Aurora Borealis

Our little girl is coming along.  Her weight last night or early this morning was an even 6 pounds.  Her night nurse said she’d done really well on her bottles and had taken her feeding tube out herself, and they’re not going to put it back preemptively.  They’ll see if she can go without it.  Hooray!

I spent the better part of the day with her yesterday.  Her nurse was saying she might be ready to come home as early as Sunday.  Yikes — we still have a few things to get ready, and since I’m not driving yet, we’ll have to find someone to transport us.

I was pretty worn out after the long day, so today we just went in for her 9:00 a.m. feeding.  Going in the morning allowed Daddy to come too, since Agent Murphy has a babysitter in the mornings.  It’s the first time Daddy has seen her since Saturday, so that was very good.  And, in very exciting news, she had a great nursing session.  She’s done pretty well a couple of times before — typically she’s tried harder at it than her full-term brother ever did — but this is the first time she’s done really well without a lactation consultant present.  She nursed pretty strongly for 12-13 minutes and she must have been getting milk because she didn’t get fussy or root around.  Then she took most of her bottle (also breastmilk) from Daddy.

We have a lactation discharge consult scheduled for tomorrow at noon, which they say will suffice as long as she goes home by Monday.  I’m trying another “whole day” tomorrow, because we’re also having a PT/OT consult about ways to give her extra tactile/auditory/vestibular input since the cataracts are preventing her from getting as much visual stimulation as she otherwise would.

It’s good to be home!  I seem to be recovering well, hitting the milestones I’m supposed to, backing down on my pain medications, etc.  I keep reminding myself to take plenty of rest periods during the day between pumping sessions.   (Even though the little one isn’t home yet, I’m still up during the night to pump and keep my milk supply going and hopefully growing.)  Looking forward to being able to drive again come July 1 to regain some independence.  In the meantime, I’m still reliant on all the wonderful folks who have been helping us in order to get back and forth to the NICU to visit Cardinal Cadette.

Yesterday I went for her 3:00 feeding and stayed for a few hours.  I’ll do the same today.  Tomorrow I’m going to go in the morning and stay through the 3:00 feeding to see if I can really make it that long and still feel okay.

After I fed her yesterday, the nurse put her back in her bassinet and swaddled her. A couple minutes later the Cardinal kicked one foot out, then the other, and then completely opened up her swaddle and arms and legs were going everywhere for about 10 minutes.  It was as if she was doing a callisthenics routine, and then she went to sleep.  It was very cute.

Every time I’ve fed her she’s been able to take in more than what’s currently “required” in her orders.  I talked to her night nurse around 4:30 this morning while I was pumping and the nurse reported the Cadette had taken two bottles from her already and she was going to give her another one at her 6:00 feeding, which would put her at 6 bottle feedings for the day.  (She has to do all 8 feedings orally for 2 consecutive days before she’s eligible to come home.)  And her weight is heading in the right direction.  Initially her weight dropped, of course, then bounced right back to her birthweight and then fell again.  Now she’s on a slow, steady climb back toward her birthweight.  Her most recent weight was 5 pounds, 11.5 ounces.

The other day Cardinal Cadette had her hearing screening and she passed with flying colors.  The woman from audiology printed out the results for Cardinal’s chart and said, “I could put these in a textbook.”  Last night our pediatric ophthalmologist examined Cardinal Cadette.  Unfortunately, our little girl has cataracts in both eyes.  She’ll have surgery on one eye probably at 4 weeks of age and on the other the following week.  I should have more information from the doctor’s office by the end of the week to confirm the scheduling.  It makes us sad, but we knew our kids had a 50/50 chance of having congenital cataracts.  Agent Murphy didn’t have them, so we’ve gotten exactly 50/50.

We are overjoyed to welcome Mrs. Tldz home as of yesterday. A most wonderful Father’s Day present. Both the Dog and the Agent showed their approval.

This afternoon, I accepted an offer of employment for a new opportunity to begin June 28. I am relieved and excited to begin the new assignment. I got a call later in the afternoon from one of my new co-workers, asking about what I would need to have set up in terms of software. I gave him the list and explained the various options and how to choose among them.

In other news, the Cadette and Mrs. Tldz are both doing well. The cadette continues to learn valueable life skills in the NICU and we are very proud of her progress. Mrs. Tldz, for her part is making great strides in recovering from her operations. Her spirits seemed quite good as I left her to come home this evening. The Agent stopped in for a visit with Auntie N. just before his speech therapy appointment. N tells us he did quite well and is still saying some of the new words he practiced in the therapy appointment. He was pretty clearly missing mommy and daddy today.

Mrs. Tldz gave birth today by c-section to our baby girl Cardinal Cadette. We went back and forth on whether she is Cadette Cardinal or Cardinal Cadette. But we are sure about the rank of cadette and the fittingness of the cardinal. The cardinal is the state bird of my home state and cardinals of the Catholic church wear red robes. Our cardinal came to us through blood, so things that are red seem rather appropriate.

To all of you who have prayed and helped us out through this adventure, we offer our most humble thanks. We could not have done it without you.

In other news, I have a follow up phone interview tomorrow. This interview is with the hiring manager, who is on vacation in India. Apparently I passed muster with the technical team. That’s good news. I’ve still got lots of other leads going, including a phone interview that I had this morning that went well enough that they want me to come in for an in person interview.

We appreciate your prayers on my behalf as I look for a new opportunity. I’m also very thankful to those of you who have given me rides to job interviews and those of you who have watched the Agent for me while I did various job hunting things.

At about four o’clock this morning, Mrs. Tldz woke up and reported that she was bleeding. As per standing instructions from the ob, we called 911 and she has been taken to the hospital. I am here at the house to watch Agent Murphy and to catch up on some chores we had not quite gotten to in preparation for Garbanzo’s arrival.

At this time, I do not know if Mrs. Tldz will be delivered of a child or kept at the hospital for monitoring until our scheduled date of 6/29. In either case, I do know that she will not come home until there is a child born.

All, please pray for her health and the health of Garbanzo Bean.

Yesterday was a red letter day at our house.  Miss A. got the Agent ready to go to the playground.  Then the handyman showed up.  (We had a list of miscellaneous things that needed attention — doors that were sticking, doors that weren’t latching, a doorbell that worked only intermittently, etc.)  Agent Murphy was fascinated and decided he’d rather watch Mr. Chip work than go to the playground.  (They went today instead.)  As if that wasn’t enough, then the lawn guys showed up, so the Agent had to run from window to window to watch them work.  Agent Murphy and Miss A. took some mail out to the mailbox and saw that people up the street were having some tree limbs trimmed, so they watched that for a while.  And the garbage truck came yesterday, too.

This afternoon it started raining and Agent Murphy pointed excitedly out the window.  Then he ran off to his room and came back with one of his issues of High Five! magazine that we’ve been reading a lot lately.  He had it open to the poem called “Rain Party” about a bunch of frogs playing in the rain.  He pointed to the poem and then out the window again.  I’m continually amazed at how the little guy’s mind works and how smart he is.  There’s so much going on in his head.  It’ll be so much better for him (and us) when he can make this talking thing work.

Mr. Tldz feels like the phone interview with Google today went well.  He has a phone interview with another company set for Wednesday, and he’s been told by the relevant recruiter that the company he phone interviewed with last week still wants to bring him in for an in-person, they just haven’t come up with the scheduling yet.  And he’s heard from recruiters today about at least 2 additional positions he may apply for.  Eventually something good will come of all this…

Some people have commented that it seems like we have quite a cloud hanging over us, given the bedrest situation and Mr. Tldz’s unemployment.  I guess that’s true, but maybe there really always is a silver lining. 

 For one thing,  having to lay around and not do much has meant that I have finally finished Agent Murphy’s baby book (with the exception of 3rd-5th birthdays and first schooling type stuff) — something I haven’t been able to accomplish in the past year and a half or more.  Hooray — just in time to start on another one!  (I’ve now set myself up a file for keeping notes for the various entries in Garbanzo Bean’s book, so perhaps I can be a bit more organized with it.) 

Another thing is that we’ve gotten to know people at our church and in our neighborhood who we probalby wouldn’t have met, or wouldn’t have met or gotten to know as well as soon.  Okay, so this really isn’t the way I would have chosen to make new friends; but we’ll take what good we can get.

Speaking of getting to know people at church…  Mr. Tldz picked up our copy of the new parish directory today after Mass.  It looks really nice, and a chunk of the parishioners do have their pictures in it, so it will help to be able to put names with faces, and to have contact info for folks all in one place.

Well, where to start?  He’s been more willing recently to try out sounds.  He’s started saying, “Go!” pretty clearly to get The Dog to go away from the table; unfortunately, she doesn’t really listen to his sweet little voice.  At therapy today he worked on 2-word sequences — verb and noun (like “roll ball”) — with pictures.  His therapist reported he did start getting frustrated. 

A while ago, at our old house, we tried a refrigerator lock to keep him out of the fridge.  We followed all the installation instructions, let it “cure” a full 24 hours before engaging it, etc.  The first time the Agent yanked on the refrigerator door after the lock was engaged, he flat out broke it.  We got a different lock, and finally got around to installing it the other day.  Shortly after we started engaging it, Mr. Tldz reported: “The good news is Agent Murphy won’t break the new lock.  The bad news is he knows how to operate it.”  So now he routinely opens and re-locks the lock for us when we need to get stuff out of the fridge.

These days, when Mr. Tldz puts a meal on the table, he sends Agent Murphy down the hall to the bedroom to tell me it’s ready.  He looks at me expectantly, and when I ask if lunch or whatever is ready, he says, “Yeah!”.  He had been running down the hall ahead of me, but in the last day or two he’s decided that he must take my hand and walk me down the hall.  My sweet little escort.

In a very exciting development, Agent Murphy seems to be heading down the path of potty training himself.  The other day the babysitter reported that he had indicated a desire to go into the bathroom.  So she put his seat up on the toilet and he peed in the toilet.  Today she reported that he did that three times this morning.  Aunty N. took him to speech therapy today, and when he got home, Daddy commented that he probably needed his diaper changed.  I asked Agent Murphy if he wanted to go potty.  He said, “Yeah,” so Daddy took him into the bathroom.  Daddy came back and reported that the Agent peed in the toilet, and that his diaper, which was last changed nearly 2 hours before, was pretty much dry; it may have been very slightly damp.  Then, when it was time to get ready for bed, Agent Murphy peed on the toilet again, and his diaper was dry again.  What a big boy!

I know it can be harder to get a kid to poop on the toilet, but hopefully if this keeps up, once we get settled in with Garbanzo and can actually focus on toilet training a little bit, maybe this will come together.