#preemiepower

Brave Little Girl

December 4, 2012 By Kayla Aimee

Over the past couple of weeks we’ve been dealing with some health issues, nothing huge, just some prematurity complications that I had thought we had under control. I won’t go into specific details here because it involves things like G.I. specialists and one day Scarlette will be a teenager and I don’t want her being all “MOTHER! I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU WROTE ABOUT THIS ON THE INTERNET WHEN I WAS TWO!”

I sat in another doctor’s office on Friday morning and after holding her down for an uncomfortable exam, I held her to me as I wished away all of her pain. I thought about all of the times she’s been stung by needles and held down for exams and restrained under machines and still she is such a little bundle of happiness and joy.

She’s our brave little girl.

We have a few more referrals and one of them is a nutritionist. I can not even tell you how excited I am about this as I’ve been asking for a pediatric nutritionist referral for a good while now. I am hopeful that new dietary changes will help us get her pain under control while still allowing her to gain weight.

And because I am feeling all emotional, I’ll share this video I came across this week of one of the first times I was allowed to change her diaper in the NICU. She’s two weeks old here and two years old now. Sometimes when I’m feeling a bit discouraged about the lingering complications we are dealing with, I look at these videos and remember that she’s come so far, our brave little girl.

Scarlette and Mommy: NICU Touch Time from Kayla Aimee on Vimeo.

16 Comments Filed Under: The Daily Scarlette, Uncategorized Tagged With: #preemiepower

Miss Scarlette Has Big News!

October 17, 2012 By Kayla Aimee

They are shared across parenthood, the milestones. We put our hands together in excitement and encourage them, the first time they roll over, that first laugh, those first wobbly steps across the floor. For these things there are dedicated spaces in baby books, waiting for us to dutifully pen in the date of their first word; “Mama” she said. These are the conversation makers, “Is she walking yet? Is she talking yet?”

Even the most average of things is tinged with prematurity. There she is, sitting up for the first time. She’s eleven months old and it took months of physical therapy but this milestone, she hit it. I write it in the baby book with qualifiers: “Sits Up Unassisted. Eleven Months (But Actually Seven And A Half Months Adjusted)”

And then there are the preemie milestones, the ones that are squeezed into the baby book in a joyful handwritten script: “Eight Months Old- No More Feeding Tube! Ten Months Old- Goodbye Apnea Monitor!”

There are more and different milestones on this particular prematurity journey and yes, that has made it hard. But it has also provided even more cause for celebration.

She’s twenty three months old and she runs up to me and says “Mama, gibberish gibberish gibberish book! Elmo! gibberish!” and then runs off, looking back over her shoulder at me and laughing. I watch her legs carry her away and breathe a silent thank you to the Lord and to her physical therapist, who held her tiny body over a rubber ball and stretched and moved her muscles until they were strong enough to send her running.

This week I wrapped my arms around the neck of her feeding therapist in gratitude and I said goodbye.

And then I did the same with her occupational therapist.

Just like I did with her physical therapist. And then her cardiologist. And her home nurses.

I penciled a new date in the baby book “October 2012- End Of Therapy.”

At her evaluation her therapy team and Jeff and I agreed that we had enough tools to continue working with her at home but that she was ready to phase out of her rigid therapy schedule. She’s made huge progress with her team and I am so thankful for the work they’ve done and how much they’ve helped me to help her.

I’m so proud of her, because these are big accomplishments. And sure, yesterday she spit out every single bite of the pumpkin oatmeal that she normally loves but the thing is she can eat. Now when she won’t it’s not because she can’t. It’s because she’s stubborn. And also because she learned about cookies and has decided she should just try to convince us to let her eat those all day long.

People ask me often when she’ll be “caught up” and I don’t know. Her doctors tell me that most preemies are caught up by age three, meaning that hopefully they’ll no longer use her adjusted age rather than her actual age. There is still therapy happening here, learning to turn our wrists and drink from a straw without gagging but on smaller scale, a family effort rather than a professional one. She turns two next month and it will mark the first time since she was born that we will be alone with her, without therapists and nurses coming often to our house. I am thankful for that time but I am joyfully anticipating this new future.

I remember when our house was full of medical noise, alarms from heart monitors and blood pressure machines, the sound of her heartbeat through a stethoscope each day, the sound of my heartbeat in my ears as I tried to position the feeding tube correctly on the first try. I thought it would always be a deafening roar.

And now it’s quiet except for the sound of her laughter as she names the letters on her alphabet blocks “A, B, C, Q!” and her feet pad across the floor to show me. Making a new joyful noise to the Lord of all the earth.

Goodbye, therapy

49 Comments Filed Under: Adventures In Preemie Parenting | A Blogumentary Tagged With: #preemiepower

Dear Scarlette | @ 22 Months

September 29, 2012 By Kayla Aimee

Do you like how I’m squeezing this in right before you turn 23 months? You will learn many, many things from me over the years, like how to procrastinate with the best of them. I’ve won awards for my procrastination skills, Scarlette. That’s not true. I only won awards for lame stuff like “Read The Most Books Over Summer Vacation” and “Most Boy Crazy.” Please aspire to the former.

You and I spent the month traveling together. We went on a cross country road trip except for instead of driving on the roads, we flew over them in an airplane. This is because sometimes your mother mistakes “a good idea” with “a completely crazy idea.” We talked a lot about how we were going to fly in an airplane, and by talked I mean that I would say “Scarlette! We’re going to fly in an airplane! Can you show me how an airplane flies?” and you would smile charmingly at me and say “JESUS!” because that is your answer to everything.

Which is good because you know, I figured it was probably charming enough to the Lord for Him to keep the plane in the air. And also? I would prefer if you’d continue to use that as your standard response well into your teenage years. You know, like when your friends pressure you to skip third period french class you can be all “JESUS!” because skipping class is wrong and your mother never, ever got lunch detention for doing it.

Turns out, you are nothing like your mother because you love flying and you excitedly squealed “WEEEEEE!” during both take off and landing, completely ignoring the fact that I had my head buried in your carseat. You also charmed everyone on the plane into giving you their cookies, mainly by asking them for their cookies. The flight attendants passed out snacks and you bounced up and down, asking each person in the rows around us “COOKIE?! COOKIE?! PWEASE?!” and then strangers were all “She can have my cookies!” until I had to politely decline because you really didn’t need forty seven packages of cookies. (I realize that seems preposterous because who doesn’t want forty seven packages of cookies so you’ll have to trust me on this.)

We spent a few weeks visiting family and you were introduced to a bunch of your second cousins. It will forever be one of my favorite memories, seeing you play with your family. Family is important, Scarlette. Family is a portrait of grace, because those are the people who invade on your vulnerabilities and test your capability for forgiveness. And family is a beautiful, joyful, abiding love which is the reason your mother got on a plane. Alone. With a toddler.

You’ve started saying so many new words, no doubt a side-effect from being around all of your cousins, and it’s killin’ me smalls. Every time you look at me and say a new word I feel completely shocked and overreact like Taylor Swift winning another award. (You’re totally going to have to google that.) Yesterday I said “Scarlette, what do you want for lunch?!” which is usually just for the sake of hearing myself talk because you normally answer that question with a random word like “BLUE!” or “MORE!” or “JESUS!” but instead you answered “EGGS!”

You smiled at me and said “AYY-GUHS! WAYZUH!” which roughly translated means “Eggs Please!’ and also “FEED ME EGGS RIGHT THIS VERY INSTANT BECAUSE I HAVE NO CONCEPT OF COOKING TIME AND THUS I AM GOING TO FALL OUT ON THE FLOOR BECAUSE I CAN NOT EVEN HANDLE WAITING TWO MINUTES FOR YOU TO PREPARE THIS MEAL!”

Oh by the way, you’ve started throwing tantrums. I am not even going to go there right now lest my head explode all over the computer screen. STOP THROWING TANTRUMS.

Let’s talk about something cute you do instead. You call daddy on your pretend phone all of the time. You’ll hold it up to your head and say “Hello? Hi Daddy!” Except that despite the fact that you tend to make most of your words have many more syllables than they need, you’ve smushed all of “hello” into one syllable and three octaves, so it sounds like “HAOW.” I told your speech therapist not to even dare to touch it because of it’s insane cuteness.

I know from our recent doctor visit that at 22 months you weigh 18 and a half pounds. Normally you weigh more but between your recent sickness and some medication adjustments you’ve lost a little weight. I suspected this when you walked into the kitchen announcing “UH-OH! UH-OH MAMA!” and saw your skirt falling down around your ankles. You are also 31.5 inches tall and all legs, which I discovered when I put a dress on you this morning and thought to myself “Self, that does not look appropriate” because the hem ended just under your tiny little booty.

But no matter how big you get, when you lay your head on my chest and your breathing slows in sync with my heartbeats I gently trace a finger across your brow and see in your face the tiny girl who captured all of my love. Most people say they can’t see it anymore, that you look so different from the one and a half pound baby I gave birth to. But I see it with my mommy eyes that memorized every bit of your face as though it might be the last time I ever saw it. I see that tiny girl in my big girl’s features and I am overwhelmingly thankful for another moment.

All my love,
Mommy

7 Comments Filed Under: Dear Scarlette, Uncategorized Tagged With: #preemiepower

Dear Scarlette | @ 20 Months

July 30, 2012 By Kayla Aimee

Dear Scarlette,

20 months is ridiculous. First of all, let’s talk about how you’re almost two. Actually, no. Let’s totally not talk about that. It seems so trite and cliche to repeatedly mention how quickly time is passing, how you’re growing up so fast. But it echos through my heart all throughout the day and I’m trying so hard to remember to stop, collaborate and listen. Oh wait no, that’s not me. That’s Vanilla Ice.

I do have a constant refrain in my mind telling me to stop. To lift my hands from the keyboard and turn the pages of your book to read yet another story because I don’t want to miss a thing. Obviously I have a lot in common with Aerosmith. And also by the time you’re old enough to read this, you’ll know that when it comes to randomly inserting song lyrics in conversations I just completely can’t help myself.

Yesterday I put your hair in pigtails for the first time. Because you were on TPN for so long in the NICU, it affected your bones and your teeth and your hair and so you don’t have very much of it. Hair that is. I’ve been not-so-patiently waiting for it to be long enough for me to put in tiny little pigtails and then after I finished yesterday and you ran to the mirror to see, excitedly pointing at yourself I thought “NO! I AM AGAINST PIGTAILS BECAUSE NOW YOU LOOK LIKE A LITTLE GIRL!” I restrained myself from removing them since you were admiring them and also because I thought that might make me a bit dramatic but I admit to not minding at all when they fell out later that day.

I’m always a bit emotional when it comes to you. I look at you hurtling yourself towards life and love and my eyes glisten and I just think “Look at you. LOOK AT YOU.”

We’ve been working a bunch on your fine motor skills. It was months and months ago that we started working in therapy about putting things IN but all you wanted to do was take things OUT. And by “take things out” I mean run into a room and start throwing things out of a drawer like a little Tasmanian devil. All of the sudden the concept of IN clicked for you and the good news is that you are mastering things like your shape sorter. The bad news is that we can’t find anything in this house.

At the end of the day I’ll walk by your pack in play and find no less than thirty different, random items you’ve collected along your travels of our house during the day and thrown in there. I’ll open the refrigerator to grab some salad dressing and am met by an assortment of brightly colored balls from your ball pit. The other day I found Elmo in one of my pasta pots and last night we spent forever looking for one of your flip flops. I found it in my desk drawer this morning.

Your daddy asked me if I’d seen something the other day. “Did you look in the bathtub?” I asked him. “Why would it be in the-oh. Scarlette?” he said. “You just better hope it’s not in the toilet” was my reply.

You talk all the time. All. The. Time. You probably get that from your father. Just kidding. You have your own little Scarlette-speak language and we keep talking about how one day when you say real words and things like “pronunciation” matter we’re going to be a little sad. Because you are seriously cute.

Going to the store with me is one of your favorite things and every person that passes us gets a wave and a “Hi!” from you. And once they walk by you turn to me and say “Where’d da go? Where’d da go?” And forget about walking down any aisle with shoes or princesses or sparkly accessories. You go into an utter fit when we walk down the jewelry aisle at Target. You start bouncing up and down in your seat frantically pointing at everything while yelling “OOOOO! YOOK A DA! WHOA YOOK A DA! WOW YOOK A DA!” (translation: “look at that”) and then people give you things like balloons and cookies because they can’t resist your cuteness either.

Or, if they do resist your cuteness and refuse to say “Hi” back to you, I am overcome with a desire to rush over to them while removing my earrings and being all “Um hi. My child is speaking to you. How dare you not engage her! Do you want to fight?! Do you?! Because I could totally take you!”

Every morning you stand beside me while I get ready and methodically take all of my makeup out of the drawer. You brush your hair, put pretend blush on your face and ask me for lotion, which you then gleefully rub all over your belly. I bought you Christmas presents the other day and I picked up a couple of items just because I know you will love them (see: play tiaras) and realized that you have so much personality.

You’re picking up things so quickly. The other day I handed you the bubble wand and after just a few “don’t eat it!” warnings because you love putting anything but food in your mouth, you figured out how to blow. Well, you’ll dip the wand in the bubbles and then sort of spit at it. And I realize that every other child in the world has done this same exact thing, pursed their lips and furrowed their brow and tried to blow a bubble. I do realize that.

But sitting there watching you do it, surrounded by iridescent shimmers against a sunset backdrop? It doesn’t feel that way. It feels new and sacred and beautiful and I can hear myself talking annoyingly about how sweet you are and how smart you are and how just look at you but I can’t seem to stop the words from tumblingly forth because my cup is overflowing.

I love you punkin pie,
Mommy

(Oops, I forgot your stats! You are 20 months actual/16.5 months adjusted. You are 29.5 inches tall and you weigh 19.8 pounds!)

16 Comments Filed Under: Dear Scarlette, Scarlette Year One, The Daily Scarlette, Uncategorized Tagged With: #preemiepower

She Can Run | Team Mom Everyday Victories

June 20, 2012 By Kayla Aimee

Everyday Victories logo

Thank you to P&G and Kroger stores for celebrating “Team Mom’s Everyday Victories”! Please visit the P&G’s event page to play games, win money off your next Kroger trip and more fun!

I close the trunk and wrangle the baby out of the shopping cart, where somehow she’s managed to get her shoes stuck inside the seat cover. A final yank frees it from the cart and sends a shower of half-crunched cheerios smattering across the parking lot. She cries as I buckle her into her car seat, pointing sadly at the lost snack and sniffling “eat, eat!” for most of the drive home. Halfway there I realize I forgot to buy baby wipes, which is written in bold at the top of the list peeking out of the diaper bag as it is the main thing we left the house for.

And that, folks, is a successful trip to the grocery store in my new life role as “Mom.”

Moving too quickly, her chubby hands pull the hem of my shorts and me in different directions. Spills and spatters and tantrums and tears and y’all, I have a toddler.

Anything I accomplish is a victory. Anything.

Everyday victories are washing my hair or washing her hair or convincing her to eat a tiny piece of chicken or remembering to start a new load of laundry and not forgetting to put it in the dryer.

But the everyday moment occurring around here that I count as the biggest victory?

Watching this girl run down the hill in our backyard.

I know, I know, I’m an overly sentimental post-NICU mommy. But after a year of physical therapy my baby who couldn’t even sit up until she was nearly a year old?

She can run.

I stand at the bottom of the hill with open arms and wait for her to fall breathless into them while her daddy cheers her on from the sidelines.

And this wipes the slate clean, the failed trip to the store, the laundry left overnight in the wash.

She can run. So I take her hand and we walk back to the top of the hill to do it again and again.

Hurry in to Kroger and Kroger Banner Stores for P&G’s big sale event, June 10–23!

At Kroger and its banner stores, more than 30 of your favorite P&G brands are at HOT sale prices through June 23, including Tide, Charmin, Cascade, Pampers, Crest and Olay. Look for tags with special prices throughout the household needs and health and beauty aisles, and be on the lookout for even bigger offers – like getting serious dollars off when you buy a bundle of products.

Before hitting the store, visit P&G’s event page on Kroger.com HERE

You can play games like basketball, track and gymnastics to win money off your next Kroger trip, download digital coupons, print a shopping list, and learn more about P&G products!

And as part of this event, consider trying one of these fab products from P&G: Vicks Nature Fusion, Charmin Basic, Downy Unstopables, and Swiffer Duster Extenders!

(Y’all should try the Downy Unstopables. No one told me to recommend them, I’ve just been using the lavender scented ones for a couple of months ever since I saw Amy Sedaris talk about them on some late-night talk show. And they are AMAZING. Jeff walked in the bedroom the other day and was like “did you get a new candle?” and I was all “NO! THAT IS JUST HOW GOOD OUR SHEETS SMELL!” Which is why I agreed to do this campaign, b/c I love Downy Unstopables AND sales and coupons!)

I was selected for participation in this campaign as a member of Clever Girls Collective.