So we have officially named our girl:

Annabelle Jane Rosenfield

I can't post a picture here because it's not uploaded online right now, but soon. She is definitely little, though.

Last night she had a bad night. They actually had to do CPR on her because her heart rate was low and her oxygen was too. But they got her stable overnight and she's been doing ok today. The doctor came over and let me know after it was all over, so I knew about it but wasn't there for the scary part. It was good to get the update quickly though, that won't be the same once I go home. They do have a daily meeting (rounds) between all the doctors, nurses & other staff which we will be going to. It gives us a good idea of what happened the previous day and what they will be doing for the new day. I'm planning on coming up for that every day once I've been discharged. Ian might be able to come in for it once a week too, on top of the weekends.

Ian & Juliette stayed at home last night & he took her to daycare this morning. She did get to come see me last night for a bit & meet Annabelle so that was nice. We hadn't had a chance to talk much with her about the fact that mommy was going to have a baby, so I wasn't sure how she was going to react. But I guess they talked about it at daycare & when she was on the way up in the elevator, so when she came in she sat on my lap and the first thing she looks at me and says "Mommy, you have baby?" and I said "yes" and she says "OK." and turns and starts trying to eat my dinner. So that went well, I guess :p She does think that Annabelle's incubator-thing is a cage, and if you ask how big her sister is she'll hold up her thumb and finger to her eye and says "little tiny". It's so cute.

We have had a few visitors so far, parents and more parents, but it's been pretty quiet which is fine by me. I'm pumping every 2 hours during the day, which kinda takes up a lot of time. Plus with visiting the ICN and everything I definitely haven't been bored. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

This blog is currently undergoing a renovation. The idea is that I can post here and give updates to the interested folks so that everyone can be up to date without the need for multiple calls / emails. I don't want anyone to feel left out, but it'll be easier to only have to say stuff once, I think. We'll see how much detail I wind up putting here, since a lot of it is alphabet soup to the outside world.

Anyway, enough introduction. I am now the proud parent of a(nother) beautiful little girl. My due date (confirmed with two ultrasounds) was November 2nd, but she arrived 7/21/08 at 3:25 am. Yes, this means she is 3 1/2 months early. No, that's not a typo, and not really too great. But all things considered things seem to be going ok.

Sunday afternoon, I began to have some pain & really felt like I had to go to the bathroom. I thought that the baby was moving around or turning, but after a couple of hours the pain was still coming & going and began to be so bad I couldn't talk during it. I decided we should call Kaiser, and they agreed that I should go in to Labor & Delivery to be checked out. I was 25 weeks pregnant. Ian & I dropped Juliette off at my folks house around 9pm to keep an eye on her, hoping we'd be back to pick her up later that night. The good news is, having gone to the hospital early with Juliette too, we did remember our camera and phone charger.

At 11:30 the doctor checked me, and I was 1cm dilated. They couldn't get a good reading of the contractions on the monitor, since my uterus was still so small, but since I was in quite a bit of pain they decided to give me magnesium to try and stop my premature labor. Magnesium is awful, it is a smooth muscle relaxer but it also can cause nausea & hot flashes. Plus they gave me a really fast IV with fluids, in case dehydration was contributing to the labor. I did think the contractions were slowing, but all the fluids meant I had to go to the bathroom like 4 times and by 2:30 I started to bleed. They had the doctor re-check me, and I was 7cm dilated. They wheeled me into an OR and got set for me to deliver. By this point the contractions were back on full force, and I felt really awful, but they wouldn't give me any pain medicine because it would cause the baby to be drowsy and at her early age they needed her to be as alert as possible. At 3:25 after just two pushes, she was born. The doctor announced that my placenta had been abrupting which means it was detaching from the uterus, and that is what caused me to go into labor. It was good to know that, but no one is able to confirm why that happened in the first place.

They whisked baby off to the ICN to begin treating her, and I was taken to a post-partum recovery room. The good news is that since she wasn't a C-section delivery & I hadn't been knocked out on morphine I was able to be up and about really quickly and got to meet her much sooner than with Juliette. I was also able to begin pumping faster, and overall the first hours have been much easier.

So overall, things seem to be as good as you can expect. More updates to follow.

so it has been quite an eventful couple of weeks. we went to visit my grandmother this weekend, which was awesome, but had an ordeal coming home with the rain and all. I got a new purse though, which is exciting. yesterday I went to a seminar for work which was stupid and boring and awful. we finally reserved our rental car for hawaii which was expensive, but we are splitting it with matt, so it wont be too bad. I keep getting in trouble at work, but not really bad or anything. Juliette has a doctor's appointment today, which Ian will be taking her to without me. My brain hurts and it's hard to think. More later i guess.

so we had a great weekend in seattle, but i am glad to be home again. our flight up was fine except juliette wouldnt sleep (and fussed a lot) until about 15 minutes before we landed, partly because we accidentally checked in the front carrier. then she woke up while we were at baggage claim, fell asleep again in the car to the hotel, and woke up again when we got to the hotel. she finally fell asleep for the night around 9:30pm. but we only had the one hotel room, so the guys all went downstairs to the lobby, and tom wound up renting an extra hotel room for the night so they had a place to party while sat on the floor of the bathroom reading so the baby could sleep. they didnt go to bed until after 3am, so when the baby woke up at 6am i took her downstairs to play in the lobby. i would take her back up to nap, which she wound up doing twice before ian woke up. then we had to go wake up tom and matt in the other room so they could check out. then we went to the base so that matt could pick up some clean underwear. the base was cool, much bigger than i had realized. matt's barracks is a crapfest though, really old and ugly. That night we went to visit aaron in redmond. we got really lost on the way, but it turned out ok. that was pretty much the theme of the vacation. i dont know.... it was fun but tiring and we didnt do that much.

on another note, is it wrong for me to be a cowgirl for halloween if juliette is a cow?

so i spent yesterday afternoon packing all our things for the trip this weekend. we are mostly done, just a few things that can't be done in advance left to go. at least this time we won't be bringing as much stuff with us- just one suitcase for ian&my clothes, one for the baby's stuff, and one with the porta crib, baby bjorn, and our toiletries. plus the diaper bag and the backpack with our airplane entertainment to carry on. and we will be gate checking the baby's carseat and stroller. believe it or not, that is about half the stuff that we brought with us on the last vacation, so i think we are doing well, getting more efficient. i do need to be sure and weigh the suitcases to be sure they are under 50 lbs though. last time one of them was overweight and we wound up paying a bunch of money. i am just glad i remembered to reserve a medium size car, not the economy size one, so we can be sure we have room for all our stuff.