The little princess

April 19, 2010 - the worst day of my life

So, I'm nursing Alexandra on Sunday night and all of the sudden she stops and (I think) is turning purple. As we all know, in the first few days, babies coloring changes a lot, so I was confused and shocked. Then she started breathing again and her mouth coloring went back to rosey red, so I knew something was wrong. We told the nurses and they said if it happened again to pull the nurse call button out of the wall and the nurses would come running to help. Well, sure enough it happened again later that night, around 11:00pm. No, I didn't pull the call button out of the wall because I was able to get her to breathe on my own, but now we knew something was wrong. The nurses took her to the nursery where they could monitor her breathing, and also monitor it when she was eating to see if they could detect something. It was even more of a sleepless night. 5:00am rolls around and my nurse took me to the nursery to bottle feed her. Her oxygen levels were still going up and down. I was on the phone with a pediatrician in our practice and we just didn't know what was wrong. We were supposed to be discharged on Monday, April 19th, but unfortunately, that as the day that Alexandra was omitted to the NICU...the worst day of my life. Yes, she was the healthiest baby in there, but not knowing what was wrong with my little peanut was heart wrenching. I was an emotional mess! After a cardio consult, chest x-ray, and a esphogus test, everything came back normal. By 2:00pm, I could breathe again and felt a huge amount of relief. They started antibiotics in case of an infection and sent some blood work out to be tested. Those were the only tests we were waiting for. After two long days, walking up and down to the NICU and being discharged from the hospital without my baby, she was allowed to come home. Basically, Alexandra was just sucking, sucking, sucking, but not breathing! So we had to train her to suck, swallow and breathe!

What a horrible experience, but our baby is healthy, just needs a little coaching! I have to say, I had AWESOME nurses in the NICU. Amazing women - thank you for getting me through those 3 horrible days!

Deja Vu - Almost 33 years later, MeMa is holding a baby in the NICU. Not her daughter this time, her granddaughter.

Alexandra's first photo shoot

When Landon was born and got his picture taken at the hospital, they basically layed him on a projector type thing and took his pic. A lot has changed in two years! Bella Baby came in with some white linens and snapped away! It was awesome and we are really happy with the photos!

Can you tell they are siblings!?!??!

See the post, second pic on April 2, 2008

Welcome Alexandra Reese Burke - meet the family

By now we were in my post partum recovery room and it was time for Alexandra to meet the family, including her big brother and Grammie and Pappy. Landon took to her really well. He wanted to kiss her and hold her - very cute!

Proud Daddy!

As Landon says, "hold the baby".

"kiss the baby"

Welcome Alexandra Reese Burke - delivery

The big day is here! Grammie and Pappy came for the weekend to stay with Landon and help relieve Jason going back and forth to the hospital. We woke up at 5:00am and were at the hospital by 6:00am, ready for the 8:00am planned c-section. It was a little difficult for me because I couldn't eat or drink anything after midnight....now tell a pregnant woman she can't eat or drink anything...it's torture! I made Jason eat his breakfast outside of my labor & delivery prep room. Ha!

With Landon's delivery, it was much different. I labored for 30 hours, pushed for an hour and ended up in a c-section. At that point, I didn't really comprehend what was going on, I was so delirious and drugged that I don't remember much of the c-section. This time, I walked into the bright room, layed down on the bed and was ready to go! The delivery team was awesome! We actually had a good time chatting away about housing, kids, vacations, etc. And of course our beautiful little baby Alexandra! She came out and proved to all of us that she had a good set of lungs and just wanted to express how she felt about it all! Not to mention that she may be a future gymnist --- there was a knot in the umbilical cord! Ugh! All went well and we were back in my recovery room in an hour and a half.

I can't see, I can't see!

Alexandra with Mama and Dada

Just wanted to suck, so the delivery nurse helped her out! :)