Adalina's Story part 2 - The birth announcement

This is the birth announcement for Adi. We had her picture taken at 1 month old because of how skinny and tiny she was when she was first born. Not to mention how busy and tired we were. Plus the fact that we had started noticing things about her physically.
P.S. I created it myself. If you know anyone who would like a custom announcement I'd be happy to do one! I'm even better at it now! hahaha! :)

Adalina's Story part 1 - The bad news

Adalina Vivian was born on February 19, 2010 at 9:36 pm - about 3 weeks early. She was 19 3/4 inches long and 5 lbs 14 oz. The story of her birth isn’t the most incredible one ever, other than to her family since we find her to be an incredible girl. The original (and flexible) plan I/we had for her birth was for it to be in a birthing center with the wonderful Nurse Practitioner/Midwife we’d been going to. I was going to labor and birth in a birthing tub. I had seriously horrible back labor (partially thanks to having had a stress fracture in L5 twice) with my first child and did NOT want to experience it again. But at the same time I wanted to give her the most natural, drug free entry into this world I possibly could.

My pregnant belly at about 7.5 months

My water broke around 10:30 am, and for some reason nothing really got jump started. I had contractions, but they weren’t progressing, or even consistent. Around 5/5:30 pm we headed to the birthing center so the midwife could check my progress, and check Adi’s heartbeat and make sure everything was ok with her, and try some things to get labor going. After a bit of walking around, and some homeopathic induction techniques contractions actually got started. Around 7/7:30 I had my first *real* contraction. (If you’ve given birth, you know EXACTLY what I mean.) Then about 15 minutes later, I had another one! Then again another roughly 15 minutes, and again another roughly 15 minutes.YAY! It was finally actually starting!!

By 9:36, with 8 minutes of pushing, she came out. During that 8 minutes the contractions stopped being helpful. They were extremely intense like they should be, but SUPER short. Not lasting long enough to actually get a good push in with each one, and they were spread too far apart. Because of these circumstances I ended up having to basically tighten my abdominal muscles myself instead of my body doing it like it should. Imagine trying to make jello suddenly become solid like steal and you’ll have an idea as to how easy that was. My abs ended up hurting for a few days afterwards like I had just done 1000 situps. (Which I have done before so I know what it feels like afterwards!!!)

Unfortunately during that 8 minute time period Adalina’s heartbeat was lost a few times. Everything was just fine with her before then so we didn’t know there was a possibility of anything being wrong. So why didn’t we go to the hospital that was RIGHT next door – so close we could have thrown a baseball to it – instead of staying at the birthing center? Because by the time we would have gotten there, me in a room, and anything done, Adi would have been already born. When Adi came out the cord was wrapped around her neck 3 times. But the NP/Midwife said that it wasn’t tight. I even witnessed her putting her fingers through the loops and fairly easily pulling them off Adi’s neck. The cord was no longer pulsing though. It might have gotten kinked while she was in the birth canal. Or something else entirely might have happened. Also, the cord (that was the longest one the NP/Midwife had ever seen) was connected to the placenta in a strange way. It was connected in such a way that if the cord wasn’t as long as it was it would have likely pulled right out and she and I would have both bled to death.

Despite these things Adi was just fine after about a minute of rubbing stimulation and some blow-by oxygen. (Where they take the oxygen tubing and turn on the O2 full blast but just hold the tubing under the nose.) She was pink and crying. And boy was she good at crying!

2/19/2010 Adalina Vivian 1 hour old

 Over the next two months Jason and I noticed some random things. She seemed to have a droop to her cheek and lip and tongue on the right side of her face. Her neck seemed to twist to one side/direction more than stay centered. She also seemed to be drooling quite a bit already. And most disconcerting was that her pupils were unequal. Sometimes it would be a dramatic (o) (O) difference between the two of them. We brought these things up to her pediatrician at her 2 month check up. He suggested we take her to a pediatric neurologist.

2/23/2010 Such a thin little baby!

We took her to one of the two pediatric neurologists he’d suggested the following week (on Monday). The nurse practitioner we saw at the pediatric neurologists office wanted us to take her to get an MRI as soon as possible. She wanted it for the next day, but there were no openings, so we took her on Wednesday. That was a somewhat traumatic experience for us as parents. Poor baby girl at 2 months old had to be given medicine to put her to sleep for long enough to get the MRI done. Then we had to wait until the following Tuesday to find out the results.

Tuesday finally comes and the nurse practitioner gives us the news we had been dreading, and I had already suspected would be the case: Adalina has slight brain damage due to oxygen being cut off during the birthing process. And “slight brain damage” is only in reference to the area that the brain damage occurred – not the degree to which the brain damage might affect/effect her. She also has mild torticollis – a slight turning of the neck because of tight muscles on one side. And by tight I don’t mean that you massage them and they loosen up – I mean they have to be worked with and stretched and massaged, and require physical therapy.

The worst part of it all is that she couldn’t tell us exactly what to expect with Adi. We might be looking at permanent disabilities or nothing wrong at all. Not knowing what to expect, or look for, or try to work on is the most helpless feeling possible.

4/3/2010 Sleepy baby fell asleep in my lap while I was playing with her

Mashed Potato Corn Chowder

Soooo... Last night we had beef au jus sandwiches for dinner with a side of corn and mashed potatoes. Ended up making far too much mashed potatoes, and I thought it would be great to turn it into potato chowder. So today I searched for recipes. I found a couple that sounded alright and kinda put bits of this together with bits of that to come up with some seriously delicious chowder!

 Left over mashed potato and corn chowder:

2 cans of chicken broth

1 can of creamed corn

1 can of whole kernel corn (drained)

2 cans of diced white potatoes (drained)

3-4 cups of left over mashed potatoes

7 slices of bacon

4-5 cloves grated garlic (to taste)

dried parsley flakes (to taste)

salt (to taste)

paprika (to taste)

dried basil (to taste)

celery seasoning (not celery salt) (to taste)

milk

water

butter

In a large pot put in the two cans of chicken broth and start heating up. Spoon in left over mashed potatoes. Thoroughly mix together with chicken broth. Add milk, water, and butter to make a full, smooth consistency. Add in cans of corn, creamed corn, and diced white potatoes and stir. Cut slices of bacon into mixture. Grate cloves of garlic into mixture. Add about 3 tablespoons of parsley, a 1/2 teaspoon of salt, 1 teaspoon of paprika, 1/2 teaspoon of celery seasoning, and 2 teaspoons of basil. Stir and taste. All measurements are guestimates since I just sprinkled a bunch in until it looked yummy, then stirred and taste tested and added what seemed good until it tasted right.

It should look something like this:

Mashed Potato Corn Chowder

And it should taste ohhhhh sooooo yummy!!! Enjoy it! :-D

This much should feed about 8 people give or take ... The leftovers we have are in the freezer waiting for us to enjoy them another day! :)

First posting...

Well, this is my first posting. Although I'm not entirely sure why I'm doing this. I guess I can use this as a forum to release thoughts, relay messages, and keep in touch with friends. Although I'm not so sure I'll have much to say! I guess we'll find out as I start talking about the wondrous craziness that is my life.