and Again

We are back home! Unfortunately, we head back up to Salt Lake in a few days to get trained on inserting Ada's contact lens, but we're back home, so we're not worrying about it right now. Instead, Ada has been experiencing the world.
She had her first visit to an aquarium with her cousin Ellie

went to her first parade -Happy Pioneer Day!
took her first walk in the new carrier
and spent some time hanging out on Dad's back
But her favorite time, by far, was when we stopped on Boulder Mountain on our way home to take a feeding/diaper changing break. We looked at flowers and trees and felt the cool breeze and even a few raindrops, but when we set her on the back seat of the car and let her air out a little before we fastened her diaper back up, she had the perfect amount of sun on her and she was in heaven. In. Heaven.

Gypsy Kid makes it home again.

After another round of driving, different grandparents houses, doctor visits, shopping and everything else we finally made it home again. And someone is exhausted...

It has only been ten days or so since our last post but it feels like it has been a month. I (Bryan) never anticipated time going so quickly now that Ada is here. I thought the days might be long and tedious. Instead, I've been amazed by how occupied we have both been by just attending to the simple needs and moods of one little person and enjoying her company. She keeps it interesting by gaining more control of herself everyday, smiling, learning to go from a chortle to a demonesque scream in milliseconds and the nonstop diaper derby. She continues to endure social events and greetings with class and charm. In this photo she is somehow tolerating Uncle Jamie.

Her surgery last week went well. We had a lot of anxiety, not so much about the procedure, but about how she would tolerate the pre-op fasting and subsequent hospital stay. Ada was a tough girl. She obediently took her binky pre-op when she was probably starving and survived all the initial check-in stuff. She was under anesthesia during the extraction so we all had a break for about two hours. Post-surgery she was immediately taken out of the anesthesia, but they had warned us it may still take several hours for her to re-orient herself and start eating and pooping normally. But, we didn't have to wait long before the nurses actually came and got Stacy out of the waiting area to feed Ada because she was so hungry and wouldn't take their sugar bottle. She then barraged us with a near constant cycle of feeding and diapers with the tortuous finale of a overnight sleep-strike. We were pretty glad to leave the next morning. Her recovery has gone fine. We give her eye-drops four times a day (dilator+anti-inflammatory+anti-biotics) but no bandaids or patching yet. Any sign of redness and the traces of her incision can no longer be seen. We feel like she is already doing better based on how her gaze and focus have improved. Here are a few battle photos.

Dad getting her ready. Her little gown was pretty cute.

Hangin' tough in post-op.

Chillin' with mom in our 5-star suite (it was a room about 10x12 with sliding glass doors - more like a closet - but the same price as a suite)

Grandpa and robobaby. At one time she was connected to six different monitors. It sure made things fun when she would get upset and set off an alarm and then become even more agitated by the alarm. Luckily, the nurses station was about twenty feet away so it only took five minutes for them to come and fix the monitors.

She has since been back to our pediatrician, cousin Dr. Sarah Connors Petersen, for her two-week check (which was fine - she's is at roughly 50% for height/weight/head) and for her first post-operative check, which was also fine. She has hopefully had the last heel-stick blood collection in her life. We go back to Salt Lake next week for a contact lens fitting and final post-op check. Then the therapy begins...

Overall, it has been a good week. We were able to come home, I have been back to work a little bit, the garden is surviving our absences and the summer thunderstorms have begun! Who's excited?!

Emotional Roller Coaster, Pt. II

Who knew we could love this little one so much? Leaving the hospital, we had a 3 1/2 hour drive up to Salt Lake to spend time with the grandparents while we recovered. It was a pretty surreal, emotional few hours. We finally realized we were entering the real world as Mom and Dad.
We spent the week with family, slowly introducing her to people and getting used to the new challenges and rewards we were experiencing. We visited the pediatrician (Bryan's cousin, Sarah, who is wonderful) for her first check-up. It was here we learned some great news and some not so great news. The good news was that Ada was finally kicking the jaundice. Her bilirubin levels had gone down significantly below dangerous levels! We were elated to hear it- no more bili lights and no more heel pricks (of which she'd already had 7). Sarah was performing all the routine reflex tests, and all were perfect until she got to Ada's eyes. There is a test where light is reflected off of the retina resulting in the "red eye" you see in photographs. Ada didn't have that in her right eye. Sarah wasn't confident in telling us why she couldn't see it, so she referred us to a pediatric ophthalmologist at Primary Childrens Hospital. After a long visit there, we found out that she has a cataract in her right eye. When the doctor told us she needed surgery as soon as possible and years of treatment and therapy, I broke down. After dealing with the jaundice, and everything else seeming perfect, this was the last thing we expected. Since then, we have researched the condition. Because it's not a hereditary form, the chances of a baby having this problem is one in 10,000- so I guess this makes Ada even more special. The whole situation is not as scary as we thought at first- I cannot imagine parents who have to deal with actual life-threatening conditions. We are most worried about her undergoing general anesthesia- the surgery itself is relatively short and the outcome looks good because we caught it early. Post-surgery, we will have to deal with patches and contact lenses until she's about 8 or 9, but it really could be a lot worse. And Ada does this enough we are confident she'll be able to handle it. It's probably going to be much harder for her parents than it is for her.
Anyway, besides this little hiccup, she is the perfect baby. She feeds well, sleeps well and is so fascinating that we don't need any other form of entertainment for a long time to come!
Here are a few more pictures:

Just hanging out with Dad

Practicing ballet

Getting confused by body parts

Wearing the cool new shirt Katie made for her

Emotional Roller Coaster, Pt. I

Ada has brought so much joy into our lives, and it started like this (as remembered by Stacy): I started feeling contractions at about 1 a.m., but they were still pretty far apart, so I just went back to bed and slept between them. At 8 a.m., we decided to drive to Cedar City. Fortunately, I was still able to sleep between the contractions for the 2 1/2 hour drive. When we got to the hospital, I was already dilated 5 cm and things started progressing faster. Because I was trying give birth as natural as possible, my one hope was to labor in the bathtub, which can be amazing pain-relief. As we were filling it, our midwife arrived and told us she didn't think I was progressing fast enough. She wanted to break my water, but I refused, so we compromised and she decided to strip my membranes. In the process, my water was accidentally broken and that's when things really started. Needless to say, I never got to sit in the tub like I wanted. Ada was facing the wrong direction (posterior), so the next two hours were spent trying to turn her- with the midwife's hand on her head, and Bryan pushing my belly in the right direction- PAINFUL. She eventually turned, and it was time for me to start pushing. Because my contractions were so long (most over 2 minutes), Ada was starting to distress a bit. I was swollen from trying to get her to turn, so pushing wasn't as effective as it needed to be. The midwife didn't think we could wait for her to come out on her own, so she called the doctor to come help with the vacuum extractor. They warned me that if it didn't work after a couple of pushes, we would have to go to the operating room for an emergency c-section (which they were already preparing). And that's all it took. After 2 pushes and help from the vacuum, Ada was born at 5:30 p.m. They had people ready to whisk her off for extra care due to the distress- her cord was wrapped around her neck 3 times! But as soon as she came out, she was perfect. Her APGAR scores were as high as they get, Bryan cut the cord and she was immediately on my chest. I couldn't believe it was finally over and she was healthy and beautiful. At the time, I wasn't sure I would do it over again without medication, but I realize now how much I was able to experience. And I couldn't have done it without Bryan. He was as tired as I was after me hanging on him, crushing his hands over and over again and holding me in various positions. But in the end, it was all worth it.

Leaving the hospital