gettin' Down with baby Olive

9:58 AM racheal 11 Comments

Just to clarify, that's my clever way of saying she has Down Syndrome :)

First off, let me apologize.  This was not at all the way I wanted to announce that we were pregnant.  I admit it, I am a big fat jerk.  If you were one of the 400 people that had no idea we were having a baby, please don't feel too bad.  Chances are, if you haven't seen me in the past few months, you were pretty clueless.

We planned on telling everyone once we found out the baby's gender, but in that same ultrasound we found out about all of baby's health issues.  We were shocked, scared for her life, and thought it best to wait.  I'm sure you understand.  Again, I'm sorry.  My blog draft (written a couple hours before surprise! Olive was born) is titled "Babymoon... P.S. We're pregnant!".  I obviously had good intentions.

A photo on our treehouse vacation, taken to announce our  baby.

On our way into surgery. See me bawling.

Olive's birth came as a bit of a shock.  All the fluid we'd seen built up in the previous ultrasounds had gone away, and we thought everything was hunky-dory.  I had one last 35-week ultrasound with our perinatal specialist, just to make sure that we were still a-go for our natural birth.  In the ultrasound, we found all the fluid (and then some) back in her chest and in her abdomen.  This upped her diagnosis from pleural effusion to hydrops, and meant that we were having a baby that day.  Awesomely enough, I went for a nice jog with Charlie to the park and spent a beautiful day in the sun, did the dishes and vacuumed the floor before I left for my appointment.  Yeah, I rock.

I called Garrett at work, told him we were having a baby that day, and he ran over to the hospital.  The Jacksons came from Chehalis, and my mom bought a plane ticket back from Hawaii for the week.  Love our family.

I LOVE this photo with her super puffy face.  Poor little girl.

Olive is doing great.  Thanks to our awesome parents, I'm sure you've all seen updates here and there about her.  We couldn't be more excited with her progress.  Her fluid has drained and stopped accumulating, she is fully able to survive off of breast milk (no IV!) and she is only getting minor oxygen supplements. Oh, and big bonus, her adema is gone.





Yesterday I got to dress her.  She was swimming in the premie clothes that I thought would be too big on her.  I am loving the fact that I get to hold her now and I got to try breastfeeding her a few days ago! These small things are really helping me feel like she's actually our kid.

The doctors removed her oxygen supply on Saturday, and she has been doing well without it!  She has been such a champ at bottle feeding, which is the only thing still keeping her in the NICU.  Once she gets bottle-feeding down and can take all her milk orally, she can come home!  I am SO excited.  At first it felt very foreign having this little babe that I could barely touch in a bed in a far-away hospital. It was very hard to feel attached to our little girl.  But after hours of watching, a few of actually holding, and like 10 minutes of feeding her, I am so ready to have her home with us.

Not feeling attached to Olive has been hard.  Especially once we found out she had Down Syndrome. We were surprised with the diagnosis, and it's taken a while to adjust our image of our future.  I don't know what our future will hold for us, and I think that is what makes me nervous.  We are not experts on the syndrome, we cannot answer 99% of the questions people ask us about it.  We're clueless.  My greatest hope is that she feels loved, wanted and adored.

One thing that really helped me was realizing what I was excited about for Charlie.  I am excited to go to his soccer games and see him score a goal. I am excited for him to come home from school excited about what he made that day. I am excited to see him become a good friend and a kind person.  I can have all that same joy with Olive.  

We want to be the kind of parents that love, support and encourage all our children to achieve their potential. Down Syndrome or not, we want them to be happy and successful.

We are all imperfect and different.  I realized as I was thinking about the resurrection (Happy Easter!) that we all will be changed after this life.  We are all mortal, fatally flawed.  Down Syndrome or not, we all have the same eternal goals and purpose.  I'm just excited to have fun along the way :)


Here are some Easter photos of the kiddos for ya.  Too cute, I know.