Aubrey the Feisty: Friday, December 14, 2012

7a.m.

Hey! Guess what??? Our baby weighs 3 pounds!!! I'm so proud. :-) She did have 2 episodes last night, but the nurse said she had spit up and she thinks that was the problem. Her feedings have increased a little and she's getting extra calories now; once she gets adjusted to that, hopefully the reflux will settle down again.

On a completely different note, why is it that when one big, costly thing happens two more big costly things show up just behind it? We have no doubt that our hospital bills are going to be astronomical after Aubrey comes home (obviously something we hadn't planned on before October 20, but reality hit when we got our first bill where the total before insurance was 5 digits and the first digit was a 9), and we're looking into ways to get help for that; what Medicaid won't cover are the things that have popped up on our house that need to be redone. We already knew we needed a new roof--we have the money saved for that and Adam was getting estimates for it before Aubrey arrived. Well, someone came to check our heating/air units a couple of days ago and gave us the glorious news that all of our duct work in the crawl space under the house needs replacing. Not sure of the specifics (I was really tired when Adam was explaining it to me), but I think that the air from the crawl space is somehow getting sucked up into the house (and apparently that's not supposed to happen--you can see that I know tons about HVAC stuff). Well, with a new baby coming home in the next month or so (and one with super-sensitive lungs at that), we've decided that new ducts and good air quality take precedence over a new roof right now. So, looks like the roof will wait. And it's not like we're sitting around catching drips in buckets when it rains or anything, so don't go feeling all sorry for us; it does, however, prove the old adage that "when it rains, it pours."

-Keli

*disclaimer: the above post was not written to garner sympathy...please don't send money or anything. Or feel sorry for us. Or think I'm making crap up (don't say "crap," Aubrey) to make our situation seem worse. I'm just writing about life. And stuff like that is LIFE. Ok, back to regularly scheduled blogging now.*

6p.m.

I just have to say that Aubrey is a dang cute baby. I mean, I know all parents think theirs is the cutest, but geez, she is some kind of precious. Anyway, she had a pretty good day. She had an episode early this morning, then she tried to have one when I was there this afternoon but we caught it in time before it got too bad. She did great while we kangarooed, thankfully; slept like a baby. ;-) She was super active and awake right as I was getting ready to leave, of course (I can't leave while her eyes are open--torture), but I did get some cute pictures. About 20 minutes after I left, the nurse called, and when I saw the NICU number on my phone my heart skipped. When I picked up, she immediately said, "the baby's fine! I just need to ask you a question!" Whew. She said Aubrey was still all agitated and wiggly, so she put her little finger up to her mouth and Aubrey went to town sucking on it. She wanted to know if she could try giving her a little pacifier. Hopefully she'll remember that sucking motion when it comes time to use a bottle and breastfeed. Now, for the cute pictures!