Celebrating my daughter's second birthday.

Today was my daughter's second birthday, and as a lot of you know, there is good cause to truly celebrate such an event. Born three months premature, she weighed just over a pound and a half at birth. During her 92 days in Columbia Presbyterian's NICU, she fought to overcome a number of life-threatening medical issues that arose because of her extreme prematurity.

To celebrate the remarkable progress she has made over the past two years, my family and I are participating in the annual Walk America event for the March of Dimes this Sunday. Last year, we raised $2,500. This year, we're going for double that, but we need your help.

Anything you can give would be greatly appreciated. Please visit http://www.walkamerica.org/teamsadie to read more about what my girl has been through and the challenges facing other premature and low birth weight babies.

You can make contributions directly through that address, or even a pledge (then I'll be in touch with PayPal info or a mailing address).

Honestly, Sadie is lucky to have survived at all, let alone wound up in such (generally) good health. I can't look at the photos from when she was in the hospital with a dry eye, and it tears me apart to think about the suffering those helpless little babies endure. We've all got different priorities and causes in our lives, so I understand if you can't contribute, but if you can, please do. It sounds cliche, every little bit helps.

Time flies. Happy birthday Sadie.

Picture time

Some of these early photos can be kind of upsetting, so if you wanna skip over them, I certainly understand. It's much harder for me to look at these now that she's home and doing well than it was to actually live through the time when we took them. I guess it's because now I know what I almost missed out on having in my life.


WEEK 1
So, pregnancies last 40 weeks on average. Sadie was born after just 25 weeks. You wouldn't take your Thanksgiving turkey out of the oven after only 2/3 of the recommended cook time, would ya? Well, same deal. This bird was WAY undercooked. She weighed a pound and a half and was 12" long. Her entire body fit in the palm of an adult's hand (we weren't able to actually hold her until about a month later). Children born at this weight have about a 50% chance of survival.

The first two photos are from about seven hours after she was born. They were taken in what's called a Transitional Nursey, where they evaluate the needs of babies before transferring them to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Because her skin was so thin (in some photos you'll see the lights from the different sensors showing right through her feet), they covered her with a sheet of plastic to prevent too much moisture from escaping from her body.

The second two photos are from day 4. In the one, you'll notice that her body was so tiny and her skin so thin, you can literally see her organs.

By the end of the first week, the doctors had her under a special light designed to help fight the onset of jaundice. This is very common in all new borns, regardless of gestation, and I know a few other parents on this board have been through this with their children as well, but it's still pretty scary. I threw in a size reference for the last photo - her entire torso was the size of my glasses.

Oh, and you see that diaper she's wearing? It's literally about the size of a maxipad

WEEK 2

These are from Mother's Day weekend. Great way to spend your first, right? At this point, she was about ten days old.

The bandage on her side is from her heart surgery. The tubes in her nose are not an actual ventilator that breathes for her, but they do deliver air with a higher percentage of oxygen directly to her nose for her to breathe in on her own.

One of the most common issues for kids born this early is that the part of the brain that regulates breathing hasn't fully developed yet (if they were still inside the womb, they wouldn't need this ability, hence...) so they very often just stop breathing because they literally don't know that they need to. As Juan mentioned earlier in the thread, watching you child turn blue can be pretty fucking shocking.

It was around this time that she started pulling those tubes out of her nose, so on occasions, the nurses would have to restrain her by saftey pinning the bandages on her arm to the bed dressings.

The third picture is of me changing her diaper for the first time. Again, here you can really see just how small she was.

Last photo is of her rig. That bed alone costs $80,000.

ONE MONTH

In these, she's about a month old. That was the first time we held her. It was also the first time we saw her without a hat. (Obviously, the nurses had taken it off in the past to change her and bathe her, but we had never actually seen it.)

Her stuffed rabbit was still bigger than her at this point.

One of the primary goals of the NICU is to get these kids to put on weight. But a side effect of the feeding tube is that their bellies fill up with air, and they literally have to release the pent up oxygen with a tube after every meal. You can see how big her stomach is in the third photo.

In the last one, Sadie had stopped breathing, and the nurse stimulating her to get her to start again. The philosophy of the hospital that she was in is that they want the kids to learn to breathe on their own as soon as possible, because putting kids on a vent unnecessarily can do more harm than good in the long run. It's kinda like boot camp for baby lungs.

SECOND MONTH

The first is my favorite picture from her hospital stay.

Finally started moving her away from the feeding tube and over to the bottle after about two months.

THIRD MONTH

By July, she was getting a bottle regularly and had been moved out of the isolet and into a crib (you BMXers will notice that the crib is HARO brand). She was pretty much over the apnea by now and her heart surgery was deemed successful.

The most dire time was around the six to ten week range. She had gotten an infection that caused kidney failure and some scarring of her liver. There are some long term issues with that, but by now, we just wanted to get her home.

The last photo was taken the day before we took her home. Look at the size of that stomach! It was filled with air and her kidneys and liver were still swollen from the infection.

So after 92 days in the hospital, she was actually discharged about a week before her original due date.

The First Year Home

When we got her home, she still only weighed four and a half pounds. We quickly fell into a routine, but it still made for a pretty long day. At first, she was eating every two hours, and it took about an hour to deliver each meal. Plus, she had reflux which yielded constant projectile vomiting (thank god for hardwood floors). Because of all that, we had to go to the doctor's office every other day to make sure she wasn't loosing weight. Plus all the trips to see her specialiasts at the hospital.

Therapy started in the fall, and that was seven hours a week. By Christmas, we had made three trips to the ER and spent another full week in the hospital for some hormonal issues she was having. But, hey, that's the way it goes right? There's not a parent on this board that wouldn't do ten times that for their kid without even thinking.


August '04:


September:


October:


November:


December:


January '05:


February:


March:


April, her first birthday: