Parenting two kids is probably 6x harder than parenting one...
Penelope will be 6 months old on the 12th! And it's taken me that long to try to find time to post again. Apologies to anyone following who worried.
I am going to gloss over the details, sorry, not sorry. I think it's important to have boundaries on the intarwebs when talking about my kiddos.
Little Miss P did not make it to our scheduled c-section and decided to come on her own two days before. I delivered her naturally, still breach. The word "natural" sounds so peaceful. Let's just imagine a scene from the Exorcist instead. People were called names, there was screaming. I would have willingly vomited in the face of the anesthesiologist if I could have at the time. I'm a hippie-dippy mom (cloth diaper, organic foods...), but that epidural would have been awesome.
She wasn't breathing at birth and was on a ventilator from the start. A few days later (the day before our son's 3rd birthday), she was moved to another hospital. We were sure we would lose her on the drive to the hospital. All I could do was hope that if we lost her, it wouldn't be on my son's birthday. I felt a lot of guilt already about how much this had already affected him. The new NICU had a lot more resources to make us feel that she was being made as comfortable as possible. At one point we counted over 20 different IVs. Over 6 weeks, she weaned off certain drugs and ventilators until she was breathing on her own.
In the meantime, I was pumping breastmilk like crazy and trying to figure out how to balance visitations with the baby and spending quality time with my son, who I hadn't been home with in 77 days.
Penny came home on June 25. We were all so happy and tired from our adventures. My son was so excited to have his baby sister home, and is still absolutely in love with her. The feeling is mutual, she loves to watch him play.
...more updates to come... Trying to use her naps to finish her bedroom, since, you know, that was never done.
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