9 days old!

In the hopes of waiting to post some deeper thoughts I ended up not posting at all the last few days...but that's silly so here are a few updates and photos and only semi-deep thoughts.

Ginny is wonderful and the vast majority of our time with her has been magical. Some cuteness:

She seems to have been born into the Australian time zone. Midnight to 4am is her happy hour...she orders a new round of drinks as soon as she finishes the last. We have some fun times, and I'm learning to nap more during the day!


Ginny-dragon has had a few challenges this week though (jaundice, not gaining enough weight, tiny bit of congestion) so we've been to the pediatrician twice and are on a stepped-up nursing schedule that as of yesterday includes some pumping and a few bottles of breastmilk too. We also have "tanning sessions" to work on the jaundice.

Even these minor health issues have brought to the surface our Elizabeth-related anxieties, and after yesterday's ped visit and traumatic heel stick (THREE pokes on her little foot) my husband shut down and I melted down (for the first time since Ginny's birth, which I actually think is incredible). Today is so much better.

And finally, puppy is accepting the new "family boss" pretty well. He is a little shy but also protective of her which we like. Here he is showing her his new toy a few days ago:

Home!

Hope to have time soon for a more complete update and story but for now I'll just say that it's great to be home and our little Ginny continues to be such a joy. She is a good eater and pooper (currently her main awake-time activities) and makes the most hilarious faces while she sleeps, including one that was an Elizabeth signature look (still trying to capture that one on film).

Going home tomorrow?

If things continue to go well, we might be headed home tomorrow! Ginny has started having a little open-eyes awake time after feeds now.

She is endlessly fascinating for us. Parenting her is so very different than parenting Elizabeth was, and yet parts of it feel very familiar.

Doing Well

Ginny is doing well, although down quite a bit from her birthweight so today is all about nursing and getting my milk to come in.  I think I got through the worst of the c-section recovery over the past 24 hours.  Definitely not fun, but worth it of course.

A few more pictures...

Chubby cheeks like her sister!

So much hair!

Our little Ginny-Dragon is here!

Virginia Mae was born this morning. 6 pounds 15 ounces. She is wonderful.

Broken Hearts

My heart is broken for Courtney and her husband at Other Side of the Rainbow.  There are no words strong enough to express the sorrow of this kind of tragedy - the passing of a dearly loved rainbow baby.*

I am writing this from the hospital.  By early this afternoon, I had reached such a level of panic that something would happen to Dragon in this last day that I was on the couch with the doppler going constantly, unable to keep down food or have a coherent conversation.  My husband gently pointed out that I might actually get some sleep, eat some food, and be fit for surgery in the morning if I spent the night at L&D being monitored instead of staying at home, so here we are.

*(added a few days later) - it turns out "Courtney" was a fake BLM.  See the last comments on this post for links.  Truly and utterly bizarre.

Regrets and Forgiveness

An unanticipated effect of these last few days/weeks:  I'm starting to understand and forgive myself for not knowing when Elizabeth's cord accident happened.  I have berated myself for almost a year and a half now, thinking I should have just KNOWN, felt the second her oxygen was cut off, sensed those moments when her brain was injured beyond recovery.  But being here again reminds me that it is a constant guessing game - shifting and feeling and trying to figure out what is going on inside but never really knowing.  There is nothing exact about this. 

I do still have regrets about how we approached Elizabeth's pregnancy.  I regret that my kick counts were so casual, not at the same time every day or recorded so I could refer back to them.  I regret that I was so focused on my upcoming birth experience, thinking it really mattered how she got out.  I regret our choice to go with a midwifery model of care, which involved only a few ultrasounds and no NSTs until postdates (which we did not reach).  We had lots of prenatal care - regular appointments, a perfect 20-week scan, and I was cleared for GD and GBS at the appropriate times.  We thought we were being responsible without going overboard, but I wonder if perhaps a more paranoid OB practice would have done extra monitoring those last few weeks, seen something early enough to prevent the accident.  Perhaps.  Perhaps not.  I'm learning to accept the not knowing. 

These regrets have also been tempered by this pregnancy, by my hyper-awareness of how things can still go wrong even while being watched so closely.

Of course, there are many things I don't regret about Elizabeth's pregnancy, like the way we celebrated her.  We had a "reveal" party to let family and friends know that she was a girl.  We read books and sang songs to her in utero, did a belly cast on Thanksgiving, went to classes where we thought about how we would parent and my husband really started to bond with Elizabeth, even though she was in me...  I think if something happens to Dragon I may regret not doing more of those things with her.   But if she's fine, I really don't think those regrets will be more than a passing thought.  This pregnancy has been about survival, not celebration.  Monitoring, not trusting that things naturally work out.  Hoping, not expecting.
It is what it is.
We have done the best we can by both of our girls.
It's a relief to feel some of the guilt lift.

Pregnant with Elizabeth, trying out our new stroller.

Pregnant with Dragon.

Countdown

We had our final growth ultrasound with the perinatologist today.  Dragon is (estimated to be) over 7 pounds now!  The NST went well.  We have two more BPPs scheduled before delivery day, plus one more visit with our regular OB.

The soap at the perinatologist's office is the same as the soap from Elizabeth's second NICU.  When I smelled it on my hands today, it made me think of her and the feeling was part sad and missing but also part happy to have a flash of her, thankful to have memories that bring her back for a minute.  I appreciate the moments when grief is softer like that.

I am booked to have a c-section next Wednesday, June 20, the day we reach 38 weeks, just 9 days away from now, exactly 18 months since Elizabeth was born.

And so we wait, and watch, and listen, and I drink ice water and eat sugar to get Dragon to kick just a little more.  This poor child has had a lot of ice water dumped on her, and been woken up by the sound of her own heartbeat so many times.  I hope she forgives us.

Dragon's rainbow blanket, knitted by Grandma S.

On Saturday night, Dragon dropped.  Elizabeth never dropped, so I had no idea it would be this dramatic.  I felt it happen in the middle of the night, and we spent the rest of the night listening to her heartbeat with the doppler every hour or so.  I was just so freaked out about a big change like that.  But the truth is, it improved things for me.  I carry her completely differently now, and I look smaller.  I can breathe and eat comfortably.  She kicks in different spots, pushes on new organs, but my ribs and stomach are finally getting a break. 
 
We received a baby book last week.  Today I started to fill it out, with our family tree and notes about this pregnancy, Dragon's name story, current events.  I want her to have a baby book, no matter what happens.  I am so in love with this little girl.

Made it to June

Well, we made it to June! and I'm just a jumble of emotions.  I'm sorry I've fallen behind on blog reading and commenting.  I'm not sure exactly why I am doing and not doing certain things right now.  So of course this post is just going to be a jumble of my thoughts from the week.

We our doula Jessica over for dinner on Tuesday night.  It was our last scheduled chat before the big day.  I told her I wanted to talk through all eventualities.  My husband and I calmly discussed with her what we would plan to do (i.e. who stays with me in surgery, who stays with baby, etc.)  if baby dragon goes to the NICU, if I have some sort of medical emergency, even if one of us dies.   Then Jessica gently suggested that we discuss what would happen if all went well and our little family ended up all together in recovery and then back in our room, and my husband and I both dissolved into tears.  It's just too much to hope for.

Then a few times this week I've had these rushes of optimism, and I want to get things done.  Now we have an assembled and clean co-sleeper, changing table, boppy, blankets, and even a few cute little outfits in the corner of our bedroom.  We picked out a baby outfit for the hospital bag.  I put the upfront costs for cord blood banking on my credit card.  I even lounged in bed a few times reading a book about breastfeeding. 

On the other hand, there was almost another hospital trip on Thursday night, when baby dragon took twice as long as usual to pass her kick count, and some of the kicks were honestly pretty wimpy.  A trip to my favorite ice cream parlor was our last-ditch effort, and it did the trick waking her up.

Our dog has taken to barking at toddlers (not too aggressively, but still not good).  It's embarrassing.  Then I realized that maybe he's picking up on the fact that toddlers make me kind of sad and anxious?  Right now they are all just reminders of the little girl who should be preparing to meet her baby sister.

Then there is the question of extended family coming to visit us.  We love our parents and siblings, but this time around we really need some extra emotional space for our little family.  I could write for days about what happened when Elizabeth was born - how we needed so much help and at the same time had complicated boundary issues with various people.  Everyone lives out of town, so there is no question of just stopping by to meet a baby.  Hence our decision to ask that no out of town guests arrive before July 11, which we have dubbed "opening day" for baby visiting season.  (We're amused by the name at least.)  This decision isn't popular with certain family members, but they are accepting it.  Mostly.  My mom keeps offering to come "at any moment - the car is always packed - you are my first priority" which yes makes me feel loved and supported, but after too many repetitions makes me feel like she's saying she thinks we can't handle this on our own.  And I have started to really resent that.  I'm trying to figure out how to communicate this to her without too much drama.  There's a lot of history there...

And my favorite unexpected moment of the week:  I turned the page to June on our kitchen calendar and it's a photo of a rainbow :)