Boulevard to Motherhood: Introducing Baby J

Well it's official, this blog is no longer about my journey to finding my daughter. Today I met her and so now this blog will be about Baby J's Journey. After many more phone calls and some massive thinking and almost backing out, tonight I met her. As I put in an earlier blog on Friday I said I was interested. At the time Baby J was doing really well except for a sac in her lung had collapsed. However today I found out things had gone badly over the weekend. She had developed more complications and so therefore I almost changed my mind. She is unfortunately over 2 hrs away from me and up until today- that was really the only thing that made me pause and thing about this. I decided to move forward.

Today I received a call that the Birth parents signed papers and was informed I could sign my APA adoption placement agreement today. So I finished some things and headed the 2 hr drive to the hospital. At 6:30pm I signed my APA and headed to meet my little girl for the first time.

So lets go back. Baby J. was born June 7 at 2:18am. She was a mere 1 Lb 15 oz and 14 1/2 inches long. They flew Baby J to the nearest hospital with a NICU that was capable of taking care of her. Her parents decided that they could not take care of her and chose to put her up for adoption. In her first few days she had 2 pulmonary bleeds that they thought were fixed by transfusions and had severe respiratory problems (which is expected for one so little). While they should be able to tell what gestational age by how this pregnancy supposedly occurred, they are not sure. They believe she was born at 27 weeks. So much better than the 25 weeks I was originally told. By Thursday they had already backed off the ventilator, but on Friday a sac in her lungs collapsed. Still not surprising. It looked as if she was actually doing really well. Friday is when I had decided to move forward with the match.

Today I got a call that said over the weekend she had developed another pulmonary bleed caused by PDA which also causes a heart murmur. The PDA is basically a hole that hasn't closed. The heart murmur can't be fixed till she gets older and more stable. Her left lung also collapsed over the weekend. The real surprise was that she started to have some bleeding on the brain. This freaked me out and almost made me change my mind. (and it probably should have.)

Fast forward to after the papers are signed. We went up (my parents came with me) and went to the NICU. After doing the paper work to go into the NICU and having our tempature taken and a few rules thrown at us, we went to her room. As we walked in after diligently washing out hands, we were met by her day nurse. The bed was still covered. The nurse opened the cover and there she was. Kicking her feet and sucking on a tube.

This teeny tiny baby was moving her legs and arms around. She was so much bigger than I expected. And way more active. The nurse started to tell us about her bed and all the equipment. She is in a special bed to keep her warm and calm. She has also been moved up to the most high tech ventilator to help her breath so she doesn't have to work so hard.

We had a lot of information given to us this evening, but I was so surprised. Here was this tiny baby who is very sick, but she moves around way more than I ever thought she would. While they changed and checked her, I got to touch her. Her movements calmed and she held my finger, almost as if she was telling me she knew I was there for her. during this they took off the bandages on her eyes to replace (they are helping her eyes develop by keeping out harsh lights) and we were able to take pictures. She even opened her eyes and looked around. Tomorrow I can start helping with tempature taking and diaper changing. Tonight she was actually past her birth weight. She weighed in at 1 lb 15.8 oz. So not way past, but hey she is only a week old on very limited nutrition.

There isn't a moment that goes by that I wonder if this is the right decision for her and myself....but when I saw her I was more confident that it is. I know there are a lot of things people want to know but for now, I am just asking for prayers for Baby J. I'm so happy to finally be a parent and hope that everything will go well. here are a few of her pictures. She is under a blue light sometimes so you might find a pic that is blue.