Ivy and her bottle

Ivy taking a break from her bottle.

On Thanksgiving, she reached three pounds. On Saturday the 29th, she weighed three pounds two ounces. She's up a whole pound from her birthweight!

Bottle time

I can't believe I hadn't posted this pic. it's my favorite because it shows just how tiny she was at first. She's still tiny, but she's bigger than this.

Ivy drinks from a bottle twice a day now because she is getting so good at it. The downside to this is that it tires her out and stresses her, so I can't hold her as often or as long before she gets upset. She also has an oxygen tube in her nose because when she is that worn out, she doesn't breath deeply enough.

This is a picture from Sunday, the sixteenth. I was holding Ivy during her feeding, and I tried to cuddle her closer. She had a short feeding tube, and it came right out of her nose. I felt horrible, especially as I watched them put the tube back in. I don't know if it hurt, but she definitely didn't like it. The nurse had to remind me to take a picture because I was so upset. This is my baby with no tubes, tapes, or probes on her face. This is just Ivy.

Growing up already

Ivy no longer needs the tanning lights so she isn't wearing the goggles anymore. We can see her pretty eyes, and she likes to look around while sucking her pacifier. She is also gaining weight, and her cheeks are filling out. She is starting to look more and more like a newborn.

On Saturday, she had her first bottle. She drank a whole 5 ccs. That's a little more than a teaspoon. It's a tiny little bit, but she only gets 18 ccs every three hours, so it's a relatively significant amount.

This news made us ecstatic, because when she learns to reliably drink from a bottle, she will be able to come home!

Ivy's bath time

I got to bathe Ivy on Sunday for the first time. She seemed even more tiny when I washed her; I was afraid she would break!

Kezie's first day of preschool

First day of school

Kezie started preschool Thursday November 13. The preschool at her dad's school is allowing her to come for a few weeks while Ivy is in the NICU. Kezie isn't potty trained like the other kids, so Shawn is on call for diaper duty. She didn't have any problem keeping up with the big kids though, and she got upset when I showed up half an hour early to take her home. I thought she might want a shorter day to ease into school; she thought differently.

tiny little bundle of joy

Ivy Amelia Averett

born November 1, 2008

3:36 am

2 pounds 2 ounces, 13 inches

Feisty and ready to face anything.

A two-pound halloween treat

Halloween night brought us an unexpected treat; our daughter, Ivy, two months early. The trauma of the experience is fading, and now we are just trying to enjoy her and can't wait until she can come home.

It's ironic that this entire pregnancy, we thought there was something wrong with the baby. Twice, I thought I was miscarrying. Her growth was behind from the very beginning, and by the time I was twenty four weeks along, she was three weeks behind in her growth and they were afraid she was going to stop growing. Then there was the possibility of a chromosomal disorder, and while they were investigating that possibility, the doctors thought they heard a problem with the unbilical chord. I was living with this new scary prospect when my midwife discovered that I had developed preeclampsia at 29 weeks.

Preeclampsia shouldn't develop that early, so when it worsened quickly, Karen, my midwife, put me in the hospital overnight. I was there October 28 and 29, and they decided that I could go home but I had to stay in bed to keep from getting worse. They also gave me the first of two steroid shots to help the baby's lungs develop, just in case she needed to be born early. This turned out to be a blessing and the best thing we could have done.

I was good. I really was; I hardly moved from the couch for two days. It was a really long two days, but I did try to rest and keep my blood pressure down. I wasn't too worried when my abdomen started to hurt on Halloween. I knew I wasn't having contractions. I called the office and talked to a nurse, who wasn't worried either. As the pain worsened, I called again and they sent me to have my blood pressure taken. It was high but still safe, so I went back to bed and tried to will it away. By eight o'clock at night, I couldn't lie still anymore; it hurt too much. By nine I really really hurt. At ten thirty I was in agony and called Karen. She told me to go to the ER. We started to get ready, and the pain got even worse. I started throwing up. At eleven, Shawn called an ambulance. We didn't think I could handle a car ride. They ran lights and sirens, which was when I really started to get scared. I hadn't thought there was reason for that.

A couple of very nice paramedics helped me outside and onto the stretcher, in full view of several of my neighbors. Shawn was going to follow in our car because he had to wake up Kezie and bring her to the hospital until one of my family members could come get her.

It probably only took ten minutes to get to the hospital but it felt like forever. I was strapped on my side, which hurt, and they couldn't give me anything for the pain because of the pregnancy. My BP was something like 180/130. One of the nice paramedics lost some of my good feeling when he missed the nice big vein on my hand that no one ever misses, and had to stab me again. I heard them talking to the hospital about whether to take me to the ER or to labor and delivery. They sent me to the ER because at this point no one realized this had anything to do with the pregnancy.

It was probably a good thing I was strapped down because I might have hit the cocky ambulance driver who informed me that he hadn't hit any red lights. He seemed to think I should congratulate him as they pulled me out of the ambulance, still gasping in pain. They wheeled me into a room and started running tests. Here everything gets blurry. Someone finally gave me some morphine, but it didn't do more than just reduce the pain a little. I did start to relax, which is why I don't remember things in sequence. Shawn came with Kezie. I hurt more than I remember ever hurting before, and cried, and was poked and prodded some more. They took me somewhere for an ultrasound, and took samples of various bodily fluids. I was still throwing up, and I wanted desperately to lie down, but I couldn't stay in any one position for very long. I needed Shawn in the room with me, but I hated that Kezie had to see her Mommy in pain and acting crazy. My sister Alli came, took one look at me, and whisked my daughter out of the room so she wouldn't have to see any more. Thank goodness. Poor Kezie was a little traumatized for a while; it was nearly a week before she wanted anything to do with me again.

Eventually, my third shot of morphine dulled most of the pain and I was mostly unconscious for a while. I woke up in a new room, surrounded by new people, and a woman was standing next to me, holding a disposable razor. I don't know who she was, but she asked me if anyone had told me that I was having a C-section now. Shawn was next to me, and we looked at each other in shock. No one had told him either. I got really really scared now. I was only 31 weeks along. I asked if the baby would be all right. She said that I wouldn't be all right if they didn't do the c-section. She handed Shawn something hospital-ly to put on and they kept prepping me for surgery.

Who would choose to have a C-Section? I don't understand why anyone would willingly choose to experience one. I thought it was awful. They put in the block and the pain in my middle finally went completely away. I have heard a lot of stories about epidurals and blocks not working well and people being able to feel half of their body during labor. I was so afraid it would happen to me and I would suddenly feel them cutting into me. I am sure the myriad of drugs in my system contributed to my paranoia about this.

When they had me on the table and numb, my midwife came in with another doctor from her practice. It was a relief to finally see a medical professional that I both knew and trusted. Karen is very good at calming me down when I'm worried, which she witnessed several times during this pregnancy. She didn't stop to chat much, because they were in a hurry to get the baby out. Thank goodness they let Shawn stay with me, too, because I couldn't have handled being in there on my own.

Dr Jula Johansson performed the surgery, and Karen was there to assist. I voiced my concern that I would be able to feel the surgery. The anesthesiologist laughed and told me they had already made an incision. He made it sound like my concern was unfounded, but we found out later that they were worried about the same thing. In fact, the reason the anethesiologist came so quickly and stayed so long was they were afraid it wouldn't work quickly enough and they would have to put me under entirely.

Shawn was next to me, sitting at my shoulder. He says he looked over the screen once to see what they were doing to me, and that was enough. He said later that had he known how serious the situation was, he would have been much more afraid. I was plenty afraid, but so drugged that I was feeling no pain or any other strong emotion. I could feel tugging and pressure on my belly. It was extremely unpleasant. After a minute, as I was starting to drift back into unconsciousness, someone said, "Look at your baby!" It was a good thing they said something, because we only got a brief glance at her before they whisked her off. I saw this unbelieveably teeny tiny little girl. She was beautiful and I was breathless, but I was also terrified because she was a frightening shade of grey and I didn't hear any crying. I lost consciousness again.

Mom was in my room by the time they wheeled me into it. I think she and Shawn left to see the baby, but since I wasn't really awake I'm not sure. I didn't really wake up until the next day. Ivy was fine. The NICU had sent a picture of her for me. I could barely see her through the equpiment they had strapped to her. Shawn had seen her, and so had my mom. Shawn said she was doing really well, and all the nurses said she was feisty. She had been born without a heartbeat and unable to breathe on her own. Once they got her heart started and connected her to a respirator, she did well. She was breathing on her own a few hours later. The steroid shots had been given with perfect timing, and her lungs were in great shape.

The pain in my middle was gone by the time I woke up. I learned that I had developed HELLP syndrome, which is a complication of pre-eclampsia. The terrible pain was from my liver; it had basically given up and started leaking enzymes into my abdominal cavity. My blood pressure had skyrocketed, and my platelet count had dropped dramatically. Lucky for me, they had gotten to me before my platelets dropped too much; I wouldn't have been able to clot after the surgery had it taken place much later. I was kept in bed for the whole day and most of the next, allowed out for nothing except a couple of brief trips to the NICU. I was hooked to a blood pressure cuff, oxygen monitor, pulse monitor, two devices designed to keep ciruculation going in my legs and prevent blood clots, a catheter, at least two medications dispensed through an IV in my arm, and oxygen. I couldn't stand up, and I couldn't move around in bed. My incision hurt and all the drugs were doing weird things to my head. By Sunday night, those drugs were doing really, really weird things to my head. I'm willing to bet there's a strong black market for some of those druges; their effects weren't pleasant, but they were very interesting. I saw things out of the corner of my eye that weren't there, I twitched constantly, and I heard voices. Not that kind of voices. I would hear voices of people that I knew, as if I were dreaming, but it would sound like they were really in the room with me. That's as close to crazy as I ever want to get.

I got to go see Ivy for the first time on Saturday night. The nurse wheeled me down to the NICU with my catheter bag and IV fluids in tow. I think I finally realized how sick I had been and still was when I realized that I wasn't up to staying long with her, and I definitely wasn't up to holding her. I never imagined that I would not want to hold my baby as soon as possible. I was too afraid I would drop her, and I wasn't even sure I had the strength to hold her. She was even smaller than I remembered. She was unbelievably tiny; I couldn't believe that she was real and would probably be all right. The ventilator was gone by then, but she was still attached to half a dozen wires and probes, and she was in a temperature-controlled isolette. Her diaper was tiny; it looked like a gauze bandage. Her weight had dipped below two pounds. The hair on her arms and shoulders hadn't had time to disappear, and I could almost see through her skin.

Modern medicine is amazing. I wonder what would have happened without it. I heard once that until a century or two ago, the cause of death for at least 33 percent of women was childbirth. Ivy certainly would not have lived without intervention, and I most likely would have died after days or weeks of terrible pain. She is our little miracle baby.