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Bill

Katie and I received the bill for 2 weeks of Addison in the hospital and 3 days of Katie in the hospital. The total came to somewhere between $45,000 and $50,000. Yikes. Fortunately, we only have to pay a small fraction of that. Good thankness for good insurance.

Pictures

New House Decoration

Addie has finally made it home from the hospital. We brought her home on Monday, but I haven't gotten around to posting about it until now. She has gotten quite good at eating from the bottle. We know she is hungry when she starts opening and closing her mouth like a fish. The only problem is she must think she is at Chuck-A-Rama because she tends to projectile vomit half of it back up. Mommy is good at cleaning it up though :).

Suspicious

Addie seems to be improving quickly now. They've moved her out of her plastic cocoon and into an open air crib. They still keep the room temperature at a balmy 78 degrees, but it's a step in the right direction towards coming home. She is also feeding by mouth a couple of times a day, so things are certainly looking up. Hopefully she'll be home soon.

I rode my bike to work today. In order to have something other than sweaty bike clothes to wear there, I had to ride with a backpack filled with my work clothes and then change into them when I got there. After work was over, I changed back out of my work clothes into my bike clothes and rode to the hospital to meet Katie. By the time I got there it was 6:10 and the NICU closes for an hour starting at 6:30, so I was in a little bit of a rush to get in there. Originally we planned to have Katie come out and open the car up, but there wasn't time for that anymore. I found our car, put on some jeans from the backpack over my bike shorts, hid the backpack underneath the car, then ran inside. I cooed Addie for 10 minutes, then Katie and I headed back out to the car. As we were walking past the front desk there were three security guards chatting with the receptionist. I noticed they were eyeing me a little bit as I walked past, but I didn't think much of it. When I got back to the car and looked for the backpack... it was gone. Who would want an 8 year old backpack full of dirty clothes? Then I remembered the security guards. I started walking back towards the front desk, and sure enough, here came two of them in my direction. Turned out someone had reported a "suspicious backpack" underneath our car. The guards were nice enough to retrieve it and take it into the hospital to keep it warm. I'm just glad the guards didn't freak out and call in a bomb squad. I can just see myself looking like a moron as a I try to explain it to the TV news reporter.

More on the baby

My mom chastised me for not updating the blog. Here is an update.

Addie has progressed pretty steadily, and there still haven't been any major problems. Her bilirubin count was slowly climbing which is an indication of jaundice, but I guess it's pretty common for premies. The solution was to put her under a McDonalds french fry lamp overnight and that seemed to fix it. It also gave her skin a nice golden-brown color.

She also has progressed to clothing as you can see from the picture. A nice purple jumper is her first outfit. Even as a premie outfit, it still looks pretty big. We also put a hat on her. If we bought her some floppy shoes, she could run off with the circus. Sometime I would like to post a picture of the piles of clothing she has got. She is real girl, for sure.

Katie is also doing much better. She had a rough week, but by Saturday she was feeling pretty good. Her blood pressure is still sky-high, but she has some medication that seems to help. She's getting to the point where it doesn't even look like she was ever pregnant. Still skinny.


As for me, I have a bike race in St. George I would like to go to this weekend. I haven't had a lot of time for riding. The weather in Salt Lake has been colder and wetter this year than I can ever remember since I've been in Utah. All of the riding I have done has been sub-two hours, so if I did go to the race, I couldn't expect much. It would be nice to get down there for some warm weather riding though.

Part Deux

Well, here I am 3 days later in the hospital with Katie.

As I was writing the last post, Katie was pacing around the living room. No sooner had I finished the post than she told me I needed to call the doctor. She had developed a bad headache and an even worse stomach ache. The doctors had told us if she developed blurred vision, stars in her eyes, or pain in her upper right abdomen, we needed to come in right away. We weren't totally sure what headache/stomach ache meant, but we called him anyway. The doctor told us to come in just as a precaution, so that is what we did.

As we were driving to the hospital, we were both expecting to get there, be told she had cramps or needed Pepto, then told to go home and get some rest, but we off by a mile.

When we checked into the hospital they admitted her into a room and immediately started checking her blood pressure and taking blood and urine samples to do testing on. Katie's stomach progressively worsened until she couldn't lie down on the bed anymore. She would sit there on the bed rocking back and forth while I rubbed her back trying to distract her from the pain. It was very uncomfortable for both of us. At 1:00 AM the blood and urine tests came back and things did not look very good. Her liver and kidneys were both showing signs of distress and her stomach seemed to be worsening. The good news was the baby seemed ok; but the doctor informed us that it was definitely time for the baby to come out, 6 weeks premature of her due date.

They hooked Katie up to a Christmas tree of IVs and monitors, constantly checking heart rate, blood pressure, contractions, baby's heart rate, and dripping all sorts of chemicals into her body. She was still suffering a lot, but things really improved around 3:30 AM when she was given the epidural. Diamonds are no longer a girl's best friend; it's the epidural. Soon most of the pain was gone and we both rested until 7.

One of the drugs they were dripping into her body was Pitocin, a drug that induces labor. Katie had been having contractions on her own, but the Pitocin really started to speed things up. The drip was slowly increased over the hours until Katie's contractions were coming only a few minutes apart and moving down her abdomen. By 10:30 they were close enough that we were really hitting crunch time.

They wheeled Katie, Baby, and myself into the delivery room, next to the NICU. A few minutes later the doctor came in and Katie started pushing. She only had to push for maybe 10 minutes before out came our baby girl. I got to cut the cord, then she was immediately passed through a window into the NICU, before Katie or I could get much of a look at her.


Now, two days later, everything since then has gone about as well as possible. The baby is in really good shape considering she is 6 weeks early. She weighs only 3 lbs 7 oz, is 17 inches long, and is named Addison (Addie) Katherine Abbott. She breathes on her own, has great color, and a very nice head of dark hair. Katie is also doing well, but is of course still very weak and tired. She has hardly slept in the last 3 days. Katie is checking out of the hospital in the next hour, but Addie probably won't be able to come home with us for at least 2-4 weeks, depending on how things go.

It's still hard for me to believe that it is my baby. I go down to the NICU and she looks so perfect, but it doesn't really feel like she is mine yet. In a way, it's almost like she is owned by the hospital, but I'm close to her because I get to visit her so much. I'm sure that will all change when we finally get to take her home and spend sleepless nights with her.

Someday, when Addie is a teenager and acting badly, I'm going to be the father that tells her how much pain her mother had to go through to bring her into this world. She won't fully understand it, but I can finally say that I do.

I would also be ungrateful if I didn't thank God for taking such good care of us and our new child. Things were pretty nervous for a few days, but we are truly grateful for the opportunity to be parents and all the challenges and blessings that lay in store for us.

We are very proud parents.