So Far Behind

Well, life has gotten a little crazy over the last month since my last posting. Here are a few updates:

First and foremost we welcomed our 3rd child and 2nd daughter into our beautiful and amazing family on June 22, 2010. She weighed 6 pounds, 8 ounces of perfection!!!

It was a very easy entrance as compared to the other two, but then she decided to go and stop breathing on us! The day after she was born she was sleeping in her cart and started making some noise. My mom picked her up and she started making some weird noises. Then I realized that she was beginning to turn blue and not breathing. My mom ran out of the room and luckily right outise of our door was the nursery nurse. She ran in, grabbed Maizy, and ran out. She came back a little while later and said that she had a lot of mucus balls in her airway. She sucked them out and said there was one more she couldn't get so she would give her some formula to try to get her to swallow it down. Great! Then she came back to our room. At 3pm, they came to get her for her 24 hour PKU test. While she was down in the nursery for this, she stopped breathing again. This time they hooked her up to the pulse ox machine and all sorts of other monitors, had her in a little incubator and took her down to NICU. We were able to visit with her down there and feed her every three hours. She was also very jaundice so they put her under the lights. She had some really cool shades on:

She behaved herself in the NICU so the next morning they moved her to the special care nursery. She was still hooked up to all kinds of monitors, but didn't need the one on one care. I was discharged from the hospital that night and we had to leave our room by midnight, but Maizy had to stay. I could not envision myself walking out the door without her soooooooo.....we stayed in the lobby. Literally, we slept on the "couches" in the lobby. And I use the term "sleep" very loosely because every three hours I had to go upstairs to feed her so we were only in the lobby for about 2 hours at a time. But unfortunately at her 2am feeding, she started dropping her oxygen levels while eating. We thought it was maybe positioning, but she did it again at 8am. So she had to stay another night to monitor her eating behaviors. We think the problem was that she only had the suck-swallow part of the suck-swallow-breathe cycle. Luckily the neonatologist took pity on us and let us stay in the "Nesting Room" that night. Basically, in the special care nursery, the babies there all need monitoring for some time so this is a room where parents can stay with their babies as a trial run before taking them home. They are still monitored, but the parents are responsible for caring for them rather than the nurses. Here we are with Maizy in her cart in the background and Ben on the so called bed:

Finally, we got to come home!!!! Maizy could not have a happier brother and sister!!!!

Welcome to our family, Maizy Daniella!!!!

Baby Names

While Alexis affectionately dubbed the baby, "Pixie" long ago, she came to the realization a few days ago that this would not be the baby's real name after it was born. Of course, all along, I was worried that if it were a boy, "Pixie" is not a very manly sounding name, but after Alexis and Max were born they both lost their fetus names very quickly, so I wasn't too worried. My dad named Alexis, Regis, after a very embarrassing story about myself that perhaps I will reveal later and he named Max, Plugis, because that is how Alexis said "Publix" at the time. Without my dad around to properly name the fetus, Alexis jumped into the task. If you don't already know, she has a love of Tinkerbell and Tinkerbell lives in Pixie Hollow, so hence the name. After the ultrasound, Alexis kept talking about Pixie. We informed her that the name was going to change once the baby was born. Alexis looked very seriously for a moment and said, "well, then I guess when she is born her name can be Alexa". We both just looked at her for a moment. Alexis continued, "I want it to be almost like my name, but not really like my name, so it should be Alexa". Makes complete sense to me, but not exactly practical. She has not yet realized that the baby's name will not, in fact, be Alexa, but I guess we'll cross that bridge in June.

Max's Obsession

Max has a new obsession....the ultrasound pictures of the baby. He enjoys carrying them around and you would think that he wouldn't be able to tell the difference between one picture and another. But even if he could, you would think he might like the one of the profile.

Perhaps, if that wasn't his favorite, maybe the one of the face with the arms showing.


But, no, that one doesn't really do it for him either. His favorite one, of course, that he will pick out to carry around 10 times out of 10 is the infamous crotch shot. With a nice little arrow pointing to it and everything. It is pretty obvious that nothing is hangin' around there so I'm pretty convinced that it really is a girl. But, really, Max, does this one have to be your very favorite?!?!?!?!?!

A New Experience

There is always an inner struggle of do you find out the baby's gender when you are pregnant or not. For our first two children, the struggle was limited and we decided to be surprised. This is about the only thing I can think of that you cannot control in life and you can be completely surprised. So we were surprised twice....first with a girl and then a boy. What more could you ask for!!! So for the 3rd time, I thought we'd change it up a bit and find out around 20 weeks (actually 21 because I got off schedule in the beginning with appointments and weeks). Today was our opportunity! We had decided to take Alexis with us because we thought she would be excited to see the baby on the screen, but we were unsure about Maxwell. We figured he really didn't understand the whole concept and wouldn't really get what we were doing there anyway. But in the end, Max ended up there with us. And he totally surprised us! He sat completely still on Ben's lap and Alexis was perched on a stool next to me. As the tech was announcing body parts they were both staring with big, wide eyes at the screen. Finally, she shows us a bottom view clearly of a tush and two legs. She asked us if we knew what it was. Since I thought I saw legs with nothing in between....I thought, "is it a girl?". And she said, yes, indeed, it was a girl. Alexis immediately says, "I knew it was a girl". She starts showing us other views, and Max starts labeling body parts with the tech and was getting so excited. Finally, after seeing all her beautifully perfect parts, the nurse was done and turned off the monitor. All on his own, Max says, "bye baby". So sweet!!! Then all he wanted was to look at the pictures and hold them. Then he would not give them up. I didn't want him to ruin the pictures so I made him his own photocopies of them. He carried them around ALL day. We stopped by my mom's school to tell her and Max rushes in screaming, "Bubum, baby girl, baby girl, Bubum, baby girl". I honestly think he might have been more into it than Alexis. Although Alexis was quite excited too. I have to admit, it is quite the different feeling knowing what it is but not being able to hold it for 19 more weeks. We are used to not being attached to any one gender or the other during the pregnancy, but learning in the moment and then having a baby in our arms. This is definitely different, but just as fun! Now I can dig out the right set of clothes!!! Welcome to the family baby girl!