Kaitlyn Amber

Kaitlyn Amber was born on February 14, 2008 at 12:27pm. She was 5 lbs 9 oz and 17 1/2 inches long. My water broke at 4am, we were at the hospital around 5:30 or 6am, and once it was finally established that it was amniotic fluid via ATI (ultrasound to determine the level of fluid in the uterus), we set up a c-section. Kaitlyn was breech. It's actually incredibly lucky that she was breech, because I ended up having a condition called placenta accreta, where the placenta grows into the uterus. Once she was out, the doctors had to do surgery to remove the placenta and do extra suturing to my uterus. I lost a lot of blood, and but they were able to save my uterus. Had we done labor and she come out vaginally, they wouldn't have known until I was hemorrhaging and I would have had to have an emergency hysterectomy, and that's the good scenario.

Since Kaitlyn was only 36 weeks at the time, she was born prematurely. She has had premature lung disease, which she has since been able to recover from. She's still tired and not fully recovered, but is off of oxygen, out of the warmer, and we are able to hold her. Those first few days of not being able to hold her and watching her go through that were horrible, to say the least. She is still in NICU at the hospital. Since she was premature and has has to recover from the lung disease, she is having a hard time getting the feedings down. Once she has eaten enough in 24 hours she can have her feeding tube removed, and after she eats consistently for 3 days straight she finally gets to come home. It has been very hard, leaving her there, and so this is all that will be posted until she gets home. I know lots of people want pictures, so I did put up a few here, but until she gets home there will be no more. We are at the hospital as much as possible, and only come home to sleep and do things like pay the bills and laundry as needed. It's just too hard not to be with her. A lot, if not all, of you know about the other tragic events going on in our lives right now, and I just want to say thank you for all of the support. We're doing okay, just need to step back and take care of ourselves and Kaitlyn at this time. She's more of a miracle than I ever could have imagined.

I've been told that these pictures don't do her justice. I'd have to agree. We've even had nurses say that yes, they tell lots of people that their babies are adorable, but that Kaitlyn truly is. She has many expressions and I hope to get them all. The first two here are on the day she was born, when she had all of her tubes on. The last three are from today. All she has on are her feeding tube and monitor leads. Tony is holding her in the last picture, so you can get an idea of how small she is.