Peacefully in her sleep at 1258am, she remembered her keys for the gate.

Remember that we love you and we did what we could to make your wishes come true.

I'll see you in my dreams.

Here is my little pity party... I'm absolutely certain that one of my other turns on this planet have to have been better than this turn. People keep telling me that we don't get more on our plates than we can handle... but damnit, I am not sure I can handle more, but more is coming.

Its been a peaceful week without him.

My father and I have been communicating, however, he has completely cracked and it would appear it is a hugely adverse side effect of two meds he is on that the same doctor prescribed. Why on earth a doctor would prescribe amitriptolyne _and_ lithium to the same patient knowing that he has been prescribing lithium for 20 yrs to said patient and KNOWING the side effects when they are combined causes schitzophrenic episodes is beyond me. My sister managed to get dad to go the hospital today for evaluation and hopefully it is a positive outcome.
When he is telling me he can hear the earth move and that he is hearing voices, we've got issues.

Add to this, this is it for Granny. She has pneumonia, and we're not intervening. The doctor is making house calls twice a day and has told Dee its a matter of hours/days. We've agreed on Dee's idea of no funeral despite Granny having already paid for it and we are going to have a Celebration of Life on her birthday at Swiss Chalet (her favourite restaurant) with one cheque and we're taking a taxi home. (All the things she would insist on.)

Presleigh is growing like a weed. We had an echo today as there was a possibility there was a murmur, but it turns out its just "turbulence" from the heart pumping blood so fast. YAY! We're up to 1680 grams today and up to 40.5 cms. She has been taking a bottle for some of her feeds the past couple of days but we're only going by her plans - if she doesn't want it or to finish it, we're not forcing the issue. 34 weeks and 2 days... we're on a roll :-) We had a bath today too, our first. Lets just say I got fairly soaked.

All in all its been a crazy but good week.

We're now at 1510 grams, and 16inches even. YAY! We're getting about 2 hrs of alert time in the morning and about the same in the evenings!
Rach read all her books that she brough to the hospital and Presleigh stayed awake thru all of them.

Things are going well in the Special Care Nursery. The nurses are fantastic and its been awesome. They've pretty much let me do everything and I can't quite get used to putting the gavage tube down her nose yet but otherwise, I do everything else when I'm there.

We're finally doing number 2s on our own without suppositories! Yay! And we're up to nearly an ounce of formula every 2 hrs! Go Presleigh!

Thank yous to our friends who have visited and sent gifts. I can't wait to use all of these things.

Presleigh has moved from the NICU to Special Care, which is a huge step. She's completely breathing on her own with no support and only has an iv with amino acids and fats and the rest are just monitor wires :-) YAY!

She is back to almost birth weight, 1327 grams last night and she's got serious attitude :-)

I'm still commuting every day but this exhausted bunny is going to bed....

Thats the long n short of it...

While I was in the recovery room, mom made the obligatory calls, I asked her to just let Devin know. He was prepared to come then and there, however, my mom told him he wasn't allowed. He wanted to come the next day and told him that I'd call him the next day, but it was neccessary for him to just be patient. She asked him to call his mom for her to save her the calls/quarters and he got pissy and hung up on her.

My step sister Adena called around 2am and they had told her as soon as I could gather my marbles I'd call her. I called her around 0530 and she came to see me as soon as she was finished work. My first real visit with Presleigh was at around 0900 with Adena. I was still fairly fuzzy brained but it was awesome to have family there instantly.

Presleigh required 80% support from oxygen when she arrived in the NICU in the first few hours and by 0600 she was unintobated with nasal prongs for support, only requiring about 21-25% assistance, feeding tubes and wires and monitors which was pretty scary at first. I had received steroids while I was at Rockyview just in case, and they helped her immensely. I started journalling things that morning because everytime I was visiting there was something new to know and I couldn't process everything so fast so I have maintained the journal with every visit so that when I get asked questions, I can answer without saying "Shit, can't remember" all the time.
So from my little journal we had the time lines of the intobation switch and we also have some quick quirks and traits.....
- tonnes of curly hair
- Devin's ears and chin but my nose thankfully
- she is O positive blood type
- no birthmarks that we can see at this time
- despises, really despises being wet but hates being changed even more
- does not like being disturbed - very Devin'ish - when she is sleeping, if you move her, change her tubing etc, she throws a huge temper tantrum about it and it takes a few minutes to calm her down.

She had to be put under the bili lights on Friday as she was very bruised from being forced into this world and she was slightly jaundiced. So she had some ultracool shades on. When I went to bed Friday night, she was laying on her back, starkers, under the lights with her shades on, one arm thrown over her head getting a tan. I kept expecting a pool boy to show up with a tall cool one by the expression on her face. :-)

She has had several visitors including a couple from Devin, however, he does have to go with me in to the NICU as only I can escort people in. He has already chosen alcohol over his daughter and its not boding well for him. The more impatient he gets with me (and everyone else!), the more I reduce the flow of information. He keeps a journal of baby information about his nephews and friend's babies, so he started one for Presleigh. I had originally been filling in his blanks for him from the first day since I have to be fair, he wasn't allowed in. However, his behaviour on Friday and Saturday have stopped that flow.

His mother on the other hand, is going to lose more than the flow of information if she says one more negative derogatory thing to me.
When she came to visit with Devin on Thurs evening, the first thing out of her mouth when we were at the isolette was "This is going to be my only baby girl granddaughter, I am very upset that you didn't call me when she was born." I said "Carol, have you any idea what happened on Wed night and how crazy it was?" "Your mother could have done it." and I tried to reply that we had asked Devin to because of not having easy phone access, however, she says "Doesn't matter it is in the past, don't worry." Well if it was in the past, then why the fuck bring it up!?! Then we were back in the waiting room with Greg, mom and Devin, Dev and I were talking and I was teasing him about the bet we had made. He had bet me $20 I'd go to term and told him to ante up. I was teasing him, because I knew he couldn't. His mom turns to me and says "You would have gone to term if you had stayed on bed rest instead of galavanting across the countryside."
I can't believe someone would say something like that to the mother of a newborn NICU baby. I had let it go in one ear and out the other until mom brought it up later. I will be saying something when I'm not so emotional but it was such a low class remark and I refuse to allow someone to blame me for something I didn't do. I did everything I was supposed to, had to, needed to, to protect this baby and I will continue to protect her from comments and behaviour like that.

Friday night in the middle of the night, they moved me from my room up to a unit with moms that didnt have their babies with them as they needed my post partum bed. When I walked to this new ward, I thought I was walking into a 1960s sanitorium. It was peach melba hell. There was this girl sitting on a chair at the payphone with her foot up, snapping gum and I was waiting for her to start smoking... the walls were peach, the curtains looked like tea towels my grandma had in the 60s, my shower flooded, and I couldn't hear the babies. My sanity on being on the post partum unit was I could hear them. Just because I didn't have Presleigh with me didn't mean I didn't want to hear them... I NEEDED to hear them. So I bawled my face off for awhile and then went and sat with Presleigh until 2am to get my sanity back. I feel asleep in a drug induced haze and woke up at 830 to begin my whirlwind again.

We had so many visitors on Thursday and it was fantastic.
So today, we are going to spend the day at the hospital. Rach is going to take some story books and sit and read to Presleigh since they can't cuddle just yet, and I will get some time with my girls.

I'm sure that I have more to add to the notes of these past few days and they'll appear in later posts, however this has gotten long and my butt is getting numb.

I guess I have a longer post than I originally anticipated....

Jan 30 1130am - I am at my now weekly ultrasound and things don't look good for baby and I am being rushed to Rockyview General Hospital from my ultrasound. By 330pm, the assessment was that we were going to monitor for the next day or so and another ultrasound would be scheduled for Wed Feb 1 in the early am to see if there were any changes.
What didn't look good you ask? The placenta and umbilical cord were not performing and and she had not grown in a week. Her movements had gotten less intense and during the ultrasound she did not move at all.
On Wed Feb 1 at 845am, the ultrasound showed movement, however, the issues with the cord and placenta were still there. At 1145am it was decided I was being transferred to Foothills Medical Centre for immediate delivery as Foothills has the best centre in southern Alberta for babies less than 32 weeks in gestation. After some serious futzing around with getting an ambulance, I was transported there and arrived at 130pm under lights and sirens. After a few hours on constant monitoring the decision was made at 6pm for a c-section and we were getting a baby tonight. To keep the mood light for my own sanity, I did ask for a tummy tuck and some liposuction while they were in there. Dr Birch (the OB) said I wasn't asking for much. ;-)

At 814pm on Feb 1, Presleigh Helen Lenore arrived into this crazy place, weight 2.97 lbs (1340 grams) and 15 1/4 inches long with tonnes of curly hair.

She was immediately intobated and whisked off to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). After what seemed like an eternity, I was finally able to see her from a distance but I was reassured she was alright and doing remarkable.

Under a heavy epidural with clot stockings on, a catheter, IV pole, I was whisked off to my room to begin my own recovery. My mom was with me the entire time and was able to ensure that Presleigh was in good hands for me before she went home to sleep after having been at my side for almost 12 hrs.
During the time that they were stitching me up and putting my now very tender innerds back in, I did ask if they were working on the tummy tuck and lipo, but apparently Dr Birch forgot to pass on that message.

In order to get to see Presleigh, there were alot of goals that I had to meet so I started wheeling and dealing with the nurses as soon as possible. First was to get the horribly awful evil clot stockings off. I wanted to sleep, they wanted me to sleep but I couldn't because every 60 fucking seconds these damn stockings would inflate and then deflate and I was JUST drifting off and they'd start to inflate and I'd body zot and start to literally vibrate. So to get them off, the deal was I had to do a lap around the unit. I agreed. Wobbly legged, fluffy headed and all we did a lap. I got rid of the stockings. Next order of business was to ditch the catheter - "You have to void 250ml for me or it goes back in" "Here's 350" So out it stayed. Next was the IV - that had to wait til 12 hrs after her birth but I could suck it up for that long and take the silly pole with me if it meant I could see her. So off we went at 430am to the NICU so I could touch and see my baby.
By the time I got there, they had taken out the intobation tube and she was using just nasal prongs for oxygen and she had pinked up and was doing 1000% better than anyone had anticipated. I wasn't allowed to stay long, but I got to touch her and at least give her a kiss from my fingers before I was wheeled away in my chariot back to my room on orders to sleep.

I will blog days 1 thru 4 tomorrow but I wanted to keep everyone in the loop and updated. I was discharged today (Saturday) and came home this evening after spending the day with Presleigh and I will continue to commute between home and hospital... but we are all ok and she is doing leaps and bounds and she's definately a fighter against the odds.