The mind of a two-year-old, part II

I left Kezie at the table with a cup of applesauce the other day while I took Ivy into the other room for a diaper change. We came back out into the hallway, and found Kezie standing over Ivy's bathtub. She was dropping applesauce into it, one spoonful at a time. I have no idea what made her decide to do that, and when I asked her, she said "I drop it!" like she was proud.

Kezie seems to have decided that she mostly likes her baby sister. The other day she offered me a trade; her doll for the real baby. She told me it was "for you!" and then tried to grab Ivy out of my arms. It's funny that she wants to hold Ivy, because it usually lasts about two seconds. Kezie then announces, "she's poopy!" whether she is or not, and pulls her hands away.

So little

I stuck my baby in a cooler and took pictures of her. It's all I could think of to illustrate how small she is. The pediatrician suggested putting her in a shoe box, but I couldn't find one that wasn't falling apart and didn't smell like shoes. Any suggestions?

We had a little stuffed unicorn that Kezie picked out for Ivy to pose her with to illustrate her growth, but A NICU NURSE LOST IT! She sent Ivy's bedding with the laundry, and the unicorn went with it, never to be seen again. The hospital sends the laundry out, so there was no going to the laundry room and asking about it. Shawn tried to find another one, but they were sold out. It just makes me sick; that unicorn was Ivy's little buddy for five weeks. It was the one personal thing she had in the NICU, and it made me feel better that there was something from us with her all the time. We want to find a new one, but it really won't be the same.

Ivy pics

Welcome home Ivy

Ivy's home in the NICU

Ivy's last day in the NICU. They had removed the oxygen, but not the sticky things that attched it to her head.

Ready to go home!

Home and sleepy

Ivy is home, and we are all so glad, even Kezie. She hasn't yet shown any jealousy, and she really likes to hold the baby. I wanted to post some pictures of her homecoming, and a few of her last couple of days in the NICU.

The mind of a two-year old

I'm stumped. Sometimes I can come up with an explanation for what Kezie does. I can think of reasons for her fascination for putting foreign objects in the VCR, or why I find raw potatoes in my shoes, or why she has been walking around all day pretending to sneeze. This one has me baffled.

This is Kezie, asleep on the floor, with her feet in her dad's motorcycle helmet, and a piece of Thomas the Tank engine train track on her chest. I walked in the living room and found her this way. No idea.

Home!

Ivy is home! She came home last night at exactly four pounds. She has no monitors, no oxygen, nothing but a teeny tiny little girl. most of her preemie clothes are still way too big, and I can't find any socks to fit her even with her big feet.

Kezie is doing well. She says baby sister Ivy is cute, and wants to hold her. So far, no jealousy. We'll see how long that lasts.

I have pictures but will post them later as I am now going to try to get some sleep.

Big Girl Bed

They moved Ivy out of her isolette and into a crib a few days ago. She also got moved into another area of the NICU; she in the the patio suite, right next to the window. She can finally see outside! She doesn't seem to care yet, but it's nice when I go to visit to see daylight instead of the dull glow of flourescent. In the picture, she is tucked in with her unicorn in her new bed, very cosy.







Ivy can eat from a bottle at every feeding. She isn't always awake enough to do this; eating is hard work when you aren't quite three and a half pounds. Usually she gives out before finishing the last five cc's or so. On Sunday, Mom came with me to see her, and the nurses have relaxed the rule about parents being the only ones to hold her. She is getting big and old enough that my Mom got to hold her and feed her a bottle. She was a good girl for Grandma and gobbled it up.

The nurses predict that she will be home by Christmas. She needs to grow a little bit more, and get better at eating. When she can nurse or drink from a bottle at every feeding, she can come home!



I was talking to a nurse the other night who was there the night Ivy was born. I spoke to one a few days after, who said that she was amazed that Ivy was doing so well. She said it was a rocky start. I knew she couldn't breath on her own, and they had to start her heart. This nurse last night told me about trying to get her to breathe that morning. She said Ivy just refused to do it. She just looked at the nurses and respiratory therapist like, "What do you want from me? I'm sleepy." Her lungs seemed fine and she should have been able to breathe on her own. They finally called arond to find out if I had been given anything that would affect Ivy. It turns out that the ER doctor (the one who better hope we never meet in a dark alley because he's dead meat) gave me Mag (magnesium sulfate) to prevent seizures and didn't bother to tell anyone in Labor and Delivery. I know very well that this drug does very strange and unpleasant things to you because I was on it for a day or two after delivery. My girl had been affected by it, which made it harder for her to breathe. Six hours later it had worn off and she could breathe on her own. It's nice to know things about Ivy's birth and early minutes because I couldn't see them, even if they scare me to death.



I had never really met this nurse before, and she was chatty. She also told me that when they first saw Ivy, she looked at the other nurse and asked, "How old is she supposed to be?" She was so little that she didn't seem 31 weeks. They still call her, "peanut," which seems to be the term for all the babies under two or three pounds at birth in the NICU. It's a little less confusing that her first name, since it sounds like medical equipment. More than once, someone has confused Ivy with an I.V. I didn't think of this when Shawn and I chose the name. Hopefully her experiences with hospitals will be limited and it won't be confusing very often. Of course, if she decides to become a doctor or a nurse, she might have to change her name.