Corn Festival

It's Labor Day Weekend, which means the annual Corn Festival at Phillipse Manor.  We got there too late for corn ice cream, which was a tragedy, but we still managed to have a good time.

Auntie Lucy got to meet Miriam for the first time.

Non-period -authentic bubble rocket launchers.

Reading "corny" jokes.

And eating popcorn.  Of course.

Cousins

We've been incredible fortunate to have Brian's stepmother stay with us for the last week, and today the Brooklyn cousins came to meet Mira and spend some time with their Mommom.

Next week I'm on my own with three kids.  Send reinforcements.

My Boy in the Garden

One Month

Someone's turning one month old tomorrow, and she's snug as a bug in a rug.

In other news truly worth celebrating, Gabe is out of diapers!  Woohoo!  Because potty training a three year old while taking care of a newborn is just the sort of crazy-making insanity we'd undertake.  All credit for this goes to Brian who (rightfully) figured it made sense to train Gabe while he was on paternity leave.  I may have cursed his name in the middle of it, but it was just crazy enough to work.

Ellie's First Friend

Awwwww....Pauly came to visit.  They've come a long way from this:

To this:

It's so strange to me that I have a newborn baby but I'm not able to spend every day with this Mama.

Three Weeks

And already I can't imagine what it was like before her.

Momma Mira Selfie

Sleepy Times...

Road Trip!

Mira started her official world tour with a visit to New Jersey.  Next stop, Paris!  (Ok, no, but wouldn't that be great?)

We went and spent the afternoon at our friend's pool and the big kids had a grand old time while Mira napped and the grown ups ate Cheetos.  We also left the house a full TWO HOURS after we meant to.  Oh the joys of getting out of the house with a newborn.

Is this first picture taken of the three of us?  Other than the snapshot in the operating room I think it might be.  Any guesses how long it'll take before we get a picture of all three kids?  Or better yet, all FIVE of us?  All five of us looking at the camera?  Hah!  Bet that will never happen.

Double Big Sister

If it were up to Ellie, she would hold Mira all...day...long...

12 Days Old

Walking Coconuts

Mira's early arrival meant some shifting of our late summer plans.  Specifically, I had intended to keep Gabe home with me for the last weeks of pregnancy while Ellie went to summer camp.  Well, best laid plans and all that...

Since Mira came early we decided to send Gabe to two weeks of camp at the JCC.  And he LOVES it.  He also, apparently learned how to draw!

He says these are walking coconuts.  Can't argue with him.

Finally Home: Mira's Birth Story

Well, that was exciting.  As Mira's pediatrician said yesterday after reviewing her hospital discharge report, "I thought the third one was supposed to be easy!"

It all began last Sunday, when I started having regular contractions.  They weren't especially painful, but they weren't stopping either, and when it started getting late I bit the bullet and called the doctor.  Unsurprisingly, his response was along the lines of "get to the hospital, fool.  What have you been waiting for?"  Luckily, Uncle Rob was visiting, and the kids were already in bed, so off we went.  At the hospital they confirmed the contractions weren't just the delusions of a sick-of-being-pregnant-momma, but since I was still only 36 weeks along, no one had a lot of interest in having the baby that night.  So they pumped me full of fluid, gave me two shots of meds to stop the contractions, and we went home around 1am.

This was all fine and good until we got up the next morning and the contractions were back...so we were off to the hospital again on Monday morning.  They tried more fluids, and more meds, but this time the contractions were here to stay.  The problem is that I wasn't really progressing, so the doctors still weren't confident that this was actually labor.  If I were having a natural delivery they would have sent me home to wait it out, but since Mira was going to be my third c-section they didn't really want me going into full blown labor...so we decided to go for the c-section that afternoon.  At this point I figured it would be a few hours, but instead everyone flew into gear and I was in the operating room within 30 minutes.  Damn.  It was a whirlwind.

Since she was technically premature (by three days!) we knew there was a chance she might need some extra help after delivery, but she came out pink and squealing.  The NICU doctor  assessed her and she had some rapid breathing, and a little extra fluid in her lungs.  Nothing out of  the ordinary for a slightly early, c-section baby.  He decided she should be watched for a couple hours in the regular nursery and if she did well, she wouldn't need any NICU time.  And she did great!  I was wheeled into recovery, where, or course, I threw up and all that nastiness.  But when it was over, we had our baby girl in our hospital room all together.

Side note:  my poor mom was scheduled to come to town Monday afternoon to help us prepare for the baby's arrival in a few weeks.  Instead she got off the bus, turned on her cellphone, and received a slew of messages telling her I was in the hospital, then that we were heading in to the operating room, then that the baby was here, and would she mind babysitting the kids so Brian could stay in the hospital with me Monday night?  She was a trooper and everyone survived.

So on Tuesday, something kind of weird happened.  I was holding Mira, and a lab tech came in to the room to get some blood from me. I shifted the baby to the other arm and a minute later, when the tech was done and I went to shift her back, she was blue-ish.  She immediately pinked up, and I didn't really think anything of it.  I even joked to Todd and Bess that I must have been holding her against my hospital gown and almost killed the baby.  Hahahaha.  Very funny.  In hindsight, I can't believe I didn't think to mention this to the doctors, but at the time, I honestly thought it was just a fluke.

Fast forward to Thursday.  We're supposed to be discharged on Friday and everything has been going swimmingly.  The last hurdle is a hospital mandated car-seat test.  It turns out that preemie babies can have breathing issues in their car-seats, and so the hospital puts them on monitors and leaves them in the car seat for 90 minutes.  No problems?  You're one your way out the door.  We thought the test was a little silly, after all, she was only pre-mature by three days!  But thank god they did it.  It turns out she was having apnea issues, so when she was in a deep sleep her little brain just wasn't developed enough to make sure she kept breathing.  That's what had happened on Tuesday with the lab tech.  And it happened a couple times in the car seat.  They took her to the NICU and it happened a few more times.  It turns out the apnea wasn't related to the car seat at all, but if they hadn't put her on the monitors and done the test we would have completely missed it.  When the doctor asked if she had had any episodes where we had noticed her turning pale or blue, I just about died.  How could I have not realized that was a big deal when it happened?  But what's done is done. And I'm trying to let it go.

The doctors were confident that her apnea was completely related to being a little early, and that with careful monitoring it would resolve on its own.  And after a night of supplemental breathing help, and 5 days of chilling out in the NICU that's exactly what happened.  Her little brain got with the program and she shouldn't have any more issues.  Both the NICU doctors and her regular pediatrician have told us to try to forget it ever happened.  Hah!  That ought to be easy.

All in all it was an incredibly surreal experience.  The hospital let me stay in an empty room so I could be with Mira and continue to nurse, but all services ceased, so it was like hanging out in your college dorm after everyone else has gone home.  I was a total ghost.  But the NICU staff was amazing, just incredibly caring, not only with Mira, but with me too.  Plus we got this awesome swag cooler bag (it's for beer, right?):

We only had one night of real fear, and that was more because the incubator and breathing assistance made her look much more sickly than she actually was.  Plus, all the talk of breathing and lungs was giving me flashbacks to my dad's illness.  I kept having to remind myself that although the hospital equipment looked similar, this was a completely different situation and that Mira was going to be just fine.  And she is.  She passed her next car-seat test with flying colors and after 8 days in the hospital we came home on Tuesday.  

The kids are doing great with her, she's nursing like a champ, and now we're all just chilling out and learning about each other and trying to survive newborn sleepless nights.  What an adventure.

Silly Daddy