I Guess I Owe You Some Pictures

AND THEN THERE WERE FOUR!

(Well, three humans and one beautiful kitten!)

The Beginning...

Ryan and I on vacation in Florida during Thanksgiving 2007 at his family's cabin. We had been dating 11 months.

Same vacation, except we were alone, by ourselves, across Florida in Orlando at DisneyWorld and Universal Studios.

Slowly Starting a Family...

Our first baby Missy. We saved her from a disgusting pet shop September 9th, 2007. She was in a dirty environment where she picked up fleas and a nasty respiratory infection that lasted 3 months. She was born on Ry's birthday, June 21st, she's 100% deaf, and she can either be the sweetest cat or the most evil little devil you've ever seen.


...but we still love her to pieces. She is now almost 2yrs old! (And yes, she's wearing a hoodie!)

Just after we got married on March 12th, 2008. We did a court wedding due to moving with the thought of doing a big wedding in the Summer. It didn't happen; instead, we got a baby. Much better than a wedding! (Besides, we didn't want to waste the thousands on a 20min ceremony.)

First Love, Then Marriage, Then Comes Baby in a Baby Carriage...

What can I say about this beautiful girl? She is our first child, a princess, a miracle from God, and the day she was born was the happiest I have seen my husband. Her name is Samantha Lillian Pearl, and she was born at 1330 on September 24th, 2008 via emergency cesarean. She weighed 8lbs 1oz and was 21 & 1/2 inches long.

Taken October 1st, just seven days before she was admitted to the hospital. At this point she only weighed 7lbs 1oz. She was only losing, not gaining. She was projectile vomiting the breast milk that I pumped, and her bowel movements were almost non-existant.

Almost a month old, a little bit after her hospital stay. There she was diagnosed with reflux (later GERD), an infection, and dehydration (duh, she was puking) and sent home on antibiotics (which caused her to get thrush, which required more antibiotics. We fought that for four weeks because of the doctor's neglect!), Zantac (for reflux) and an expensive prescription formula that thank God the military paid for. In this picture she was almost back up to her birth weight of 8lbs 1oz. Look how skinny she was. :-( Her skin flaps on her legs were awful.



Moving on Up...


This is Samantha now, both taken just last week! After 7 months of hard struggle, we are finally at a point where every day is a dream instead of a nightmare. This picture was taken this month on the 21st. Her "Easter" pictures. Isn't she beautiful? Today she weighs just 15lbs 12oz and is 26 & 1/2 inches long, but she has come a long way since that skinny little baby you saw up there. Her weight is all in her now chubby little legs, and her arms and torso are still petite. But instead of screaming, pain and sleepless nights, she is laughing, smiling and enjoying life!

Samantha's first trip to the park last week. She loved the swing, but hated the slide (we held her as she slid down). She'd swing all through the night if we let her. She is still on her expensive formula, but we are going to start weaning her off of it and onto a regular formula which scares the heck out of me. I don't want a repeat of last October when she almost died. I am concerned with how her system will handle it, as her formula now is free amino acids, milk and soy protein free, hypoallergenic, etc. and the regular formula has all those. But we are starting slowly under the close care of our wonderful Ped GI Dr. C, and are supposed to feed her one bottle of regular formula once every three days and report bi-monthly weight checks to Dr. C. We are starting that regime this week. She has been upgraded to a stronger reflux med, Prevacid, because for one month straight (Jan through Feb) she would scream half the day and all night because she was in so much pain. A few days after we got her on the Prevacid, she was 1000% different. We were seeing a baby we never saw before. It was pure bliss, and still is. She is slowly starting on solids - due to her GI issues we have to be careful - and loves pears.

Well, there you have it folks. Faces to the names, and a little about our past few years!