Going Private...

I have made the decision to keep the blog private. Ammon had some identity theft issues a while ago so he has some concerns... I would love to have a way of keeping you posted on our lives! Please leave me your email address so I can send you an invitation. Thanks!

LIVVY!

Well it has been life changing the last four weeks. Olivia Bren was born on March 25th. She was 7 lbs. 13 oz. And 20” long. Now we have a Lizzy and a Livvy. Lizzy went to the doctor that Tuesday. The doctor thought she would probably have at least another week. Well that night about midnight she woke me and said she was having major contractions. They were under two minutes apart already. It seemed like she was going to have the baby right then! I was a little disoriented but managed to grab all the stuff and get the car ready. I was driving as fast as I could in that snow. We made it... So Lizzy was in labor all night. They gave her an epidural about 3:30am. Sometime around 11am the doctor came in and broke her water. Then after 16 hours of labor, she finally had the baby girl.

Olivia is doing great now, but she did have a rough start. As she was being delivered, somehow the doctor noticed that the baby might be having problems. So she calmly explained to both Liz and I that she might have to immediately be taken to the NICU where another doctor, nurses, and a respiratory therapist can help her. Sure enough, when she finally got her out she wasn’t breathing. So about a minute later they rushed her down the hall to the ICU. I went with Olivia and the doctor stayed with Lizzy. It was crazy, having no idea what was wrong and no idea how to help. The doctors and nurses were running everywhere. At the same time Olivia came in, three other babies came in within five minutes after her. They hooked her up to tubes and IV’s and everything else... her oxygen saturation levels were way low. When they would drop tremendously, Olivia would tense up of course... but after a few hours she calmed down. She had IV’s and tubes in her nose, mouth, both hands, both feet, and a few in her head... those ones kept clotting or coming out. It was tough to see but she was worn out and finally fell asleep.

Many hours later Lizzy woke up and was feeling up to going up to the NICU to see Olivia. So we wheeled her up. They took good care of her and we got to visit as much as we wanted in spite of the tight security. She spent a couple more days there and we finally got to hold her on Friday. Then she started to show improvement in her breathing so they took her off the stuff, but had to put her back on in about a half an hour. So she had to stay another night. The last part of the time we were at the hospital we stayed just down the hall in the Ronald McDonald family rooms. It was nice to finally get some sleep and still be close enough to feed and see her every little bit. It was a long week. It was exciting to take her home! She started rolling over and hasn’t stopped since we got her home. Is that normal?

When we got her home we had a lot of help, which was well needed. I had a little time off work and then when I went back Liz’s Mom came out and stayed, then Liz’s sister. Our first load of dishes coming back didn’t go well either. Turned out our washer was broken so I went shopping for a new one while Lizzy and Olivia got some rest, some. I finally got one picked out after shopping all over. So I took the old one out, picked up the new one, installed the new one. It had been installed and returned to the store I think. It was leaking and wasn’t working right. I had asked them if problems and they had said no, that the people had just changed their minds. Well I called and they wouldn’t come and get it. So the next day I took it back. They were all sold out of that one, so I started shopping again. This time I took Lizzy while her mom stayed with the baby. We finally got another one picked out, but it wouldn’t be in for 2 days. Two days later I went and picked it up and installed it. So far so good. Whew!

The next week or so went ok. She didn’t seem to sleep at all… I know I am exaggerating, but it really seemed like that. We were back and forth to the doctor and clinics constantly. She had some jaundice when she was born and the doctor was a little worried about it when we left, but it cleared up pretty quick when we went back in a week to have her tested.

She had a couple of hang nails on her thumbs, so I was watching them closely. One was infected. I lanced it we soaked it and it got better. But she seemed so mad all the time for the next couple of days. One morning we were changing her clothes and noticed that her left thumb was twice the size of her right! I could tell it was infected throughout the knuckle. It looked like four huge boils or pimples. I lanced them and drained tons of infection out. We took her to the doctor and there were a lot of questions as to what it could be. They finally decided that the thumb still looked too infected. So the cut her thumb open and just let it drain. She lost a lot of blood out of that little finger. So they wrapped it up and gave us a prescription and told us to come back the next day for a follow up. The next day it was way worse. We took her in and they immediately called her doctor to have her admitted back into the hospital.

We were at the hospital for four more days. The infection took over her thumb and even went under the nail and pushed the nail off her finger. They did a lot of tests and started her on some antibiotics that made her real sick. More painful IV’s. One time they couldn’t find a vein and it took them seven times to finally get the right spot where her veins wouldn’t roll. That was way bad! Anyway, they thought it was a number of different things… herpes, staph, and all this other stuff. It turned out to be a real bad staph infection she probably got while being at the hospital the first time. But there is no way of knowing for sure where she picked it up.?

When finally got to take her home on a weekday at about ten at night. We had been doing shifts to stay with her while either of us ate and showered. We were already dead tired. We got some more help from family and friends when we came back. Lizzy and I got hit a day later… I think it was the flu, but she thinks we got food poisoning from the hospital. We were both throwing up all night. The first time I got hit was when Lizzy was already in the bathroom in the night. I threw up a couple times all over our white carpet. I took another couple of days.

Things are semi-normal now. We are into at least a little bit of a routine. We were always expecting that starting our family out would be hard, nothing is coming as an absolute total surprise meltdown. But even knowing doesn’t make it perfect. It seems like the Lord knew exactly when we needed her. So far she is a great addition to the Ashby family... So we are going to keep her!