Callie's Debut

I thought I would share how Callie made her entrance into the world since I started updating the blog 4 months after she was born. So there have been no pictures of her arrival, coming home, trip back to the hospital and her coming home again. My theory is that she could vividly hear everything that was going on outside of the womb and that would mostly included her sister talking, laughing, talking, pitching fits, talking, giggling, and more talking. Although, Carlysle can be quite shy (at first) once she warms up........she is non-stop. My guess is Callie began to wonder, "how will I ever compete with this very inquisitive (yes I'm sure that's the word she used) chatty little girl?" She probably thought we would hardly notice her and that her emergence into humanity must be something grand.

After an uneventful pregnancy and relatively easy birth, we prepared ourselves to go home. Carlysle was so excited and had the cutest response which is on the video below. Aunt Courtney stopped by that night and we ordered pizza. At dinner, Joey was holding Callie and he suddenly got up and walked her over to the window. I thought nothing of it until he walked back to the table with a concerned look on his face. Before he could say anything, his mom said "Joey, her color doesn't look good". When I looked at her, she appeared to be bluish-gray. That is not something you want to see on a baby that is less than 48 hours old. Joey grabbed his phone, called Kyle and said meet me at the office and proceeded to load Callie in the car. By the time we got to the office her color was normal again and after checking her oxygen levels, they decided she was ok and maybe it was a fluke thing. That didn't stop Joey from deciding we needed to stare at her all night. So we literally took turns staying up ALL NIGHT holding her and staring at her.

She did fine all night and most of the next day until around 4. Joey was feeding her when she did it again. This time she also went limp and it lasted much longer. He grabbed her, put her in the car and we took off. He called a cardiologist he knew and they said come on in....at 4:30 on a Friday afternoon. They were awesome. This is when I began to panic because Joey panicked. He generally brushes things off and I have to keep pushing, insisting I know when our child's sick. In the car, tears started coming down his face so I just shut my eyes and prayed knowing it was out of our hands. At the cardiologist's office, they did an echo and said it was normal. Her heart looked great! Ahhh, sigh of relief......followed by "Ok what now". We both decided we weren't comfortable going home with her turning blue so off to the Children's Hospital we went.

Callie was admitted that Friday night into the PICU two days after she was born. That night she had blood work done, an IV put in and a spinal tap. The spinal tap was normal....thank goodness. For the next two days we anxiously stared at the monitors in her room panicking at every beep. In the PICU, the rooms are very open and there is no bathroom. Joey and I shared a very uncomfortable and tiny couch. At two days postpartum, this was miserable but neither of us were going to leave her side. During those two days, she had more tests including a brain ultrasound, an EEG and an upper GI. During the upper GI, we watched the barium go down into her stomach and immediately come back all the way to her throat. The radiologist said that was one of the worst cases of reflux he had seen. So there it was, after all that, she had severe reflux. So she basically just stopped breathing when she refluxed and turned blue. We felt so relieved to have a diagnosis and somewhat silly that we had to go through all that to find out! So we got prescriptions for Prevacid and Zantac and finally brought her back home!

Here are some pictures of Callie during her stay in the PICU. We actually took the pictures b/c when we came home quickly Saturday morning to shower, Carlysle was adamant that we take the pink bear (pictured below) to Callie. She "bought" this bear for Callie at the hospital gift shop the day Callie was born. We wanted to be able to show her that Callie had the bear and it was helping her feel better. :)

This is video of us bringing Callie home....the first time!