part of the process so we embrace it!

Getting worse before it gets better

She is definitely more awake now and has started crying and it's such a pitiful sound. Her eyes are also swelling up quite a bit more and are turning black and blue. It's so hard for me to see her like this and know there is nothing I can do except comfort her. Just pray that she will continue to heal quickly and that she won't get too upset or be in pain.

Wesley may stay here tonight instead of me since I'm not sure they are going to let me feed her. We'll see how she's doing around that time, I guess.

The surgery is over!

I'm just getting around to posting this, but Lucy's surgery is over now!!! We met with Dr. Mackay around 11:45am and he said that everything went really well. He said she only lost a little blood and the bones came apart very easily and there were only a few little holes in the dura which is the lining in between the skull and the brain.

We got moved up to the pediatric ICU waiting room around 12:45 and shortly after that we got to come back and see her. We're in the room with her now. I wasn't shocked to see her all swollen already, but they said it's probably going to get worse. A lot of times the surgeon will put in a drain tube so that there isn't as much swelling, but our surgeon opted not to do that because he said the babies recover faster without it, even though the swelling may be a little greater at first.

She's still sleeping, but she will squeeze your finger if you put it in her hand and she's moving around a little bit.

Here are the pictures of her ... she's swollen, so if you don't want to see it, don't read any further ...

So we're praying for minimal swelling, that her stomach would be able to take food sooner rather than later, that she wouldn't be scared or frustrated because she can't open her eyes, and that her pain will be very very little. So far, God has answered our prayers over and above what we could ask for, so we expect His faithfulness to continue even in the small things!

Dr. Wrubel is finished!

We just got a call from our lovely O.R. nurse, Denise, and she said that Dr. Wrubel is already finished with his portion and now Dr. Mackay (the reconstructive surgeon) is doing his part. They only expect the surgery to take another hour and fifteen minutes, so probably about 12:15pm she'll be finished (we hope!).

Mom, me, and Wesley are still here waiting. Well, actually, it's just me and mom now. Wesley just got some coffee and went to walk around. Teresa and Clifton are going to walk home (thank goodness we live so close because there is zero chance they could get their parking spot back if they drove home!) and they are going to let Nina out and give her a chance to eat.

It will probably be another hour on top of the hour and fifteen minutes before we can see Lucy. She has to go to a recovery room and then be transferred to the pediatric ICU and get settled before we can see her.

I can't tell you how many messages and comments I've received from my friends and family today, and even people I've never met. You don't know how it feels until you've experienced it, but I have to say that it feels amazing. Like, cry a lot from happiness amazing. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

The surgery has started!

Doing her vitals before taking her back.

Our last family picture, pre-surgery.

Gigi, Lucy, and Papa.

My cutie pie.

Well, it has started. She ate for the last time around 12:30am this morning. Then she woke up around 5am and we had to give her the caffeine. She was in such a good mood and was just playing and laughing. We headed here around 5:45am and they took us back to the day surgery room around 6:40am. She started getting a little fussy but after they were done she fell asleep in my arms (a great answer to prayer!!!). We met with the anesthesiologist and our two surgeons and then the OR Nurse (Denise) came and got her. She actually held her arms out to Denise and went willingly with no crying! She took her giraffe Sophie and her pacifier with her. I just got a call from Denise and she said that Lucy went under the anesthesia very well and even though they had a hard time getting an IV in her, they finally got it in and the surgery started and is going well so far.

I'll try to post more as we hear anything.

Pre-op Appointment

Today was Lucy's pre-op appointment. We first met with a patient care technician that just asked us basic questions and took Lucy's weight and height. She is 27 1/2 inches long and I think she weighed about 16 lbs. and 8 oz. If that's true, she has lost a few ounces since her last pediatrician checkup, but since that time she has also started crawling non-stop so I guess I can attribute that little weight loss to the increased activity. Right? :)

Then a nurse came in and just talked over the procedures with us. Basically, she can't have any breastmilk after 1:30am, and she can only have clear liquids like water or Pedialyte until 3:30am. Then we're supposed to give her the caffeine at 5am, and have her at the hospital at 6:00am and then the surgery is going to start at 7:30am. So it sounds like I won't be getting much sleep Thursday night/early Friday morning!

The surgery is supposed to take 5.5 hours, and then it usually takes them about an hour in ICU before we can go see her. That's a long time without my baby!!!! But she will be out of it all that time so it's not like she will know we're not there.

We saw the waiting room today for the family while she is having surgery, and it's a lot louder and more crowded than I thought it would be. Of course it was in the middle of the day today so it will probably be different at 6am Friday morning, but still ... I will definitely be bringing a book and my computer because we can't really leave the waiting room all that much and that's a long time to just be sitting there. Plus, I think I will need some distraction.

They had to take her blood today and that was no picnic because they always have a hard time getting a good vein. After poking around a lot, they finally got enough blood and sent us home.

It was nice to talk with people today that could tell us what to expect. I feel just slightly more ready for the surgery now. I'm just ready for it to be over.

If you want to pray for us on Friday and beyond, here are a few things that I definitely know we'd like to lift up to our Father in prayer:

• Pray for an easy morning with Lucy on Friday and that she won't be super cranky because she's hungry, and that she will go with the nurse easily and with a happy spirit so that my mommy heart can rest assured. (and I won't start crying!)
• Pray for the anesthesiologist to have perfect understanding and wisdom as he doses out the anesthesia.
• Pray for the neurosurgeon (Dr. Wrubel) and the reconstructive surgeon (Dr. Mackay) and the nurses and technicians as they work on Lucy. Pray that the atmosphere will be calm and that God's spirit will just be resting on everyone.
• Pray for Lucy's recovery -- it's very common for the baby's heads to swell up and their eyes swell shut. Just pray for minimal swelling, and no complications as her head heals and as she comes out of anesthesia after the surgery.
• Pray for Wesley and I because I know that seeing our baby with a swollen face/eyes, a bandaged head, and disoriented from the anesthesia is going to make us super sad. Just pray that we'll have grace what lies ahead in the next week!

I really can't thank you enough. I know that Lucy has been covered in prayer since she's been born and we feel the support behind us, like a wind pushing us towards the finish line.

I'll try to keep the blog updated on Friday and the next week as the surgery occurs and we're in the hospital.

To leave on a happy note, here's a picture of my very active little girl with her best (canine) friend, our dog Nina. They are too funny together.

7 months old

Technically, she'll be 7 months old tomorrow, but I had a free moment to blog, so I thought I would just give a little update.

I took her in today for a "shot-only" visit and a follow up to her little E.R. visit from this past weekend for vomiting and they weighed her and I think she weighed 16 lbs, 12oz. I thought I remembered that she weighed 17 lbs.+ at the visit before but a quick check of their records said she had gained weight since the last visit so I guess my memory is wrong. What else is new these days?! haha.

She's doing much better after what appears to be a tummy bug of some kind over the weekend. She is almost back on her normal eating schedule. I haven't been giving her any solid food since Sunday so we may try to re-introduce those in the next few days slowly.

Just a little rundown of Lucy these days:

Likes:

- "Crawling" everywhere. If you put her down, and turn your head for a second, she will have crawled almost across the room. She doesn't get herself all the way off the ground yet ... it's more of a inching across the room by pushing up and flailing forward. :)

- She likes to talk, and her favorite sounds at the moment are "dadadadada", "nanananana", and little whispers like "shhhhh". She laughs all the time.

- Chewing on the dog toys for a second until Mommy notices and takes them away.

- Eating carrot and pear baby food, although Mommy makes her eat other things like sweet potatoes, peas, and apples, too.

Dislikes:

- Having her fingernails clipped.

- Having her nose suctioned for boogies. :)

- Drinking her caffeine twice a day.

- Mommy taking away the dog toys. haha.

Only 24 more days until her surgery. I'm not looking forward to it, but in a way I feel like I've been waiting for this day to be here since she was born so there is an excitement about having the surgery over and done with and having other things to look forward to, like her first Christmas and her first birthday. And after all the times we've had to be in the hospital with her, having a planned surgery and knowing what to expect is almost a blessing. I also hope that after her surgery they will let us take her off the apnea monitor and the caffeine eventually. So those are many things to look forward to.

I will probably update closer to the day of her surgery. We have people that are set to give blood for Lucy, and then we have a pre-op appointment a couple days before Lucy's surgery. By the time Lucy is 8 months old, she will have already had her surgery done!

6 month old stats...

They usually give me a little sheet with her height and weight on it when we have her pediatrician visits, but this time they forgot. So, my numbers may be a little off ... I'm going from memory and my memory these days is a joke.

So I think she weighed 16 lbs, 7 oz. She is 26 inches long, and I can't remember for the life of me what they said her head circumference was. I don't usually pay attention to that number since it's a little off because of her cranio.

She's eating rice cereal and we started sweet potatoes this morning, in addition to her normal nursing schedule. It's really fun being able to feed her food with a spoon, and Wesley enjoys being able to feed her, too.

Well, it's beautiful October weather, so we're off for a walk!

Appt. with the pediatric ophthalmologist

Ask me how long it took me to learn how to spell ophthalmology correctly... ;-)

We had Lucy's visit with the pediatric eye specialist (that takes less time to type than the 'o' word!) that Dr. Wrubel referred us to. I knew that one of Lucy's eye wandered and I just assumed that they would tell us that the surgery would correct it or that she would grow out of it or something. But the first thing that his P.A. said was that both of Lucy's eyes have strabismus (the medical term for an eye that turns outward) but that Lucy is good at controlling it in a sense. She can independently switch from one eye to the other, which she said was good. We saw the doctor and in basic terms he told me that what was wrong with Lucy's eyes was not going to be repaired by her cranio surgery and that it would require an additional, though less extensive surgery. And he said that her vision is probably already set, and even with the surgery she would probably never see with both eyes the way that most people do. She'll be able to see just fine, but it won't be the same "3-D" way that you and I see. It's almost as though you were covering one eye. You can still see everything just fine, but distance and position is a little hard to tell.

The problem with Lucy's eyes is that the muscles holding her eye ball in are just slightly in the wrong place. The surgery would move two of the four muscles back where they are supposed to be and he said that would correct her problem aesthetically. He said it's an outpatient procedure, but the next step is to talk to Dr. Wrubel about whether we should do the eye surgery prior to her cranio surgery or after. He was thinking after, which I believe Dr. Wrubel will probably say also. Another concern is that the surgery would require general anesthesia, and again, with Lucy's recently diagnosed apnea, general anesthesia isn't such a great idea and should be limited to only medically necessary times and as little as possible.

Here's my feelings about all of this: I'm a little disappointed. I thought it was just going to be an easy thing to fix or outgrow. I hate the word 'surgery' and I was sad to hear it again today. But, I don't mind if the surgery has wait even until she's a year old or even older if it's just going to be an aesthetic fix and won't correct or damage her vision either way. I also know that doctors tend to give you the worst case scenario. The cranio surgery may correct it. She may be able to see with both eyes for all he knows! :) I also know the God that made Lucy and I pray daily that He will heal her and make words like "never" seem pointless.

I think it's just been a hard week for me and Wesley as parents. It seems as though the bad things are piling up on our sweet girl and it's easy to get stressed out and fearful about it all. But we just keep reminding ourselves that God is in control and that a year from now, this might all be a distant memory and we won't even remember what it was like to be afraid that Lucy was going to stop breathing or that she wouldn't be able to see correctly.

And I know that we did genetic testing way back when she was a little baby, and it came back that there were no genetic abnormalities present to show that she had any syndrome related to her craniosynostosis ... but the more things that come up with Lucy and the more research we do, I'm not entirely convinced that she may not have a mild case of Crouzon's Syndrome. Of course, if you look up that syndrome and see pictures of the patients, you would think, "No way does Lucy have that!" but that's why I say a very mild case. There are just too many things to think that they just all randomly happened and are not related to something. I e-mailed the geneticist again today just to ask his opinion and to see if there is any way we could have missed something. It doesn't change anything one way or another if she DOES have Crouzon's, but I think it would help doctors to better understand her conditions. It would also let us know that there is a risk that any of our future children may have the same problems, and it would let Lucy know (when she gets old enough to care about this) that there is a chance her children would have it, too. It's not life-threatening, and if she has a mild case then you might never see anything about her that would make you think she had it unless you knew all the other symptoms.

We're ready for all of this to be over! Lucy has her E.R. followup/6 month visit on Monday with her pediatrician and her surgery is right around the corner!

6 months and more of the hospital ...

Sorry for the delay and not posting on the 27th, which was Lucy's 6 month birthday. We were in the hospital instead! No fun, but here's the story...

You know we had that scare about two weeks ago with her. Ever since then she was fine at home. We were excited about taking the monitor off 24/7 after two weeks. On Saturday we took the monitor off and she was only wearing it to sleep. She did great being watched by her Gigi and Papa while her mommy and daddy went on a date.

On Sunday morning, Teresa (her Gigi) was holding her and she was sleeping. I happened to look over at her and noticed that she had slumped over more and had started turning blue around her lips and even into her nose area. Of course it was super scary and we started doing all we could to get her to wake up and respond to us. She came around after a while. We didn't know what to do. We knew this had happened before, but we had no idea what it meant that it happened again. She seemed to be okay and was tired so we pulled out the Pack and Play and put it in the living room so she could nap there and we could watch her. We also put the apnea monitor back on her since it was off during the day. Clifton and Teresa left to go back to Thomasville. Lucy woke up from her nap probably not even 15 minutes after they left and Wesley was playing with her on the floor. She was sitting up, playing with her toys, when she just slumped over again and turned blue. This time we were freaking out. It had happened twice within about 30 minutes. The second time the apnea monitor didn't even go off when she had the episode. We tried to call the apnea monitor company, and I tried to call the pediatrician only to get a number for Children's Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston. I had to wait on the line to get a nurse. Wesley spoke to her and after hearing everything, she said we should take Lucy to the E.R. I was so upset. I did not want to go to the hospital again. I just knew they were going to do all these tests and send us home with no answer again. But I was scared, so after packing a bag this time, we headed to the E.R. When we got there, there were several other families with kids in the waiting room so they gave us a number. While we were waiting, I was holding her, and she slumped over again in my arms and turned blue and I was calling, "Somebody please help me!" and these nurses ran out and grabbed her and rushed her into the trauma room. We finally got in there and they got her on oxygen and they were trying to get an I.V. on her and everything. While they were working on her, she started going splotchy in her face and then started turning blue again on the table. They quickly put an oxygen mask on her instead of the little nasal things and she came around. By this time, Wesley and I were both in tears and so fearful for our little girl. We didn't know why this was happening and how long it was going to keep going on. We were just so scared.

After about an hour or two in the E.R., they got a bed ready for her in the Pediatric ICU. We went up there. They didn't know what was wrong. At one point that night, while sitting up in the bed, she had another episode and her oxygen saturation got down to 17. Just to give you an idea, everybody's oxygen saturation should be right at 100, as in 100% of your blood is oxygenated. 17 means that for a few seconds, Lucy was only at 17% of what she should be at. They told us it might be something wrong with her heart, so they wanted to do an echocardiogram the next morning.

They did that test, and everything was normal (including another chest x-ray ... this girl has had a lot of radiation in her short life!). They told us they wanted to do a sleep study to see if she had obstructive sleep apnea. I guess there are two types of apnea -- one that you can have while asleep and one you can have while awake. They came around 8:30pm that night to put all the wires on her. There must have been 40 wires, no joke. Her head was all wrapped up and they had things on her nostrils and on her lips and her eyes and almost everywhere you can think of. So yeah, that's probably the best way to get a baby to go to sleep, right?! WRONG! haha. Let's just say that she would only sleep for about 10-15 minutes at a time, and only if I was standing there holding her arms and legs down. If I didn't, she would flail her arm and pull out a wire or wake herself up. So basically from about 9pm until the test was over at 3am, I stood beside her bed holding her down while she cried and didn't sleep. I guess that she slept enough, though, because the sleep study did show that she had both types of apnea.

The obstructive kind can happen when something is blocking the airway, in most basic terms. It could be the way her nasal cavity is shaped, or her airway, or something like that. They said there is not much they can do to fix that. They think the surgery may fix that some. The other kind of apnea happens because she has periods of time when she breathes, then doesn't breathe for anywhere from 5-13 seconds, then breathes again, and repeats that for a minute or so. What happens is that with the first delay in breathing, her oxygen levels drop some. With the second breath, she can't recover up to what she needs to be at. So with the second delay in breathing, her oxygen levels just drop even more. If she does that for a minute, her oxygen levels are so low that's why she turns blue and goes limp. They said they usually treat this with plain old caffeine. Yep, caffeine! I guess it speeds up her respiration and brain function just enough to keep her body breathing at a normal pace. So they started her on caffeine that day. It's just a syringe full of clear liquid caffeine that we squirt in her mouth and she (mostly) swallows.

That night, even though she didn't have all the wires on her, she just wouldn't go to sleep. I think the most she slept at a time was an hour. The rest of the night it was like 15-20 minutes of sleep then waking up crying. Finally, around 6:30am, I think the nurse felt so bad for me having not slept the whole night that she took Lucy out of the room and let the other nurses entertain her while I slept. I think I slept for 2 hours and she said Lucy fell asleep after a while, too, and got about an hour of sleep.

That morning, the doctors came in and told us that we could go home that day! I was so surprised because I thought they were going to move us to the general floor but the doctor said that all they would do there is just continue to monitor her and give her caffeine, and that's stuff we could do at home. So on Wednesday around lunchtime we packed up and went home.

Lucy still has to wear her apnea monitor 24/7, and she gets caffeine twice a day. We'll just continue that indefinitely but for sure until after her surgery I'll bet. It's annoying. The apnea monitor is a pain for her to wear and it's bulky to lug around. She hates swallowing the caffeine and I worry what side effects it's having on her digestive system. But it's better than having a baby that turns blue and goes limp and unresponsive, that's for sure.

We're very blessed to have an unimaginable number of people in our lives that prayed for Lucy and for us while we were in the hospital. I probably had hundreds of Facebook comments, and lots of texts and voicemails from our friends and family, telling us they were praying for us and asking if there was anything they could do for us. People were asking to bring us food and snacks and to watch Lucy so I could sleep. I just don't have the right words to say thank you. People even made their Facebook statuses things about Lucy, asking their friends (who don't know us) to pray for Lucy. How incredible. It's humbling, really. We don't deserve such an outpouring of love and support. But I will take every second of every prayer that people pray for Lucy's healing and recovery because I want it so badly also.

So her six month birthday came and went without much fanfare or celebration. I have no height or weight stats to share with you (oops, not true. She is 24 inches long. I know that because they had to measure her for the sleep study). We had a 6 month well visit scheduled for Monday, but we had to reschedule until next Monday for a well visit/ER followup.

Lucy also has her appt. with the pediatric ophthalmologist tomorrow morning. I'm not expecting to learn much -- it's mostly just a chance for this doctor to see her and get an idea of how she is pre-surgery so that he will know better what is different post-surgery.

We joked while in the hospital that Lucy is just like her mommy and wanted to check out the hospital floors she was going to be on after the surgery so she could plan better. :) Well, we've seen the PICU and we've seen the 5th floor East, so we're all set. I just hope after her surgery we get a room with a better view than the ones we've had previously (parking garage and blank brown wall, respectively). I also know what things we really need in the hospital (good toilet paper, juice that's not from concentrate, and comfy socks) so we can pack those things when we go in next. After this year, I never want to see Children's Healthcare of Atlanta - Egleston again!!!! No offense to the hospital, but I have seen QUITE enough of you!!!

Here's a picture of Lucy after she fell asleep on one of the nurses the morning she was being entertained while I slept:

A little scare.

This past Saturday started out really normally. Lucy ate around 7am and then went back to sleep for about 45 minutes then started fussing. Wesley offered to go get her and then he brought her back into the room and we all played with her in the bed for a little while. Then Wesley took her to the living room to entertain her while I got a tiny bit more sleep. As I was waking up (around 9am) he was changing her diaper. All the sudden I hear him saying, "Lucy, what's wrong?" and then in the next second, "Babe! She's not breathing and her lips are turning blue!" Of course everything starts moving in slow motion. I jumped out of bed and threw my glasses on and he was holding her and she was really limp. Even though it seemed like forever, by the time I got in the nursery she was breathing again but she just kept acting like she was falling asleep and she wasn't really responding to us and she was still acting like she wasn't getting any air, even though I knew she was breathing. We had even checked her mouth just to be sure by some freak chance she had grabbed something small and choked on it. Nothing. We decided to call 911 because she was still just acting so strange. They got there in about 3-4 minutes and she had started to just move around a little more after we put on flat on the couch per the 911 operator's instructions. They checked her blood sugar by pricking her toe and I guess it came back normal. Then they asked us which hospital we were going to take her to. I was really surprised -- I guess I hadn't thought about having to take her to the hospital. Since she's been to Egleston before and it's right around the corner from our house, we decided to take her there. They said she didn't need to ride in the ambulance but that we could take her ourselves if someone sat in the backseat to watch her. We just literally threw on our shoes and headed to the ER. They got her checked in and when they put in back in a room she started to have another episode where her oxygen levels went down and she was very limp and unresponsive. So they moved her to a bigger room and put her on oxygen. I don't know all they did in the next few minutes ... I know there were at least 3 doctors and 4 nurses in there. They drew her blood and gave her an I.V. and the whole time she's just screaming and it was so hard for me to hear that. But her screaming was better than her being limp and unresponsive! They finally let me hold her after they had done all their tests. They did a chest X-ray, a CT scan, and a lumbar puncture to rule out meningitis. They let me hold her and just wheeled us both around to get the CT scan. She was a trooper. Even during the lumbar puncture she basically fell asleep while they were doing it (after crying during the initial insertion of the needle). Nothing was showing up, so they said they at least wanted to keep her overnight for observation. They also wanted to do an EEG so they could see if it might have been a seizure. They gave her I.V. antibiotics in case it was an infection.

It was like deja vu, having to rush in to the hospital with her wearing basically pajamas and not knowing what was wrong with our baby. I cried a lot for a few hours. Then eventually they said she was doing well enough that she could go straight to a room on the regular unit, and not have to go to the ICU. So that afternoon we went up to the regular floor and they took her off oxygen since she seemed to be doing better. They also let me start nursing her which definitely made me and her feel better. This was about 2pm and she hadn't eaten since 7am that morning -- she had only had the IV since about 9:15am. I think when we got to the regular room and they took her off oxygen and I was able to feed her I calmed down a ton and just prepared to stay. Wesley went home and let our dog out and got us some clothes and toiletries.

What was cool (if you can call anything about that situation cool) is that the floor we were on at the hospital is the same floor she'll be going to after her surgery to recover. It's the "neurological" floor they called it. She will have the same nurses and a similar room. It was really good to know that. I have to say, I HATE going to the hospital with Lucy, but I cannot say enough good things about Children's at Egleston and their doctors and nurses. They are so supportive and so perfect to work with kids and their parents. One nurse hugged me in the E.R. and all the other doctors and nurses make sure to ask if you understand everything that's going on and they know it's frightening and they just try to make it better. Like letting me hold Lucy while they transported us everywhere instead of just making her lay alone on the bed.

The only test they were waiting on was the EEG, which I guess can't be done on the weekends unless it's an extreme emergency. So we knew it would be Monday before we could have that done, but we were hoping we could come home and then go back to do it outpatient. But the doctors said they wanted to keep her in the hospital through Monday just to be sure nothing happened again since they said if it was going to happen again, the greatest chance would be within 24-48 hours after the original incident. So we were stuck there until Monday afternoon. But I have to thank our friends Drew and Diane (and little Anna!), and Jeri, and Sarah and Jarrett for coming to visit us. It definitely made things easier and just less boring and overwhelming. I'm sure visiting a hospital on the weekend isn't their idea of a fun thing, so we really appreciate it.

Lucy slept great both nights and the only thing that bothered her was this hard splint on one arm to keep the I.V. in and the fact that the nurses and doctors were always in and out at odd times checking her out and getting her vitals. Wesley went home both nights to sleep since there was only one pull-out couch bed in the room. (I'm guessing this will be what happens when she is recovering from her surgery, too.)

So the end of the story is that we just don't know what happened. Nothing showed up -- everything was normal. They are making her wear an apnea monitor for about 2 weeks 24 hours a day (except for bathtime) and then for about a week just when she's napping/sleeping/in the car seat. It's just a band that goes around her chest that has electrodes in it that measure her heart rate and her breathing. It's really annoying because it has to be plugged in as much as possible so wherever we go, even from room to room, I have to carry the big pack around and all the wires, etc. The wires are always getting tangled up in her legs, too! But it gives me some peace of mind knowing that God forbid, if something should happen in the next few weeks, the monitor would let us know immediately. I'm hoping nothing will happen and nothing will show up!

They also made us take an infant CPR class yesterday before going home. It was really good for Wesley and I to learn about how to do CPR on Lucy should we ever need to. It just gives me confidence that we at least know what we're doing but I hope we never need to use it!

So we're back at home and just enjoying all that means ... our own beds and homecooked food and only a few wires attached instead of lots of wires. I'll be glad when we can take the monitor off, too!

Another good thing is that we thought we didn't know her blood type, but while we were there I asked about it again and they looked in her records from her previous hospital visit and the blood type was there: O+! So now we know and we can find people to donate since neither Wesley or I are a match (B+ and A+ respectively). But we know Lucy's Gigi is a match and we have lots of O- volunteers, too, which is a blood type she can receive.

So, you know, just another eventful weekend in the Fielding household! Looking forward to this weekend and all it's boringness! :)

Lucy in the hospital -- everyone remarked on how happy she was and how friendly she seemed to be. :) Our little sunshine.


Wires: the fall's hottest baby accessory.

5 months old

I usually post on the 27th of each month, but Lucy had her regular doctor's appointment today instead of Friday so I waited. :)

So we took her today for a regular visit, complete with a shot. She did very well and the only side effect I noticed is that she took an extra long nap late this afternoon.

She weighed 15lbs and 5oz! I was so surprised. I only expected her to weigh almost 15lbs, but not over it! Awesome. They didn't take her length or head circumference since it was a "vaccine-only" visit.

We still haven't gotten her blood typed yet. I'm procrastinating because I don't want to have to watch her get her blood drawn, but I know I need to do it so I'm just going to force myself to take her in the next week or so.

The only other doctor update is that we made an appointment with a pediatric opthalmologist on October 1st so he can check out her occasionally wandering eye and get an idea for what it's like pre-surgery so he can better assess her post-surgery needs.

I feel like she is just growing up so quickly. She is eating about every 3 hours during the day instead of 2 hours like she had been. I think next month we might start introducing rice cereal and then other baby foods. She is also trying to sit up on her own and "talks" more.

And since no post would be complete without a picture, here we go! :)


Eating her toes is a new fun activity.



She loves to "sit up" and we keep letting her practice in safe places and we feel like she'll get it on her own soon!