Look whoo turned ONE!!!

(Opening gifts at her 1st birthday party)

Can you believe it's been a whole year since baby Addison joined our family?!?!

It feels like just yesterday when we were all sitting around tossing around possible names for Baby "A"

Well it's been an awesome year, she fits perfectly into our family! She is very laid back and doesn't mind waiting a few minutes for her meal while we measure out Alivia's food or treat a low.

She is incredibly fascinated by that little black bag that holds the meter, poker and bottle of test strips. That bag must be kept zipped at all times! She loves to pull the cap off the poker, slobber on the meter and hide bottles of test strips under the stove.

She also LOVES LOVES LOVES wrapping her little fingers around Sissys tubing and giving it a good YANK!

She's also been a great sleeper (unless she's teething!) The girls share a room and she's totally unaware of us sneaking into their room at night, she doesn't even budge when the meter beeps or the pump alarms.

She's also learning at a young age that it's completely "normal" for her Momma to occasionally check her blood sugar, sometimes she scoots over to me while I'm checking Sissy and gives me her hand :)

We're still not in the clear yet with her kidney issues, we just went in for her follow up ultrasound and Dr visit and the kidney is still swollen. It did not go away on it's own like we had hoped for but at this time it's not causing her any problems and it may never cause a problem. Surgery however will be required if it starts acting up.

She's still not walking or crawling yet. I know she knows how to crawl but chooses not to and has very little interest in walking. BUT she does do this super cute butt scoot!

 In a way I'm sad that my last and final baby is growing so quickly, I'll never again be the mother of an infant and yet at the same time I'm a little excited for the next stage of motherhood, raising my children. I'm super excited to be able to just hop in the car with out having to leave my bum hanging out of the backseat in the pouring rain to buckle carseats :)

Addison update part 2!

First of all thanks everyone for all your thoughts and prayers for Addison! It was a very stressful day for me but all the comments and txt kept my mind from wondering to all the bad things that could go wrong with my baby bug.

We got to the hospital around 10:30am for check in.

At this point she hadn't nursed since 7:30am, she nurses about every 3 hours during the day so she was just hitting that 3 hour mark. I had it all planned out in my head, keep her awake until 10am so she's sleep at least until 11am, when I thought they'd put her out for the ultrasound and scan. Well thanks to a nice little boy in the waiting room that threw a HUGE screaming fit in the waiting room as soon as we got there that didn't happen!!! She woke up and of course was ready to eat, Tony walked her around and around the waiting room trying to distract her, I kept checking my phone waiting for her to be called back. When we were called back the man introduced him self and said he'd be doing the ultrasound, humm thought they were putting her out for that??? Nope! Lucky guy got to do the ultrasound on a very hungry and fussy baby!

After about a half hour of that he got what he needed and led us to another waiting room to wait for her next procedure.

Her nurse and anesthesiologist were super nice, they went over everything with us. I really felt at peace handing my baby over to them. By this time it had been 4 1/2 hours since her last feeding and she'd finally given up and had fallen fast asleep in my arms. We were sent to the cafeteria for lunch and told to come back in about an hour and they took my baby girl away and through the door...

The hubby and I went down to get some lunch even though neither of us were very hungry. Finally an hour had passed an we went up to the waiting area. After a few minutes I heard my baby girls cries.

The nurse saw me standing at the end of the hall way and let me come in and get her, boy was she MAD!!!

After a good feeding and some Tylenol my happy girl was back!!!

Ready to go home!!!

Monday was her follow up visit with the specialist and her results were GREAT! Both kidneys are functioning perfectly and both are doing their fair share of the work. We'll just continue follow up ultrasounds about every 6 months

Addison Update!

Well folks almost 4 months have already flown by since Baby Addison joined our family! I feel like time goes by faster with each baby! Makes me so very very sad!!!

She's sleeping through the night and growing like a weed  

Likes

Mommy

Boobies!!!

Her swaddle blanket!

Her swing

Her binky (most of the time)

Dis-Likes

The car!!! She HATES the car! Screams the entire time!

Anyone who's not Mommy

Bath time

Bouncy chair

Tummy time or any other floor activity that requires her to be out of Mommy's arms

At her last appt with the kidney specialist he reviewed her prior labs and ultrasounds and ordered another blood draw, renal scan and a nuclear medicine scan. I was all fine and dandy with this until the nurse called to set up the appointment and informed me that she needed to fast before getting PUT UNDER!!! SAY WHAT??? No one told me she needed to be knocked out for the procedure and how do you expect a breastfed baby to fast!!! The nurse said she had to be completely still for the procedure so that's why they choose to put the kids under. And she also said that because she is breastfed she can nurse up until 8am (4 hours before the procedure). Well tomorrow is the day and Im FREAKING OUT! I just want to cancel the whole thing!...But I can't!

3 month Endo appt...

Well the time has come for yet another check up for Alivia with the Pediatric Endo. Leading up to the appt I was looking through her log book and although most of her numbers were in range  they were pretty much on the higher end, it wasn't until a few weeks before the appt that her numbers were coming down into the range I preferred. Current 14 day average on the meter...139, 90 day average...214! I figured were were looking at an A1c of 8.1 and was really surprised when it came back at 7.5! I thought for sure all the time it took us to get adjusted to the pump and getting the basals set would of done a number on her A1c but I guess when you check and correct every 2 hours around the clock it doesn't do much damage.

The Dr. looked over her numbers and decided not to change much except the target range and to up her basal just a tad. He said we have great control but if we wanted to could even get it a little better. I'm all up for better!

We changed her target from 150 to 130 during the day and from 150-200 to 130-150 during the night. Already her numbers have been great! We chatted a little bit about her weight again, she's now up to 50 pounds and is following the growth curve but just above it. He's not too concerned about it yet. After our appt we took the advanced pumpers class and learned about cool features of the pump like combo bolus!!! We tried it out on our Saturday morning Starbucks hot chocolate and it worked great! Such a cool feature!

-Enjoying a S'more with no high blood sugar spike!-

On our appt/class days Tony takes the day off and we try to make the day special for Alivia, all our attention is on her and we let her pick where we have lunch, This time she picked the hospital cafeteria of all places! Silly kid!

After lunch we met up with a fellow D-mom Amy and her kids at Cafe Sip-n-Play (best invention ever!). We got to sit and chat while the kiddos played, it was so amazing to talk with another D-mom face to face. I long for the day when I can chat with all you guys face to face too!!!

-Holding baby Addison-

-Giving baby sister a bottle-

Welcome baby "A"

C-section was scheduled for Wednesday, April 21st at 8am. The day before I still had SO much on my "to do" list but didn't sweat it because I figured I wouldn't be able to sleep that night so I'd have tons of time to work on it, boy was I WRONG!!! That morning I called my son's Dr., he has asthma and despite the steroids and albuteral he was still coughing non-stop. She had him come in at 3:30, but they were running behind so I waited for over an hour in that little room with 2 kiddos, thinking about what I could cut from my "list". She finally came in and was pretty sure it was just his asthma acting up but gave him a 5 day course of antibiotics for baby "A"'s sake. Next it was on to Target to get the Rx filled and of course something wasn't right and we had to wait for the Dr. to call back and confirm the Rx...another hour and half down the drain (we live a 1/2 hour away from the pharmacy so going home to work on the "list" was not an option)! So by now it's pushing 7pm, kids still need dinner, baths and to be put to bed, oh yeah and Alivia needed a site change...I was almost in tears thinking about my "list", why do I always procrastinate??? It was probably close to 9pm by the time the kids were sleeping, poor kids 6am is gonna come really quick for them! I hurried up and took my last pregnant shower, not even taking much time to enjoy it, too stressed about the stupid "list". Then I made a huge mistake...I sat down!!! Wow I was exhausted!!! What to do??? Take a quick nap then work on the "list"??? Push through the "list" then enjoy a few hours of sleep??? Humm maybe a compromise, at least finish packing the bags and do the dishes then sleep, setting the alarm for 2 hours before we needed to leave to finish up the more important things on the "list" I now despised! Trouble was that I pushed snooze 100 times and didn't get up until 15 minutes before we needed to leave!!! So much for the stupid "list"! I now have a bedroom full of boxes and piles of crap that needed to be dealt with! Err why do I procrastinate!!! Well of course we were a little late getting out the door, we were supposed to leave our house by 5am to get to the hospital by 6am, I don't think we even left until 5:20! After about 20 minutes of Hubbys super SLOW driving I made him pull over and let me drive so we at least had some hope of making it to the hospital kinda "on time". We arrived at check in at 6:15am :) Then it was up to my room to get some blood work done and to get my IV started... that did not go well!!! I have tiny veins! They blew 5 veins before they finally gave in and used a smaller needle and a vein on my forearm...OUCH!!!

I was really hoping to see my kids before they took me back but no luck, I instantly felt sick knowing I rushed them the night before and didn't wake them this morning to say goodbye and now someone was going to cut me open. I kissed hubby goodbye and they walked me back to the OR. Oh how I hated this part! Being all alone for the spinal and the "other" stuff they do to you before a C-Section. Spinal did not go well either, 1st attempt hurt SO bad! Instant unbearable lower back pain, she had to take it out and go higher...oh the Joy!!!

(My back after the spinal)

It felt like forever laying there strapped to the table all alone...oh I don't feel so good...oops blood pressures dropping...a little something to fix that...FINALLY the Hubbys here and everything got started...oh I don't feel good again...humm blood pressures fine...oops there goes the nasty pre surgery drink...do you know how hard it is to throw up laying flat on your back worried about the messing up the Drs holding the scalpel??? So not fun, after a few more rounds I finally felt better, just in time to hear her 1st cries!!!

Baby "A" was born at 8:23am.

(Checking out the cord)

 Daddy cut the cord and the nurse immediately noticed that she had a SUA (Single Umbilical Artery), she said no big deal, she just needed to do an ultrasound later that day to check for abnormalities.

Baby "A" weighed in at 8 pounds 1oz, pretty big for only 38 weeks, nurse thought so too and because she was over 8 pounds needed to check her blood sugar...33! I got to see her for a few minutes but then they had to take her to the room for a bath and some formula to get her sugar up. By 9am I was all put together and back in my room in hopes of some times bonding with baby...no such luck, because of the formula she had no interest in nursing and it was hard to enjoy her with the nurse constantly pressing on my tummy, then the bleeding started, I'll save you from all the details but lets just say I lost a total of 5 units of blood during the entire C-section and 4 units in just the hour after the C-section...needless to say I got a nice shot right in my thigh!

After the hour of recovery in flowed the visitors, it was nice to see everyone ooo and ohhh over her but I still hadn't gotten to see my baby. Another blood sugar check was done...43 (and we even cheated on that one, I had just finished nursing her!) The nurse said she needed 3 blood sugars in a row above 50 BEFORE a feeding. I was crushed, this was my 1st time away from Alivia, I shouldn't have to be worrying about blood sugar numbers, especially in my newborn! But I didn't have a choice, she would continue to have her blood tested every 2-3 hours until they got the 3 in a row (which she finally did…50...51...51). When the dust had settled and all the visitors had gone in came the nurse to take baby "A" for her ultrasound, the Hubby went with her and I got took a little nap. Shortly after the nurse and Hubby returned with baby "A" her Dr. came in... oh this can't be good, I've never gotten results from a procedure so quickly! The Dr. informed us that one of her kidneys was swollen and it was most likely 1 of 2 things... 1-vesicoureteral reflux which is when urine that dwells in the bladder flows back into the ureters and often back into the kidneys (she would need surgery to correct it) OR 2- Some sort of blockage that may need to be surgically removed if it does not break up on its own. She would need more testing in the next few days and she was referred to a specialist for even more additional testing over the next few weeks. Hubby and I both had a mini pitty party for ourselves and tried not to think about it. I finally had my baby to myself, she was finally wide awake and as soon as I looked into her eyes I knew her name...

Addison Jean