Happy 4th anniversary to the amazing man who truly loves me just as I am.

You are a gift that I never, ever take for granted.

Thank you for four wonderful years.  Thank you for standing beside me through the worst year of my life, and the worst loss a human being can ever sustain. Thank you for your optimism, joy, calmness, good humor and your ability to fix every Kate-created tech and logistical problem I throw at you without losing your temper.

Thank you for understanding me.

Thank you for being such an amazing stepfather.

Thank you for G and C.

I love you, Jon. It’s gonna be good.

-Kate

Today was my first day back at work, which meant that it was Baby G’s first day at work….with Jon. He works at his family’s accounting firm and he has been taking C to work with him each day since she was 8 weeks old. Today he had both C and G for the first time. Of course, he has some pretty amazing help in the person of his mother, who is a saint and a terrific grandmother. She comes to the office each day to care for the kids. C looooves going to “her” office each day to play with her Mimi, and I’m sure G will too.

Reports indicate that G’s first day in the office with her daddy went well.

Today Jon, J, G and I drive down to Chattanooga to watch E and his cousin J play in a middle school lacrosse tournament at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (G’s first LAX game!). C stayed in Knoxville and played with cousin NC, and also spent much of the day with Jon’s parents. J and E’s dad drove down to Chattanooga too, so we all watched E play, and we went out to lunch together at a favorite pizza spot, Lupi’s in downtown Chattanooga, just a block away from the Tennessee Aquarium.


Two of my three girls – J and Baby G with me at Lupi’s.

E on the field, wearing mouthgard (that’s why his teeth look blue)

Baby G on my shoulder at the restaurant, looking like a cross between Mr. Magoo and an angry raisin.

J and her dad at Lupi’s

A Jon’s-eye view of Baby G.

If you had told me last Friday that by THIS Friday I’d be home with a new baby, I would have scoffed. Sure, there were definite signs that pointed to the baby coming early, but somehow I just couldn’t wrap my head around the possibility. I was focused on the 13th as a delivery date – which still would have been 2.5 weeks early. But of course, my body had other plans. And here we are!

Bringing G home was as momentous and joyous as it always is when you carry that new family member across the threshhold for the first time. The sun was shining and the sky was blue as Jon slowly drove us the five minutes home from the hospital, with me riding in the back with her to make sure she didn’t flop completely over in the car seat. As you can see, at only 5 lbs, G hasn’t quite grown into her carseat. (The eagle-eyed among you will also notice that in my exhausted state, I fastened the leg straps completely wrong, but thankfully, Jon caught my mistake.)

When we arrived home, my mother and MG (my three older kids’ wonderful stepmother) were there to greet us. They had cleaned our house from top to bottom, and MG had filled the rooms with fresh daisies and hydrangeas. Big hugs were exchanged all around, and we went inside, where I quickly became overwhelmed by emotion: gratitude for G and her safe arrival, sadness over the family member who is now missing from our home, and a sense of profound relief that after nearly two months of being inside of hospitals (or anticipating being inside a hospital again), I was home.

My new mantra: NO MORE HOSPITALS.

The first thing I did when I got inside the house was beg to be allowed to look at the newly redone bedroom that my sister, MG our dear friend and neighbor JR and numerous other little helper elves have been secretly working on for weeks. The bedroom was a first floor junk room (understatement) that attaches to our bedroom through the only full bathroom in the house.  Ever since we bought the house in 2006, we have intended to renovate this rundown, junk-filled room into a first floor bedroom for C. Once we found out we were expecting G, we REALLY wanted to get the room finished in time for the baby’s arrival – thinking that C could then transition to a big girl bed in a real bedroom before the baby moved into our bed. Also, at this point, C has a lot of toys and books, etc and without a room for them, they have just been scattered all over the house. However, time and finances prevented us from doing a single thing to make the room liveable during my entire pregnancy.

Then, while Henry was hospitalized, and it looked like we would be bringing home a child with major physical disabilities, I began thinking about how I would instead get that room cleaned out, painted and made handicapped accessible before Henry was released from rehab. As the only first floor bedroom other than ours, that was the logical space to prepare a room for Henry. Plus, since it’s attached to our bedroom, I wouldn’t have been far from him at night, which would have been reassuring for me.

My sister and I began talking about what would need to be done to this room in order to make it wheelchair friendly, etc. before Henry came home, but then Henry got worse…and then he died. After May 31st, even thinking about doing anything to the room just made me sad and seemed overwhelming. I gave up on the idea of doing anything to it until some far future date; I certainly saw no way to find the time or resources to do a single thing to it before the baby arrived.

But it turns out that Betsy was secretly getting folks organized to renovate the room for us before G arrived. She quietlychose paint colors, fabrics for the curtains and for the canopy on the vintage canopy bed that my mother had given us when she moved from her house, etc, etc, etc. She quietly asked family members and friends to give her Target and Lowe’s gift cards as baby gifts so to pay for all the work the room needed. And then, while I was in the hospital for four days after my c-section, our dear friend and neighbor JR, along with my older kids’ stepmom, MG, worked their TAILS OFF cleaning the junk from the room, scraping and prepping, painting, repairing a broken window and so on. MG hit garage sales to find an end table to match the bed that we had, and she painted the old, ugly dresser and changing table that we had used for C. Betsy continued getting things measured for fabrics and choosing accessories.

By this time, I knew that something was happening with the room, but I had NO IDEA of the extent of the work that Betsy, JR, MG and various other friends were putting into it while I was hospitalized with the baby. Trust me, this room was a terrible wreck before I left the house on Sunday to give birth, and the idea that it could be transformed so completely in less than one week was inconceivable to me.

But when Jon and I got home from the hospital with the baby yesterday afternoon, I was dying to see what they had done. Suffice it to say that I was TOTALLY unprepared for how radically changed this room was. When they opened the door and showed me, my jaw hit the floor. This formerly junk-filled, dirty, rundown room with peeling paint and holes in the walls had been made over into THE most beautiful, peaceful little girls’ room that I’ve ever seen. The walls are a gorgeous robin’s egg blue. The trim is a beautiful, high gloss white. The windows were repaired and the closet was cleaned, freshly painted and organized with beautiful new wicker toy baskets. The new canopy bed was set up and the other, previously banged up and ugly furniture had been made over into shabby chic adorable with MG’s mad decorative paint skillz. I could NOT BELIEVE how gorgeous it was, and this is before any of the fabrics are finished for the canopy, curtains, bedding, etc. It’s a magical, amazing room for C and G to share as they grow up, and I can’t believe that my wonderful friends and family pulled off such a makeover miracle in less than one week.

Here are a few photos of the room that I took when I first had the big reveal yesterday. They aren’t very high quality because I took them with my BlackBerry. I will get some better ones as soon as I get a few minutes. And my sister keeps reminding me that it will be even prettier once the new wall sconces and light fixture are installed, the rug she’s ordered arrives, and the curtains, canopy etc are all up. But I have to say that I think it looks pretty amazing now. I can’t believe I have a nice place to change G and such a beautiful, peaceful space for C to play and (eventually) sleep. The room is so lovely and the transformation is so radical that I can’t stop going back in there just to look

C and NC already loooooove the new room.

It’s 11 pm, which means that Baby G has now been out of my belly and in my arms for just about 24 hours. And I have yet to sleep!

Jon is asleep on the fold out sleeper chair next to my hospital bed, and G is snoozing in the little bassinet on the other side – which explains why I haven’t yet slept. You see, the hospital where I gave birth  doesn’t allow newborns to stay in the room if both parents are asleep. In order for the baby to stay and not be taken to the well-baby nursery, at least one adult has to be awake – with lights on – at all times. And since Jon is asleep, I am fighting sleep myself because even though I’m sure they would take excellent care of her in the nursery, I don’t like being away from her. I know that I’m going to have to cave in soon, though. Even the post-birth euphoria that’s kept me awake this long can’t last much longer.

Since I am exhausted and feeling spacy, I probably can’t manage a truly organized and coherent blog post, so here are some odds and ends from our first 24 hours since G arrived:

• For those who have asked or are curious, yes, I did have a c-section.  My labor went from Braxton Hicks contractions to REALLY strong contractions in just a few hours. Brethine and stadol failed to stop or even slow down the contractions.  So for several reasons ( I will write a longer birth story later), including the fact that G was transverse breech and the very powerful, nonstop contractions were stressing my previous c-section scar, my doctor advised us to go ahead and have a c-section. Forty five minutes later – at 11:45 pm last night, G arrived via a relatively uneventful surgery.

• G was technically 34 weeks gestation when she was born. She would have been 35 weeks if she had made it to midnight before her delivery.

• She weighed 5 lbs and 7.5 ounces and was 18 inches long. She’s TEENSY. But unlike some babies who come early (including C, who was born at 36 weeks in 2007), she doesn’t look undercooked or like a preemie. Instead she just looks like a miniature, perfectly formed china doll, with sweet little features and quite a bit of wavy, very blonde hair. She is GORGEOUS.

• She needed a bit of supplemental oxygen for a few hours after birth, so Jon and I had to wait to have her with us until 3-4 am in the morning after the c-section. She’s been breathing wonderfully since then. That’s great news because at 34-35 weeks, we weren’t sure how her lungs would be. We’re really lucky.

• That’s the good news. The bad news is that like many late-term premature babies, she is veeeeery sleepy and her sucking reflex is underdeveloped. So breastfeeding is not going well (understatement).  She and I are really struggling to get nursing going.  Even for me -  someone who has successfully breastfed several other children, and who has helped lots of other women get started nursing their babies – this is really a challenging situation.  She’s simply too tired to latch on and actually eat.  And making matters more complicated, she also has had issues with unstable body temperature and blood sugar levels (both also common problems for late term preemies). So we have to get calories into her.  It’s crucial. Without energy, she can’t wake up enough to nurse. It’s a vicious cycle. At one point today, we were warned that if we didn’t see some improvement in her feeding and blood sugar,  she might have to be sent to the special care nursery for a day or three to get things stabilized. The thought of being separated from her in an acute care hospital setting was REALLY upsetting to me.  So I broke down and explained to the nurse who had taken her blood sugar about recently losing Henry, and she was absolutely wonderful. She told me she would do whatever she could to help us get the blood sugar issue turned around – and she did.  This nurse spent the next 45 minutes showing me how to use my finger plus a syringe (to avoid nipple confusion while she;s learning to breastfeed) to get a mix of my pumped milk plus high calorie formula into G’s little tummy. An hour later, her blood sugar reading was the best it had been all day. And since that time, this nurse’s technique has allowed me to keep her well-fed enough to stay out of the NICU.  She still isn’t really getting enough, and I’m still not half as good at it as that nurse is, but we’re hanging in there. I also keep G skin to skin as much as possible to keep her temperature up, and so I can try to nurse her every time she looks even remotely awake enough. Unfortunately, I really wasn’t able to get her to latch on even one time today. But I think that if I just keep trying as she grows and becomes more awake, we will eventually get there.  Between the pumping, the nursing attempts and the finger-plus-syringe feedings, keeping her fed is a very time consuming proposition at this point. Her weight is now at 5lbs 4ozs, so she hasn’t lost too much. That’s good. Tomorrow I hope to get a clearer idea from the pediatrician of how her feeding will have to look in order for her to go home (I am hoping for Thursday at the latest).

• Today J (staying with her dad and stepmom while I am hospitalized)  and C (staying with Jon’s wonderful parents) both came to meet their new baby sister for the first time. It was magical for me to see each of my girls with G, and to realize that I am now the lucky mother of THREE beautiful daughters. J came to the hospital with two of her best friends, and I loved seeing the big girls oohing and aahing over G. J seemed so proud, and loved holding her new baby sister. C came into the room yelling “where is my baby sister!?” and was absolutely THRILLED to finally meet Georgia. She couldn’t keep her hands off of her, but I could tell that she is also a little stressed. We’ve had so much happening in our family lately, and she’s had to spend more time away from her mama than any two year old should. But her grandparents are so amazing and she is so close to them that I think she is mostly doing okay. Still, I can’t wait to get home, get the kids home, and try to settle in as the radically reconfigured family that we are.

• E still doesn’t know that G was born last night! I tried several times today to get him on the phone at camp but wasn’t successful because he was out hiking all day. I think we now have a plan where he’ll be calling me first thing in the morning so I can tell him. He is going to be SO EXCITED.  (He will probably be equally excited to hear about the surprise baby guinea pigs)

• G’s other hospital visitors today included Aunt Betsy, cousins E, M and NC and  Uncle Robert and Aunt Nicole, plus cousins A, H and N (their J is away at camp as well, so he wasn’t here).  Dr. Neighbor also came, along with the Hickman grandparents, plus C and M (who are Henry, J and E’s father and stepmother). It was a busy day. All agreed that G is an absolutely beautiful baby who radiates a peaceful, warm vibe that puts a smile on everyone’s face. She’s a special baby; we all sense it.

• Today was an amazing day for me. Starting last night, while I was lying on the operating table just before the c-section, I sensed Henry’s actual presence with me for the very first time since his death. And he’s remained with me all day today, encouraging me to fall in love with his new baby sister, born two months to the day after he was first admitted to the hospital.  When I hold G in my arms, I feel Henry with me in a really intense way.  It’s extremely comforting and has brought me a level of peace with the loss of my son that I hadn’t experienced even one bit before G’s birth. It’s been an extremely emotionally intense 24 hours, and I love Henry even more than I did before.

This week, E is at camp, J is at her dad’s for the week (the kids alternate weeks between their two houses) and C went with Jon to the beach for four days to spend some time with the Hickman side of the fam.

And Henry is gone.

That accounts for my whole family, so I am alone at home for the week, except for the hours I am at work. I am actually kind of glad to have the time all by myself to think and be sad and write, but I do miss everyone. Especially Henry. The house is very, very quiet. (Before anyone worries about me saying I am alone in the house on the interwebs, I will add that I am alone BUT FOR my giant, male Great Pyrenees dog, Leo, who doesn’t like people who aren’t supposed to be near the house coming near the house, and I have the alarm system turned on when I am here and when I am not, so….)

Here are some photos Jon sent me of C in South Carolina yesterday. She – like everyone on my side of the family, particularly us girls – absolutely loooooves the beach.

C, practicing to become a BIG sister very soon.

J on her church group mission trip this week. (She got home last night and BOY was I glad to see her.)

E, with cousin M at Edisto Island, which is where the kids received the news that Henry had left us, Their father and stepmother (compliments of a dear, dear friend who has a company plane and is generous beyond words) flew them down to tell the children (I am too pregnant to fly) and then they all stayed together in the house my family had rented for vacation before all of this happened, letting the kids play with cousins and be loved on by various aunts and uncles before flying back together the day before Henry’s memorial service. Edisto has always been a special place to me, my kids and my family. Now it will be even more special. I hope to scatter some of Henry’s ashes there later this year or next summer. He loved it there very much.

Here are E and cousin M playing in the fountains in downtown Knoxville yesterday. The fountain drenching was part of a guys’ day that Jon had with them which if I understood correctly included Laser Tag, hot wings, fountains, Chucky Cheese and going to see the new Karate Kid movie. Basically my idea of a day from hell.

E fell alseep as soon as he got home. He was tiiiired. Today he leaves for sleepaway camp – the same camp Henry attended and loved (as well as lots of other family members).

Can you tell that their father and I, and stepparents (and aunts and uncles and dear friends) are trying to keep the kids busy, active and yet surrounded by a lot of support and love at the same time? It’s hard to know how we are doing in helping them through these early stages of their grief. Hell, it’s hard to know how I am getting through these early stages of my grief. (Is there sleepaway camp for hugely pregnant women who can’t stop weeping or writing?)

Recent snaps…

E and cousins Mac and El with a tenacious NC clinging to her big sister’s leg. Look how tall El is getting! She’s 9 months YOUNGER than E is and she’s already 5’6″!

(FYI, my favorite NC quote recently is when I heard her tell C, “I am the princess ballerina and you are my VERY BAD SLAVE!”)

E and I caught some of the Dogwood Arts Parade on Friday night before we saw the movie “How to Train Your Dragon” at the theater on Gay Street. The movie was fantastic. Highly recommended. We had to park several blocks away because of parade traffic and I am so large now that poor E had to get behind me and sort of push me up one of the steeper streets in order to get us to the movie on time.

A skeptical looking J hanging out on the front porch last weekend.

J had a great week because she got to go to Sundown in the City (a really popular local outdoor concert series) with friends and NO adults for the first time ever. The girls had a great time.  Here they are right before I dropped them off downtown for the show.

C (who almost never gets sick) has been really under the weather the past few days with a nasty tummy virus. You can see her general mood in this photo. That’s pretty much been the look on her face for the past four days.

C to Jon: “Daddy, your tummy is getting as big as mama’s!”

(As Jon’s belly is flat as a washboard and mine is as large as a small Latvian village, this is obviously not the case, but I can’t say I didn’t chortle when she said it…;-)