one day i will be a good blogger

one day i will remember to update my blog on a regular basis...one day i will be on top of everything---NOT
We have been busy finding and buying the perfect farm house....
here is what we found

We should be moving into our own little house in the woods before December is underway...
and little Willow is making big progress

sorry

i apologize for being the worst blogger ever. i have been very busy. we arrived in Oregon exactly two weeks ago today, after staying in Oklahoma for a month to spend time with family. We are staying in a rental house in a suburb of Portland while we look at properties to buy in the country.

This land is so breathtaking and beautiful. i LOVE the overcast/drizzle/GREEN. i guess my English Grandmother's genes shine through in the climate. I don't miss the brown/HOT climate of Texas one bit. There are people i miss dearly though....

Here we are making new friends. Everyone we meet is so friendly- except for the few 'Portlandia-style' hipsters that can be found almost exclusively in downtown Portland.
here is a very cute video of my water-loving baby girl
willow's bath

my rainbow - one year old

one year ago my darling rainbow baby Willow was born, 9 weeks early. I had a chorio infection and she had to come out. She was a tiny little plucked chicken, with no butt and sticks for limbs. She had tubes and wires and IV's. she could not breathe or eat or poop or cry. modern technology did it all for her, bringing her from certain death to life.

Now, today she is one year old and thriving. She crawls and cruises. She says a few words and plays several games. she loves chocolate. tonight she will have a huge slice of chocolate cake all to herself.

Willow brought joy back into our house and we are all madly in love with her. Thank you Lord for bringing us Willow!

happy Mother's day

another day without my baby girl Aquila. Last year, without a baby in my arms, church was torture. this morning, i look forward to praising god for the one i will be holding.

But, i will still be missing my forever baby.....

look how much she has grown

willow at 12 days old




willow today at 4 months old

sister love

my rainbow

To say Willow spends a large amount of time in arms would be putting it mildly. There are always willing arms for her. Willow sleeps snuggled in the crook of my arms- because i cannot sleep with her anywhere else. Having lost a baby, and knowing full well the pain in empty arms, i enjoy every delicious moment, as i know they will not last...


"Song for a 5th Child" by Ruth Hamilton.

Mother, oh Mother, come shake out your cloth, Empty the dustpan, poison the moth,
Hang out the washing and butter the bread,
Sew on a button and make up a bed.
Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?
She's up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.
Oh, I've grown shiftless as Little Boy Blue
(Lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo).
Dishes are waiting and bills are past due
(Pat-a-cake, darling, and peek, peekaboo).
The shopping's not done and there's nothing for stew
And out in the yard there's a hullabaloo
But I'm playing Kanga and this is my Roo.
Look! Aren't her eyes the most wonderful hue?
(Lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo).

The cleaning and scrubbing will wait till tomorrow,
For children grow up, as I've learned to my sorrow.
So quiet down, cobwebs. Dust go to sleep.
I'm rocking my baby and babies don't keep.

loving Willow, missing Aquila

How does Willow fit into my grief for Aquila?

When Willow was first born I was so afraid of losing her that that was ALL i could focus on. Then as her NICU stay turned into a "grower/feeder" stay, my focus was on breastfeeding. I found bunches of resistance in the NICU (aside from one doctor and a small handful of the nurses and the LC )to me being there almost 24/7 and to my wanting Willow to leave fully breastfeeding. I found out later the nurses were giving me a hard time (and it wasn't all in my head) because of this blog. they had all been reading it and decided basically that i was nuts over the loss of Aquila. But they were so wrong. i would have been just as "annoying" if it had been any of my babies in that NICU. Breastfeeding is very important to me. I could care less if someone else wants to breastfeed their baby-that's none of my concern- but as for me and mine, we like the boob. And, the way i saw it, Willow should have still been in my tummy, so she needed me their to hold her as much as humanly possible. I kept saying- "we are a dyad..we need each other.."
So i had very little time for grieving Aquila, as mostly i was trying to be there 100% for Willow.
i did, however, find myself terribly angry (again) with Faith Beltz. See, the infection that made Willow come early and almost die was the very same bacteria that contributed to Aquila's death. See with Aquila i had a fever in labor. Faith said nothing to the hospital when i was admitted after delivery. Had she said something about the fever, they would have given me IV antibiotics. Later the coroner said Aquila had a Chorio infection, which Faith should have know BEFORE the abruption began. quotes from here :

"Symptoms of chorioamnionitis include fever and tenderness in the uterus. The baby may show signs of infection, such as a fever or a higher-than-normal heart rate.


Symptoms may include:

*
Fever

*
Significant maternal tachycardia

*
Fetal tachycardia

*
Tender or painful uterus

*
A foul odor of the amniotic fluid

*
Maternal leukocytosis
"
"Chorioamnionitis may initiate uteroplacental bleeding or a placental abruption."

According to my OB from Willow's pregnancy this is what happened=
The bacteria that caused the chorio (which likely caused the abruption) was never treated with antibiotics. it continued to live in my uterus, but was kept fairly in check by my strong immune system. however, the week before Willow was born i got the nasty virus that put me in the hospital. that virus lowered my immune system-helping the bacteria to gear up for an attack-which it did.

So, thanks to my midwife's incompetent care i not only lost a baby, but almost lost another one, and was subjected (as was Willow) to a horribly stressful NICU experience. And it was during this stressful NICU stay that Faith slapped me in the face by saying i refused to transfer (complete lie) at the second board meeting - see this post.
so, yeah, Angry does not begin to cover it.

But there was the sweetness of holding Willow all those hours..i needed that..it was what i had yearned for for months. i would try holding other babies, try stroking thier hair to see if it felt like Aquila's, but none ever did..none ever gave me that which i needed so badly...but Willow was mine, my sweet smelling, sliky haired baby. It's like a line from my favorite poem
Propaganda poem: maybe for some young mamas by Alicia Suskin Ostriker

"oh young mamas
no matter what your age is you
are born when you give birth
to a baby you start over
one animal
and both gently just slightly
separated from each other
swaying, swinging
like a vine, like an oriole nest
keep returning to each other
like a little tide, like a little wave
for a little while
better than sex, that bitter honey, maybe
could be the connection you’ve been waiting for
because no man is god, no woman is a goddess
we are all of us spoiled by that time
but a baby
any baby
your baby
is the most perfect human thing you can ever touch
translucent
and I want you to think about touching
and the pleasure of touching
and being touched by this most perfect thing
this pear tree blossom"

I cry mostly at night, when Willow is snuggled by my side, and i am stroking her hair. Because, then i can almost picture Aquila in my arms. Seeing the things Willow does makes me sad for the things Aquila was not able to do... I think it is good that Willow does not look very much like Aquila, because i would not want the moments of flooding grief to catch me unawares.

willow

my days in pictures

all day long, every day (well mostly) i am sitting here, in my spot on the couch. this is my view and what surrounds me. Willow spends about 45 minutes (or more) of every three hours eating and then i pump. the couch and i are well acquainted..



i am using an SNS to supplement replacing the bottles she was taking in order to get out of the NICU. She hates the tube, so if she fights it i use a nipple shield too..sigh
my view looking down.



my rented baby scale.i weigh her before and after each nursing session to ensure she gets enough.



ahhh, faithful old Bessie. always right there in front of me. i see you right in front of me all day. i use you about 8 times every day to make up for Willows inability to empty my breasts.



my books with handy answers to questions like "do i seriously have thrush again?" and " why is my daughter clicking while nursing? "

we are home!

after an exhausting and tiring 5 weeks we are home with baby Willow! I have no time for blogging yet as all my time is spent feeding, pumping and caring for Willow- and my other kiddos....but it is a great thing!

there is nothing in this world sweeter than a new baby snuggled in your arms.

Willow updates

I have been busy..very busy- holding my baby. my day consists of waking at 7 am to pump, scarfing down some oatmeal and packing my stuff and heading out the door. I drive to NICU and spend the next 9 hours there, holding Willow and trying to breastfeed her. I pump every two hours during the day, usually with her in my lap. i then go home at 5pm to eat dinner with my family. i come back up to the NICU after shift change at 7:30 pm and stay till about 10pm. Then i drive home in a daze, pump and sleep for 4 hours, till i need to pump again.
but every minute is worth it. i could hold her 24 hours a day. i hate putting her down and driving away.

So, as far as her progress. She started off on a CPAP machine which blew air into her lungs under pressure. She had all feeds by IV and was on IV antibiotics for 10 days. She was jaundiced (put under Billi lights).She had to stay under a radiant heat warmer in just a diaper to maintain her temp. She blew out IVs like most people change socks- 10 (or more??) IVs placed in 10 days....
She had multiple apnea spells and heart rate dips, for which they put her on oral caffeine. She had one dose of surfactant to lubricate her lungs. She had a spinal tap and countless blood draws.
She dropped from her birth weight (4 pounds) down to about 3pounds 14 ozs.

Now,at 16 days , Willow is rocking the NICU. She has done better, faster than anyone predicted.

She is over her birth weight (4 pounds, 1 and 1/2 oz). no more IV antibiotics or feeds. no infection. no more breathing apparatuses. She is breathing room air without help. She has been taken off the caffeine and we are waiting to make sure her heart rate stays steady. She is fed through a tube in her nose. My milk supply has risen to enough for two Willows!
She has been trying at the breast all week and has had two real swallowing feeds there (yesterday and today)

She has moved into a regular infant bed and is wearing (tiny) clothes.

Like i said, she is a rock star!

All she needs to do to come home is learn to eat for all her feeds and continue gaining weight and keeping her heart rate steady.

So any prayers towards those goals would be welcomed!

God is good and everything he does is good. Thank you Lord!

the birth of Willow Grace

As i previously posted, i was hospitalized Labor day weekend with a fever of unknown origin.My OB did a whole slew of tests, but nothing came up and i started getting better so i was allowed to go home. Ruled -unknown virus... Then all week after coming home i continued to feel completely run down and on Mon the 13th i spiked a fever again. I called my OB the next morning when the fever hadn't gone and she got me right in for an appointment. After looking me over she determined best course of action was to admit me to the hospital again so they could do even more tests.
I went strait over and got tested in a bazillion ways. Finally at about 7pm my perinatologist came in and did a scan and talked to me about doing an amniocentesis. she was worried about a occult Chorio infection. OUCH - amnios hurt!!!!
The results from the amnio did not come back till about 10 am the next morning. By this time i had had several more test run , including an MRI. My doctor came and talked to me and said the amnio was showing signs of an infection in between the wall of the uterus and the amniotic sac. it was only a matter of time before bacteria invaded the sac and the only cure for Chorio is delivery, so we started Pictocin at about 11 am.
I was feeling totally emotionally raw and still physically sick, so i made a plan to get an epidural when my labor was strong- especially because i could not move well since i had an IV on a pump, a blood pressure cuff, a pulse ox, and the contraction and heart rate monitors.
Willow was very hard to keep on the monitor and the toko (contraction monitor ) was almost never reading my contraction. This made it impossible to even bounce on the birth ball, so i labored for the 13 hours in the bed on my back.
When my water broke there was lots of blood, which had everyone worried- but my Doctor's partner (by then my doc was off shift ) said we could wait it out since Willows heart rate had continued to be perfect in every way. She offered that if i wanted a Csection she would give me one, but she did not mind waiting. She did recommend me getting an epidural in case there was any problem so we could cut quickly. That was fine with me , since i already wanted one!
the anesthesiologist came in and gave me the epidural - again with the OUCH - those things HURT to get! Well, it worked for about an hour and a half. then half my uterus was feeling the contractions perfectly. He came in the readjust, but that didn't fix it. The only thing else he could do was re-do it and i was not up for that because it hurt the first time and contractions were so often i did not think i could hold still. Within several contractions the epidural was completely gone and i was having to moan quite loudly. This was about 11 pm.
About 11:30-11:40 ish the nurse checked me and said she thought i was an 8. So i said that we should head over to the OR - we were delivering in the OR because it has the stabilization room for the preemies connected to it. She argued with me that it would take a while to get to complete.blah blah blah. i told her is i were to get off my bed and walk to the bathroom i could squat and deliver the baby. So, we went to the OR ! LOL .

my good friend Emily

We got in there and the Doc wanted to check me. She said , "oh no, she's only 5-6!" and left the room. I said "hell no this baby is coming out. I had three contractions in a row with no stop .At the end the nurse said to stop bearing down or i was going to swell my cervix. I said "it's funny, they always say that, and i still always do it and it never does". Then i grabbed the rail of the bed on my right side and pulled my self onto my side and up higher on the bed and with the next contraction she was coming down. I said "she's coming out now" The nurse said that she couldn't be and she wanted to check me. I said "no. i am pooping. her head is coming out now."She stuck her hand inside me as the head was coming down and said " stop pushing!" i screamed "get your hand out of my vagina!" and pushed her out-onto the still-not-broken-down-bed. Everyone was fumbling around like chickens with there heads cut off (NICU staff ect). The nurse only had one glove on, so she didn't want to pick Willow up, so my friend (who happens to be an LnD nurse in another city) Hand her to me. Willow was screaming bloody murder and pink and beautiful. Everyone must have been completely floored because they tried cutting the cord and sprayed blood all over my fave, hair and gown. Then the doctor walked in.


apparently , when a multipara says her baby is coming out , her baby is coming out, cause the Doctor had only left the OR about 3, or 4 minutes before!
And i have still not had a doctor deliver a baby, LOL, even though i wanted one to! And even though i wanted to have a nice pain-free delivery- i had another natural birth- and frankly was pretty pissed about it during the labor!

I was laughing within minutes of the birth because of how funny it was was :)

Willow Grace Paparella

Baby Willow Grace came into this world, pink and screaming just before midnight last night, Sept 15th (exactly 2 months early/31 weeks). She is in the NICU but doing great so far. please pray for her heath, breathing and a speedy recovery!