It’s A Girl!

So it’s been awhile since I last wrote to you. Okay, so my last post was over a year ago. So many times I wanted to log on and type out my thoughts but just never took the time to do it. I’ve been busy with work and kids and, well, you know how a mom’s life is. So much has changed in the last year for me and my family and I wish that I had taken the time to document all that has happened. Let’s see. Where to start? Well, “It’s a girl!” might be a good place.

As I am quickly typing out some of the happenings around here, I’m hoping little Addison doesn’t wake before I’m done. Yes, that’s right. We have a new baby girl at our house who’s almost 7 months old now. I’d love to be napping with her, but laundry must be done, supper started, and, well, blogs won’t wait forever or write themselves. I haven’t slept more than 3 hours in a row for probably a year, but I’ve found that one 30 minute nap really isn’t going to change much and Momma needs some time to herself sometimes. Brain fog is becoming too much of a daily reality and I think I ought to start putting some of my rambling thoughts down before they fly out of my head forever. It feels so strange to be doing anything without her in my arms. Great, now I’m going to cry because she’s growing up so fast.

She came as a surprise to us all and has filled our lives with joy and “firsts”, even though she is our third baby. Since my doctors think that I have an autoimmune disease called Sjogren’s that can affect any baby’s heart that I carry, I had to do multiple ultrasounds of the princess during pregnancy. I lost track of how may we did, all in Oklahoma City, which is a 3 hour round trip, but I’m guessing we got to see her little body at least 12 times. The trips were sometimes a pain, but getting to watch her grow was something I hope I never forget. Considering we had just a couple of ultrasounds with our other two kids, this was a new and exciting experience for us.

Ironically, everything looked great with baby’s heart all through pregnancy and a healthy 8 pound baby was born on April Fool’s Day. Then, when she was a day old or so, the on-call doctor at the hospital called our room to tell us that, during some tests, she thought she heard something wrong with her heart. Probably just a common heart murmur, but that she would make us an appointment with a pediatric cardiologist. Since everything always looked good and we had watched her heart so closely, I was not prepared when, 4 weeks later, Dr. Emily at OU Children’s Hospital told us she had moderate pulmonary stenosis, with some stenosis in her arteries, too. This basically means that her arteries in her heart and her main pulmonary valve are too narrow to let all the blood flow as needed and her valve is not flexible enough. Basically, if it got any worse, we would be doing heart surgery on my tiny child. We were told to watch her for trouble when feeding. Does she sweat or get too tired when feeding? Oh, and make sure you bring her in to the hospital if she turns blue. Yes, all things a momma wants to hear when they’re recovering from a c-section, haven’t slept in what seems like years, and is holding their tiny, precious baby in their arms.

Good or bad, I don’t really know, but this was not related to my autoimmune disease. I bawled like a baby when the kind Dr. Emily told me that this was not my fault and there was nothing I could have done differently during pregnancy to prevent it, and, even if I didn’t have autoimmune issues, it still could have happened. I’ll just tell you, though: it sucks feeling helpless when there’s something wrong with your child and there’s nothing you can do about it but wait and see if it gets better.

So, enough with the heavy stuff for now.  7 months later, we are seeing the cardiologist every 4 months instead of every 6 weeks like we were. Addison has been stable since she was about 2 months old so no procedure needs to be done now and the doctor feels safe about letting her go longer between visits. She starting to eat some purees, babbling at us (I swear she says Momma sometimes), loving her older siblings’ goofiness, and is rolling everywhere she needs to go now. I’m not sure I’m ready for her to be crawling around, but ready or not, she will be doing it soon. I just don’t know what we’re going to do about our Christmas tree. Gary says we may have to invest in a Charlie Brown tree and sit it on the dining room table, but somehow, that’s not cutting it for me. I need our big tree out. I just don’t want one of the ornaments to be Addie’s first food.