Pictures Tell A Thousand Words

Now that you've read all about our birth story and have heard about Sloan's first week of life, it's time for more of what everyone wants - pictures! As you can imagine we have a ton, but have narrowed the best down into one album for easy viewing.

But, before I post those everyone should know that Sloan wants to hear from you! Since we are all connected through text, email, Facebook, Twitter and FourSquare these days, it only made sense to make sure Sloan was dialed in as well. We have set her up with an email and Twitter account:
Email: sloanloudis@gmail.com
Twitter: @sloanloudis

So, if you'd like to follow her growth progress, check her out on Twitter. Most importantly though, if you'd like to welcome her to this little world we live in, tell her a story, or just drop her a line because you are thinking of her - please send her an email! We'll be sure to read her all of the notes when we do her bedtime stories...and one day when she is older it will be a nice keepsake as well.

Now without further adieu -- pictures!!
ps - the slideshow moves rather fast and we can't change the speed, so if you're having trouble reading the captions either roll over the slideshow for manual controls. Or if you'd like to manually scroll through the album, use this link.

Introducing Sloan Yates Loudis

Baby Girl "BG" Loudis (formerly known as Warby) came into this world on Wednesday, August 15th at 10:04am, and weighed in at 3lbs, 1oz. She surprised her parents with her early arrival, but she apparently had somewhere to be - and quick! The rumor is that she wanted to make sure she didn't miss any football games...

Snug as a bug in a rug

For a 32 week old preemie, she was surprisingly strong. She came out able to breathe on her own, and some of the NICU nurses said her sucking abilities looked more like a 34 week old baby. Apparently she is already acting older than her age...  She is a feisty little thing and is always squirming around in her incubator. Arms flailing around and legs sprawled out across her little nest of a home. There was a time when they had a nose cannula to help with oxygen, but she kept messing with it and that experiment was over.

From the beginning they inserted a feeding tube into her mouth. They started with about 5ml of food, but quickly learned it was too much so they dropped her to 4ml and established a good starting point. Her intake has increased 2 ml every 12 hours since and as of this blog posting she should be at about 20 ml per feeding. They feed her each day at 1, 4, 7 & 10 - both am & pm. The feeds take about 2 hours to go through, she digests for an hour, and then they do it all again. As of Sunday they moved the feeding tube to her nose because those flailing arms would pull it out. Mom & Dad think she looks better with the tube in her nose anyway.

Reaching for the tubes

As is the case with a lot of preemies, her bilirubin levels were high so by Friday they had her under the lights to help prevent jaundice. She got to come out briefly on Sunday & Monday, but her levels have risen again and she is back to getting a suntan. This is a fairly common problem to have and we're told levels typically subside 7-10 days after birth.

Under the lights. Note the sprawling arms & legs

The biggest medical hurdle so far have been 'bradys' (short for bradycardia). These are episodes where the heart rate drops below a certain number (100 in our case). Between weeks 32-34 is when babies develop the ability to breathe, suck and swallow at the same time. If this coordination isn't quite perfected yet, the breathing will become really shallow and the heart rate drops. Each of these episodes only lasts a few seconds and they're typically brought out of them by a little jostle or stimulation. On Friday, BG Loudis had 16 of these episodes. The doctors were really alarmed at this number so they first dropped her feed amount. The bradys continued, though not as often, so they decided to give her caffeine on Saturday evening. She ended up with 10 bradys on Saturday. By Sunday the number dropped to 4, and on Monday there was only one. Tuesday was our first brady-free day, so we have made significant progress. However, we aren't out of the woods yet - there was one brady today (Wednesday) but it only lasted a few seconds and she brought herself out of it.

Cuteness

Once she has proven she is over the bradys, she'll become what is known as a "feeder & grower". This just means that she has to get bigger and stronger. By Tuesday night she reached her birth weight again (roughly 1400 grams). The next milestone is around 1700-1800 grams. This is when she'll be big enough to start regulating her body temperature. Once she can do that, her brady spells are gone, and she is at least 1800 grams she can come home! 1800 grams is only a rough estimate though - they've done all sorts of precautionary tests to make sure nothing else is causing her size issue, but they've all come back normal. She is likely just a really small baby, so they may want her to be just a bit more than 1800 grams.

Now on to the more fun and less medical stuff. It took us until Sunday, but we finally named our sweet little Warby: Sloan Yates Loudis. You have to understand that we had a list of about 9 names when she was born. Our plan was to go to dinner for Barry's birthday (Sept 4) and narrow down our list to a Top 3, take those to the hospital with us and then decide. That obviously did not happen, so while I was in my drug-induced haze we narrowed it down to a Top 5, and by late Saturday we had a Top 2 - Greer or Sloan.  He came back to the hospital on Sunday morning, said he had slept on it, and felt like Sloan should be the winner. After doing a little research, we learned that Sloan means "warrior", and after the fight she has shown us already, how can you argue with that? It was very important to me to honor my paternal grandmother who passed away just last December, so we gave her the middle name Yates, which was MawMaw's maiden name. She is now officially Sloan Yates Loudis, but rest assured she will still answer to Warby - and Mom and Dad are definitely guilty of still calling her that every once in a while.

Our final list of names - it stared at Mom for days in the hospital bed

Finally, our current status... Mom & Dad go visit Sloan at least twice a day. Typically one of these visits will consist of "Kangaroo Care" time - basically skin on skin time for at least an hour. The first session was a huge hit on Sunday night and our little Baby Girl began to sleep much more peacefully afterwards. Mom likes to go in the mornings for the 10am feeding and sit for as long as two hours. Dad finally got to do his first session last night and thought it was pretty awesome. Sloan had the hiccups for the first ten minutes or so, then spent the second ten minutes squirming around on his chest trying to find a nipple - we finally gave her a binky and she settled down quickly. Each night when we go back, whether we are kangaroo'ing or just saying Good Night, we are reading her a book. The first night was "On the Night You Were Born", then it was "Baby Bear, Baby Bear, What Do You See?" and finally "The Going To Bed Book". Tonight's selection is "Does A Kangaroo Have A Mother, Too?".

Mom and Kangaroo Time 

Dad and Kangaroo Time

Best By Oct. 08

Stop mocking me, Apple Juice. 

Most of you have been lead here by the big events of the past week - our precious baby Sloan (formerly known as Warby) was born on August 15, 2012. I'm sure many of you are thinking "but I thought you weren't due until October 8th?". Well, you'd be right. Here's the low down on how we skipped 8 weeks of pregnancy (for the record, I don't recommend anyone else trying to do this)...

It all started back during our Week 28 and Week 30 check ins. The Week 28 check in was with a midwife who thought my blood pressure was getting a little high. They did a few blood tests & everything came back normal, but they suggested I start taking my BP at home just to keep tabs on it. During our Week 30 visit, my blood pressure was much better, but now I wasn't showing enough belly growth between the two visits. So a follow up appointment with the imaging center was made for 8/8. We soon discovered that Warby was only measuring in the 5th percentile (anything below the 10th percentile is considered the 'danger zone') and that, coupled with my elevated BP numbers, could be cause for concern. The Dr ordered two rounds of steroid shots as a precautionary measure (they help with lung growth) and instructed me to come back twice a week from now until Week 36.

Our first check up was on August 14th - Week 32. All of the Doppler images of the placenta looked better (check for blood flow, etc), but my BP was 140/90 exactly. The Dr got a very serious face and told me that if my numbers went up at all for our next visit he would be sending me to the hospital for monitoring. Little did he know I was headed there anyway...

Finding a cab to the hospital 

I woke up Wednesday morning with cramps (now I know they were contractions) and bleeding. I also was not feeling Warby move, and she was always very active. After a quick phone call with my Dr (who had just reviewed the notes from the previous day's imaging visit) she suggested we just go ahead and go to the hospital.

The On-Call Dr (Dr. Flagg) was waiting for us and they whisked us away into a triage room. They strapped me up to some machines & quickly found Warby's heart rate - it was at 148, a good number. Relief! She was still there! But, in the time it took Barry to sign three admission papers, I had a sudden hot flash and another contraction. The nurse came in and said her HR dropped to 90. They had me lay on my left side, lay on my right, then get on all fours to find a better pulse. Each time I moved positions, another 3-4 doctors would come into the room. Dr. Flagg quickly announced "we're going to have to deliver your baby now". It appeared as though I had developed preeclampsia and it was causing the placenta to separate from the uterus. They immediately started wheeling me to the Operating Room - so fast in fact that my IV, which was still being put in, almost got ripped out. They told me they would try to keep me awake and just give me an epidural, but about 10 seconds in the OR they decided it was best to knock me out. I just told them "do what you have to do". I said a quick prayer and the gas mask went on my face...

Barry had to wait outside the operating room from here on out. He was putting on scrubs as he walked down the hall, and barely had time to process what was going on. There were quite a few anxious minutes outside of those doors, but everyone that passed in and out assured him that things were going well. Finally, a few minutes later he heard crying and knew that Warby was here! We got to the hospital no earlier than 9:30am; the time was now 10:04am and our daughter was here.

Proud Papa

"Warby" (the hospital called her "BG", or Baby Girl Loudis) was born at 3lbs, 1 oz. She was breathing on her own (Praise the Lord for the steroid shots!), but they took her to the NICU pretty quickly. They woke me up about an hour later with the good news; Barry also insisted I look at the awesome view from the OR...I was not interested in anything but sleeping. My blood pressure was still pretty high in the recovery room so they put me on Magnesium Sulfate. Talk about making you loopy! For the next 36 hours I would sleep for 2 hours, then wake up for 30 minutes and struggle to focus/keep my eyes open. Rinse & Repeat.

By Thursday afternoon they wheeled us up to the 13th Floor and we got settled in our room. I was finally able to meet Warby that night around 7pm. I was still a little out of it, but it was such a joy to finally meet my little girl. They even took her out of the incubator so I could hold her for a little while.

The next three days were a blur of NICU visits, needle pricks and blood pressure cuffs. By Sunday afternoon our time was up and we had to head home. It is a sad moment to walk out of the hospital with all your material stuff, but without your baby. But, as you'll see in the next post, she is being well taken care of by the best Dr's & nurses one could hope for.

It's not a very conventional birth story but it's our story; and we couldn't be happier or more blessed to have our perfect, little bundle of joy.

Let's Hear It For The...

Boys!!
Or, that is how the song goes... It is also how most guesses have gone thus far (including mine and Barry's).

So, Sunday night we went up to our roof and prepared to open the envelope. We also got engaged on a rooftop, so it seemed quite fitting. As you can see from yesterday's post, we had a bottle of champagne from our wedding ready to celebrate (a little champagne never hurt anybody ;) ).

But truth be told, as excited as we were to find out what Warby was, we thought it was a little anti-climactic because we are certain it's going to be a little boy...besides I never really got sick, my weight gain hasn't been in my face, nor has my skin been much of an issue (all 3 wives' tales about little girls for those that don't know). Anyway, so we braced ourselves...and opened the envelope!!!!

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IT'S A GIRL!!!!! 

Color me shocked. Absolutely stunned. We are both totally surprised that Warby is a little girl! We are both so very excited and can't wait for all the fun surprises that are in store for us! As if finding out it's a girl wasn't a surprise enough :) Thank you all for playing along and submitting all your guesses!!

This is the real reaction :) 

I hope she still likes football...

The Big Reveal!!!!

Ok folks, it's almost that time...time to reveal what Warby is!! Please leave your guesses in the comments! If you are one of the few who happen to already know, please do not spoil it (yet)...

A status update for some background info:

• You can find a recent picture of my 'bump' in this post (warning, there isn't much of one). That picture was at 21 weeks, I'm now 23. I've gained about 10 lbs so far, but I'm not sure where it is. 
• Most people say I am carrying pretty low.
• I had a little bit of morning sickness weeks 6-8, but it was very manageable and I did not throw up. 
• No major cravings, although I've been eating my weight in goldfish crackers. 
• For the most part, I still look & feel relatively normal. 

Ok, your turn...what is your guess?!?! 

It's a Warby ! [UPDATED]

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a Warby!!!

What's a Warby, you ask? Well, most people go with some kind of innocuous nickname for their unborn child, like the classic "Peanut". We decided to go a little less mainstream. It began as a very questionable name my loving husband came up with (origins: here). It has been struck from the possible name list, but lives on in legend. So, yes we are calling our unborn child Warby. (For the record, I wanted to go with Pat but got outvoted)

[Insert picture of sonogram here. I decided posting sonogram pictures wasn't for me, if you want to see it you'll have to email me.]

We did receive some presents for Warby earlier this month...Warby's very excited grandparents sent us a care package! 

Ducks, ducks and more ducks! And a Jayhawk and Bulldog...

A quick update as Warby has gotten some super fun surprises lately that I wanted to share...

From our friends The Walkers and their precious girl, Morgan. 

Warby's first gameday outfit courtesy of my dear friend Bryan Tackett

Coming October 2012..

2+1=3 !!

That's right, we're thrilled to announce that there will be a new member of the Loudis Family later this Fall! We're looking forward to all of the adventures this will bring - dirty diapers, sleepless nights and all!

A huge Thank You to our friend Kiley for taking the awesome photos, there were so many cute ones we had a hard time choosing which one to show. Full album of the best shots below!