Introduction

In high school, I used to blog almost everyday. For reasons I don't remember, I deleted my blog but now that I'm a new mom and all my family and friends live 2200 miles away, I thought it'd be a great idea to keep everyone updated with my life and to keep myself from answering the same questions 20 times :) So here's an introduction...

In April 2005, Chris and I started dating, and we got married in September 2007. Chris joined the Marine Corps in April 2008 and got stationed at Camp Pendleton, California in December 2008. In November 2009, I got pregnant with Kylie, and the fun began...

I truly did not like being pregnant at all. I hate to say that, and I know some women just love the experience, but I enjoyed almost nothing about it. I had "all day sickness" from week 4 to week 18. When I was about 19 weeks, I got pitting edema that lasted until the week after I gave birth. At 26 weeks, I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes.

So after being completely miserable for months, we fastforward to July 20, 2010. I was 34 weeks and 2 days pregnant. I woke up that morning feeling like "all day sickness" had started again. A couple of weeks before, I learned in my childbirth preparation class that some women get "morning sickness" again at the end of pregnancy. Oh no! Not this again for another 6 weeks. But I also learned that some women get flu-like symptoms the day they go into labor. I remember telling Chris and my mom that, and we all thought, "oh gosh, I hope not!" I'd made an appointment a couple weeks before to get the carpet cleaned in our apartment. The cleaning guy came and was just getting on my nerves. He kept pretending his pen was a microphone and would talk into it every time he said something. And when he expected a response from us, he would put the pen to our mouths. I wasn't feeling well and just wasn't in the mood to play his games...and he seemed to be taking FOREVER! He finally left and around 9:15 pm, I asked Chris to go to the store to get me a Ginger Ale to settle the queezy feeling in my stomach. While he was at the store, I decided to jump into a hot bath, hoping that may make me feel better, too.  After soaking for a few minutes, I stood up and felt something "pop" in my stomach and then fluid started coming out. It would stop for a minute or so and then start again. I think I was just in shock because I was still so early that I never thought that my water had broken. I called Chris, and he rushed home. I called my doctor's office, and the answering service got me in touch with a nurse at the hospital. By 9:45 pm, we were on our way to the hospital, and the contractions started. We were checked into the hospital, and I was only 1 cm. I developed preeclampsia so they inserted an IV and put me on a magnesium sulfate drip (which can sometimes slow down labor...great!). After a couple of hours, I'd only dialated to 2 cm. I decided I wanted an epidural and after three tries, the anesthesiologist finally got it in. I was so tired so I went to sleep for a couple of hours. At around 4:00 am, I woke up to the feeling of contractions again. I called the nurse in to tell her the epidural had stopped working on the left side. She decided to check me again, and I was 10 cm! 6.5 hours after my water broke! She then got a puzzled look on her face and called in another nurse to check. "Either your baby is breech or she has a squishy head." Oh no! When I woke up feeling sick on the 20th, I'd also noticed that my stomach felt much different than it ever had before. It was usually really hard all over but that day, it was soft and squishy at the bottom, under my bellybutton. I had a suspicion she had turned, and I'd told the nurse that when I got to the hospital but they never checked to see. Anyway, after an ultrasound to confirm Kylie was breech, the doctor came in and told me that I needed a c-section. So they quickly prepared for surgery, and I started getting the urge to push. Oh my gosh, it was so intense! They were trying to hurry me into the O.R. and kept telling me to "hold it." Trust me, that is not easy! In the O.R., the anesthesiologist tried fixing the epidural for like 20 minutes. He finally got me numb enough for surgery. And at 4:51 am, my sweet little Kylie was born! July 21. 5 pounds, 2 ounces. 17 inches long. She screamed, and I knew that was a great sign! But then she stopped screaming so much, and her breathing was very labored. It was just a whirlwind. Time stood still. After about 15 minutes, they let me see her and then rushed her out of the room. I don't remember how long after but the neonatologist finally came in the recovery room to tell me how sick Kylie was. What? Sick? Nobody told me she had the possibility of being so sick. I didn't know what to think. I wasn't prepared for that at all. The rest of that day is a blur. I know that she was born at Scripps Encinitas, transfered to Scripps La Jolla, and transfered to Rady Children's in the first day of her life. The first 2 hospitals didn't have the equipment she needed to help her breathe. Chris spent Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday traveling between the hospital I was at and the hospitals Kylie was at. I looked forward to the pictures and videos he brought back after every visit with Kylie. I hadn't even been able to hold the baby I'd carried for 34 weeks. I got to see her a total of 30 seconds. It was devastating. I was released on Friday, July 23, and Kylie was transfered again...to the Naval Hospital in San Diego (Balboa). Finally! I could go see my sweet baby girl.

When we got to the NICU at the Naval Hospital, it was surreal. The first 30 minutes of the visit were the worst 30 minutes of my life. We were barely welcomed, her nurse kept calling her a "he" and "him," and the medical student who looked over Kylie right after we got there had the worst bedside manner. She pointed out all sorts of things "wrong" with her and had no answers to any of our questions. Here I am, at the most emotional point of my life, my new baby has spent the last few days on breathing machines and being so sick she could have died, this is the first time I have even gotten to really see her, and this medical student is telling me all these physical things that are wrong with her. I almost broke down. I had to tell Chris we needed to leave to get something to eat before I started crying hysterically. We went downstairs to McDonald's and thankfully, another mom of a baby in the NICU heard Chris and me talking so she came over to give us some support. She made me feel a ton better.

The rest of her stay at the Naval Hospital went much better. All the physical things "wrong" with Kylie apparently weren't as serious as the medical student was making them out to be. I made it a point to ask the doctor questions about those things in front of that medical student, and the doctor was much more positive.
-The 2nd and 3rd toes on Kylie's feet are fused together. Not completely but at least halfway on both. It's called syndactyly. It's usually genetic but can also be a sign of other things like Down Syndrome. It just simply looks like those toes didn't finish separating. When she was several weeks old, I learned that Chris' dad and brother have the same thing on their feet.
-Kylie's right ear is noticeably bigger than her left ear but with age, I think that will correct by itself.
-Kylie was 3 days old when she got transfered to this hospital, and she hadn't yet opened her eyes because she was so swollen from all the tubes that had been shoved down her throat and nose. So the medical student said her eyelids appeared to be fused together.

ANYWAY, obviously Kylie's eyelids were not fused together. And as long as her fused toes won't pose a problem when she starts walking, I think we are going to keep them the way they are. Just one of the things that makes Kylie unique!

On to more recent things...

Kylie started spitting up a lot. Now, I know babies spit up but she has been spitting up so much that it interrupts her sleep hours after she finishes eating. Her pediatrician thinks she may have acid reflux so Kylie has been taking Zantac twice a day. She has been spitting up less but she's still doing it, and it's still interrupting her sleep. We stop her in the middle of feedings to burp her, and we burp her for 15 minutes or so after every feeding. The fact that she's still spitting up like 2 hours after she finishes eating is why the doctor thinks she's got acid reflux. So hopefully we can get the right dosage of Zantac to completely stop the reflux!

A few nights ago, I was putting a diaper on Kylie after she got a bath. She still hates baths (well, she enjoys them until I get her hair wet) so she was screaming. I noticed a bulge coming out of her right groin area, and I freaked. I'd never noticed it before, and it just kept getting bigger. I ran to the living room to call 911 but looked down, and the bulge was gone (Kylie had stopped crying by this point). A couple minutes later, I went back to getting her diaper on, and the bulge came back. My first thought then was that it was a hernia. I got her dressed and wrapped and researched the bulge on Google. The next morning, I made an appointment with the pediatrician, and she referred us to a pediatric surgeon because she thinks it's an inguinal hernia. If the pediatric surgeon confirms that it's an inguinal hernia, Kylie will have minor surgery to fix it. I read that babies that have inguinal hernias on one side will often have them on the other side, too, so I guess we'll see soon. I also read that up to 30% of preemies have hernias so apparently, they are more common than I initially thought. We have a consultation with the pediatric surgeon on October 4.

Kylie has been half-smiling and smiling in her sleep for weeks. She has gradually started smiling a little more and today, she smiled really big! It was so sweet! I tried getting her to smile again so I could take a picture but she wasn't having it so maybe soon!

I think I've gotten everything up to speed. I will try to update this regularly to keep everyone informed about our lives!