Saturday, March 15, 2008

Addison's Arrival



Just a quick bit of info and then I'll post more in a few days: Baby Addison was born on March 12, 2008 at 1:47pm in Am. Fork She weighed 8 lbs. 1 oz. and was 20 inches long. She has a lot of dark hair and of course is super cute.
F.Y.I. - Addison is a girl :) I didn't realize it was a boyish name so much but it turns out that it is...oh well...I guess it is in keeping with "Michael Anne" then after all.
Her birth was a great experience although this time around the contractions were fast and furious, even with an epidural! Derek got to cut the cord and Michael Anne was there to see it all, which I think helped to keep me calm during those contractions and pushing that weren't supposed to be painful. I didn't expect nor intend for her to see everything but she was pretty fascinated so when she wanted to see more we let her and she loved it. I think she is destined to become a doctor. Nothing phases her, she is fully captivated when it comes to anything medical and recounts what she sees with excitement and four-year-old animation that is so fun to watch.
At birth Addison was having a lot of nasal flaring and made a snorting/wheezing sound when she breathed heavily so our pediatrician decided that it would be better to be safe than sorry and recommended doing a CT just to make sure it was just swelling from the birthing process rather than any kind of anatomical defect or abnormal growth. Thank goodness he wanted to be safe because the CT showed two growths in her left nasal passage. They weren't completely blocking her airway but her oxygen saturation would get pretty limited whenever she was the least bit agitated, or even when she wasn't. So the day after she was born she was moved into the Newborn ICU. Later that evening she was transported up to Salt Lake see a specialist. Her pediatrician, who is a wonderful doctor by the way, only wanted her to be seen by the best pediatric ENT that he could find so we were confident that she would get great care and she did.


Right now she's up at Primary Children's Hospital but should be coming home either today or in the next day or two. Not to worry though, she just had to have a minor surgery to correct what turned out to be a tear duct that had no outlet. Instead of draining into the nasal passage it was causing the nasal tissues to swell and balloon out which then pushed the turbinate out into the airway making it a difficult to breathe. The operation was fairly straight forward; open the cists caused by the swelling, let them drain and that's it. She did really well the surgery was quick and uncomplicated but they wanted to keep her for observation in the NICU. Last night we got to bathe, change and feed her. She was VERY happy about eating, not so much about getting bathed and changed!

The nurses have been great. They kept saying how fun it was to care for a full term, pink and mostly healthy baby. They had to adjust the heart rate monitor though because full term babies have much lower heart rates than preterm babies and every time one of the other nurses went by her bed they kept asking Addison's nurse if she was aware that her baby's heart rate was so low (in comparison to what they are used to). Then Addi's nurse would say something like "Yeah I know, isn't that cool she's a term baby!" Some of the other nurses would come over and check her out just to make sure for themselves.
Well, we surely are grateful all of the prayers and thoughts from so many family and friends who didn't even know that anything out of the ordinary was going on. I know these prayers help and have given me a lot of comfort. Although Addison's problem and surgery were pretty minor on the scale of things that could go wrong it is heart wrenching to watch a baby, especially your baby, go through anything that causes them pain. We are also so thankful for good doctors and nurses who know how to help. It is amazing to watch them in action. We have felt blessed with the best and are excited to be with Addison today and hopefully bring her home today or tomorrow. Michael Anne has already made some paintings for her "little ga-ga" and is so thrilled to be a big sister although many of her big sister duties have been postponed a little as she has been with grandma and grandpa for several days. Yesterday my mom & dad took her by the hospital so she could see where mommy, daddy, and baby Addison were. Michael wanted to go in but grandma explained that she was too young to be able to go into see Addi. Michael responded that she knew she had to be 14 years old before she could go into that hospital (one of the nurses the day before had told us that when I asked if Michael would be able to see Addi while at PCMC). She is so clever and very sweet.

3 comments:

Ann said...

Felicitaciones, and hope she is home soon! Glad Addison has gotten such great care and happy to know things are looking good. She is beautiful!!

April said...

Congratulations - Addison is beautiful! I'm so sorry to hear that she had to go through so much. I bet Michael Anne can't wait to see her little sister.

Also, I think Addison is a great girls name!

Heather said...

I think that Addison is cute! Hope everything turned out okay.