1st birthday countdown - devin's 1st month...

i decided to take a great idea from a fellow blogger mama i found through michelle over at plus one. her name is emily and she has a darling, beautiful daughter named poppy who recently hit the big 1. her blog is called last train to pooksville. the link i provided starts you off at her first countdown post. there are 12 days left until devin turns one and what i will be doing each day is creating a post (with pictures of course) describing exactly what was going on in each month of devin's life starting with his first month. on the 12th day i will be making his birthday post! i so enjoyed knowing that emily would be pretty much forced to grace us with her blogger presence each and every night leading up to poppy's big day and loved getting to watch poppy grow all over again. so here goes...

devin's first month...
jue 23rd 2009 was the day devin was born. i had been in the hospital on the high risk floor for the last almost 5 weeks. i had a very difficult scary pregnancy. i started having bleeding at 5 weeks, just one week after i found out i was pregnant. for the first 20 weeks of my pregnancy i thought i was having a miscarriage pretty much every day. at 22 weeks i had yet another very heavy bleed and went to have my 20th or so ultrasound to make sure things with the baby still looked ok. they always had despite the scary unexplained bleeding. this time, things were not ok. i had no amniotic fluid. my water had broken at 22 weeks 6 days and i was admitted to the hospital. i was told i would stay there until i had my baby and the chances were that would be very soon. drs. gave me a less than 10% chance i would ever bring my son home alive. it was the most devastating day of my life. i was in complete agony over the aspect that my perfect baby could die and most likely would. drs. said the most a woman could go with 0 amniotic fluid is about 2 weeks and of course that still didn't give me much of a chance. fabian and i were asked to make a decision about whether or not we would want our son resuscitated if he came at some point in the 23 week mark because this was the "grey area". they would take life saving measures but they didn't recommend it. it was up to us.i refused to make that decision and fabian stuck by me. he told me things would be ok. our baby was strong and he would be just fine. i really wanted to believe him but man was it hard when every dr. and most nurses were preparing for the worst.

i laid in a hospital bed only getting up to use the lovely "bedside commode". i drank gallons of water a day and started researching preemies and pprom (preterm premature rupture of membranes). kanalen.org was a wonderful resource and taught me that there was real hope in a situation like ours. also, i started stalking the preemie parenting board on babycenter.com.

i started having contractions june 22nd overnight. the dr. checked me in the morning and it was official... i would be having a c-section today, at 25 weeks 6 days gestation. my baby was estimated to weigh 2 lbs. 3 oz and i was scared to death. he arrived at 10:51 am on june 23rd 2009. my birth story is actually awful, its here if you feel like reading it. this day began our NICU journey.

he weighed 2 lbs. 6oz and was 13.5 inches long. he was very sick for the first few days. he needed to be on the oscillating jet vent and his blood pressure was dangerously low. they had him on every possible medication to bring his blood pressure up to normal. nothin seemed to be working. we were told once agian we might lose our son. the first days were dreadful. it was such a blur. i was so scared and so happy and so sad all at the same time. fabian was very strong and of course remained positive the whole time. devin had jaundice and needed to be under the bili lights for quite some time. it seemed he was under those lights for months, but it was only a few weeks.

we had some wonderful nurses taking care of  devin for the first few days and i was able to interact with him on the very first day and hold him on his 3rd day. i started pumping breast milk about 20 hours after he was born and as his condition improved over the next few days and weeks, small amounts were finally introduced through his feeding tube.

first picture of the three of us together...

my first time holding him (and kissing him)...

things were very stressful. he was doing ok, but new things popped up each day. bad news, then good news, then worse news and so on. it was the most difficult time of our lives! i started doing kangaroo care after a week or so and it was wonderful. most of his nurses were great and allowed us to be very hands on. we bathed him, changed his diaper and held him alot.

the last week of his first month he was allowed to wear a real outfit! this is the first really happy picture of me, i was so glad to see him in a real baby outfit! i was so proud! the next day i was able to dress him myself! i hated that i had to be "allowed" to do things, but thats preemie momhood in the beginning. its hard, but oh so worth the wait! im a big fan of milestones and being mama to a preemie gave me waaaay more milestones to celebrate! devin hit so many milestones in his first month! coming off all blood pressure meds, coming off the vent, coming off c-pap, being held for the first time, first feeding, first bath, first time wearing clothes, first time taking a pacifier, first holiday (4th of july), and just plain surviving- not only surviving, but kicking ass at surviving were some milestones crossed in his first month. he had alot more to go, but we had made it a month and things were looking up. he was out of the woods... the dark scary part of the woods at least and things were becoming more routine and relaxed, well, relaxed isn't the right word, i guess things were just a tiny bit less horrible by the end of the month. each day, got more and more exciting as i slowly started to realize i had way more than a 10% of taking this amazing baby home after all.

a year ago today...

i found out i was pregnant! i cant believe a year has gone by. we had absolutley no idea what we were in for! i took a pregnancy test at 6:00 in the morning. i just knew i was pregnant. i had a feeling and felt that way for a couple weeks already. i was so excited i had to wake fabian up (on a sunday). we were so happy and he insisted we tell all of his family. i called my mom first and he called his dad and all of his brothers and sisters. im sure evryone thought we were crazy for telling them so soon, but we were so excited and couldnt help it.

just a week later would be the first of many heart sinking times we would go to the emergency room because of unexplained bleeding. pretty much from that time on i would be in constant fear of loosing my baby. but through all the worries and all the drs. telling me things were not going well, i  still remembered the feeling i had when i saw that extra line on the pregnancy test, it was a calm, happy feeling and i knew i would meet my baby and he or she would be just fine. so many times i closed my eyes and thought about that moment of clarity. i was right!

first entry!

ill give a brief history for readers who dont know us. my name is gretchen and im married to mny husband of almost a year (nov.28th) fabian. we have been together for 6 years and have a beautiful son named devin luke.

devin was born on june 23rd 2009, but wasnt expected until september 24th 2009! he came 3 months early and had a pretty rough start in life. this blog is basically for friends and family who dont get to see devin much because he needs to stay inside away from most people until the spring when flu/rsv season is over. because he was born so early he is unfortunatley at high risk for catching harmful viruses like rsv (i'll explain this more in future posts) that could basically land him back in the hospital.



while i was pregnant i had alot of complications (mailnly random bleeding for no apparant reason). when i was only 22 weeks pregnant i was admitted to the hospital because my water had broken and was told i would lose my son because i would most likely deliver within 48 hours. the drs. asked fabian and i to make a "desicion" about whether or not we would want our baby to be ressusitated or would we want to just "let him go". well we refused to make that decision and 5 weeks later i was still pregnant.

that 5 weeks gave devin his chance at life, and hes here and healthy today. he was born weighing only 2 lbs. 6oz and 13.5" long. he spent 11 weeks and 1 day in the nicu at northside hospital in atlanta. and came home 2 weeks before his due date. he has been home with us since 9/9/09 and we couldnt be happier!

devin is actually 21 weeks old today or 5 months on the 23rd! i cant believe hes been here that long! his adjusted age is almost 2 months. that means it will be 2 months from his due date on the 24th of november. so hes just like a 2 month old right now, not like a 5 month old. sometimes that concept is confusing for people but thats just the way it is. his pediatritian says hes developmentally more like a 3 month old and his size is more alng that line also so thats a VERY GOOD THING!
right now devin smiles socially only a couple times a day which is the cutest thing ever, and hes getting really good at holding his own head up. we recently got him a bumbo seat and he sits in it so well!

ill put soome pis up of his first couple weeks along with more recent ones to compare how far this little boy has come. its amazing! as of today he weighs 12lbs. 8 oz and is 23 inches long!