a letter to "mapat"

Dear MaPat.

thank you for taking me riding on my bike everyday. i love my bike.

and thank you for buying me chips and juice and letting me pay like a big boy.

and especially thanks for teaching me how to use the potty. i hated those stinky diapers and mommy has enough poopy butts to clean with my little sister around. i'm doing good with the potty still and haven't peed on the floor since you left.

i hope you come to visit me again soon.

love
samil

just when i thought...

it was time to let our baby-secret out of the bag...

tomorrow morning at 10am we get our baby back. what?

i mentioned that amely was under oxygen for an hour after she was born. she had swallowed some fluid and as a preventive measure, they watched her for awhile with the air tent over her head. she was fine, though, and we took her home just 36 hours after she was born.

and then she started to get yellow. we didn't think too much of it at first, because it was just her face, but then it started to descend and her eyes got pretty icky. amalio ran into the doctor in the supermarket and she insisted we take her to the ER in the morning (i assume she'd have sent us to her office, but it was a holiday) to get some tests run: a bilirubin test and a coombs test.

her bilirubin was super high. the doc thought maybe it was a blood incompatibility - that baby had O+ and i have A, but after a quick blood test it was determined that that was not the issue. she could be jaundiced because she wasn't getting enough sunlight (it's been raining here for weeks) or because she swallowed my blood during the birthing process.

either way, she was taken away to the neo-natal unit for phototherapy. the doctor didn't give us any time periods - just told us that, don't worry, it's not fatal, but she'll need to stay as long as it takes to get her bilirubin levels down to where they should be.

thursday afternoon she began her treatment and by friday morning at the 15 minute visiting "hour" she was back to normal color from neck down. by friday night at the 15 minute visiting "hour" her face was better. today they took her blood again and found her levels just fine, leaving her for the night just to make sure.

all of that to say, she's coming home tomorrow and hopefully we won't have anymore issues. the real sad part of it is that my mom has been here and is leaving like now and won't be able to spend much time with her new granddaughter. they did break the rules and let her in to hold her in neo this afternoon.

so, more pictures and stories soon. hope you all had a great weekend!

new baby.

i didn't mention one word about a new baby on my blog, and even on facebook i was pretty careful - until the end when people started wondering where she was. is she here yet? i'm easily frustrated. and living in a country with people who think it is okay to say whatever pops into their minds. and on a daily basis i had to listen to people's comments about my belly, about how we raise our kids, about what we should do and what we shouldn't and every.single.thing. that i was doing wrong. and i don't even have a mother-in-law.

so, opening up that can of worms on the internet just didn't seem appealing to me and since i don't really know who reads this blog, i kept my mouth shut. sorry about that. the tactic worked, though, and i had a little bit more peace than i might have otherwise.

but now amely (pronounced ah-me-LEE) is here and there's no real need to keep her a secret, right?

samil has been spending his days with grandmom, mostly begging to go outside and ride his bike to the store. she's done a great job potty training and teaching him how to use money to buy juice and chips. he also grew overnight and i'm sure gained about 10 pounds as soon as the baby was born. this is a pretty bad picture, and we have nice ones, but this is the only one on his bike.

i went into labor on wednesday night. it's been a dramatic end to a pretty mundane pregnancy as i lost my doctor around 8 months due to governmental crap and had to find a doctor who understood me, my concerns and the fact that i'm not an uninformed patient (like most women in the clinic i go to). they had originally set the date for my c-section for june 8th. and that was after fighting them out of putting it for june 13th. i told them this baby wasn't waiting that long, but of course, they didn't listen and i had a semi-emergency surgery thursday morning.

amely was born thursday morning at 8:20am. she swallowed a ton of fluid on her way out so they put her in an oxygen tent for an hour. she's not had any distress since, but she is pretty jaundiced so she's going to see the doctor tomorrow.

i'm supposed to be resting, but i'm getting pretty restless. i get my stitches out on friday and i can't wait. samil and amalio are going to the resort this weekend, my mom leaves sunday morning and i get back to work soon enough.

have a great weekend!

welcome.

i've been really busy lately. what with this going on:

amely alcequiez f.

june 4,2009 8:20am

8lbs, 21inches