Oh my heck...

I just love this little guy! He is such a stud! Thanks Candace for taking his pictures!! I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! I know we did! Now we are looking forward to Christmas! Happy holidays!

Any Suggestions?

So... Caleb needs his pictures taken. I obviously am NO good with the camera and that is why I need professional help :) If anyone has any names of good photographers or they can take a good picture themselves please let me know! I want them done before Caleb gets too big!!

The Happy Caleb!

And here is our cute little boy!!

The Sick Caleb...

Here are just a few pictures of our little NICU experience

A Rough Start!!

So about a month ago (sad... time goes by too fast) little baby Caleb entered our lives! Now not to brag... but I had the best pregnancy in the world. Seriously! I felt like superwoman! I had absolutely no complications, I was hardly ever sick, never swollen, you name it! And I had a perfectly healthy little boy inside of me. It was wonderful. I could be pregnant all the time! (ok maybe not...) I felt super lucky when Caleb decided to come two weeks early! I couldn't have planned it better. I had a full term baby and got to skip out on those last dreadful weeks of pregnancy! Cool!

We were completely blindsided when all of a sudden we had a very sick baby... It never once occured to me what I would do if my baby had to be taken immediately to the newborn intensive care unit. All I can say is the first two weeks of Caleb's life was the most terrifying two weeks in mine.

So I'm going to back up a little bit.... When I was 35 weeks pregnant, I was tested for something called Group B Strep. Every pregnant woman is tested between 35 and 37 weeks. Now if you don't know what Group B Strep is, I will tell you. (It's ok I had no idea either... Heck all I knew was I got tested for it). GBS is a bacteria that 50 percent of healthy women carry. You won't know that you have it because there are no symptoms. It causes absolutely no harm to you. It also comes and goes. That is why you are tested for it late in your pregnancy. It will determine whether or not you will be a carrier for GBS during delivery. If you test positive it's not big deal at all. You will be put on antibiotics and some doctors will induce your labor just to be safe. So.... I had the test done. I was told that I would have my results in 5 to 7 days. Well a week passed, and another week passed, and I never received a phone call or a letter. So I assumed that I was negative... No big deal.

This is the first lesson I learned..... NEVER ASSUME ANYTHING! Turns out... I was positive for GBS and I had no idea because I never got my results. Long story short... I passed Group B Strep to Caleb.

Now when it comes to infants, Group B Strep is something you don't want to mess with! It causes all sorts of scary problems. Basically, if not treated, GBS will intoxicate the baby's entire blood stream, making them septic. It eventually will make its way up the baby's spinal cord and into the baby's brain, causing death or other serious problems. During Caleb's 14 day stay in the NICU, he had to have several brain ultrasounds, a spinal tap, a pickline, among many other things.

What really bothers me... is I feel like this was something that should have been prevented. Why couldn't someone have made a two minute phone call to inform me that I was GBS positive?? Was that too hard? Little Caleb was very sick all because someone didnt't do their job... But I have learned that I need to focus on the positive. Caleb is doing so much better and will have no long term problems. He is now the perfectly healthy baby that I always dreamed of having thanks to modern medicine and lots of prayers on our family's behalf. Someday when I die, I am going to high five Alexander Fleming for inventing antibiotics!

We are so blessed to have this little miracle in our lives... Throughout this whole experience we have learned how many people care for us and also how powerful prayer is. It was a rough start for us but things couldn't be more wonderful now. We are so happy that he is home with us now and most importantly that he is healthy!

So... I am going to attempt the blogging thing again :) We'll see how it goes!! I figured this is probably the best way to keep family and friends informed about what is going on in our lives. Also, I like seeing what is going on in all of your lives! I was told it's not fair to "blog stalk" when I don't even have a blog myself haha. So if your blog is private, we would love to be added! My email is ekusuda07@gmail.com.
Stay tuned!! Updates to come!