5 ounces??!! Wha Wha Wha What??!

Amazingly, today at the doctors Chloe weighed 5 more ounces than she did 2 1/2 weeks ago! I don't know how it is possible, the way she has been eating! But I will take a gain over a loss or a stay the same any day! I kept looking at the scale after the nurse said 12 lb. 9.5 ounces, and then when the nurse left I kept putting her back on the scale to weigh her again, and again... I am like, holy moly Chloe! I don't know how you did it but you did it! As a good friend of mine's dad said, I wish people would get that excited when I gained weight! We have been sneaking in some more rice per bottle... but she has been eating half the minimum of what the GI doc wanted her to eat! Oh my, you have this weight obsession after having a micro-preemie baby, as if we girls don't have enough pressure! I have never been so ruled by numbers and scales in my whole life. 5 ounces, not such a huge weight gain, but it's a gain. She did have a miraculous day on Sunday where she ate double what she had been eating days before, so I keep feeling like maybe she is turning the corner, feeling better, and will start eating better. I learned never to have too high of hopes though, to precede with caution. Lesson from the NICU. Since I was once a half glass full kinda girl, it is sad for me to think this way, but one has to guard their heart and be prepared for the worst.  Ah, the scars of having a baby at 24 weeks and then a child in the NICU... On top of that we have some anticipation building in the house! Hurricane Irene heading this way! Might build up to Category 3! Haven't survived a cat 3 yet! My husband keeps singing, "Come on Irene," which is making this hurricane have association to a few frat parties in college and where I was in the 80's. I am a little on the fence about how I feel about this one, but hurricanes can't help but bring out this excitement with a little bit of the unknown fear attached. I do have a little bit of adrenaline junkie in me and hurricanes scream adrenaline. I mean there is a reason people who live in hurricane areas have what is called, hurricane parties. It brings out some human emotion or need to have a good time on what could be your last night on the planet, or to want to feel the danger of it being the last night...or well whatever. Reminds me of a story of another hurricane preparation... In Hatteras one year I made the 5 o'clock news while shopping at the grocery store. The news caster asked me what I was doing to prepare for the hurricane, buying water, stocking up on batteries. The camera scans down to my cart which is full of beer and chips I was picking up for the hurricane party. Oops. Yeah I said, I am stocking  up on water, haven't made it to that aisle yet. Preparing for this one is a little different, I mean having a kiddo and all. I mean how much excitement can one have in their life, I mean she is not even a year old! My dad flew down to the rescue a couple days ago to help with the Chloe being sick, and the not eating thing. She has improved since he got here, so maybe that was the magic trick. I mean, my dad is an ol' boy scout through and through so he spent quite a bit of time at Home Depot today getting ready for this storm. Let's just say we have flash light battery power for a few years, a flash light for every room in the house, including the bathroom, laundry room and closets. This is his first hurricane, so hopefully it will be a light hearted storm, no one will get hurt or suffer and we can just enjoy surviving it! Meanwhile my mom is have daily panic attacks about this whole scenario. We are lucky enough to not only have my dad for some help this week, but Evan's mom is coming in, in a couple of weeks. Always nice to have extra help and have family around. I am having some withdrawal of the Caring Bridge site. I didn't write on it too much lately, but I found it so nice knowing family and friends were reading and keeping up with Chloe. I could easily feel the support and I loved being able to read the people's comments. But I just felt the site was for the medically critical and even though the saga continues, there needed to be a stopping point. The site offers a nice option  which is turning all the journals, comments, tributes into a book. For Chloe's birthday she will get what mom and dad, and a whole bunch of friends and family wrote about her in her first year of life. I will make sure it doesn't get torn or eaten until she is old enough to appreciate it. (She does like to put books in her mouth, not food, but books.)I hope if some of the followers of Caring Bridge are on here, you continue to comment or become a follower of the blog! xoxo!

pneumonia schmonia

It has been a crazy couple of days being parents. We traveled to Oregon over the weekend for a friend's wedding. ( This friend, some of you may remember, was the one at my wedding who put the hair extensions on his face so he had a ZZ Top beard...) It was a lot of traveling in just a few days for the whole family, but we had a really great time and enjoyed the beautiful coast of Oregon. Chloe, once again, traveled great. Slept on the plane, well behaved, didn't eat great, but that isn't unusual. She is babbling now like crazy. The therapists and I have waited for the repeat of consonant-vowel over and over and she has got the ba-ba-ba-ba down! When we returned to Florida, Chloe had a few episodes of unconsolable crying. Not any where near her normal behavior. One in which she woke up in the middle of the night and it took Evan and I over an hour to get her calmed down, just not Chloe. Then the next evening she woke up from a nap and just started screaming. This lasted for about two hours. Evan and I both felt a bit silly rushing her while she was so upset. We knew something was wrong, but without a fever, do we walk into the ER and say, "Uh my baby is crying, is there some medicine to help with this?" We finally took her temp and she had a low grade fever.  I felt like it wasn't worth messing around,  let's get her to a hospital asap. I had flash backs of the last rush to the hospital, and  that didn't turn out so well.  I still have guilt of not getting her to the hospital soon enough. It's hard making that decision to go get medical help if things aren't obvious. In Chloe's case it is probably best to error on the side of caution and let the doctors take a look. It turned out to be the best thing and turns out they can help for all that crying. Tests and x-rays confirmed the diagnosis of pneumonia. Ug! Talk about a punch in the gut! I swear I should be wearing a sign on my forehead saying, "I let my kid get pneumonia. I suck as a Mom." Of course I think she got sick in the first place from family. Then the tests, all the tests, how much does this little one have to go through?? We got the doctor asking, "14 ounces when she was born? Not, 2 pounds 14, not 1 pound and 14 ounces? This is the smallest birth weight baby I have worked on." Once again, reality check, my baby survived being born at 14 ounces. I guess that is a big deal. So, the little one is on antibiotics and they have helped tremendously already. She is doing a lot better today, and hopefully we caught it soon enough that all will be well. Poor girl! She is handling it all really well. The biggest freak out was the x-ray. She even had a delayed reaction to the shot in her butt. She is a little toughie. But no one wants to hang out in a children's hospital too long. Evan and I both left traumatized looking at all the injuries and kids with puke all over themselves. Quite an interesting experience. They even have TV's in all the diagnosis rooms. Evan and I were forced to watch hours of Disney television before we figured out how to change the channel. It was like hanging out with my nephew Frankie on a Friday night. I guess we will see how this will affect the little one's lungs...

A room of one's own...

Hello everyone and welcome to our little blog! It was difficult for me to set this all up- but I did it and I feel accomplished! I had started a blog years ago and it faded into the nothingness. We will see how this one goes. It is difficult to pick a name for a blog- but, again, mission accomplished. Explaining "14 and up!" goes like this: I was thinking, "Wow, the number 14 has turned out to be a meaningful number to me now. If I wanted a tattoo, I finally have something meaningful to tatoo myself with... do I argue with my mom about getting a tattoo or should I just put the number in the title of my blog?" Well you see what won out. No one likes to argue with their mother. Evan and I became hubby and wife of the 14th of April 2007. We had Chloe on the 14th of September 2010, she weighed 14 ounces. The number just keeps hanging around the family. Which brings me to the reason for this blog. I enjoyed keeping everyone up to date on Chloe on Caring Bridge. She is still an adventure, but I thought maybe the day of needing Caring Bridge has passed. Blogs seem a little more cherry and happy than the wonderful, needed Caring Bridge. Here we go, getting married, having a baby and startin' life out at 14 ounces! Let's see how this goes! The theme of this post is- "a room of one's one". While I do appreciate Virginia Woolf, Chloe's room is maybe, not so serious, but alas she does have a room of her own... as long as there are not any guests at the house, in which case she will be happy to share. But it does represent the three of us finally moving out of the bedroom at my parents in which I grew up! (Loved it, but time to move on!) Represents us being in our new place, back home and the start of the family. There are things, preemie things, still going on with Chloe, but I felt this intro post should focus on the light hearted, positive move we have made. See below, the lil one's room. The mosquito net over the crib is not decoration, it is a neccesity. Motherly guilt over the more than 20 bites on my daughter once we got back sealed the deal.