March for Babies

This year our family is joining the Earlham College team to participate in the March of Dimes March for Babies fundraising walk. The funds raised by this event support March of Dimes research to prevent birth defects, premature birth, and infant mortality. Every year, half a million babies in the U.S. are born prematurely. Premature birth is the leading cause of newborn death and many life long disabilities.

As you all know by now, both of our children were born prematurely. Sam was born 16 weeks early on July 12, 2009, weighing 1 lb 8 oz and measuring only 13 inches long. He was airlifted to Riley Children's Hospital in Indianapolis a few hours after he was born and spent 8 days fighting for his life in the Riley NICU. Unfortunately, Sam was just too small and too sick to survive. He died in our arms on July 21, 2009.

After losing Sam, we didn′t want to take any chances with our second pregnancy. In spite of seeing a maternal-fetal medicine specialist from the very beginning, Catie was born 11 weeks early this May. She weighed 3 lbs 2 oz at birth and quickly dropped to 2 lbs 8 oz. After spending 70 days in the Indiana University Special Care Nursery, we brought home our beautiful baby girl on July 14, 2010. Because of the excellent care she received at IU and a whole lot of TLC, today she is thriving.

So far no one has been able to figure out why our babies came so early. I had two healthy, low risk pregnancies and yet went into preterm labor with no warning signs with both children. It is our hope that research funded by the March of Dimes will help reduce the risk of premature birth and prevent other families from experiencing the pain that ours endured. We hope you will support our walk by joining us on September 18th at Glenn Miller Park or by sponsoring our walk at http://www.marchforbabies.org/catiemoore. Even though it is too late for our family, please help us give all babies a fighting chance!

Thanks and we hope to see you there!

Shannon, Andy, & Catie

Talent

Catie's birth appears to have inspired many of our talented friends and family members. Here are a few examples of their very impressive work...

My sister knit this beautiful blanket, while

my mom & dad rebuilt and made cushions for the chair
Laura Sullivan's amazing needlepoint decorates this quilt and pillow

Aunt Debbie knit Catie this super-soft blanket

Daddy knit this scary fossil nautiliod

Fellow geologist Alison Smith knit Catie two adorable cardigans and a bib!

My co-worker Donna Day made Catie this beautiful baby quilt

"Grandma" Janice Bragg knit Catie another warm and soft baby blanket that is just the perfect size for her bouncy and car seat.

Catie also received several hats- here are a few knit by Vicki Hair, Meghan, and Great Aunt Sally

Thanks everybody!!!!!

Bath time!

My mom was out visiting Catie last week. It was great to have an extra set of hands to help out with the baby and give Andy & I some much needed rest, and of course she had a great time with her granddaughter. I think they both enjoyed bath time in particular...

At least the bath part was fun. Someone didn't want to get dressed afterward though!

A few of my favorite things...

Sorry for the lack of updates recently, caring for Catie is taking up even more time than I imagined! (yes- laugh at me all you more experienced moms) Anyway, here's how Catie has been spending her time at home...

Chillin' in her bouncy

Playing on her mat

Hanging out with Daddy

Sleeping in her swing

Sleeping on mommy

And her favorite activity of all...EATING!!!

Hope everyone has fun at the Veilleux family reunion this weekend!!!

Catie versus the Fish

Catie has really been enjoying tummy time on her fun activity mat (a great hand-me-down from Polly & Henry). She is strong enough to flip her head from side to side, but can't really hold it off the floor yet. The OTs at the hospital had given us a brochure with some activities to try with Catie, which included placing a towel under the baby's chest during tummy time while she is still developimg her neck muscles. I decided to give it a try using a stuffed catfish. It didn't exactly work the way it was supposed to! Rater than use it to prop herself up, Catie thinks it is great fun to drag herself over the fish and land exhausted and panting on the other side. She really thinks that she should be able to crawl already and the fish has given her the next best thing.

She starts by laying on the fish...
Then gets comfortable, sometimes flipping her head to the other side.

Once in position, it's time to start pushing.

Then it's up onto the fish

A little more...

Then over the top!!!

Have mom replace fish and have fun flopping over it again (and again)!

Baby Girl Due: July 23, 2010

Catie was supposed to be due today. Kind of crazy considering she is 11+ weeks old. In my sleep-deprived state, I do not have a whole lot to report. We're all hanging in there and getting accustomed to life at home. Catie had her first visit to the pediatrician yesterday. She weighed a whopping 7 lbs 2 oz! Since she is growing so well, the doctor didn't have much else to say. We will be heading back to Indy next week to see the (dreaded- Catie's word, not mine) ophthalmologist at Riley, but other than that, we are pretty much staying home.

Catie's nursery is almost complete. I just need to finished sewing hangers onto the bird quilt that Suzi made for Andy when he was a baby. Once the quilt is hung, I'll be done with the initial decorating. I'm not ready to move her in there alone yet, but it will be nice for naps during the day. We are really looking forward to a time when she'll sleep in a crib and not on one of us! Until then, naptime for Catie looks more like this...

Calming Miss Crazy

Miss Crazy herself....

So sleep and newborns just don't mix. At least sleep and THIS newborn. She prefers to sleep attached to a human- snuggled on to a chest, lying across a stomach, or best of all, with a boob in her mouth. This may work well for Catie, but it's not so good for me. I've found it to be pretty much impossible to get anything (other than typing or reading) accomplished, including sleep, while she is nursing. Hopefully this will change as she grows either because I get better at multitasking or because she stops wanting to nurse 8 hours a day. In an attempt to gain a bit more time without having the child attached to one of us, Andy & I have been experimenting with different ways to calm the beast when she is fussy. We've known about the power of the vibrating bouncy for some time now, but were happy to discover that "narco swing"- the magic swing that puts crying babies to sleep in seconds, and walks in the stroller also seem to work. These might not get us any more sleep, but at least I can get the dishes done :-)

Who's that baby in the mirror?

Here's a photo series from our last night in the hospital. Catie saw herself in a mirror for the first time and was FASCINATED!

Whoa! there's a baby in here with me.

Maybe I should make faces at it?
Bluuuubbbbb!

Hey, baby!!!

Yaayyyy!

Day 3: Sleeping like a baby

I still have not had the experience to truly understand this phrase. Yes, Catie is fully capable of remaining asleep through Andy cutting woodshed parts in the basement, but she's awful loud! There are a never ending snurfles, grunts, and sighs emanating from her. We did have a good night though. Catie managed to sleep for 3-4 hours between feedings, and when she did wake up it was just to eat and then fall asleep again. Much, much better than our previous 2 nights when she refused to sleep unless she was being held.

After all that rest, she was raring to go this morning! We had a nice bath, did some laundry, played in the garden, watched daddy work on the woodshed, cleaned the kitchen a little, etc. I'm getting in a lot of practice with the fine art of baby wearing. Thank god for front carriers- I don't know if I'd be able to leave the couch without one!

Day 2: At home with Catie

I figure that Catie's discharge from the hospital was a logical end of our CaringBridge site. Those sites are really only for short term use and the 51 photo limit was driving me crazy. I never intended to continue posting from home, but with so many of our friends and family far away, I decided to start this. Besides, I've gotten pretty good at typing one handed and have LOTS of sitting around time while nursing (have I mentioned how much this kid likes to eat?!). It's weird I guess, but I never considered CaringBridge a blog- it was just a means of getting status reports out to everyone who cares about us when we didn't have the time to call or email. Somehow it took on a life of its own, and here we are...

For those of you who have not been keeping up with CaringBridge, Catriona was born at 28 weeks 6 days on May 6th. She was discharged on Wednesday after spending 70 days in the IU Hospital Special Care Nursery. She weighed 6 lbs 7 oz when she was discharged, well up from the her low weight of 2 lbs 8 oz. As with so many newborns, and preemies in particular, she suffers from gastroesophageal reflux. Spitting up alone isn't a problem- what baby doesn't urp on a regular basis??? However, Catie tends to stop breathing and drop her heartrate when she is doing so. Therefore, she came home with an apnea monitor so we will know when she has one of these bradycardic events and can get her through it without having to rush a blue baby to the emergency room. So far, so good on that front- no bradys and no blue baby (yet).

Things are still plenty exciting though. We are all getting adjusted to life away from the NICU. For Andy & I, this means living on limited sleep, having to pass the baby back and forth during meals, and learning to interpret Catie's newer cries without having a huge medical team there supporting us. Catie, on the other hand, is having to get used to a new environment sans the constant ring of alarms and crying babies and with mom & dad as her only caretakers. She seems to be handling the changes well though. I think babies must be remarkably resilient little creatures.

Stay tuned and we'll keep you posted on Catie's progress and our parental trials as Miss C grows!