Life at home in Keezletown

We have not disappeared! I realize it has been over a week since we last updated many of you, and that you may be curious about what has transpired since we left UVA last Sunday, November 25^th. What I can assure you of is that it is unlikely, for the foreseeable future, that we will be inundating you with emails – we are just too busy to do much writing these days. Right now Jason is feeding Nora (after an only semi-successful breastfeeding try) and Kali is trying to “sell me eggs” and is making concentrating on this update rather difficult.

It is important to note that Kali and I are out in our front room (the room that has been under construction for a very long time), which we just moved furniture into yesterday with the help our friends, Risha and Mike. From the futon I can look out the picture window and see the mountain in front of me. We’ve always known we live in a beautiful place, but it is nice to finally be able to appreciate that from the indoors. I told Jason last night that it felt pretty unreal that we were actually going to start using the room that has seemed like a distant dream for some time. The room isn’t quite done but it is very livable and Kali has been thoroughly enjoying it in the past 24 hours.

Now for what many of you are curious about: how is Nora doing?? The week has been full of lots of ups and downs for Jason, Kali and I, but Nora has seemed more or less not bothered by it. She has been doing what all babies are supposed to do: eating, sleeping and filling her diaper. The eating part has been the biggest anxiety-producing task at hand. For Jason the anxiety is figuring out which bottle nipple works best for her and is most conducive to me also working at breastfeeding with her. For me it’s trying not to get frustrated with her frequent lack of enthusiasm and it’s also the need to continue doing a fair amount of pumping until both her appetite and stamina for breastfeeding increase.

BUT she must be getting enough milk!! Last week at her first pediatrician appointment she weighed 4lb 4oz. Today Jason guessed she would be about 4lb 6oz and I said that I would be happy with 4lb 7oz (which would be about ½ oz a day gain). She surpassed our expectations by weighing 4lb 10oz (a 6oz gain). She also measured 19inches, either showing growth or that she is just getting more comfortable stretching out from the fetal position. Her pediatrician, Dr. Ashton, was very pleased with her progress and encouraged us to keep doing what we are doing. Really the only reason we have to go in weekly to the Dr. at this point is to continue checking her weight and making sure she is gaining at a reasonable rate. If she continues at this rate, she could make the 5lb mark by next week, but we won’t get our hopes up too much. There was really nothing else new to report from the appointment, except that we were happy that he agreed with us that the vitamin with iron that UVA recommended we give to her is probably more of pain than it is worth and affirmed us discontinuing it at this point!! Nora will be pleased!

Kali has been so sweet with Nora, often singing her the ABC’s and holding her at every chance she can get. She also enjoyed helping give her a bath yesterday. Jason and I have found it to be a huge challenge to balance all the needs in our house right now – especially Kali and Nora’s. Kali has struggled with this transition more than I had expected, after she seemed to do so well throughout my time on bed rest and during our time at UVA. She continues to talk about how good it is to be home, how much she loves baby Nora, and how she is doing fine BUT she has had many more “meltdowns” and they are normally about things like what cup to drink out of, what she wanted to wear for the day, or anything else little that just doesn’t go quite as she would like it to. I think they are decreasing in frequency and we are trying to be patient knowing that this is a huge change for her and probably not at all what she expected having a little sister would be like. It’s not really what Jason and I were expecting either and I think all three of us are a bit more weepy, sensitive and prone to “meltdowns.”

The biggest thing affecting Jason and I’s ability to cope with all of this is our lack of good sleep. Jason is actually probably lower on sleep than I at this point since he normally is called in some for every feeding, whether it be solely using the bottle or finishing the feeding with a bottle after she has fed some from me. We may need to move to me learning the bottle to give him a break, even though we were hoping to not confuse things more than necessary for Nora. Also, it is more than a little bit clear that we have a Daddy’s girl on our hands – I seldom get her to sleep but she often cuddles up with Jason and sacks out. He mentioned to my mom the other day that he feels more bonded to Nora at this stage than he did with Kali, and that is likely because of the many, many hours he has spent holding and feeding her early on. That may be also why my feelings are the opposite.

We enjoyed having my mom with us for most of the week. It was hard to see her leave Saturday. I was uncertain how the two of us were going to handle the upkeep of our home and the care of both little ones, particularly when it seemed we had kept 3 adults relatively occupied most of the time. I still wonder how that will go over the long haul, but for today we are doing okay. And maybe that is all that matters for now. I recognize that there will continue to be ups and downs on this journey, I just hope that the ups will get a little higher and the down times not quite so intense.

In the coming weeks we will mostly stay here at home, trying to establish some kind of routine that works for all 4 of us. I will need to start transitioning back to work and that will add another level of complexity to our lives. We will not be traveling at all over the holidays, as we have been advised to keep things for Nora as “calm, cool and collected” as possible and to keep away from large gatherings and crowds to try to keep all of us healthy and Nora in particular. It will be a different holiday season for us for sure, but one we are unlikely to forget.

Well, I have a little girl sitting next to me who is impatiently waiting to choose what pictures to include with this update. She has managed to break up my concentration significantly enough during this update that I can only hope it makes at least some sense.

We will continue to try to keep you posted, but I wouldn’t count on much more than a weekly update after her appointments. We do not have to return to UVA now until January when we have follow-ups with neurology, neurosurgery and the geneticist who will by that time have results from the DNA testing. We aren’t finding a lot of time to obsess over what those appointments could reveal for us as we are pretty well occupied with baby and child care most of our waking hours – and sometimes even in our semi-wakeful states.

Enough for now, Janelle