Day 4 (10/17/11)

Madeline was scheduled for closure surgery today, which means they were going to fit all of her intestines/bowels back in her body. We weren't sure what time the surgery was going to happen so we were anxious all day. At about 2pm we got a phone call from the pain management team and they wanted to know if we would authorize them to do an epidural on Madeline to control her pain during surgery. There were some risks involved and the thought of them doing anything near her spine scared the crap out of us, however the doctors reassured us that it was the best option. So we decided to go for it. She went in to surgery at about 330pm and was done at about 515pm. It went a lot faster than we thought, but at the same time, it was the longest hour and a half ever. After the surgery was over, we met with 3 of the surgeons separately and they all explained that it had gone well and that she was doing great. Her surgeons were all great guys who truly care about all of their patients, and they answered all of the questions we had.

Seeing her after surgery was hard. She had a breathing tube in, and her little lips were taped in to fish lips. Her stomach looked great, however she was totally out of it. We left to get dinner, and then came back to the hospital around 730. While standing there watching Madeline, Jeff noticed that her stomach bandage looked different, and right before our eyes, blood started coming out of the sides of the bandage. We called the nurse over, who put pressure over the bandage and paged the surgical team to come up and look at it. We were really scared and I instantly started to cry. It didn't help that the nurse said "I haven't seen this happen before." Thanks lady, that's not reassuring!! Rob the surgeon showed up and changed the dressing and came out to reassure us that everything was fine and there had just been a build up of pressure behind the dressing. It still really scared us though, and it made for a long night away from Madeline. I called the nurses during the night to make sure Maddy was doing all right.

Day 3 (10/16/11)

I'm not going to go through all the days of our hospital stay, but there are a couple of days I want to remember...

Jeff took Hailey to Bellingham to get more clothes and other stuff we needed. I stayed behind and hung out with Maddy in the NICU. Candice and Jason came over for a visit too! Candice found some cute hats for Maddy. They are still a bit big, but she will grown in to them!

At around 6pm, the hospital paged us and said that Maddy had her eyes open, so we loaded up from the Ronald McDonald House and drove to the hospital. Sadly, by the time we go there she had gone back to sleep, but the awesome nurse (Mari) took 2 pictures of her and printed them off for us. What an amazing thing for her to do. I was devastated because I hadn't seen her with her eyes open yet, but the pictures were so great to see.

My parents got Madeline some new hats/head bands too....

Day 2

On Oct. 15, at about 6am a doctor came in and checked me out and said I could be discharged. Finally!! I just wanted to be with Jeff and Hailey already! My mom came over to the hospital to help me pack. We impatiently waited around until 9am when it was finally time to leave. My dad and Hailey drove to the hospital to pick us up and then took us over to the Ronald McDonald House, which is right across from Children's Hosital to drop off all of my stuff.

Hailey stayed with my parents while I went to Children's for the first time. I was really emotional walking in to Children's for the first time. I felt so awkward because I didn't even know where to go or what to do. Thankfully I had Jeff to support me. I was so worried that Madeline wouldn't know me or recognize my voice because I wasn't able to have any bonding time with her after she was born. As soon as we got in the elevator I started crying, and when we got to the NICU and I saw her laying there the tears just kept coming. It was so great to touch her and tell her I love her. She was so beautiful.

Later in the day, we brought Hailey up to meet Madeline for the first time. It was such a beautiful thing, and I will never forget it. Hailey was so proud of her sister and couldn't get enough of touching and kissing her. She also sang her a couple songs.

My expression sums it up: Sheer exhaustion and happiness at the same time.

Our little fighter

Madeline Belle

Madeline Belle was born on Oct. 14 at 0424 at UW hospital in Seattle. But let me back up and tell the whole story....we went to UW for a routine appt. on Oct. 12. During my non stress test, Madeline wasn't moving much and they couldn't really get her heart rate to increase. I explained to the nurse that her fetal movement had really decreased the past couple of days, and the night before I had almost gone to St. Joe's for an ultrasound to check on her because I could not wake her up and get her to move. Instead of going to St. Joe's, I used a doppler we have at work to find her heartbeat, which made me feel a tiny bit better. The nurse then took the results of my NST to the doctors to look over, they weren't very happy with the results, so they hooked me back up for another NST that ended up having the same results. I was nervous and I didn't want to wait another week and risk something happening to Madeline or risk going in to labor in Bellingham.

So we met with a doctor that we hadn't met before and she totally understood how I was feeling and agreed that Madeline was not behaving in a way that she had before, but I was still surprised when she turned to us and said "So are you ready to get checked in today?" Heck yes we were, well kinda! I had told Jeff the night before that I was going to bring my bag to the appt. just in case, so he packed a bag as well...thankfully, he thought to pack the important stuff like the cameras, chargers, and computer. I had packed a bag, but I had packed it like 3 weeks prior and couldn't even remember what was in it.

We excitedly called our families to tell them the news. Thankfully, Hailey had spent the previous night with my parents because Jeff and I both worked graveyard shifts, so we knew she was good to stay there with them. We just needed to coordinate pick up of our dogs, which was easy to do because we have great families :-)

So at about 4pm, instead of touring labor and delivery like we were going too, we got admitted. We were excited and nervous and had no idea that it would take as long as it did t meet our little pumpkin. They started the induction process (foley bulb) at about 8pm that night. My friend Candice came up to visit us at about 9pm just to help kill some time.

The next morning at about 0730 they took the foley bulb out and in went something called Cervidel which is supposed to thin the cervix. My parents came down with Hailey and got a hotel room near the hospital so they could be close by. It was so great to see Hailey, and it made me so emotional when I saw her. By 6pm, I was only dilated to 3cm, but having regular painful contractions. Jeff's dad came down after work and Candice was visiting as well. At 10pm, I was ready for an epidural, woohoo! They started pitocin at 1130pm and increased dose amounts every 30 minutes.

By 0315 on the 14th, I was dilated to 8cm and the doctors said my water bag was bulging. Jeff was asleep in the room, Candice was awake from the commotion, Gary was asleep in the waiting room and my parents were at the hotel with Hailey. So I texted my mom, text Gary, and let Jeff sleep for a couple more minutes. When I finally woke him up, he was so confused and totally thought that I was joking about being so dilated. My mom never responded to my text, so I called my dad and woke them up and she headed over via taxi to the hospital.

The doctors originally said they were going to break my water, but decided against it right away because of my history of FAST delivery with Hailey. At 0400 Jeff got dressed up in his blue suit and they moved us to the operating room, so we could be close to where the pediatric team would be standing by to get Madeline after she was born. Originally I wanted to have my mom and Candice in the room with us to take LOTS of pictures and to give me some support after Jeff left with Madeline, however the OR was so small they said that no one but Jeff could come in. So Jeff had to pull double duty: support me and take lots of pictures and he did amazing.

At about 0415, our doctor decided to puncture my water to create a slow leak. My body had other plans. My water burst ALL over the doctor, it was like a flood. they had to throw down towels so no one would slip and almost immediately I felt the urge to push. However the pediatric team wasn't quite dressed yet, so I had to wait a few minutes breathing through the contractions. Finally we got the thumbs up from the peds team, and I pushed a total of 4 times and out she came. It happened in under 2 minutes, probably less. I briefly saw the doctor hold her up, she wasn't crying. I was able to ask if she was ok and then she was gone in another room to be checked out and taken care of. Jeff went with her to get pictures and make sure she was ok. I was an emotional wreck, but I had some awesome nurses who checked on Madeline and gave me updates and helped comfort me.

Soon I was wheeled back in my room, and got to see my mom and Candice who showed me lots of pictures of Madeline that Jeff had sent out on his phone. He stayed in the ICU with her waiting for children's to come and transport her. Finally at about 0630, Jeff came back to my room and he told me all about Madeline. Shortly after, Children's transport team brought Madeline in to my room so I could see her before she was transported. It was bittersweet. She was in an isolette, covered with tubes and wires and I had 3 strangers standing around watch me interact with my daughter for the first time, and I had to sign a bunch of paperwork saying that she could be transported. It was not ideal, and I was super emotional. Jeff was able to ride in the ambulance with her over to Children's and did an awesome job keeping me updated as to what was going on. Gary followed Jeff over to Children's, and my mom and Candice stayed with me.

I was taken to a recovery room at about 0730, and at about 9am, Jeff called to say that Madeline was going in to surgery at 0915. There went any chance of going to sleep. It was awful knowing that I wasn't in the same place at my baby as she was about to go in to surgery, and I didn't even have Jeff to lean on because he was with her. He was able to walk with her down to surgery. At about 1130, I got word that the surgery was a success. They were able to fit all of her intestines back in her body, however, she was having trouble breathing, so they had to take some of the organs back out and fit them in a silo bag. I spent the day dozing off and on, and visiting with my dad and Hailey.

That's enough for now...here are LOTS of pictures!

Getting ready for Madeline

It's time!

Before going in to the operating room...no that's not coffee...its water, I promise.

Seeing and touching her after the peds team checked her out.

While she was getting worked on

Madeline ready to be transported to Children's hospital

Our sweet girl

Hair! We can't believe all the hair she has..Hailey was bald for a year!

In the NICU

Madeline's cool ride to Children's

The license plate of the ambulance

After her first surgery

Grandma sitting with Madeline so Jeff could get some sleep

Tiny foot that was poked too many times :-(

Daddy and Maddy

Schuh Farms

I have been feeling worried about not being able to do fun Fall activities with Hailey once Madeline comes, so I wanted to make sure we at least got to go to one pumpkin patch. So on Sunday, we headed down to Mt. Vernon to Schuh Farms. It is such a fun place, and there was so much to see and do. Hailey started out on a long train ride through the pumpkin patch. She smiled the whole time, although when she got off the ride, she said she had been sad because she couldn't see us the whole time :-( (even though we were watching her the whole time!). Then we headed over to a big inflatable pumpkin that had lots of orange balloons blowing around in it. Hailey was scared of the air blowing through it, so she got her face painted as a kitty instead (she did finally get brave enough to go in to the pumpkin). Then we headed over to check out the 3 little piggies (cute!) and the chickens (that Hailey and Jeff had a blast feeding). After walking through the store, drooling over the apple pies and checking out the cool decorations, we bought 2 baby pumpkins and headed over to the pumpkin patch to look at the pumpkins. Hailey had fun pushing the pumpkins over and seeing if she could lift them off the ground. Lastly, we hit the playground which was an instant hit! They had a huge mound of dirt, with a couple of tube slides built in to the dirt. Hailey got covered in dirt, but LOVED going down the slides. It was so much fun to watch her gain confidence climbing up the hill on her own, and pretty soon she was running up it. Here are some pictures of our fun day...

She got brave enough to go in to the pumpkin and had a ton of fun chasing balloons

Snuggled up with her baby pumpkin.