Three Weeks!

Wow... Three weeks I have been hanging out here!  Have I even been on a three week vacation (wondering as I stare at my tropical calendar taped on the laminated closet door)?  The calendar has three weeks of days x'ed off in bold purple.  I love seeing those x's as each day is an accomplishment, another day Zoe has to thrive.  At the same time I also think of all the things I am missing, breathing the fresh air, taking a walk, working on the nursery, cooking, playing with Luna... the daily life.  One day at a time... I have come this far and I can do this.

My daily routine is settling around here.  Wake up, nurse comes in, asks me ridiculous questions, take meds, temp, blood pressure, monitor, eat breakfast, stare out the window, read, internet, stare out the window, eat lunch, get doctor visit, take meds, stare out the window, wait for B to visit, nurse shift change, repeat same ridiculous questions, take meds, temp, blood pressure, check out Zoe's heart beat tone, eat dinner, watch sky darken, flip through the whole 20 channels with B, mope when B leaves, read book, take meds... fall asleep hopefully... wake up at 2am to take meds, drift off to one eye open sleep, wake up at 6 am to take meds... repeat.  (Thankfully my wonderful doctor has stopped my every four hour blood pressure and temping through out the night, that was just a huge annoyance.  By the time the nurse is done I would be pretty awake.)

Some days are accompanied by biophysical ultrasounds when Zoe misbehaves, just to add some excitement around here.  I have become pretty keen on the morning monitoring. If I am left on more then thirty minutes something is up and I become suspicious.  I have notice the decelerations and now give Zoe a nice little finger prod to snap her out of it.  Seems to work and saves me the stress of another biophysical ultrasound. So far she has scored 8 out of 8 on the three test we had.   However, we almost failed the breathing test on Monday.  Someone didn't want to play and would only take sporadic practice breaths during the 30 minute allowance.  The tech went two minutes over and Zoe did it, thank goodness!  Like I said, she is a stubborn little girl already.

I have finally managed to read since about mid last week.  In that time I have absorbed my self into two books.  The first book was an ease back into the reading world.  Hollywood Girls Club by Maggie Mar, a fun, easy, mindless read.  Thank you LC for lending it to me.  My second adventure was Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris.  I loved this book!  The humor and random storytelling is just my style.  I highly suggest it to all you readers out there.  Thank you TS for bringing that to me.  My next two books will be Bossypants by Tina Fey and Born to Run by Christopher McDougall.  Thank you MN for bringing those to me, I wish we could have visited.

Hmm, what else have I passed time with.  A bit of knitting, ok one baby bootie after three very frustrating attempts.  This poor little bootie is botched though.   I accidentally cut a thread and it is going to unravel.  I will try this again very soon when my patience up for it as it is lots of counting on very little needles.  There are plans of starting a baby blanket as well, this is easy mindless knitting for me.  I am obsessing over what yarn I want, but I do know I will be doing the Big Bad Baby Blanket from Stitch n Bitch.  It is so hard to not touch and explore the yarns in a pretty yarn shop.  FYI, if you want to learn how to knit this book is the best.  I am a proud self learned knitter.

Oh how could I forget?!?!  We got a MacBook Pro!  Here I am happily typing away and probably the reasoning for my ramblings.  Thanks CC for working out this deal, I am so pleased.  My iPad was fine here, but nothing like a fantastic laptop to make wasting internet time so much more pleasurable.  My iPhone is fantastic, but of course just too small at times.  The only frustrating thing is this hospital's wifi, it doesn't like my email boxes.  ho hum.

Now a Zoe progress update!  Monday was the start of 29 weeks and also my OB ultrasound for growth and all that fun stuff.  Zoe is 3 pounds and her size is measuring just a head of 29 weeks.  She has really long legs and hates to be bothered like this.  She has also settled into a Frank Breech, her butt is down and her legs are straight up to her head.  How can she possibly be comfortable?  Move it Zoe!

Next week we will be meeting with our "team" to design a course of action plan or Mission Zoe as I prefer to call it.  This team will include our doctor, fetal cardiologist, neonatologist, and surgeons... I am sure I am leaving someone out.  We will begin to devise the plan as well as give B and I clearer picture of whats to come.  I do know that Zoe's big debut will be a storm of epic proportions of which I doubt we are prepared for.  So the next few days will be comprised of composing a list of questions.  Where to even begin?

Zoe needs to reach 5 pounds at the minimum by birth in order to go to Children's Hospital of Los Angeles.  We want so desperately for Dr. Starnes to perform her three surgeries.  If Zoe decides to debut early (as expected) then she will be sent down to Rady Hospital of San Deigo.  Our fetal cardiologist is pushing for the Norwood Hybrid if she is a preemie and that is where we need to go. (I would post a link, but I have yet to find current info on this procedure.) I am sure these doctors are wonderful and fully capable, but we had comforted ourselves with the path of CHLA.  Hopefully she will grow a half pound each week and put us closer to CHLA.  

We are also setting up a blood drive for Zoe either at CHLA or Radys, which ever hospital we end up.  Friends and family can donate blood shortly after Zoe's birth for her surgery.  It doesn't matter the blood type as they tend to use platelets.  I will talk more about this in the future. 

More awesome news around here is that my cervix is measuring 2 to 2.5!  The cerclage is working!  I went from giving birth to Dylan to having a cervix again.  I am a medical miracle according to our doctor and he reminds me that each day is a blessing.  No one expected us to make this far, I love to prove them all wrong and so do they. All fingers are crossed that this trend continues to move forward.  4.5 weeks and I have meet my goal of 35 weeks.

My sister and dear friends are also planning our baby celebration... ok a baby shower.  It will be held here at St. Josephs in the rose garden May 29th.  It's not a typical baby shower, but more of a get together for all friends and family to celebrate what we have over come so far.  It will be nice for both B and I to see all everyone that can attend.  It really has been a long time.  We haven't seen the majority since everything started happening back in February.  I don't even know if everyone is aware of what all has happened.

At the same time this celebration is hard, I fear my tears that day.  We should be celebrating two babies, Dylan and Zoe.  Push forward with hope we must while honoring our loss.  I am trying to come up with some way to acknowledge Dylan without making others uncomfortable.  Maybe we should plan another butterfly release as we did at our wedding... I just have the need to do something.  I will have to think on this.

Monday Dylan was cremated.  I tried to put it out of my mind, but it was tough.  Both B and I hated knowing that he was there for so long... alone.  He will be coming home shortly.  So unbearably sad.  Do you know how hard it is to mourn one baby and have hope for another?  It can be very conflicting at times.  I will leave it at that.

So there are my ramblings for the day and I will end it on a positive note.  Three successful weeks in the hospital and 29 weeks and two days pregnant.  Not bad for how we ended up here.  

Thank you to LC for visiting me Tuesday morning, I really enjoyed your company as always.  Thank you YM for visiting and bringing me a delicious lunch today.  I really appreciate it, more then you will ever know.

Random thought, maybe I should take an online writing class to stop hurting your eyes with my awful grammar and such :)