Like a fish to water

Olivia has always enjoyed taking baths. She loves the water no matter where it is, a bath, a pool, or a mud puddle!! If she finds water you can bet she is going to get in it and be soaking wet from head to toe before she is done. Here are some pics of her in the bathtub. You can tell as she get bigger she loves bubbles, the more the better. Don't worry the water isn't deep just the bubbles!!!

Olivia's smiles!!

Olivia has always been a happy baby! She is definately a girl of many smiles and expressions. One little smile or giggle out of her can make you whole day better, it seems to make all of your petty little worries disappear! She is our shining star! Here are a few for you to see!

Olivia and Osteogenesis Imperfecta

When Olivia was born we never suspected anything was wrong other than the fact that she was so early. She was very healthy to be such an early preemie. In the hospital she never cried, fussed or seemed like anything was hurting, until around October 8, 2006. She was being very fussy and kept crying but she was not showing any signs of something being wrong. She was not running a fever or anything. The NICU doctors kept saying she was fine that she just wanted some attention and the nurses (who spend the majority of the time with the babies) kept telling the doctors that there was something wrong, that Olivia didn't act like that. Then her right leg started to swell. That is when the doctors realized something was wrong. They called us at the hotel and told us that her right leg was starting to swell and they thought it might be an infection. Well when you are dealing with a preemie, INFECTION, is not a word you want to hear. There bodies are so tiny that they have a hard time fighting off infections. They did blood tests and xrays but still didn't find anything wrong. They called in an Orthopaedic doctor to see her. He had them do an MRI and that is when they found the fracture, that was almost already healed. They beleived it happened in utero. The Ortho doctor was the first one to mention the possbility of Olivia having Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI), however none of the NICU doctors thought she had it. We continued going to see the Ortho doctor every six months. On our first visit he did xrays of her legs and showed me the bowing in her femurs and tibias. He gave me a list of reasons why he thought she had OI. Her legs were bowed, her bones were thinner than mine (on the xray), her triangular shaped face, her large soft spot, among other things he told me. I at that time just brushed it all off to her prematurity, but he kept insisting she had it. She also was not gaining weight very fast or getting any bigger. She only gained about a pound a month and was diagnosed as failure to thrive, which I knew better because she ate all the time. They finally sent us to a genetics doctor who gave her the clinical diagnoses of OI. They also did a skin biopsy when she was 1 year and 2 months old. That told us that she had OI III or IV, that was in December 2007, when we got those results. They then did a test from the same blood work that told us she was a type IV. She has handled the OI very well and has not had any more fractures as of today. We are still learning every day about OI and what we could possibly face in the future. It all depends on Olivia and how she handles the OI. We pray every day for her strength and that God will do what he will with her life. We thank God for the strength that she has and continues to have.

Finally Home!

Olivia came home on November 10th, 2006. We were so excited and ready to bring her home but so nervous also. She was so small and we had to keep her really bundled up so she wouldn't get too cold. She came home in the middle of RSV season so she had to be isolated until March, that way she wouldn't get sick. She had a few visitors (as long as they weren't sick), but we couldn't have a lot of company. Her PaPa was one of the first ones to hold her at home, he is a proud PaPa! Grandma, however, was sick when we came home and didn't get to come visit until after Thanksgiving. She was so upset (I think she called me every day)! We loved every moment when she came home. After spending 12 weeks in the hospital and living in a hotel, you are more than ready to be back home. We spent her first Thanksgiving, Christmas and New year at home. She didn't come home on any monitors, Praise God, but we were still nervous. Momma lost a lot of sleep because I would wake up and have to check on her to make sure she was still breathing. She hadn't had any episodes where she stopped breathing but I was just too nervous, but she was always fine.

Olivia's Beginning

Olivia began her journey of life three months earlier than expected and God is the reason that she is alive today.
Momma ended up with pre-eclampsia and going into the hospital on August 16, 2006. They tried bedrest to buy some more time for Olivia but it wasn't working. Mom's blood pressure continued to rise and her kidneys started shutting down. We were transferred to Mercy Health Center in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma on August 17th. Olivia was born via c-section on August 18, 2006. She wasn't due until November 18, 2006.
She weighed 1 lb 7 oz and was 12 inches long. She was a beautiful baby for a preemie.
She was on a ventilator and under bili lights for the first three days. At four days old, Olivia pulled out her ventilator, she did so well without they decided to leave it off and just put a nasal cannula on. The nurses told us they were amazed at her, they had never seen a baby as small as her off the ventilator already. But that was only the beginning of the amazing things this tiny baby would do.
At five days old she was crying during her hands on time, the nurse on duty at that time was shocked because she said she'd had some that small make noise but never cry out yet. All of her nurses say that she is onry, Grandma and Papa keep insisting that she gets that from her mommy, but I don't know what they are talking about!!

I finally got to hold my precious little baby at 10 days old for the first time. I got to hold her in what they call "Kangaroo hold", which is where they put the baby on your chest, skin to skin, and then cover her with warm blankets. Keeping her warm is very important. I only got to hold her for about 40 minutes, which of course was not near long enough, but it was wonderful! I just cried and cried and made sure my mom caught my tears, because I was afraid they would hurt her. If I'd only known then what I know now. But after holding her it made it even harder to leave the hospital without her. Thankfully we had a hotel room right down the street and could go up and see her whenever we felt like it. Unfortunatly the more I held her the more I realized that she would lose precious weight that she worked so hard to put on, so I made the decision to put off holding her for a while so she could gain weight and get closer to coming home, because once she came home I could hold her all the time!! She had to weigh at least 4 lbs before she could leave the hospital and we still hadn't made it to two lbs. I prayed every night for God to hold her in his hands, because even though I couldn't, he could and she needed to feel that love!
Mommy and Daddy still went to see Olivia daily in the hospital, we weren't holding her everyday but we could still talk to her and see her. She finally reached 2lbs at 1mth 3 days old and continued to make great progress and developed perfectly. She did not have any major problems that some preemies have. She did great in the NICU and she always seem to be doing better than babies bigger than her.
The only scare we had was on October 10th, 2006. The doctor called us at the hotel room and said that Olivia's leg was swelling, they weren't sure what was going on but they were trying to find out. She mentioned "infection", which with a preemie you never want to hear. We rushed down to the hospital, Jesse drove and I don't even remember the drive there. They did blood work, xrays and finally an mri. This is when we discovered that her legs were as bowed as they were. Anyways the result was she had a hairline fracture in her right femur that was almost healed. They think it happened in utero. She went on to be fine and never had any other problems.

She spent 12 long weeks in the hospital, it seemed like she was never going to come home. I think she gave all the doctors and nurses up there a run for their money. There were a few nurses I wasn't sure were going to let us bring her home, they had fallen in love with our precious baby girl. But she finally came home on November 10, 2006, just eight days before her original due date. She weighed 4 lbs and 8.6 oz. She did not come home on any monitors, which was kind of a relief. I think I would have been more nervous if she would have. I heard there are a lot of false alarms with those. It didn't matter though, she was finally home and that is what we had prayed for. A happy, healthy baby, we didn't care how small she was and we thank God every day for her!