Our little Addy is now 5 weeks and 4 days old and is starting to do things that grown up girls do like suck her thumb for example. Her hands are rarely free from the socks we place over them to keep them warm but this day she just happened to land her little thumb right in her mouth which calmed her down for at least a few seconds before she got tired of it and started crying again. I just loved the day she dressed up in overalls. She was so cute in them I just couldn't get over it. I took over 50
pictures and will now have to proceed to erase most of them
because she wouldn't stop wiggling so most of them are blurry. Oh
well. Addy's starting to get really strong and has her own little will

already when it comes to matters of snuggling and cuddling. She kicks her legs against our tummies and Mitch and I have to hold on or else she'd jump out of our hands. She is continually testing out her ability to hold up her head and gets better and better at it every day but mom is still a little reluctant to let her try it without a hand poised behind it waiting for the inevitable release of her wearied neck muscles. She slept for five hours straight the other night which got her momma really excited, but it was short lived and follwed shortly by three nights of up every two hours and colic in the grey twilight of the mornings. Luckily Mitch has been wonderful in helping me so I can get some more Z's. He takes the early morning shifts and gets some studying in too if she's not too fussy. Momma has also discovered the calming power of running water and has made it a habit of putting Addy by the bathroom door when she runs a bath, which seems to soothe her. She'll just stare into the direction of the noise and eventually drifts off which is always a blessed occurance!!

Sorry It has taken me so long to get this up and out to everyone but then again we've been enjoying our newest addition!! That's right Adelaide Anne Oliver joined our family on Thursday October 16th at 6: 48 p.m. She weighed 8lbs point 6 oz. and was 20 1/4 inches long. After she was born she had some troubles breathing and so was taken to the special care nursery soon after delivery which made her parents especially the tired, drugged me a little anxious. They attached a heart monitor, a lung monitor and oxygen to her tender little frame while her parents watched on and worried. Mitch was proactive though and continually asked questions to determine what was going on and why everything was happening. The doctors had two culprits for her breathing issues. The first they thought was amniotic fluid in the lungs left over from birth, which is pretty normal in newborns and goes away after a few days when the fluid is absorbed back into the body. The second issues was that she had some sort of infection in her lungs or in her body somewhere which was causing the stuggled breathing. They had to hook her up to a continuous IV of sugar water since I could not feed her. They were afraid of aspiration, which is taking more fluid into the lungs when eating, because she didn't have the breathing thing down pat, it would be dangerous to try to add eating to her little throat and airway. The doctors took radiographs of her lungs and found that they were hazy which either meant infection or fluid. After a few more radiographs the haziness started to dissipate and they concluded that it was just left over amniotic fluid. But to be on the safe side they tried to tap some spinal fluid to look for infection one more time. Well they didn't get any fluid even after two tries and they didn't want to distress Addy anymore than that. They had given her antibiotics along with the IV drip just to cover their bases anyway. Well after 3 days and nights of being in the special care nursery Adelaide got to come home with us. She began to jaundice a little bit the night she came home so they sent a bili blanket home with us which produces blue light that breaks up the bilirubin in the body so that it can pass as waste out of the body. Infants have a hard time getting rid of access bilirubin because their liver is not functioning well enough to handle the overload of bilirubin. She had to be on the blanket all the time for 3 days. She peaked the second day and lowered enough the third day that they took her off the blanket. Now she is healthy and entertaining her parents with loads of new baby tricks, like projectile bowel movements and other such fun things. More entertainment is to come I'm sure!!