Rewind to the end of 09'

Lets just start with the holidays and I will update from there....

Lets see...We spent Christmas at home this year. We were fortunate enough to have our family come to us. My mom, dad and grandma came to stay with us for a few days. It was great to have full time babysitters! Although I didn't really see them when we were up at night? I worked on Christmas Eve and was home bright and early Christmas morning to see all the stockings filled by Santa and watch Laney open her first Christmas presents. This special event went much as everone said it would. She received lots of brand new great toys (Grandma and Grandpa rock!) and her favorite you ask? You guessed it some little green plastic brace that held in the first toy she opened. She was not interested in anything else for a couple of days! Everyone said it would happen so we expected it but we will try again next year. As for presents from Mom and Dad well, we got her a new bathtub seat in the anticipation of the cast that is due to come off on January 4th! We used to LOVE bathtub time so hopfully we will love it again. Christmas day brought lots of fun. My aunt and uncle that live here in Boise came for Christmas dinner. We had a delicious prime rib with all the fixin's. We topped it off with some Baily's in the coffee and a couple rounds of pinochle. Christmas just isn't Christmas without some sort of game of cards being played. Laney spent the day playing with her new green plastic brace and chewing on her Great Grandma's oxygen tubing. What can I say, she is teething! All in all it was a wonderful first Christmas. I have to say I am already a little excited for next year.

Hope you had happy holidays,

The Meyers

Time Flies....

Wow! It has been a while... We are all doing fine and enjoying ourselves this holiday season. I need to back clear up to Halloween to update this blog. That is terrible I am a little ashamed. Oh well! I will make it short and sweet.

Laney was a Dragonfly for Halloween this year! It went well with her purple cast. She stayed home and handed out treats to the trick or treaters with her dad. I had to work. Mostly we have just been hanging out at home trying to keep her from getting sick. Knock on wood it has worked for the most part. She was able to get her swine flu shot in mid November and just our luck I ended up coming down with the swine flu one week later. How miserable. But fortunately she had her shot and it really didn't seem to bother her. I missed a few days of work and it meant that we spent Thanksgiving at home. We of course missed seeing family and friends but I have to admit it was nice to just have a quite day at home.

The end of November brought us to the midway point of Laney being in her cast. This meant it was time to go back in and have it taken off and changed. We weren't sure if they were going to have to do an actual surgery to change anything or just change the cast. We got lucky! Things looked great and we ended up just changing her cast. This time we went with RED for Christmas! It was a pretty easy trip in and out of the hospital for once. So now we are scheduled to have her cast taken off on January 4, 2010. All things considered these last 9 weeks of her being in the cast have gone quickly but we are looking forward to getting it off. I can also say with confidence that Laney is excited too! She wiggles and squirms like she knows she is supposed to be able to move but just can't.

Let's see...I don't know if we mentioned that Kevin went hunting this year and brought home an elk and restocked the freezer for us. I have been working at the hospital. I work nights and mostly on weekends so Kevin is able to work during the week and we have been fortunate enough to work that schedule out so we don't have to put Laney in day care. I am sure I am forgetting many things but that is a general update for now. I may have to make a New Year's resolution about keeping up better with this!

Happy Holidays!

The Meyer's

When God hands you a lemon...

You know the rest of the saying. Suffice it to say that we're getting a little tired of lemonade around here. We love our little lemon though, and we're glad her second surgery is over and we're moving forward again. We should have known Laney might be needing two surgeries when the doctor told us this summer, "I've only had one kid where the first surgery didn't relocate the hip properly and we had to go in and do it again." Laney always picks the short side of the odds. If she keeps this up, she'll probably someday win the lottery, be over 6 feet tall, become a Rhodes scholar, make it big as an actor or singer, save the world, and have a dozen children of her own. But she probably wouldn't even be here if she didn't beat the odds all the time, so we're not complaining about that.
This surgery was not nearly as smooth as the last one, and probably gets us started in the Bad Parents of America Club, if we weren't already members. She was out of surgery at about 9am and was in a different position this time, very spread-eagle, almost in the splits with just a slight bending of the legs. She was not happy, and never really stopped screaming. Except when the nurse gave her 0.06mg of demerol, and then almost everything stopped, including her breathing. So we had to sit there for 1 and 1/2 hours regularly stimulating her chest to remind her to breath so her O2 levels would stay up. It brought us full circle back to our months in Neonatal Intensive Care. Ah, such wonderful memories.
Anyway, the demerol finally wore off and the screaming started again. We took her home at about 11am, probably to the delight of the recovery room who didn't have to listen to her screaming anymore. We thought she would calm down at home, and figured she was probably just scared again and maybe a bit more uncomfortable due to the new position she was in with the cast. We kept giving her tylenol every 3 hours, which has a bit of hydrocodone in it, and tried to calm her down and get her to sleep. By 5:30pm, she was still crying. I'm not kidding, she never really stopped crying. Even after the tylenol treatments, she would calm down and almost get to sleep, but after just a few seconds she would jerk herself awake and start screaming again. After a while we started to worry, even wondering whether she was giving herself little seizures due to her hysteria. We finally gave up and called the doctor, who said she was probably having muscle spasms and suggest we combine the tylenol with Motrin (ibuprofen) and see if that worked. By 8pm we had given up and the doctor sent us to the hospital, where they gave her some valium and a comfortable crib, where she finally got some rest. In hindsight, we probably should have called the doctor much earlier and taken her back to the hospital much earlier, which is where the Bad Parents membership comes in. We just thought she would finally calm down, but she just couldn't due to the muscle spasms. We've probably scarred her for life now. We feel scarred ourselves!
Angie spent the night with Laney and we took her home the next afternoon, hoping she hadn't picked up swine flu which is running through the hospital. However, even the little bit of valium she was getting was reducing her drive to breath, so we went home with an O2 and heart rate monitor, and quickly came to the conclusion that 1/4 doses of valium or less was all we could give her. Due to the stress of the whole situation, we decided we would just take the rest of her dose, and that has helped us out a lot. Wink, wink.
So we're now on day 4 post-surgery and she is doing much better, though she still isn't eating like she was before. But she's getting there. We go back on Wednesday for the MRI to check whether the hip is properly placed this time, and if not we'll be back for round 3, which will be a more invasive surgery. And we'll be drinking even more lemonade.

Can't Catch a Break

We just can't seem to catch a break with this kid. As I mentioned in the last post she had the surgery on her hip. Things went well and we brought her home. There was an adjustment period with getting her used to her cast. It took a few days but she resolved to hanging out in her cast for the next 12 weeks. Her surgeon like to be cautious so we took her in yesterday for an MRI on her hip. There is always the possibility that it can come out of socket while she is in her cast. The MRI went great. She did really well. In fact she fell asleep while they were putting in her IV! (I wish my patients would do that) she slept all the time we were waiting to get the MRI. No problem, she did great! We took her home and after a long nap she was her happy self again.
Tody was the follow up with her sugeon. Brought up the MRI on the screen. And...yup, you guessed it! HER HIP IS OUT! "you are kidding!" is the first thing I said. #@*&! @#%&@$ was the second! It isn't out by much it is mostly just positioned to high in the socket. #$&*! $#%!#@ I say again! Calm down, I say to myself. OK, what do we do now? "take the cast off and do the surgery again." he says. I like the "take the cast off" part, not so excited about doing the surgery again. Fine, get the cast off and let the kid have some peace. I will take a few days with out the cast. There really isn't much I can do about the rest.
So his nurse brings in a cast cutting machine and we start cutting off the cast. Other than a little noise it really doesn't seem to bother Laney much. I cover her ears and we keep cutting. All the sudden Laney screams. I am thinking to myself...why is this bothering her now...we are almost done. I calm her down and look at the nurse as she starts to pry the cast apart. Yup you guessed it, the saw to cut off the cast cut Laney's leg. *&#%! #$@!**%## I am saying to myself. Don't scream at the nurse, YET, just keep Laney calm. So being the trooper she is Laney calms down and just does the little gasping cry. The Physicians assistant comes in, mind you I have not said a word and neither has the nurse. The nurse hands over the cutting tool and walks out without saying a word. No apology nothing. I am a nurse. I know things don't always go perfectly. I understand and I have sympathy. But when something like this goes wrong you aplogize and move on. We got nothing. I was so mad. Unfortunately I took it out on the PA a bit and walked out of the office. It is a superficial cut. It's not like Laney was bleeding everywhere but it is about a 2 inch gash in her thigh. I feel so bad for this kid. Some times I think she needs a better mom. I can't believe all that she has to go through. It could be worse, I know, but today it sucks.

The final hurdle...hopefully!

The next phase of of Laney's first year has begun. Last Thursday the 24th of September she had surgery on her hip. Every instinct you have fights you when you have to turn her over to a stranger that you know is going to put her to sleep and mess with her bones. I can't even think about it anymore. Handing her over was the hardest part. Everything turned out just fine though. The surgery took about an hour, which was much faster than we expected. We checked in about 5:30 am. At 6:00 they took us to pre-op. We got her in a little gown and she played around on a crib, rolling and playing with her feet. We talked to the nurse, anasthesiologist, and the doctor. At 7:30 they came and took her away. We also ran into one of the clergy staff, Carla. She came and prayed with us for Laney when she was in the NICU. She came and we said a prayer before her surgery. Then the nurse came. When I handed her over she just looked at me like, "what are you doing?" It was awful. About an hour later Dr.Shea came out to the wating room at 8:39 and told us she was fine and things went well. "Thank God" We went back in to the pediatric recovery room to see her. She was awake but still a little groggy you could tell. She had the most pitiful look on her face. It was beautiful but sad. The nurse picked her up and handed her to me to feed. It seemed like it hurt because she screamed. It took us about 20 minutes to calm her down. Even then the only reason she stopped is because she puked. Poor kid. I put her back in bed and we all just held hand with her and kissed her. It seemed mostly like she was just scared from the whole ordeal. Luckily we brought her purple singing elephant. That seemed to do the trick. Originally we had planned on having to stay the night in the hospital with her. Dr. Shea said it went so well and the hip went in easily so we could take her home. We hung out with her in recovery for a while and finally took her home around 12:30.

"That sounds great" you might say. Well until we got to the car and tried to put her in her car seat. As you can see from the photos she is cast straight up and down which is not conducive to being strapped in a car seat. She was screaming at us so we took our chances and just drove her home. Horrible, I know. Sometimes you do what you have to do.

Since we brought her home she is doing well. I think we have the changing of the diaper figured out. We are only allowed to give her sponge baths for then entire ordeal, but she does love them.

We gave her "the last bath" Wednesday night before we took her in. She was in her tub for about an hour. We had to refill the water 4 times from all the splashing! It was great. After 6 towels and mom's soaked pajamas we called it good and took her out. I miss those splashing legs.

Anyway, she has been pretty cranky. It is hard to tell if it is from pain or frustration. We have decided it is mostly frustration. We have bought her some new toys to accomodate her inability to move. She really likes some of them and is annoyed by others but we do what we can. Mostly she just wants to be held all day. We are hoping she adjusts a little better in the coming weeks. It is all an adventure and we are learning so much from this experience. We are mostly just grateful that she is

a part of our lives.

The Meyer's

Long Overdue Update!

Time gets away from you. I can't believe that it has been a month since we have posted an update. I am hoping you all are thinking that no news is good news. In this case it has been. We are all doing great. There have been a few changes though. Lets see..Laney had a follow up appointment with the pediatric cardiologist. They saw some very minor defects in her heart when she was in the hospital. It often happens to babies born so early. Theirs hearts are just not ready to be out in the world. The good news is, that she is fine. She has a minor defect in the way the blood flows through her heart that apparently is very common in kids. They think it will just resolve on its own and if it doesn't she will never notice because it is so minor. Yeah!! Next we took her to the orthopedic surgeon for her final appointment before surgery. She is doing fine but the hip is still dislocated. So we have surgery scheduled for September 24th. Please keep her in your thoughts and prayers. The surgery is minor but it makes me nervous for her to go under anasthesia. It is a mom's job to worry right?

The other major change we have made is the fact that I have gone back to work. I started the 21st of August. I have only spent 2 weeks doing actual nursing but I really like it. It is definately challenging and hard work. I have enjoyed my patients and the staff has been great. Being away from Kevin and Laney is a different story. They have been doing great! After much work with an occupational therapist that specializes in cranio-saccral therapy we finally got Laney to eat from the bottle. She even took a pacifier a few times! Now she switches back and forth most of the time without much effort. However, she has regressed a little and is back to waking up 2 times during the night. I have a theory that as she is growing she is using more calories but not really taking enough in with just the milk so this week we are going to try a little bit of real food and see how that goes.

As far as other advances that she has made...she has great head control, she is rolling over both ways (it is more common when she is mad) she is almost sitting up, and she is chewing on everything. It is amazing because she has never beena drooler but about a week ago the drool started flowing and now all she wants to do is chew on my fingers. Poor thing. I don't feel any teeth yet but I know they are there. We'll see how long it takes them to poke out.

Last but not least for our big news update...Kevin turned 40! August 30 was his birthday. We had some friends over and had a BBQ with some games and lots of drinking. (I think alot of them realized it is alot more difficult to recover at 40!) A few people stayed the night. We got up the next day (some of them more slowly than others) and Kevin went rafting and fishing with some of the boys. All in all I think he had a good time.

I think that is about it for now. I hope everyone is well!

The Meyer's

Good days and bad days.

Laney has had an interesting week. On Monday the poor kid had to go and get her immunizations. Not fun for any kid (or parent for that matter). She got her shots, which actually went fairly well as far as crying fits go. As soon as I picked her up she was fine. The trouble came when she had to have a PKU test done. This is the test they do in the hospital when babies are born. They poke their heel and fill in a bunch of circles on a special piece of paper. Well, she had to have her 3rd one done! They have to do it 90 days after her last blood transfusion. This will check for a wide range of metabolic and blood disorders. I am glad they do it, especially after all the blood transfusions she had. But, SCREAM, my gosh this kid found her lungs! Poor thing. I felt terrible, like I am sure every parent does. To top it off she was a little dehydrated. We took her to pick huckelberries this weekend and it was a little warm, not to mention it has been over 100 in Boise for the last week or so. So, thank god that is over! That was her rough day this week!

Today however, she had another hearing screen. Third time is the charm, right? It is! She passed. She still has a little fluid in her left ear but it had decreased and they wanted to see how she would respond. She did great! She passed on every tone. We probably will have to follow up with an ENT (ear, nose, and throat) doctor to make sure the fluid clears soon. Apparently, the audiologist says if it stays in there too long it can start to disintigrate the bones in her middle ear. I am assuming that God put them there for a reason and we don't want them to disintigrate so we will be looking into that and put a tube in if necessary. Whew...glad that is over.

Tomorrow is the NICU BBQ. Every year the NICU has a "graduation" BBQ for all their patients. Not just the ones in the last year but for as long as the families want to come. We are very excited to go see not only other families that we met but her nurses and doctors as well. I know as a nurse it would be neat to see how my patients progress as they grow. This is a great opportunity for them and us. I will let you know how it goes and get some pictures.

I hope everyone is doing well. We are doing great! We love hearing from you all, so thank you!

The Meyer's

What are these??

We have been waiting and waiting. It has finally happened, Laney has discovered her hands! Today she was highly offended that these fancy new things on the ends of her arms would hit her in the face. One second she is facinated by the site of her hands and the next she had a cranky look on her face because her new friends had smacked her in the face. I couldn't help but laugh at her. Which then got me a little sideways glance. I love these little milestones. I feel so lucky to have had all this time to spend with her. It makes me anxious to go back to work but I think it will be good for both of us.

A little progress has been made with the bottle. I have started giving her bottles when she wakes up from a nap. I discovered that when she had been awake for a while and got hungry it just didn't work. She was much to aware of what was going on. By giving it to her when she was waking up hungry, she was still out of it enough that you could sneak a bottle in without her knowing. It seems to take 2 oz. before she figures it out and won't take any more. Hey, progress is progress. Right now I will take what I can get. Hopefully over the next couple weeks it keeps getting better. Now if I could just convince her that rice cereal is to be eaten, not worn!

When did bottles become evil????

The newest challenge at the Meyer household is, yep, you guessed it, BOTTLE FEEDING! Not having any other kids, I assumed that bottles are a natural transition. When you boil it all down, you suck and milk comes out. Bottle, breast, doesn't really matter, right? Not with this kid! Anyone out there who has encountered the challenge of switching a breast fed kid to some bottle feedings (not even all feedings, just a few a day) (and not formula, still breast milk) please let me know any trick you used to make taking a bottle less than a national crisis!

What prompted all this bottle feeding stuff you ask? Well, it is back to the real professional world for Angie. Yes, I got a job. I will be working nights on the telemetry unit at St. Lukes. What is telemetry you ask? Basically it is anyone who has a heart monitor on that is not in intensive care. Mostly cardiac and pulmonary patients. I am very excited to put my education to use but a little melencholy about leaving Laney through the night. In order to make the transition easier we wanted to introduce some extra bottle feeding to her now. What were we thinking? The ironic part is that she gets at least 1 bottle every day in order to give her vitamins. Today, absolutely not! We broke into hysterics many times. Every time I put the bottle in her mouth the lower lip came out and this pitiful, tortured cry came out. When I ignored that drama and kept trying the meltdown quickly ensued.

Really, if you have encountered this problem I would love to hear how you solved it without feeling like you were starving the kid to death.

I guess we will get up tomorrow and try, try again! That seems to be basically what parenthood is. Try, try again.

ZZZZZZzzzzzz.........

Things are trucking along in the Meyer house as usual. Kevin is still working an on and off type of schedule, which is great for Laney and I. It makes getting to her doctors appointments and things much easier. Laney is doing great. She is getting stronger every day. She can hold her head on her own about half the time and she is starting to coo, or as we say, she is "using her language skills". She just looks so intent on speaking. She just talks like she has the greatest story to tell. This is mostly in the morning and it sure is fun to interact with her. She has developed some mild colic in the evenings starting about 6pm. By about 8 or 9pm she has tuckered herself out and ends up asleep. I don't have the heart to wake her up and to be totally honest I am just glad at that point that she has stopped fussing. Unfortunatly, this late nap usually turns into a long one and sometimes she doesn't wake up till sometime between 11pm and 1 am. I have to say I am not at my best at this time of night. But she is happy rested and ready to play. We have tried to curb this habit by trying to keep her awake and not playing with her when she wakes up late. We just try to put her back to sleep. This usually results in the waking up every 2 hours because we are hungry! Ugh! I still have faith we can turn her clock so she goes to bed later but no success yet.

For the 4th of July my mom and stepdad came to visit and we had a BBQ with some friends. Kevin and my mom and stepdad climbed up on the roof to watch the fireworks that they had downtown. Laney and I sacked out in the living room. I was a little concerned because the neighbors had their own fireworks but she never even flinched. One good thing that came from her being in the NICU for so long, she is tolerant of noise!

Other than that we do tummy time and play most of the day. I don't seem to get a whole lot done, but, I have to say, I don't really worry about it much. We just have fun hanging out with her for now. I know the day will come soon when I will have to go back to work so for now we are enjoying every minute!

How did Newton miss this?

I have been battling with a question for a few weeks now. I keep expecting that the answer will just fall from the sky and smack me in the face and it will all make sense. It's not happening so I will send this out to all the parents out there. Why does baby poop defy gravity? There is a big old diaper there that covers a large area but for some reason baby poop defies gravity and goes right up the back. This doesn't seem like the logical option even if the diaper is full. You would think it would work WITH gravity and go down or even at worst out the side of the diaper. Nope. Not this kid. Straight out and up the back. I think Newton with all his theories on gravity must not have had children.
Laney is doing great. The physical therapist is going to be here in about an hour to weigh her. best we can guess she is getting close to 10 pounds! I know...double digits! She is growing so fast. I am guessing this would explain why she has been wanting to eat every hour and a half lately. She is sleeping better. We get up between 2 and 3 and then between 5 and 6 but at that point I feed her and dad takes her and they get to hang out while mom takes 1 more nap.
She still has not passed her hearing screen yet. We are absolutely convinced that she hears fine but we are waiting for some fluid in her ears to clear up before she is tested again. We will know again in a couple weeks.
Our last great endeavour was a BBQ for her. We wanted to thank as many of our friends and family as we could get together. We ended up with about 70 people. Thank god for the big back yard! It was a great time. Laney was exhausted and it took her a day or two to get back on track but she did great. For all of you that weren't here we want to thank you for all of your prayers and happy thoughts sent our way. All of that was used up and now we have a beautiful and happy little girl that is growing like a weed! I need to get moving for the day but if anyone figures out how baby poop has the power to defy gravity I would be very interested to know.

Angie

The Meyer Lemon

We truly are slacking at getting updates out, for that we apologize. Laney is doing great! Last Thursday she weighed in at 7 lbs. 9 oz. She is gaining about half a pound a week. Medically she is healthy as a horse but still is having some complications. Our pediatric orthopedist abandon the hope of having the pavlik harness (torture device) work at putting her hip back into socket. It was deceiving the last week. It would pop in and out of socket fairly easily so we were very optimistic it would work but when we had our check up it was obvious that it was not working. So the next step is surgery in September and she will have to be in a full cast from the waist down for 12 weeks. Uggg. Can't say we are very excited about that but for now we have a normal baby girl with out stuff attached to her and that is an exciting change. I guess we will enjoy it while we can and deal with the rest when it gets here.

The othere check up we had was for her hearing. She failed her hearing test in one of her ears before we left the hospital. Because of that and the particular antibiotics she was on in the hospital we had to do a follow up hearing screen. Well that didn't go so well either. They ask you to bring the kids in tired and hungry so you can feed them and they fall asleep for the test. Sounds like a good idea right? Well not only would she not fall asleep because she was over tired by the time I took her in, but she ended up doing the test naked because of some violent poop that drenched both of us. Because of the electrodes on her head I couldn't put another outfit on her! So we spent hours naked and pooped! She did finally fall asleep but then proceeded to fail the test in both ears this time. "How does this happen?" you might ask yourself. Apparently she has a little fluid in her middle ear on both ears. No infection, just some fluid. We are glad there is no infection but we are frustrated with the fluid. So they tell us we need to go see her pediatrician. Off we go to her pediatrician who needs to see the fluid. We go to his office and say "she failed her hearing screen. They say she has some uninfected fluid in her middle ear." He says," Let me take a look. Yup she has some uninfected fluid in her middle ear." Thanks for stopping by. Pay your money on the way out the door. Nothing they can do. Wait. Come back and see me in a month.

You all know we love Laney more than anything in the world but Kevin and I have started joking that she is out little lemon. Kinda like when you buy a car and one thing after the other goes wrong with it. Thats Laney. She is our little lemon. I guess you could call her our "Meyer Lemon." I am not sure what we will do with our free time when we don't have to go to doctors all the time but we are grateful that she is with us and we have to go to the doctor at all.

She is sleeping better. For a while we were on an every 2 hour feeding schedule. Gotta love the growth spurts! Now she is only getting up about 1-2 times every night. (depending on when I finally get up for the day.

Other than that we are working on her room. I know. She is 4 months old and we are just painting her room. A little tragic, I know, but our justification is that she doesn't sleep in there anyway. I will get some pictures when we are done.

I hope this finds you all doing well and enjoying your summer! I know we are.

The Meyer's

There's no place like home...

We first want to apologize for such a long gap in our posting. It has taken us a while to get settled in at home. Lots of doctors appointments and as most of you know not much sleep. She may be 3 months old but was due two weeks ago and is therefore acting just like a newborn. She seems to be settling into a sleeping and awake time rhythm. Not necessarily a schedule but she is letting me sleep for chunks of time at night now. She tends to give her dad more of a hard time and he usually ends up holding her most of his shift.

We have not been doing much outside the house. She has a tough time in her stroller and we end up carrying her when we go for walks so we are waiting till she gets a little stronger. We did take her to a friends house this weekend for dinner. She did great. She didn't sleep but she quietly looked around the whole time we were there. She slept great that night! We also had some pictures taken on Sunday. I don't have them yet but when I do I will be sure to post some. There is nothing like a cute naked baby picture to bring a smile to your face.

Medically she is doing well. Tomorrow we go back to the orthopedic doctor to have her hip checked again. The doctor was very encouraged last week. He was able to actually put the hip back in socket. It wouldn't stay there but the fact that he could even get it in was a great improvement. She tolerates her harness ok. I think it makes her crankier than she normally would be but overall I don't think she is greatly affected. Her physical therapist is still coming weekly. She weighed her yesterday and she is 6 1/2 pounds! She is averaging a little over an ounce a day! We were excited about that! Everyone still comments on how small she is but we are starting to think she is huge! 1 more pound and she will triple her birth weight!

We may be tired and busy (although by the end of the day we wonder what we did all day) we are mostly just enjoying having Laney home with us. The days are going by fast and we are trying not to take any of them for granted. Time for us to take a nap and get up in a few hours and do it all over again!

The Meyers

Free at last, free at last...

Last Friday, May 8, at 3pm, we finally stole Laney out of the NICU and got her home! Unbelievable. We've been smiling ever since, and haven't looked back. Her last antibiotic dose was Thursday night, so they told us that if she passed her car seat test, we could probably go home the following day. Apparently some kids can't sit in a car seat for 90 minutes coming straight out of NICU. Laney tried her car seat study on Thursday and didn't quite pass, but on Friday morning we suctioned and got the bugars out of her nose and she passed with flying colors! She also had a hip ultrasound to see if she had hip displaysia which is common in babies that had low or no amniotic fluid. The ultrasound revealed that her left hip is dislocated. We are taking her to see a pediatric orthopedic doctor tomorrow and he will check her out and probably put her in a brace, and if that doesn't fix it, she may need surgery at some point. But if that is all she comes away with after all she has been through, we will truly have been very lucky. Getting Laney home on Friday and being able to wake up at home, on Sunday - Mother's Day - was such a huge treat!

Since getting her home, Angie and I haven't done much except feed Laney and hang out. Something we haven't been able to do for a long time. Angie took Laney to her pediatrician yesterday, and he gave her the once over, plus her 2 month immunization shots (3 of them). She didn't like that much. Home health comes today for physical therapy (she still has a little bit of range-of-motion issues in her arms and legs). I'll probably not work much in the next couple weeks until we get settled in well at home. Angie will be studying when she can in order to pass her nursing board exam sometime in the next6 weeks.

So I guess that's the end to this portion of our adventures with Laney. Now the fun begins. But looking back on it, the bedrest, the time in NICU, it wasn't all that bad since the outcome was good. That's all we were ever worried about, and now that the prognosis is looking positive, the whole experience can't feel negative. There are many things we won't know about Laney's health for a long time, like how fully her lungs will develop or what issues might come up, such as asthma. Or how well her neurological development will progress. But most of the symptoms that usually lead to long term problems never materialized in Laney, so we have confidence that she will be completely healthy with no long term issues. Right now we're not worrying about those sorts of things. Instead, we worry about how much she is eating and growing, how to keep her from getting sick, and all the other normal things parents worry about in a newborn. We are sure to just stop and enjoy her too. She is 11 weeks old now, but her due date is tomorrow, so really, she is a newborn. She weighs 5 and 1/2 pounds, has hazel eyes, a little bit of hair, and looks more like her mom than her dad. (Depends on who you ask) Like all parents, we are very proud of her, but after what she has been through, we know she's a fighter too. Guess we better get ready because a year or two from now - no doubt we will have our hands full.
Stay tuned for more adventures with our amazing little miracle!

The Meyer Family