Nursery and Jude's Haircut

Well, we agreed that when Juliet was born, we would cut Jude's hair. Last night Colin chopped almost all of the locks off and now he really looks like a little boy!
And here is Colin painting the last pink coat of paint on the nursery. His Uncle Andrew spent most of the day freshening up the brown on the bottom and putting the pink on the top. Yay for a girl room!!

Juliet Is Home!!

Juliet came home today!! We got the call from the nurse early this morning that she was ready to be discharged today. I couldn't get to the hospital fast enough! She's been great today - she pretty much sleeps all the time - I wake her up every three hours to feed, change her diaper and she falls back asleep. What an easy baby!! I know, I know. She will wake up pretty soon and let her voice be heard, but for now she is pretty low maintenance. It's just all of the pumping and sterilizing that takes so much time. She's worth it, though!
The boys LOVED holding her!
Here's right before we took her away from the NICU. This sweater and hat set were knit by Colin's Aunt Judy and I can't even believe how beautiful it is - it fit her perfect!! Oh, and we did put socks on her and a added a huge blanket before we took her outside.
Here's her wonderful day nurse, Rose, that just loved her. It was a bit sad leaving - I haven't known Juliet except for inside the walls of the NICU and under the care of the nurses. It's incredible how much these people love all the babies.
I just love staring at my baby girl!
Love the outfit!!
Rose took a quick family photo for us.

Thanks for all your prayers!! Please keep praying that she grows fast and learns to breastfeed!

A Big Thanks to Everyone and the Latest on Juliet

Ok, so my house is a disaster, the nursery needs to be painted, I am battling a breast infection (and losing miserably) and quite possibly could be bringing a baby home tomorrow, but I will sit on the computer nonetheless.

I just want to thank everyone for all they have been doing for us - meals, prayers, baby clothes, organizing meals to be delivered, taking care of the boys, etc. I really am amazed at everyone's generosity and willingness to take time to help us during this crazy season in our life.

We spent some time with Juliet this morning and she seemed to be doing well. She nursed surprisingly well and we spent a good deal of time holding her. She sleeps ALL the time and has to be awoken for all her feedings. We did notice today that she is getting little chipmunk cheeks and a double chin. Yay!! I forgot to ask what her weight was, but from the looks of it, I think she is gaining nicely. We just need to get her fat enough to regulate her own temperature.

Prayers for Juliet

Juliet will not be coming home today as expected. She had a choking spell during a feeding last night and her temp dropped too low. So, it's day to day at this point - please keep her in your prayers for a speedy recovery and for her little system to mature to the point where everyone is comfortable with her being back at home.

NICU Day 14 - Juliet is coming home!!

Here are some pictures of Juliet from yesterday. We stopped to drop off her car seat (I had no idea that we would have to get a special car seat for babies that are 4 lbs.) so she could get tested in it. She was supposed to be home today, but she failed her first car seat test (meaning her oxygen dropped) but she was tested again today and she passed! So, if all goes well, we will be driving to the hospital to pick her up around 10 a.m. tomorrow!

Colin and I are completely unprepared - we have no car to hold three kids, no room for her, just barely enough food in the house, etc. It should be interesting! I am feeling a bit overwhelmed with what lies ahead, but I know it's all in the Lord's hands - He blessed us with this sweet girl and I know He has a plan for her.
Here Colin is strapping her in the car seat for the first time. She didn't love it.
She is so tiny in his arms.

NICU Day 13

Great news! Juliet is spending what should be her last few days in the hospital. We are still anticipating a discharge of early next week. That means we are hastily preparing our house for her arrival - Colin bought pink paint today (he picked it out all by himself!!), we are picking out a car seat appropriate for a 4 lb. baby and now the shopping list begins: bottles, nipples, blankets, hats, etc. I hope I don't forget anything!

I had the luxury of spending the entire day with Juliet at the hospital today - I fed her bottles, took her temperature, changed diapers and then held her for hours. It was the most amazing feeling to be able to hold her with no rush to leave. Her feeding tube has been removed and as long as she keeps taking bottles, we can bring her home!
Look how skinny she is!
Colin took a few moments to hold her - such a proud Papa.
Auntie Erin met her for the first time tonight.
She really didn't love the flash.
It's really exhausting to have company.

NICU Day 11

Yesterday was such a great time with Juliet! After a 2 hour drive to the hospital with boys in tow, Colin's brother dropped me off at the door and let me stay for as long as I needed. I got to breastfeed, change her diaper, take her temperature, burp her and give her a bottle. She nursed so well that the nurse had me take her off after 10 minutes because she had to take her bottle with vitamins in it. Yay! She's gaining about an ounce every night, so I figure that she should be close to 7 lbs. when she reaches her due date. She's maintaining her temperature in the open crib, so we just need to work on bottle and breastfeeding. If the nurse's prediction is correct, she's coming home early next week and we get to drop off her car seat tomorrow so they can hook her up to all the monitors and make sure she can breath in it alright. If not, they install some odd little preemie bed in our car until she reaches 5 lbs. It's weird and very sad to not have her here today on Christmas and my emotional stability is waning as the days go on. I know my boys need me too, it's just so hard to have a baby but not really have her.

Juliet's Room Decor

Ok, so we still have to evict Jude from the nursery and paint the top half of the room pink, but I went ahead and ordered this bedding set and all the fun accessories anyway. Dwell Studio was a brand I fell in love with before I had Jude but at that point it was extremely expensive and not yet integrated with Target. Now they are more affordable and it is actually on clearance right now!! How much do I love buying pink things? Oh yeah, and we are still searching for a white crib on Craigslist - let me know if you know anyone that is selling theirs.

Jude Walks!!

The boys have been in Eugene for a little over a week and they arrived back home last night. It was bittersweet because we had the freedom to jump in the car and go to the hospital whenever we wanted, but at the same time missed them terribly. They looked so much bigger to us - especially Jude. Then we noticed that he could walk across a room without falling. He actually walks!! He was wearing this little outfit, talking on the phone and walking this morning. He looked like a little Gap advertisement! Oh, how quickly they grow up...

Juliet - NICU Day 10

We made it to the hospital today!! I haven't seen my sweet baby in over two days and I think I was about to have an emotional meltdown if I didn't get to the hospital. She's doing better all the time. They have moved her to an open crib, but her temperature is getting a bit cool, so they may have to move her back to the isolette. She took the first two feedings of the day from the bottle, which is great. I didn't make it in time for the noon feeding, so breasfeeding wasn't an option today, which breaks my heart. Another hard thing is having the nurse tell me that preemies sometimes never exclusively breastfeed. She may always need a bottle. There are so many things I have to adjust my expectations for. At any rate, the nurse is expecting her to come home early next week. Yay! That all depends on Juliet, of course. I can't wait to hold her whenever I want without running the risk of driving in terrible weather to get to her.

Here are some pictures from today:She was all bundled up and sleeping when we first arrived.

Colin couldn't help but give her a big kiss.

I love that they have two hats on her for extra heat - I guess I will have to be stocking up on hats!

Oh, I could just hold her all day long.

A family photo - excuse the no makeup today. It was more important to get to the hospital than to be fully ready.

Another close up of Jules.

Boys' Room Remodel

Between trips to the hospital, Colin has converted the computer/guest room to our boys' new room. Sharing a room could be an interesting transition for Jude, as he is kind of a loner. At any rate, Colin put up new Sheetrock, textured the walls, made the window trim and installed the new light fixture (you like it? We thought the boys would love the dragonflies on it). Last night we worked on putting most of the hardwoods down. What a fun room! I am a bit jealous it's not mine...

I think the hardwoods are a marked improvement from the previous floor you see at the back of the room. Now we have to cover these beautiful floors with some sort of rug so the boys don't destroy it =).

My Labor Story

Warning: graphic labor language ahead including but not limited to: cervix, dilation, placenta, mucus plug, etc. If you are a guy, you may not want to read this (at least my husband wouldn't).

On Tuesday of the week I delivered Juliet, I was in my OB's office complaining of bleeding and irregular contractions. After a quick cervical exam, she hastily sent me to Labor and Delivery for a 24 hour observation because I was dilated to 1 cm (which is too early to be doing at 32 1/2 weeks) and apparently had been losing my mucus plug. The hospital did an ultrasound, found that my cervix was still long (I guess it shortens the closer you get to labor), observed my contractions for 4 hours and released me with instructions to "not put anything up there" (exact words from the doctor which I take to mean don't have sex. Hmm. Just what I was in the mood for). The one thing I heard over and over is that this is my third pregnancy and my body is probably just doing things earlier.

Over the next two days, the bleeding got heaver, I began to feel pressure and decided to call an advice nurse again. This was Friday morning after Bible Study and right before we were to take off to Lincoln City for the weekend. The advice nurse didn't like the symptoms she was hearing, so she advised me to once again come to Labor and Delivery. I politely asked Colin to wait for me to be released (which I knew I would be) before he left for the coast. As I walked into the hospital, who did I run into but Colin's aunt and uncle, Emanuel and Cynthia. Unfortunately for them, they asked me one too many times how I was doing and if I needed company and I broke into tears. Oddly enough, it's the only time I have cried in this entire experience. They sat with me in the triage room as my contractions were monitored and after awhile they left for home because everything looked normal. In the span of 1 hour, I had more than six contractions and two VERY aggressive cervical exams (the kind that feel like they are stripping your membranes) which revealed me to be only at 1 cm still. The doctor released me saying that this is my third pregnancy (in case I wasn't aware of that) and these are probably just uterine irritations. With that reasoning in my head, I headed home and advised Colin the trip was still on and we headed to Lincoln City.

Over the next few hours, the contractions became the sort I had to breath through. I figured they were just the uterine irritations the doctor referred to (and probably aggrivated with the exams) and prayed they would go away. Soon, sitting on the couch watching TV became incredibly uncomfortable and I began to ask myself if we should be looking up the Lincoln City hospital address. At bedtime, Colin and I layed down in this big beautiful bed with an amazing storm outside, but I knew I wouldn't be sleeping that night with this kind of pain. At 10:45 p.m., I jumped out of bed, put my shoes on and informed Colin we needed to get to Portland. I'm not sure I mentioned that Colin had food poisoning, so you can imagine how he was feeling. With a sick husband and a snow storm brewing outside, we headed for Portland. At one point during the drive we hit blizzard like conditions and Colin had to pull over to throw up while I was having contractions every 4 minutes on the dot. The ENTIRE way from Lincoln City- do you know how many contractions that is?! It's really not very comfortable to labor belted into a sitting position. The only thing I could do was breath and shift around in my seat to try to find a comfortable position. Didn't happen when my body was contracting and writhing in pain. The pain became so bad that I couldn't do anything but stare at the speedometer and hope Colin could read my mind to drive beyond 50 mph. It was actually too painful to speak. Soon I began to break a sweat with each contraction and figured they wouldn't be able to give me any medicine to stop this labor - we were closer to Portland at this point and the Sunnyside exit off 205 couldn't have come soon enough. When I arrived, I was bent over in pain and they got me right in. After checking me, the doctor's eyes became like saucers. "You are fully dilated". Finally - everyone jumped into action! They called the Panda team (the team from OHSU that transfers NICU babies to a better facility - in this case St. Vincent) and rushed me to the OR. The doctor informed me that I wouldn't be getting an epidural, but after a bit of pleading, I did receive a couple of small doses of Phentenol to "take the edge off". I was suddenly in the OR surrounded by many people in scrubs, including my husband, and I'm am informed to not push until the Panda team arrives. Before I know it, it's time to deliver three pushes later, my baby is out. She cries briefly and then I don't see her except for a couple of minutes in an incubator before she leaves the hospital. She, Colin and the Panda team rush off to St. Vincent. At this point, the doctor had to give me a good dose of pain relief, because my placenta wasn't coming out. She literally had to pull it out with her entire hand (but only after she had to search around for it for about 20 minutes). I might say this was as painful as childbirth. That "take the edge off" pain relief didn't do jack for me. After all is said and done, I am transferred to a quiet room to recover, alone. I didn't have energy to make any phone calls and the people back at the beach house actually thought we were still sleeping in that room. Eventually I was transferred to St. Vincent and saw my sweet baby in the NICU. I have to admit that for a couple of days, she really didn't feel like mine. She was theirs. I couldn't breast feed her or even hold her. I would just pump in my hospital room and bring the milk down to the NICU and ask how she was doing. Slowly, she felt more like mine once I could hold her. Now, she feels completely like mine.

So, that's my labor story. It's not pretty and we really have a different view of Kaiser, but I did get a sweet baby out of the whole thing.

NICU Day 7 - Juliet is one week old!

I can't believe it's been a week already!! Juliet was wide awake this morning and it was so incredibly hard to leave her, but the weather was quite dangerous, so we only had about 1 1/2 hour at the hospital. She breast fed incredibly well this time and took the bottle a bit after that. The rest of the milk was fed through her tube. Apparently she had a "spell" (what the nurses refer to as not breathing, heart rate drop, saturation drop, etc). Her heart rate and saturation dropped. Since she has to be free from spells for 5-7 days, we may not be bringing her home as soon as expected. I find a strange comfort in that, though. I am terrified of bringing home a baby that may stop breathing or can't control her body temperature. I am hoping to make it to the hospital tomorrow, but we'll see if the weather permits. Here are some pics:
Her preemie diapers are so big on her!! It's so hard to change those diapers with some many wires going to and fro.

We left her like this - she was tired from our visit. Eating, staring, burping - it's all very exhausting =).

Colin and Juliet - so smitten with each other.

Here I am burping her - she's like jello in my hands. It's very intimidating holding a baby this small! Her eyes look black at this point - I think genetically they can only turn out to be blue or green, though.

She Has A Name!! And NICU Day 6...

And her name is Juliet Lilian McGladrey. After much torture, Colin finally let me decide her name tonight while we held her. Lilian is a family name and Juliet is a name I fell in love with in high school - I think it's a very romantic, literary name. She is becoming much more aware every day. I tried to breast feed her again tonight, but it was too much work, so we fed her a bottle and she drank half of that, leaving the other half for the feeding tube. She has been moved into an overflow room in the NICU that she shares with just a couple of other babies. I'm missing her more and more each day because finally I can hold and nurse her. She was wide awake while we were there and she spends a lot of time just staring at us. It's the most precious thing just to smell her sweet little head.

Check out the red hair in this one!!

I love how she wraps her hand around Colin's finger - they don't even fit all the way around. What a little miracle baby!

Baby McGladrey - NICU Day 5

Well, we made our daily trip to see Baby Girl (nope, no name yet - sorry guys!) this morning. I made sure to be there before her 9 a.m. feeding so that I could try to breast feed her. She is doing great! They removed the biliruben lights (for now at least - they may have to do them again tomorrow) and her PIP line (IV). So now she is off the preemie IV fluid and totally on breast milk! I guess they have to fortify the milk with some sort of calorie/vitamin booster (which I will have to do until she would have been full term). She has moved to an incubator, which is a good thing. The doctor said that she should be home in one week. Christmas will sure be weird without her home, but I'm just glad she's healthy and where she needs to be. This was after the first attempt at breastfeeding - it's a lot of work to suck, so after about two minutes, she was out.

Here she is snuggling with Papa.

Here's her new abode - it's a bit intimidating, but it keeps her warm. Look at how computerized everything is - what if their computers crashed?!

Here's her close up - that's her feeding tube in her nose. And her eyes were open today!! She couldn't stop looking at us quizzically.

Here's Colin giving her the bottle - she was too sleepy for that, too. We will keep trying, though!

Here's a peek through the incubator at her.

Baby McGladrey - Day 4 In NICU

Well, Baby McGladrey is now 4 days old and I have to say a huge thank you to all that are praying for her - those prayers are being answered in a huge way! As you can see by these photos, her CPAP (the huge intimidating oxygen thing) attached to her face was removed at 9 a.m. today and she is breathing wonderfully on her own. Her tube feedings of breast milk have been steadily increasing and as of noon today, she sucked down a bottle all by herself (it was a small bottle, but still)!! This is truly a miracle to me that she is progressing so quickly. They have her on the bilirubin lights for her jaundice, which is normal for a preemie. I got to hold her for the first time last night and I think I experienced a little piece of heaven....she is such a little angel.
We are traveling back and forth from home to the hospital one to two times a day (we miss her so much when we are away). Tomorrow I get to try and breastfeed her, but I won't expect too much because I know her suck reflex wouldn't be that of a full term baby. Keep checking the blog - I plan on telling my oh-so-interesting labor story next.

Look how huge Colin's hand looks to her!!

Here's a close up - she's still pretty puffy, but I'm starting to see some features peek through!

Here are the bilirubin lights under her blanket.

Here's another close up.

Baby McGladrey Has Arrived!!

Well, I will make this quick (as I have just arrived home from the hospital), but our sweet baby girl arrived 7 weeks early. I went into labor unexpectedly on Friday night and she was born at 3:01 a.m. Saturday morning. She is in the NICU at St. Vincent and doing well for her age. She is needing a bit of help with oxygen and they are watching her for jaundice and infection. We can expect her home in two weeks, and we have a lot to do before then - which includes a name, so pass on any suggestions you may have =). I'm a bit emotional today without a baby and having to pump every 2-3 hours, but my goal is to see her every day. Please keep her in your prayers!!

P.S. It appears that she has red hair as well!!

A Day in the Life Of...

Well, since I had a small cup of coffee this morning, I felt the urge pick up the house before more contractions set in. During my 1 1/2 cleaning escapade, I thought I would snap some photos of what my boys were up to...Playing with remotes is always a crowd pleaser with the boys. Oh, the simple pleasures in life.

Here's the room that will the boys in the very near future. We are moving them in together, perhaps into bunk beds. That should be an interesting transition! We will be painting the walls, probably next week, then Colin will be installing the hardwood floors.

Here he is sanding the walls down, preparing for the texture phase.

Jude had to vacuum.

I gave the boys my camcorder bag so they wouldn't play with my camera bag.

I was shocked to find what a disaster Jude could create while waiting for Samuel to poop - cornbread all over the floor, and where did that toothbrush come from? And a tool, of course.

Just a small portion of stray toys left around the house.

I'm now resting, trying to not bring on more contractions.

And now for a few random thoughts:

1) I love Jane Austin. I just read "Northanger Abbey" for my book club and can't believe how gossipy Victorian literature is. Also, who is entertained by walking around a room, arm in arm with a friend? Or attending ball after ball? I guess things were different before TV and Wii.

2) Last week I walked into a Starbucks in Lake Oswego and realized the incredible class difference between myself and them. Those women are dressed to the nines, nails completely manicured, hair perfectly highlighted and cut, beautiful purses, etc. How do these women find the time??

3) I tried to watch the movie Charlie Wilson's War. Too many boobs and really? Has rated "R" become pretty edgy, or is it just me?

4) We get to go to The Nutcracker on the 23rd. Yay! Neither Samuel nor I have seen it and I can't wait.