Visit with Olivia's Birthfamily

This afternoon, we had the wonderful opportunity to enjoy some time at the Lake with two of Olivia's sisters, Olivia's birthmom and her birthdad. We are so blessed to have an open adoption for Olivia. At first we certainly had to learn how to do an open adoption. There are no clear directions on how to do this. I think that the best way to describe how I feel about Olivia's birth-family is LOVE of course, but to be more specific, I feel that they are extended family. And they are the sort of extended family whom one feels very comfortable around, has fun with, enjoys, and looks forward to seeing. Visits always seem too short. When we first thought about adoption, we did not know how it would be to have an open adoption, but we like it. I don't know if all open adoptions are as comfortable as ours is for us, but all I know is that I thank God for the gift of such a wonderful addition to my life. An addition of many people who I now call my family! I also feel such gratitude that they chose us to be Olivia's mommy and daddy. What an honor! We are so grateful and honored! Everyday I think of her birthfamily, and everyday I ask God to bless them abundantly!

Happy 6th Month Birthday

Today is 6 months since we received the phone call that Olivia had been born! Wow! It is hard to believe that it is already 6 months. We think that since her development is slower than for a typical baby, that time goes much slower also. There is lots of time to savor every step along the way. Sometimes with a typical baby, the rate at which they develop can make ones head spin! We are lingering in the luxury of enjoying every step along the way. (and making lots of lemonade out of any available lemons to sip as we wait!)

Olivia has changed so much from that 4 lb baby whose skin hung on her bones. If you remember, she was initially on oxygen, IV's, feeding tube, in an incubator, and on a billiblanket for jaundice. In addition, she was hooked up to all sorts of monitors. We would sit with her and watch her monitors and pray that everything was going to be alright. Praise God, 13 days after she was born she came home from the NICU! Today, Olivia is a healthy "strong" baby with Down syndrome who is developing very well considering the circumstances. Today we began putting small blocks into an old oatmeal canister. Plunk Plunk! Very exciting! The blocks are small enough for her to hold, and Mommy helps her get them to drop into the canister. (all the while providing necessary head and torso support... but the support needed for her head lessens everyday). Olivia enjoys knocking blocks over! And she enjoys pushing the top to make it go around!

Praise God for the gift of Olivia in our lives!

and

God bless her most wonderful birthmom for entrusting to us this precious baby, Olivia!

We think of the birthmom everyday, and thank God for such a wonderful woman!

A Baby!

I have been thinking of all the things I want to tell you as I sit feeding O. Then she is down to sleep and I sleep at night and do housework during the day! Busy Busy! Happy Happy! The house is clean! We are well fed! O is happy! The cats are brushed! The litterboxes are clean! I am up to date on Thank you notes! Life is good!

O has passed out of the "feels like a preemie" stage!!! Now she feels so much like a newborn baby!!! She still is probably more low tone and floppy than a typical newborn, but she is so much stronger! And a determined little lady! She now weighs about 7 lbs 5 oz. (weighed her on the scale from Grandma and Grandpa B the other day. She mostly sleeps at night and eats. She will sometimes go to bed early and sometimes late. We find that sometimes she is ready for a bath at 5 pm, but other days doing it at 7 seems to settle her down for sleep much better. We are following Montessori's advice (and Grandma Kate's wisdom!) and following the child! At this early point in her life every day is different. We just try to keep her rested, active during alert time, well fed and dry diapered! We are using Tushies diapers which are gel free. They are the closest to cloth. They are recommended by our doctor. We hope that the fact that she feels wetness and doesn't like it will help her potty train at an earlier age. We have dear friends raising a sweet little almost 2 year old with Ds who is in cloth. God Bless this amazing mother!!!!!

I am reading Road Map to Holland when ever I can squeeze in a few moments. I am addicted to reading, and so am always trying to sneak in a page or two out of the various books laying around the house! O will grow up in a house with much reading and many books littered around the house! Anyway, this book was written by a woman who had twins. One with Down syndrome. She writes about her experience in the NICU which is so healing to me! I had felt that what I was experiencing was just because I was an adoptive parent. But as I read her wonderful words, I realize that every parent feels this way! I also learned that we were brave to have spent the endless hours there. It was all worth it! By the time we came home with O we really knew her and she knew us!

Life with O is wonderful! Yes! I do understand the full impact of sleep deprivation! God bless all of you who raised multiple babies! Especially my brother and sister in law with 5 in 9 years! Amazing people! God bless you!!!!! O brings joy at every hour of the day! She is such a huge blessing and so amazing! We are so lucky to have been chosen to raise her! I pray that we will be worthy of this great privilege! God bless the birth mom! She called Daddy O to wish him a Happy Father's Day! O has so much of her birth mom in her! Sweetness and strength!

Bitter-sweet Milestone Day

Today we reached a bitter-sweet milestone.  The birthmom signed her papers indicating that she will not be parenting O.  We ask for your prayers for her. This is never an easy thing to do, even when the birthmom knows that it is in her best interest and in the best interest of the baby.  We so very much admire her strength and her sweetness. She has done so much this week to help us to feel comfortable with being given the great privilege of raising her beloved daughter.  She wants us to be the parents and feel comfortable that this is what she wants for her baby. She is grateful to us for parenting O.  We just feel so privileged!!!!  We cannot imagine a more perfect daughter!  We love her more and more everyday!

Mama O gave O a bath today.  In the photo above and below, she is all clean, bright-eyed and happy!
Just some time looking at Daddy O and Mama O before going back to sleep. She did much better eating today. The occupational therapist (OT) gave us great tips to keep her more alert during feedings.  Her sucking is strong and in good form.  All the reading about Down Syndrome is paying off as we understand very clearly what the OT person is saying having done our reading ahead of time.
Here is our little apple blossom stretching out.  She now weighs 4 lbs 8.3 oz. !
We are taking one day at a time and just enjoying every moment that we are with her!  Today we were in the NICU for 9 hours. Usually our days will be shorter so that we don't wear ourselves out before she comes home. The bath delayed our departure.

Thanks to every one for your support and prayers and emails. I try to keep in touch as much as possible, but I know that I don't always do as well as I would like. But know that we so very much appreciate all the support and emails and facebook comments!

Mothers' Day

Free Free Free at last!!!!

Today O got rid of all of her medical equipment except the feeding tube.  She got to put a nightgown on over her t-shirt, and she can be swaddled in one blanket and not need any more blankets.  She is out of the incubator and in the isolette. She is regulating her temperature just beautifully!  It was amazing how all of the sudden her temperature regulation kicked into gear! 

O still will need to spend most of her time swaddled since she was a pre term baby.  They want the babies to have to kick hard against the swaddle as if they were scrunched in the womb. This strengthens their muscles.   O is floppy.  They tell us that most of what we see is probably the Down Syndrome low muscle tone floppiness.  She will need to be swaddled for the first 4 to 6 weeks after she gets home.
Look who woke up today!!! O slept all day yesterday.  It was great to see her eyes for a little while this morning.  She seemed to wake up and look Mama O in the eyes and say, "Happy Mama's Day, Mommy!  I am glad I got here for the big day!"  We were so excited by all the progress that O made today. The biggest milestone was moving to the step down unit of the NICU.  She is classified as feed and grow.  That means that once she is feeding completely on her own by bottle with no feeding tube and still growing that she can go HOME!!!   (the driving back and forth 1 1/4 hours each way is getting to be a bit much!)   O is doing good with the bottles, but she needs to be able to eat all the ounces they want her to before she can go home.  

O now weighs 4 lbs 5 oz  (our weight yesterday was inaccurate)

The doctor said that she may be ready to go home as early as Wednesday!  Please pray that we can go home soon!  We are all ready to be home together!  Doctor also said that O is very healthy for a baby with Down Syndrome.  Music to our ears!  She will have another echo-cardiogram done to make sure that her heart is truly doing well. Doctors tell us they hear no murmur and believe that her heart is good!  Praise God!

We had been praying for the birthmom, as I know many of you have too.  It has been rough emotionally.  In addition to the adoption plan, she had a C-section (emergency) and it was rugged.  She also was worried about O in NICU.  Today, the birthmom called Mama O to wish me a Happy Mothers' Day!! Wow!!! Hearing her say that gave me permission to be truly Happy about my first Mothers' Day.  I told her that entrusting O to us made us happier than we could ever express. She was so happy to hear this.  We have a great birthmom. She has a sweetness about her that is so dear.  We think that O has her eyes.  

O is a great kid!  She is so cool!  We are so blessed!!!  

We began praying with O the first day we met. She really likes the Our Father.  She will flutter her eyes when we pray.  She cannot wait to be Baptized!!!  She thinks that is going to be awesome! We have told her all about St Mary's and she is so excited to join! She cannot wait to hear Father Dave tell all the stories about Jesus!  (and hear Deacon Roger sing!)

Busy Weekend

Friday afternoon we celebrated PJM's birthday by going to Fernwood Botanical Gardens and Arboretum. It was gorgeous with spring flowers! 

 Saturday morning we moved furniture to set up Baby O's room. (here is a little preview)

Saturday, afternoon we went to the Lake to visit with Dad, Uncle Dick and Y before heading to Mass at our Parish.

Sunday was rainy, but a good day to set up the baby swing, baby seat, wash the covers, and to unpack strollers and car seat.   We finished cleaning out Baby O's closet.  Today, LSM started doing laundry and moving Sweet Baby O's things into her closet and dresser.

As we move closer to the due date we have a very specific prayer intention that we ask you to include in your prayers: 

 "For Baby O to be born healthy enough to be released from the hospital in a few days."

We will not be granted custody of her until she is released from the hospital, so we will not be able to start taking on our parenting responsibilities until she is released.  This is all a legal thing and not specific to this case.  I don't know if it varies from state to state, but it is the law in our state.

All is going well.  It is hard to be a birthmom though.  The papers said that it is much like the death of a child for a birthmom and that there is a period of grieving for her after she has placed the baby for adoption. C need and deserves our prayers.  It will all be fine. But it is hard for her and any birthmom.

Spoke with Social Worker

This afternoon we had a conversation with our social worker to bring us up to speed on how things are progressing.  Easter, we received a short email from the birthmom, C, who reported that she and the baby were doing well.  Baby O has moved out of breach position into a head down position, and C is more comfortable than she had been.  C continues to tell us that she is lucky to have found us and feels very good about placing Baby O with us for adoption.  Our social worker echoed these comments.  C's social worker sees C as still on track for placing her baby for adoption with us.  Yes, consistent with the end of her pregnancy, C is showing signs that it is going to be more difficult for her than she had thought to part with her baby, but that she is showing none of the typical signs which would lead them to believe that she will keep the baby in the end. C would like us to meet her mother and a friend prior to delivery as they will be there at the hospital also.  Our social worker tells us that she has been telling her family wonderful things about us.  That is nice and reassuring to hear!  It would be good to see C again prior to the delivery, so this will be good.

We should be receiving in the mail shortly, very very rough information from the birthmom and birthdad about themselves and their families.  This is private information for our eyes only to help us know more about the baby and her birth family history.  The social workers don't feel that there is any earth shattering news in this information. That is what we had expected.  We will also be receiving a very very rough draft of the hospital plan. What is contained in there is subject to change. C may decide that she wants more private time with the baby than she had previously thought. That is perfectly understandable and acceptable.   I cannot even begin to imagine how hard it would be to place ones baby for adoption, but I have heard that it is difficult beyond your wildest imaginings.  We have the utmost respect for what C is going through.  We would hate to be in her shoes. Even with all the uncertainties that we have and all the chance for this adoption also to fall through, we still realize that what we would go through in losing Olivia is by far less difficult than what C is going through in terminating her rights to her own flesh and blood.  Our prayers are constantly with her.  We cannot make her pain go away, but we can do all we can do to make this as easy as it can be given the circumstances.

Cardiologist on Friday

C called today. On Friday, we will be going with C (and O!) and her social worker to a "special hospital" not too far from here to see the "very special pediatric cardiologists" to let them do a fetal echocardiogram and give their opinion on our little sweetheart's sweet heart.  As of an ultrasound done a few weeks ago at the "regular  hospital", we think that Baby O has a cardiac defect called a VSD  (ventricular septal defect).  These can be minor problems or more major problems. Currently the thought is that O's VSD in of the peri-membranous variety which usually needs surgery in the first year of life.  Cardiac defects are very common in babies with Down Syndrome. The cardiologist who read the first fetal echo gave us an 80% chance that she has the VSD.  That of course means that there is a 20% chance she doesn't have it!  We keep praying!

C told us that the pain is better, since the doctor told her to push on the painful area and get Baby O to move to a more comfortable position.  It worked!  

A Little Background

My husband (PJM) and I (LSM) are walking the journey with a birth mother who is pregnant with a baby girl who has a prenatal diagnosis of Down Syndrome.  We will leave a lot of details out of our posts in order to protect the privacy of the birth mother.  We will refer to the birth mother as C, for her courageousness. C is a really neat, compassionate, wonderful woman who we are blessed to be getting to know.  As we have had two adoptions fall through in the past, we simply take one day at a time, knowing that nothing in life is for certain or forever.  But these past 4 weeks have certainly been full of ups and downs!  We are hopefully optimistic that Baby O will come to be our daughter one day, but in the meantime we simply are living in the moment with our thoughts and prayers always with C and Baby O.  A due date is the end of May.