Philomena Anne

I promised I would write all about Philomena and her birth. I have been preoccupied with living here in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit for the past two and a half weeks to be able to put two thoughts together to write a blog entry!

After I had gone down to Antenatal Testing on the 10th and they decided my uterus looked way too thin, they scheduled my section for later that day. It was very surreal sitting in my hospital bed and feeling little Philomena inside me kicking around and knowing that in a few hours she would be in the world.

Apparently, so the medical records say, she was delivered pretty quickly after I was put under general anesthesia. She was immediately taken to the NICU for observation and given oxygen and eventually graduating to CPAP. She was 5 pounds and 5 ounces and 17 inches. They put her in a crib but she started losing weight so they moved her to an isolette to keep her warm. They told me she was burning too many calories trying to keep her body temperature up.

My husband did all the feeds and kept her company while I recouped. He did a fantastic job and she fed well at first. Then as the week progressed she seemed to get more and more tired with her feeds. She has an NG tube (a tube that is inserted in her nostril and goes directly into her belly) and her scheduled called for every other feed to go in her tube. She stayed stuck there until yesterday, believe it or not, when she finally advanced to six full bottle feeds.

Our adventure here in the NICU has been a roller coaster ride. It's difficult to hear doctors and nurses all tell you to just be patient and "watch her grow" and "she'll catch on in her own time." In the meantime there are five other children at home who have been without their mother for two months and a husband who has been trying to keep his job and run the house for the same length of time. The stress is tremendous - I don't think I can even articulate how tremendous the stress of it all really is.

Philomena is so pretty and very healthy she just has a difficult time staying awake to eat. I consider myself lucky, though, when I talk to other moms in here (who, by the way, have been my complete sanity!) who have been here for months! Some moms here have babies born at 24 weeks gestation and are looking at two more months or more here. There are some sick babies so I feel blessed that Mena is healthy with the exception of her feeding.

I expect our Good Lord is trying to teach patience and what it means to absolutely wait on Him in His time and I hope we did pass His test or at the very least came close to passing it. Thankfully, we have been blessed with good friends and family who have helped us out; the Mantoans who have four children of their own yet week after week took on all five of ours so that my husband could go into the office once a week. My sister in law and brother in law who also have five children and took all of our kids once a week so Kevin could go into work. Their charity blows my mind. Where would I be without my hospital visits from my sister who can make me laugh at any given moment and especially when I need it the most or my brother who would come over to the house at night after a long day at work and watch and bathe all the kids at the witching hour so Kevin could come up to the hospital to visit me? We were tremendously blessed with so many good people from church who gave us meals and would come over and clean the house or check the kid's schoolwork. There were just days I would sit here in the hospital in awe of the help we were getting, sometimes from people we didn't even know! There were good people in our homeschooling support group who dropped off meals as well. Though we think God has tested our limits, He also poured out His mercy and blessings at the same time to get us through.

I hope to be able to write more blog entries from my home computer and not the hospital computer. It will be a weird feeling to be home all the time, but one I can't wait to experience.