Birthday Girl

Hard to believe that Blakelee is one week old. I thought it would be fun to share with you a funny story from the morning she was born.

Let me set the stage. It had been a very tense 24 hours. Even though things had gotten so much better for Mandi once she got the epidural it almost made us more nervous because then she wasn't able to feel things changing. Then the doctor warned us that with such a tiny baby Mandi wouldn't need to be dilated to a 10 in order to have her. What????? Immediately the image of Mandi sneezing and birthing this babe came into my mind. We became hyper-sensitive to any move that Mandi made. We were constantly asking her, "Is anything wrong, different, strange?"

So there we were Saturday morning and Mandi gets a strange look on her face. We ask what is going on and she says that she feels "wet". Of course Grandma Ho and I run over there, through back the blankets to see what we can see. Poor Mandi didn't even have a chance to be modest. Before I can even get a good look at things Merralee says, "Ahhhh somethings coming." She goes running to the door, throws it open and yells down the hall that we need help in here. We were down the hall around the corner from the nurses station and I knew that probably no one had heard her, so I went running down the hall until I found a nurse and I yelled at her that we needed help, we were having this babe. I run back in the room followed by nurses and doctors who start checking Mandi.

Turns out we were a little over zealous in our evaluation. No, no baby was coming just then, her water had just started to break. We now believe that what Grandma Ho thought was the baby was pro. bably just Mandi's butt cheek. Good times, good times. That really got our blood pumping I tell you. We weren't too far off though because little Miss Blakelee made her appearance about 30 minutes later.

*If sharing this story doesn't get me blacklisted from updating this blog I'm not sure what's gonna do it.

Now for this morning's update, from Grandma Ho:

I talked with Blakelee's nurse Lisa this morning and she had a really good night.  No A&B's since yesterday.  They did put a feeding pump on her feeding tube, which will still feed her same 10 ml, just slowly over 30 min instead of draining all at once into her tummy.  Her tummy has been a little swollen yesterday and today so they did an x-ray this morning to check for a POSSIBLE condition called necrotizing enterocolitis.  Again they are just monitoring her for this but a swollen tummy is a symptom.  Necrotizing enterocolitis is the death of intestinal tissue. It primarily affects premature infants or sick newborns. Necrotizing enterocolitis occurs when the lining of the intestinal wall dies and the tissue falls off. The cause for this disorder is unknown. However, it is thought that a decrease in blood flow to the bowel keeps the bowel from producing mucus that protects the gastrointestinal tract. Bacteria in the intestine may also be a cause.  They will continue to monitor her tummy size and check with x-rays as needed.  We're hoping it is nothing and she just inherited her Grandma Ho's belly!!  Otherwise she is doing remarkably well and even as we have worried about our little one, we are grateful for our blessings as we overhear the problems of some of the other tiny ones that are there. As of last night she weighed in at 2lbs even. Baby Blakelee picked a wonderful mommy & daddy to come to and they are doing such a good job!!!!