YIKES! Moldy tubby toys!

I always make sure that I squeeze out all of the water from the tub toys but the other night at the end of Alaina's bath I squeezed one of the toys out and ick! Black mold! For pete's sake, she chews on these things! I wanted to throw them away, but I called my mom and she said to wash them in bleach and water and squeeze them several times, then rinse them in plain water. So, I did it, but I am afraid to use them again. I mean, of course it's going to happen again. How often am I going to have to spend 40 minutes washing these things? It just doesn't seem worth it. BUT...my HUGE question is, why do they have a hole in them anyway???? What's the point? Can't they make them without a hole? Hmmm...off to Google hole-less tub toys!

Getting ready for Baby's Big Day!

I can't believe Alaina's birthday is right around the corner. We have her dress, her invitations, gift bags and the cutest gifts for the kiddies...all we need now is more room in our house!

half a year old already!

Alaina had her 6 month check-up yesterday. She weighs 14 lbs 10oz and is 24 inches long. Doc said she is the 50th percentile for weight and height. I asked, "is that for a 5 month old?" since she was 5 weeks early. He said , "no, that is for a 6 month old." She's caught up already! Amazing! She started eating sweet potatoes yesterday and will get bananas in a few days. The look on her face was priceless the first time she tasted the sweet potatoes. It went from confusion straight to delight!

Alaina's appointment with the Geneticist

Alaina had an appointment with a Geneticist yesterday. He was truly amazed at how healthy she is. Alaina just loved him! She was smiling at him and talking up a storm. She is developing perfectly on track. I learned that Situs Ambiguous with asplenia, which is characterized by ambiguous location of the abdominal organs and absence of the spleen results in affected patients having a 99%–100% prevalence of congenital heart disease. Alaina has a perfectly healthy heart. The Geneticist actually said that she is a miracle! I am sure that is a pretty uncommon statement from a man of science.
I was thinking in the car on the way to work this morning, that not long ago I was just devastated hearing about all that was wrong with my baby and here she is 5 months old and perfectly healthy. I never expected this. I could not be more happy!

My Angel was Baptized

Alaina was Baptized on Sunday May 24th. About the 24th....I realized a few weeks ago, my Wedding Shower was on the 24th of July, I was married on the 24th of September, Alaina was born on the 24th of December and was Baptized on the 24th of May. A neat coincidence. Anyway...everything went very well. I surprised myself at how much I didn't mind her being passed around from person to person. Of course she barely slept all day and was not so sweet when we finally got home. I will add pictures as soon as I can. I brought my camera, but was too busy to take any pics. Hopefully my parents took some good ones. Dad has a habit of cutting off heads!

Alaina has a new cousin

Madelyn Eve was born Sunday May 17th
6 lb 15 oz. 19 inches

Mom and baby are doing great and are going home today! Alaina and Maddie are only 5 months apart and I am sure they will be best friends with Maddie's big sis Meghan callin' all the shots!

The Present

Alaina came home from the hospital at two months old, almost three months ago. I am not going to say that all was perfect when she came home, it wasn't, but I didn't care. I had my baby home and I was not going to let go. She threw up some, maybe once a day for about two weeks, but it was so much better than every feeding ending up all over the floor, or my shirt. We spread blankets and sheets all over the floor, her swing...I only fed her in the kitchen. But, after a few weeks she stopped throwing up completely and never threw up again. Shortly thereafter she started sleeping through the night. How lucky am I?
I really can not believe to this day, that things turned out this way, so perfectly. I feel so blessed. I know that difficult beginnings do not always lead to happy endings, but I have faith and I truly believe that the worst is behind me and the future is bright for my baby.

The Past

Hello, my name is Gina and I am starting this blog to hopefully provide some hope for those, like me, who were told that there is no hope...

Last year, almost a year ago today, I found out I was pregnant!!! YEA! I was so excited...my whole family was excited for me. About 10 weeks into the pregnancy I told my Doc I had a small amount of bleeding, so he sent me for an ultrasound. Toward the end of the u/s the technician got very quiet and said, 'ok, I am going to have this reviewed by the radiologist." The next day my OB called me to say that they found fluid behind the baby's neck and that if I had a nuchal translucency test scheduled, I needed to call and have it moved up. Of course I was in a total state of panic. My husband and I were going on vacation....I wanted to cancel and stay home. My family convinced me that it would not be a good idea to stay home and worry for the next week, so instead I went on vacation and worried anyway! We came home a day early for the scheduled nuchal translucency test. I will never forget the cool, damp day and the cool feeling in my bones that day. After the test, the technician told me that the Doctor would like to speak with my husband and I in her office.

This next part is embedded in my brain, she said:

The nuchal translucency score was 5.9. (which is off the charts high)

There is a 20% chance that my baby would be chromosomally normal

I may want to consider termination depending on the severity of the baby's disorder because my life may be at risk if I carry the baby to term.



It would be an understatement if I said I was devastated. I could not speak, the tears would not stop. The Doc then advised me to have an amniocentesis to determine what disorder my child has and a fetal echocardiogram to check for heart defects.

I had to wait over two weeks to have the amnio and another 10 days for the results. (By the way, during the amnio they told me the baby was a girl, but it was SOOOO hard to be excited through the worry.)

So....the results came back....NEGATIVE! What???? My baby was chromosomally Normal! A few weeks later, the baby's heart was checked and I was told that she has a perfectly healthy heart. For the next few months, I enjoyed my pregnancy...well as much as anyone can enjoy getting huge, swollen, tired, and non mobile! But I was happy despite all of the discomforts of being pregnant.

Until.....my water broke....five weeks early. Although, I never for one second though that anything could be wrong even though I was early.

I delivered a baby girl, Alaina Grace, on Christmas Eve...my little miracle at 5lbs 6 oz, 17 3/4 inches. She did go to the NICU, but I was reassured that she was doing great and that we should be able to take her home in about a week.....oh how things never turn out as we are told! From the first time Alaina was fed, she threw up...all of her feeding. After about a week of starting and stopping her feeds, a Doctor came in the NICU to have a chat with me...he told me that my baby has a very rare type of situs inversus. Situs what??? Basically her stomach and her liver are on the opposite sides, but her heart is in the correct place, and they were unable to locate a spleen, which helps to fight infection. At that point, that is all that they said, but I could not stop crying. Maybe it was the post partum depression, maybe it was because it had been a week and my baby was still in the NICU, and maybe it was because the way the Doctor put it, it sounded like there was no hope.. of course it was probably a combination of all of these...I just cried and cried. I thought, "come on, what else can I go through? Haven't I been through enough?" After a few more days of tests and my baby not eating because she kept throwing up, I was told that my baby was going to be transferred to Children's Hospital, where she could get better care and possibly surgery. I was so very naive, I asked, "when will they bring her back to this hospital?" I swear the nurse didn't have it in her to tell me that she probably wouldn't be back, so she just said, "every situation is different."
So, off we went to Children's Hospital, where things moved very quickly and many, many Doctors came to evaluate my little one. There I learned that there is a 1 in 22,000 chance of having situs inversus where the heart remains on the left side and that the odds having a severe heart defect with this type of situs inversus is 95% and that the Doctors were amazed that my baby's heart is healthy. I also learned that her intestines were malrotated and that she needed surgery to correct it. That happened within a few days. Alaina recovered quickly, but when it came time to start eating...well let's jst say I needed to bring a change of clothes when I visited....yes, it was projectile. Weeks went by of starting feeding...stopping....starting...infection in the colon...stop feeding.........over and over again. Then something just clicked inside that tiny tummy of hers...things just started to work! So, after 9 weeks in the NICU, my little miracle came home!!!