Best of 2014!

  Although this has been an amazing year with a lot of ups and downs, we are so happy to be moving into 2015 at home with both of our girls healthy and happy.  This time last year Shane and I spent the last moments of welcoming the new year at my best friends house, Brielle spent the night with my parents (can't believe she was 6 months old then!), and we were talking about our plans for this year and where we wanted to be as a couple and as a family. I hope everyone has a great time celebrating tonight and we wish everyone a happy and healthy new year!

• January

-Brielle turned 7 months

-Shane and I decided to officially start trying for another baby in February

-I started coming up with my first ideas for my blog

• February

-I wrote my first blog here

- Brielle turned 8 months and had her first Valentine's Day

- I decided to share Brielle's birth story

• March

-Shane and I celebrated our 9 year anniversary

-Brielle turned 9 months!!

-Found out that we were pregnant!

• April

-Brielle turned 10 months!

-We took Brielle's spring pictures and they turned out beautiful

-Brielle's first Easter was a hit! She loved Easter Egg Hunting

• May

-My first Mother's Day and Shane turned 27!

-Brielle turned 11 months!

-Brielle was full on walking!!

• June

-Brielle turned 12 months!

-Shane celebrated his first Father's Day

-We found out that it's a GIRL!

• July

-We found out at an 18 week check up that Rochelle had Trisomy 13

-Our first Echo was done on Rochelle in utero

-I came to realize it's ok to say no without feeling so guilty

• August

-I was 25 weeks pregnant with Rochelle

-We celebrated my 26th birthday early

-We had our second opinion from the cardiologist

• September

-I turned 26 and was 29 weeks pregnant!

-I wrote about having a week full of love

-It's so important to celebrate the little things

• October

-Shane and I celebrated our four year wedding anniversary

-I went into major nesting mode getting ready for Rochelle's arrival

-We took our fall family pictures

• November

-We welcomed our second gorgeous daughter into the world

-We stayed at the Ronald McDonald House for the first time

-I wrote about surviving the NICU

• December

-Brielle turned 18 months!

-We had our Christmas part 1 at my parent's house

-We survived our first hospital visit since being released from the NICU here!

Crazy Week in Review

  So, as many of you may know, we spent Christmas week in the hospital taking care of our baby Rochelle. I will describe a little bit of what we went through and where we stand today.  I just want to say first and foremost, thank you to everyone for the prayers sent to Rochelle. God healed her little body and she is back at home safe and sound.
  On the early morning of Monday December 22, I started to notice that Rochelle was showing shows signs of increased effort of breathing, and her rate of breathing was increased.  I hooked her up to the portable pulse ox machine (which measures her oxygen percentage) in her body and she was in the 80's (which is suppose to be 90-100) at 1/4L on her concentrator.  I hooked her up to the spare oxygen tank and increased her flow to 1 liter and her sats were still low and not going up. After doing everything I could at home, I called Shane at work and told him to come home immediately knowing that we needed to take Rochelle to the ER.  I called my small town ER and told them what was going on (she was in Respiratory Distress) and knew she needed to be closely monitored to see what might be happening. They quickly life-flighted her to Dell's Childrens Meidcal Center in Austin (Shane got to fly with her while I packed up the house and all of her equipment, the dogs and their kennels to stay at my parents and drove to the hospital from Yoakum) Thank goodness that my parents were already watching Brielle that weekend which worked out perfectly for her to stay there a few extra days.
  When I arrived to the hospital her x-rays were showing signs of atelectasis (collapse of the lung), and increased vasculature, so they wanted to start her on antibiotics right away in case of a possibility of pnemonia, and for the respiratory therapy to provide albuterol breathing treatments every 4 hours and CPT (chest physiotherapy) to break up the secretions in her lungs.
  The next day (Tuesday morning), the doctor ordered to increase the amount of lasix (to remove the extra fluid off of her body) from once a day at home to three times a day.  He also ordered to give her a potassium replacement replace what is getting lost while on Lasix, continue CPT and albuterol, continue her on an IV with D10W (because her sugars were a little low), and place a PICC line, continue the antibiotic regimen, and place her on a CPAP machine to help her breathing.
  Wednesday (Christmas Eve), the plan of the day was to take her off her breathing machine (CPAP) and put her on a high-flow oxygen, try to start feedings again through the NJ tube (nasojejunum) and keep the stomach empty, change the fluid pill (Lasix) to twice a day instead of three times a day, continue IV fluids until we know she can tolerate her half breastmilk/half formula feedings, continue CPT and albuterol, blood gases and an x-ray to be drawn in the morning.
  Thursday morning (Christmas Day), the plan was to the increase the feedings by a small amount, continue CPT and change her albuterol to as needed, switch from the high flow oxygen to the regular nasal cannula that we were using at home, discontinue the IV antibiotics since they ruled out viral or bacterial pneumonia, and continue the lasix to twice a day.
  Friday morning the only change was to increase her lasix to three times a day due to an increase in haziness in her lungs from the x-ray taken that day.  The doctor loved her improvement and stated that we will be making way to leaving tomorrow.
  Saturday morning the doctors stated that Rochelle was doing great, all of the treatments and therapies worked tremendously and a LOT faster then they thought and they would discontinue the IV fluids, take out her NJ tube and place back her NG tube for feedings to resume at home, discontinue the PICC line and CPT and we will moved to the step down unit called IMC for one more night of monitoring before being able to go home.
  Sunday morning we were told we were able to go home!!! Best news all week, Rochelle did amazingly all week with all of the changes she had to go through, and by the grace of God she stayed strong and came out stronger then ever!! We are going home with Lasix to be given twice a day in her NG tube, prevacid for her reflux to be given once a day, miralax to be given in the morning with her feeding and oxygen to remain the same at 1/4L on the oxygen concentrator.

Sorry for making this all about the facts, but Rochelle endured a LOT  this past week and she is so amazing and strong.  People say we (Shane and I) have amazing faith and strength, little do they know our baby girl Rochelle has gone through more than we can ever imagine.  God gives her amazing strength and no one ever expected us to be here to this day being able to write about our little blessing.  She is AMAZING, not us. We are so happy to be home with our girls and thankful for my mom able to be here with me and help me out with the girls while Shane went back to work this week after taking last week off.
**Thank you to everyone who helped make our girls have a wonderful Christmas, and took time to come visit in the hospital or bring gifts for the girls, we appreciate you all so much! :)

Thank you to these amazing men for getting Rochelle stable, safe and sound to Austin.

On her CPAP.

Loving her new toy!

smiling at Santa

Trying to convince me to hold her (which worked we finally convinced the nurse to let us to hold her!)

Surviving with video chats from Brielle.

loving on my bundle of joy

Almost ready to go home!

Leaving the hospital! YAY!

Christmas part 1

  This Christmas was much more different then any other holidays Shane and I have had together.  We were so happy to be home with Rochelle and Brielle for the holidays and just get to spend some quality time with our loved ones.  The plan was to spend this past weekend with my family and on Christmas day spend it with Shane's side of the family.
  On our way to Lockhart (only an hour from my house to my moms), Rochelle's big oxygen tank that had at least 8+ more hours on it went from half full to empty about 40 minutes into the drive.  Rochelle immediately showed me signs that she was going into respiratory distress (decrease oxygen levels, retractions when breathing, turning bluish/grey) and I knew we had to do something, and quick.  We always bring the concentrator with us when we go visit somewhere so that we can use the tanks only (when in the car or running errands), so we knew we needed to find a plug and the first place came to mind was Buc-cees and it was about 5 minutes away.  I kept stimulating her as her oxygen levels were dropping and Shane immediately put his hazard lights on and was driving at least 100 mph to get to to Buc-cees.  Those 5 minutes felt like the longest in my life as I am sure for Rochelle it felt the same not being able to breathe well. As soon we got there they were accommodating and let us plug in our big machine and sit by the main entrance (some of you may have seen me!) for an hour and half that it took Shane to go home to get an extra spare tank and get back to me.  That was definitely a crazy start to our morning, but we were so happy when we made it to my moms and were finally able to relax and Rochelle was back to her normal self.
  Since we have both not been able to work much we definitely didn't have any money to be buying gifts this year, so my mom and I decided we would just have a craft filled day with the kids and they could paint, build  a ginger bread house, make their own sugar cookies, etc. and just enjoy the true meaning of Christmas and savoring every sweet moment.  It turned out that my brother had gone over and beyond with the gifts and got some for everyone and we brought gifts from our friends for Brielle to open as well.  It was so great and of course her favorite part was ripping the paper off, even though she did say that she wanted to color immediately when she found out she received a color book (it was so cute!)
  The day was well spent and I am so excited to start many new traditions at my moms new house and fill the kids with great memories with their grandparents.  I love that my brothers kids get to spend time with Brielle and Rochelle and just love on each other.  Cousin love is the best love.
(P.S I am writing this from the hospital where we will most likely be spending Christmas Day, after I finally got Rochelle to be comfortable and sleep and Shane's napping as well! (so cute!))

Cousin love

Our precious family

Gingerbread cooking making

more fun!

Uncle Nathan is the best!

Julia with the kids :)

Brielle wanting to color right away

Nana is the best!

Emma loving her new toy

Aiden was the only one who was "finger painting"

Emma :)

Brielle was so happy to get dirty

All three right before we called it quits and all three went straight to the bath! lol!

Feet painting

Messing with/loving on Aiden

Me and my girl 

This is the kind of pic you get with toddlers 

I am pretty sure Brielle was eating and Emma was talking.:)

6 week check-up 12-18-2014

  This was a very eventful day full of new appointments for Rochelle and a full day of love and laughter with friends.  Rochelle met up with the cardiologist and her primary care physician to follow her weight gain and any new changes we may encounter.

  The cardiologist appointment started out with them getting an EKG before the doctor came in to do his initial assessment.  She definitely did not like her clothes coming off so we didn't know how we were going to be able to last 3 hours for her echo.  Once they did her weight (7 pounds, 10 ounces--YAY) and length, we had to wait a little bit and then try to get her comfortable and calm before the ultrasound tech brought us to the other room to get her echo done.  After about an hour and half of looking at every possible angle of Rochelle's heart we finally got a complete reading and just waited for the doctor to come in and read the results.  He did confirm that she does still have a ASD and a PDA.  The ASD (hole in the top of heart toward the back) is still a moderate size causing the right ventricle to be enlarged a small amount (which is why she is going to be continuing on lasix but increased the dose to 0.4ml once a day) and the PDA looks to be getting smaller (which is usually the case in many children) to about 2cm in size. Overall great news and we all decided that it is best to just monitor the heart and do a follow-up visit in 4 months.

  The appointment with the pediatrician was next and she is so good with Rochelle (always talking to her and complimenting on her hair/how cute she looks) always answers the many questions I come in with.  With her steady weight gain (she said she is gaining like a healthy baby) we increased her NG tube feedings from 50ml/hr to 52ml/hr every 3 hours since she was tolerating the other feedings so well. We also got some eye ointment due to her increased secretions (yellow) around her eyes that come right back after wiping them off.  She has been having increased constipation issues due to lower fluid levels (caused by her medicine lasix) and we started her on miralax to mix with her formula/breastmilk feedings as needed.  She also continues on her prevacid once a day for her reflux and just answered some other minor questions we had and she said she wants us to come back in two weeks for a weight check and a follow-up to see how she is tolerating any of the changes.  

  Overall it was a very good day of appointments for her and let me just tell you how much manual pumping in the car is NO fun, but I would do anything to help Rochelle gain weight and grow to a strong little girl! After the appointments were done, Shane surprised me with an early Christmas present with a mani/pedi and I got my hair cut the day before! I couldn't believe it, Shane walked around the mall with Rochelle and carrying her oxygen tank and feeding bag while having her in the carrier.  If that doesn't melt my heart so that I could have some alone time (well my best friend Adriane did come meet up with me which was definitely a great surprise) and get pampered which was SO nice!  We then made an extra stop on the way home (at this point Rochelle was done being in her carseat) at our friend Courtney and Danny's and it was nice to have some adult time and we stayed there until 11:30pm!! We realized how good it was to just talk to our good friends (in person) and how we miss doing that, now that we all have kids now.

  Thank you for the continued prayers for Rochelle, she is such a strong and amazing little girl and we cannot wait to see her flourish :) 

SO cute!! 

Rochelle's echo

Daddy and his girls. After he cut off all of his afro!

Bri and her adorable self

Rochelle is definitely winking at us!

Courtney's Christmas gift to Brielle--We LOVE!

Courtney's Christmas gift to Rochelle--We LOVE!!

Sisterly love--she practically crushes her with all of the hugs and kisses! 

The only one good picture out of like 50! lol!

Smitten by her little sister

Brielle is 18 months!!

Yes, we have had a crazy last few months and I can't believe Brielle is already 18 months! She brings so much joy to our lives, we wouldn't know what to do without her. She is such a great big sister and loves trying to care for her and help in any way possible.

Height: 33 inches

Weight: 24 pounds 7 oz.

Likes:
-She honestly loves food (she definitely has a sweet tooth)
-Barney
-She loves to TRY to feed herself pretty much everything.  And in her perfect world, she would.
-Her wubbanub paci (she actually ripped one of her paci's in half while 8 teeth were coming in!)
- LOVES to color--I mean it's an all day activity.
-LOVES to dance!! This girl has got some rhythm!
-She loves to IMO chat with her cousins and Nana and Grandpa!
-She likes to try to do all of the reading in her books now
-Her favorite animal is still a cat--not just any cat, our cat Oscar.
-Puzzles have been a big like for her lately
-Talking is what she does all day and loves to share her opinion
-To take the backs off the remote controls( the battery as well)
-Loving on her baby sister... maybe a little too much sometimes :)

Dislikes:
- Changing diapers/clothes--This has a love/hate relationship where sometimes she will just lay down and do it and other days she will kick/scream/cry the whole time while doing it
- Getting out of the bath.  If she could stay in there all day just playing with the water, I am sure she would.
- Being told "no". She now says it back with a finger wave included at times. at-ti-tude.
-When the dogs bark she immediately says "hush" to them
-Wipe her face and get out any boogers
-Shots


Teeth: 16 teeth. WOW I am so glad we have gotten through the worst part of all of this teething mess. It's been a tough road these last couple of months but they have finally all broken through the gums at least and now we are waiting for them to come in.

Diapers: Size 4.  She is almost getting too big for them which I am hoping that means that we move up to the next step pretty soon and start to potty train :)

Language:
Signing- More, sad, happy, dirty, hot, cold, all done, milk, thank you, please (we are currently working on colors and feelings with signs)
Words- Wow, this amazes me as well because she will pretty much be talking all day while she is awake. She loves to repeat back what you say, and when you are telling a story about something she said or did she likes to do it again to show you (cutest thing ever). She has increased her vocabulary a lot in 6 months and we can't wait to see what the next 6 months brings!
Understanding- She understands most things that are told to her and she will say "huh" when she doesn't (Shane and I are definitely guilty of this)

Morning crazy hair 

Looking so grown up!

Eating on top of the table..typical

Counting time

So adorable!

Thinking her sisters chair is hers as well

Standing up in the shopping cart..oh toddler-hood

This is Rochelle's as well. She thinks it's hilarious 

mommy's glasses

Eating...typical :)

These months have been amazing with all of the learning and growing she has done and we can't wait to see how much she grows between now and turning 2!

Rochelle is one month old!!

  Wow, a LOT has gone on in the short month that Rochelle has been here! It seems like she is months older then she really is, but I think that's just my lack of sleep feeling that way.  It's crazy because for a moment (while starting this blog) I had a peaceful quiet noise with both kids asleep and daddy taking a nap as well, but I was quickly reminded by Brielle that quietness doesn't last long in this household.
  Since coming home from the hospital, I have been so busy with making appointments (we finally had her first out of hospital appointment with her new pediatrician which was nice), I still need to make an appointment for her to go see the eye doctor, cardiologist, GI specialist, and make calls to home health next week and order more supplies from her supply company.  I stay busy, but I am SO glad Shane has been able to be here with me during this month and really help me stay grounded and pray with me during the good times, and the bad.  (thank you so much to my mom as well, you are amazing!!)
  God has blessed us with a great hospice agency near our small town to help kind of get more settled at home and help with anything Rochelle may need at this time.  She is doing great by the way, she still has labored breathing, but has not shown us any major scares and has adjusted to being at home quite well.  She continues to be on her two medications (lasix, and prevacid) which we give once a day, and continues to be on oxygen at 0.25L per nasal cannula, and has her NG tube in for feedings which her doctor increased to 50ml/hr every 3 hours. yay! (she was showing me signs of more hunger in between feedings so I asked if we could increase it by a small amount and she has tolerated it great!)
 By continuing tradition I will write her stats on here, just like I did with Brielle.


Height: 20 inches (yay, she grew an inch already)

Weight: 6 pounds 15 oz.

Likes:
-Food (she definitely knows when it's time to eat!) She gets breastmilk and formula (elecare) every feeding .
-Being held
-Sleeping all day (what it feels like at least), and up all night
-Being swaddled
-Sleeping on her side (she will sleep on her back but it won't last long)
-Car rides (she will wake up if we are stopped too long at light, but will soon go back to sleep)
-Music


Dislikes:
-Being woken up (for feedings, diaper changes, etc)
-Being moved from one position to the other when she's comfortable
-Being naked


Language:
-Crying is pretty much her only form of language at this point.  When she was first born she had such a soft little cry.  Now she definitely gets her point across when she's upset--she still will desat (drop her oxygen levels) when she is so upset she forgets to breathe while crying, but they go back to her normal right away.

Here are a few cute pictures from her first month!

YAY! A huge celebration :)

sisterly love

daddy love

playing on her playmat

Picture time

We love her so much

Our precious baby

gorgeous baby

Enjoying some outside sun for a bit

Thanksgiving day

Carseat test--passed with flying colors, yay!

Rockin' an outfit by Auntie Adriane

Very tired but all worth it

Her paci looks the half the size of her face! :)

Bow time!

Under the Bilirubin light

Daddy love.

We are so excited we have been able to both be off work and spend every day with our baby girl.  We love our girls so much!  Thank you so much for all of the continued prayers for our baby Rochelle :)