Hi Everyone,
WOW! What a crazy week this has been. We just returned home from the hospital...we have been there since Tuesday, so 6 days at the hotel beaumont! It feels good to be home, but we miss our pretty girl so much! There is so much to tell and I don't know how I will put everything down.... so I will just start from the beginning.
As you know from Emily's post Madeline was born on November 18th weighing in at 10lbs 6 oz. I am still not sure how ALL of that fit into my body!!!
She came out crying which was a beautiful sound.
They showed her to us and we were able to see her "O". the opening was really small but the amount of intestines seemed SO big!
(Check out the photo gallery for pictures of the closed up O.)
Sam followed our princess up to be checked out and I went off to recovery.
A short time later Sam came down with 2 surprises.... one was to tell me the weight of our child and the next was to tell me that they were going to do surgery that day! They had to reopen the surgerical room , so it wasn’t going to be for a little bit. Sam then went back up to be with Madeline. A short time later he came back with an even better surprise... our baby girl. I was able to hold her and love her before they took her into surgery… It was incredible.... I am tearing up just thinking about it! By 6pm the surgery was done! When Doctor Morden came to talk to us he said the surgery went well. They were able to put everything back in and she already had an appendectomy! They needed the room to “lay her pipe” so to speak….. Maybe that was the purpose of the appendix! To make room for Madeline Oginsky to be put back! J He also let us know that there was a good chance of Madeline coming home in 7-10 days! What??? Much better then the 4-6 weeks he had originally told us! He mentioned that we would need to see her feeding and pooping and that it may take 1-3 days for her to have a bowel movement..... we finally were able to go down to see her at about midnight. (there were some complications with me after delivery....but that is a different story.) When we got there, the nurse said... Oh she just pooped! That was our first miracle in string of many! (That was also another first… the first time I referred to poop as a miracle!)
By the next evening all of Madeline’s tubes were out and we were able to hold the little peanut! Amazing!
The next morning they called and I was able to start to nurse her!
It was unbelievable how great she was moving along!
On friday night we had a little bit of a set back. Madeline began to spit up this really gross green stuff. We were able to keep feeding her, but it wasn’t going well. She continued to spit it up through the night. On Saturday morning we went down to see her, and she had spit it up through the night. We had to discontinue feeds. She had been doing so incredibly well and this was scary! The Doctors ordered x-rays of her upper & lower intestines to make sure that there were no bowels that were obstructed or rotated or kinked….. Praise God everything was fine. They did notice she had a lot of reflux. We still had to discontinue the feeds until the Doctors saw her the next day. But Saturday ended up being a wonderful day. It was just me and Sam and we were discharged, but able to spend the night that evening, just with out a nurse. So we were able to spend the entire day just holding and caring for Madeline with out any interruptions. Plus when we needed we could go and eat and sleep and we knew that she was in good hands. I would say that even though it started rocky, Saturday was one of the best days in my life.
By Sunday morning they OK’d us to start feeding Madeline again. She started eating right away. The only thing we did different was prop her bassinet up to help her digest her food. Madeline had absolutely NO spit ups all day Sunday and at the time I am writing this (7am Monday morning) she still hasn’t even spit up milk!
By the end of Sunday, they had taken her IV out and they are just monitoring her sugar (it was very high when she was born and since she has been getting most of her nutrition from the IV they cant tell if she can sustain good sugar levels on her own.) So far for the past 12 hours it has been great and has remained steady! (I have been calling the NICU every 3 hours. J)
We are hoping that we will be getting a call if not today then tomorrow that we can bring our little beauty home!
God Is so so good and through out this journey He has shown how faithful HE is and what his miracles are all about.
What Madeline has been through is something that may cause other issues down the road, but we know that no matter what happens, God is with us… so WHO can be against us???

We just want to thank everyone for all of their support through out this whole process. There have been so many praying and supporting us, I cannot express how grateful we are. The blessing of having people out there who care and pray and support FAR outweighs any other blessing out there!
This experience had the potential of being devastating, but it has been beautiful. We have seen the hand of God in every step we have taken. From the ultrasound to the delivery. From the Doctors and Nurses who have taken care of us to coming home and Madeline’s full recovery.

We will of course continue to update you on all the changes and news that goes on!

Love,
Sam, Erin, Ava & Madeline!

Maddie and her IV... she wants to eat it!

Proud big sister!