Looking back...April 2013

April was a challenging month. Keeping up with a 3 year old and remembering how to take care of a newborn again was a learning experience.  As all parents do Brian and I adjusted to having 2 girls and functioning on minimal sleep.

 Once we brought Christina home from the hospital we realized that she had infant reflux and gurgled, grunted, and made all sorts of noises while trying to fall asleep due to her milk coming back up into her throat.  We learned that raising her bassinet at one end helped a little but all those new baby sounds kept us up at night.

At around 3 weeks of age she started to projectile vomit with each feeding and sometimes a couple hours after.  After numerous loads of laundry, a trip to the ER (which they just told us it was her reflux and we needed to burp her better.  If you live near Watertown NY I do not recommend Samaritan hospital, which I had heard and the reason I did not deliver there.), I finally got her into see her pediatrician who immediately ordered an ultrasound of her stomach and sent us to Syracuse for surgery that evening.  She had a condition know as pyloric stenosis. It's condition where the muscle between the stomach and small intestine closes and doesn't allow anything to pass.  I think we caught the condition early, but Christina and I spent 4 long days at the Children's hospital in Syracuse.  It was hard seeing my beautiful daughter just 3 1/2 weeks old with machines hooked up to her.  But in the end the surgery went wonderful, and her scars are so small they will be gone by her first birthday.

With all that we went through in April I did not take to many photos. But I believe the few I did turned out beautiful..

These next few are from the photos I took for Christina's birth announcement

The ones below were taken for Christina's first month photos.  Sabrina was in a photogenic mood, practicing her modeling skills.

This one is of Christina pre-surgery...

...and post surgery

Brian brought Sabrina to visit us in the hospital our 3rd day there, her and I took a "mommy & me" moment and enjoyed some Cold Stone Creamery ice cream together.

I'm glad April is behind us and believe that the challenges we faced made Brian and I stronger parents.