just another eye update...

oy vey...another eye doctor appointment. but at least the news at each one is getting better and the concern for her vision drops a little. today we saw dr. g who was the first doctor to realize that her eyelids were flipping and suggested the pressure patch which ultimately saved annabel from surgery. its funny at children's hospital because when we make a follow up appointment we make it with the office and not with a particular doctor. for that reason we have seen five different eye doctors in our eight visits. dr. c was our favorite probably because she was a resident that we actually saw every day for five straight days. bottom line though, their system may be wack but it saved our baby's eye so i guess it works. as for today's visit, the scratch is not really a concern anymore but there is still a little bit of "haziness." the steroid drops that she's on should be clearing that up but it takes a while. dr. g said that we want it to clear up because if it stays too long and makes it harder for her to see out of her left eye, then she will start "favoring" her right. then we would end up having to patch her right eye to force her to use her left and then we're right back to having a robocop baby with a patch. today's visit was good but we've still got a follow up appointment (or ten) before they tell us we're in the clear. it could be worse though. we count our blessings daily and thank god for the baby that he gave us. because it could be worse...



this photo here was taken on saturday, september 19 at our second eye doctor appointment when dr. g and dr. c noticed the entropion for the first time. i love the photo because it truly shows a mother's love for her baby...

please pray for luke...

through our experience with annabel, cheryl and i have truly felt and experienced the power of prayer. another family that we know is dealing with some extreme challenges with their brand new baby. please pray for kathryn, scott and their new son, luke...

http://teamwhitaker.blogspot.com/

world's longest basketball shot

nothing to do with our baby but pretty stinking awesome!



or click here to view on youtube

so how about that "birth plan"...

following is a series of messages between cheryl and cindy (her sister who is due with her first baby on october 12) about our "birth plan". just thought it was funny enough to share...

cindy: umm clearly if you had one it didn't go as planned but....did you have a birth plan made up? If you did can you send it to me- I want to make sure I didn't forget anything!

cheryl: i attached the birth plan i came up with along with the list i made of what to pack for the hospital. i can't really attest to how good either list is since i did not really use either of them! one of the days we were still in the hospital andrew & i went over our birth plan. it was funny to read through it after everything we went through. most of it is the exact opposite of what happened. however, i did successfully avoid an episiotomy - i have a 6 inch abdominal incision/scar to show for it; more than 75% of my labor was spent at home, walking around and unattached to machines; and i made it through my entire labor without pain medicine! it's all about looking at the positives right?!

as far as what to pack... for yourself you don't really need much. i don't know about your hospital, but ours provided me with everything i needed and i stayed in the hospital gown all 5 days i was there. the only thing i really needed was an outfit to go home in & toiletries. we brought some "things to do" (cards, books...) for after i "got my epidural" and then after the baby was born, but we didn't use any of it. obviously the 30 minutes we were at the hospital before my c-section wasn't really the time for a quick game of go-fish and afterward things were so crazy & stressful the only non-baby thing we did was check our email. not sure what it would be like after a "normal" birth to a "normal" baby. :)

on another note. something i have experienced and apparently 99% of all women experience: breastfeeding is anything but natural. yes the baby has some sort of natural instinct to root & suck, but that is as far as it goes. i have been having a lot of trouble (mostly stemming from the decision in the hospital to nurse a little and supplement with formula and then pump - because she wasn't getting enough from me) and have been talking to all of my friends with kids and they have all had a lot of trouble too. i agree that breastmilk is the best thing and all the books are right about how great it is - but none of the books tell you how impossible it is at first. i just thought i would give you some warning. :)

let me know if you have any other questions. i know i didn't have a typical birth, but if there is anything i can help you with let me know. i am very experienced in taking a newborn to the doctors if you have any questions about that! :)

love you!
cher

mommy, what's she doing?

here's a video of annabel holding her head up all by herself. she is so precious...



or click here to view on youtube

so fresh and so clean clean...

today was bath day for annabel...and boy was she stinky! ha. not really. she kind of smelled like a baby. not that we have a whole lot of experience with that and know what a baby really smells like but i guess she smelled like what i would expect a baby to smell like (those are the kind of sentences you can come to expect until we get some more sleep...). the funniest part was probably her hair. as you can tell from the photos and videos she was certainly blessed with a full head of dark brown hair. and now its soft :) i guess that's what johnson & johnson baby shampoo is supposed to do. its nice. so you're probably wondering how our sweet, quiet, sleepy angel liked her first bath. ummm...errr...she did not. it was pretty amazing to experience what she can do with those lungs that she's got when she wants the world to know that she's not happy. we've got some video as proof. for now though you will just have to imagine our little angelic annabel screaming bloody murder as we gently bathed and massaged her tiny body. but she is squeaky clean now. and it was kind of fun. all in all i would call it a success. :)

is she fixed already?

on the seventh day, we rested...and on the eighth we went back to the doctor. :) but seriously though, today we took annabel back to the eye doctor after our day off to check out how the healing was going and get our next set of instructions. it seems like so long ago that we were pacing the halls and worrying about whether this mystery eye problem would make our baby blind in her left eye. well, today we got the closest that we have yet to a clean bill of eye health (and the heavens rejoice along with us...:)). the scratch on her cornea is virtually gone and she has just a teensey bit of swelling and haziness associated with the recovery from the trauma her poor little eye had to endure for two long weeks. and the eyelid has not flipped in since monday. to the layman, her eyes look pretty much identical for the first time ever. and all without surgery! we're not 100 percent healed yet though so we will continue to monitor her eye closely and have a follow up appointment for next wednesday. but we are close. that was doctor appointment numero uno.

doctor appointment numero dos was pretty good too. this was our follow up weight check at the pediatrician. dr. g was out so we got to see one of the other docs in the practice. its a neat system that they all work so closely together and there are no turf battles (at least that we know of yet). dr. c was great and it was nice to get a slightly different perspective. oh right - what did she weigh? she gained two whole ounces! that would have seemed like nothing to me just a few weeks ago but it was two pretty huge ounces. first of all that gets us back up to her birthweight of 7 lb 4 oz (which is a pretty big deal for babies). secondly we went two visits with no gain and it was really stressing everyone out (like the whole eye surgery and cheryl's raging infection wasnt enough...) so this was a big deal that she has gained weight. we still have some kinks to work out in the whole feeding thing but this kind of gives us some flexibility to try new systems and not be totally controlled by the doctor and her oh-so-mighty scale (but we still think that dr. g is great so we value all of her advice...).

all in all, this is a pretty big day for the robison clan. we had two good doctor appointments, i offically went back to work (even if just for a half day), cheryl survived alone with the baby (not really alone because grandma is still here but psychologically "alone" for the day), and we all got a good nap. we knew that this would be tough when we started but had no idea what "tough" really meant. the past 16 days have been some of the hardest for cheryl and me mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually. its nice to see a little light at the end of the tunnel. :)

it won't be like this for long...

"it won’t be like this for long
one day soon we'll look back laughin’
at the week we brought her home
this phase is gonna fly by
so baby just hold on
‘cause it won't be like this for long..."



or click here to view on youtube

check out them feets...

bet you can't guess whose are whose... :)

let's get normal...

today was a pretty good day. we started out with a trip to the eye doctor (like each of the past 6 mornings) to check and see how the scratch was healing and how her eyelids were holding up. both were good. the scratch is still there but is much much smaller and should be totally gone in the next few days. in fact the doctor prescribed a new medicine to help prevent scarring - this means that they feel good enough about it healing that they are looking past the point of it being scratched to make sure it doesnt scar. that was pretty encouraging. and the eyelids have not flipped in two days and every day we further and further from the idea of surgery and closer to normal. yay! and get this - we don't have to take her in tomorrow! whoa! we get a day off! they want to see her again on friday to check her progress but a day off is a day off! the first day we took her in and ended up sitting in the crowded waiting room for about an hour. toward the end we asked if there was somewhere else we could wait seeing as how we have a 9-day-old baby with a nonexistent immune system. every day since then the nurse has recognized us and just sent us to the back (where it is much less crowded) when we get there. they are pretty nice.

in other news, cheryl's infection is close to gone. she went and saw her doctor today who said that things were looking good. now the trick will be to keep those ducts unclogged. lots of water, lots of rest and lots of baby feeding should be the answer. that was pretty miserable for cher so hopefully she won't have to worry about it anymore.

things have been so hectic the past few days that we realized about dinnertime that today she is two weeks old. whoa! its amazing how fast time flies. everyone tells us to try to soak in these times because they will be gone before we know it. as stressful, scary, exhausting and frustrating as the past fourteen days have been, we want to remember them forever. and we know we won't. that makes us sad. the tiny noises she makes. the kisses on the forehead. the way she kicks her feet when we change her diaper. her beautiful, beautiful baby eyes [pause]...all of these things are so special right now and i just hope and pray we can hold on to these memories for a long, long time.