Kerith Watching the Cars Go By

Don't you just want to pinch those cute little chubby legs? :)

Lunch

Our Little Vampire (and her big sis)

Josiah Update

Well, it's hard to believe our little Josiah is already going to be 4 weeks on Monday! In my mind it's kind of like he's only about to be 1 week though, since we just got to bring him home on Sunday. He has been doing well at home, both breathing-wise and eating-wise--he now weighs 7 lbs 2 oz and looks just as healthy as all his siblings at this age. And all his siblings love him very much--sometimes a little too much :)

This has been a busy week--bringing home Josiah, Elijah turning 3, and Kerith starting to walk! So I haven't gotten to take many pics yet of our newest little munchkin, but I'm sure it won't be long before you see lots more of our little man :) Here are a few to tide you over!

Our Newest Addition

Well, Josiah Leyland Axelson surprised us this past Monday, June 7, with his early arrival at 36 weeks (6 lbs, 4 oz and 20 in). We were able to have him at home still, so we scurried to get the house clean and make all our last minute preparations.

I labored from about midnight until 5:23 pm, when he was born. Fortunately, I slept through the first 7 hours or so of it. Everything was very calm and peaceful as the day went on and contractions got more intense. Then, the last hour things got a little crazy; everything happened so fast that it's kind of a blur. Jackie (our midwife) noticed that Josiah's heartbeat was starting to go down when I would have a contraction, but I still wasn't having the urge to push. 911 was called, just in case we needed to transfer, but Jackie examined me, which ended up breaking my water; I got the urge to push, and she very firmly told me to push now and get this baby out ASAP. So, I did what she said and pushed him out in what seemed like only one or two minutes (which really is probably fairly accurate).

Then, the real craziness began. Little man decided he didn't really want to breathe properly, so there was no crying or moving around like our other babies had done. There was just this rasping baby with a very heavily retracting belly. So we gave him some oxygen to try to help him out. During all this, the ambulance arrived, but we told them all was well for now. We wanted to give our little guy a couple of hours to try to breathe properly on his own. But we were never able to take the oxygen off of him, so we called 911 again, and they transported Eric and Josiah to the hospital, where our little munchkin was admitted into the NICU. We've come to find out that Josiah's breathing issues are very typical of a white male born at 36 weeks.

Over the past week at the hospital, Josiah has been put under a hood to supply him with oxygen; that wasn't enough, so he had to be intubated, put on a ventilator and given Survanta, a medicine to supply him with a substance called surfactant, which we all have in our lungs to help them to expand properly (or something to that extent). After a couple of days of doing better, he was extubated and put back under the hood. But after a day or so of that, he wore himself out; so he was re-intubated and put back on the ventilator and given another dose of Survanta. After about a day or so, he started breathing much better and was given a nasal canula (in the pics below). During this period, he also had an IV giving him antibiotics, just in case he had an infection b/c I didn't get to have my Strep B test before giving birth. And he's been given electrolytes and fats through the IV as his nutrition. Yesterday (Saturday) he was given his first taste of milk (which I've been pumping for him) through a tube that's stuck down his throat (also in pics below) b/c he's still breathing a little too quickly to be able to bottle feed him. Since he started, they've already tripled the amount so that now he's getting a full ounce. And he's done well with that, so it should continue to increase.

The day he got to go from intubation to nasal canula, his bilirubin levels got too high, so he's been under the phototherapy light for 3 days now. So I didn't even get to hold him again until Friday, and I can only get 30 minutes-1 hour of holding time for the entire day.

But he's now improving daily, so we're hoping it won't be too many more days before we can bring our little sweetness home with us.

Over the past week, the Lord has been more than gracious to us in protecting our son and providing us with additional helps and encouragement. Josiah's had really nice nurses who've taken good care of him. My wonderful, amazing husband has kept our other 3 munchkins for many hours each day so that I could be at the hospital with Josiah. He said it's given him a renewed appreciation for my staying at home with them :) Eric's parents have housed and fed us all week and stayed with the kids after bedtime so Eric and I could go back to the hospital; we've had sweet friends clean our house; other sweet friends had a play day with MJ and EM one day; more friends have visited at the hospital and brought me lunch; my parents have cooked, mowed the grass and played with the kids this weekend; and many others have called, emailed, etc.

We are extremely grateful to everyone, but mostly we praise the Lord for having his hand on this little one from the beginning of this pregnancy through now. He obviously has a special plan for Josiah since He's seen fit to allow him to live, and we look forward to seeing that played out in his life.

Sorry for the very long post, but I just haven't had a chance to update many people this week, and I know many of you praying for Josiah are very curious as to what's going on :) Below are some phone pics (that's all I've been able to manage at this point) of our little one.

A Few Mother's Day Pics

Yes--I know it's a little late, but here are a few pictures my wonderful assistant photographer took of me and my cuties on Mother's Day :)

My Silly Girl

On Friday, we were getting ready to go to the splash park, so MJ was supposed to be putting her swim suit on. She walked out of her room telling me to look. Yes--she had put her top on as her bottoms and her bottoms on as her top. Never a dull moment with her :)

Big Sister

So in the past couple of weeks, Mikaela has been telling me more and more about how much she LOVES her baby sister. She tells me, "She's soo cute and adorable and squishly and lovely and pretty. And when she's wearing a dress for church, she's beautiful." :)

MJ is always brushing and combing Kerith's hair, trying to feed her a snack or her milk, trying to help her walk, give her rides on the little firetruck we have and this morning, she started playing dress up with her :) She has also started picking her up quite a bit--usually to either bring her to me when she's crying or to keep her from doing something she's not supposed to be doing. Kerith used to fuss at this, but lately she seems to be mostly fine with it. I'm so glad she loves her sister so much. It's an answer to prayer, and I pray that their love for one another remains throughout their lives.

Mikaela did also tell me the other day that she loves her baby sister AND brother, Elijah. I'm so glad she included him :) She does tell me, "He's so cute!" when he does or says something that we think is cute :)

Pre-Baby Traveling

We've been wanting to make a couple of trips before Baby A arrives, so our first destination was to Carrollton to see Aunt Kelli, Uncle David and Brayden. It was the longer trip, so it needed to be made first. Kelli's parents ended up getting to come too. We had a lot of fun, and it was nice just getting to relax at the house. Kelli's dad was putting up a rail and steps for the deck that he built a couple of weeks ago, so Eric enjoyed getting to help out with that. And I enjoyed getting to hand off Kerith some--she's starting to get kind of heavy :)

Mikaela LOVED getting to see Brayden again. She loves babies and really enjoys loving on and playing with them (although, in their eyes she's sometimes a little like Elmira from "Tiny Tunes" :) ) In a couple of the pics, she was trying to make Brayden look at the camera :)

Then on our way home, we got to stop by Grandma F and Granddaddy's house to see them for a couple of hours. The kids were very excited to get to see some of their favorite people over the weekend :)

Math Time

Mikaela has finally gotten into addition and subtraction over the past couple of months. We've gradually made our way to a number line. It's been so pretty lately, and my little princess has sooo much energy that I decided we'd just make our number line in chalk outside on the ground so she could jump from number to number for each problem. She jumped for a few of them and then decided that she'd ride her bike from number to number to figure out the sums and differences :)