PRECIOUS

Not much more we can say about this picture...our little monkey is the best thing that's ever happened to us! How cute is this!?!?!?!

1 Week Old!

Mackenna is 1 week old today!

She had her 1st doctors visit on Monday and she is doing great! She had dropped to 5lbs, 6oz, but we weren't concerned as the doc said that is normal and for a preemie, he was very impressed with how well she was doing! She had moderate jaundice, but her blood work came back normal, so she's just been hanging out in the sun at home :)

She is just absolutely perfect; Nate and I are loving every minute and soaking it all up! She is such a happy baby and we can't wait for all the things to follow with each day!

I'm finally here...

What a turn of events!!!!!!!

This morning at 7:10am, little Mackenna Elizabeth Schlieman made her grand entrance! What a ride we had to get her here though!

At about 1:45am, I was woken up by what I was accustomed to with my kidney pain. So as usual, I got up, took a pain pill, walked around for a little bit and figured I'd get sleepy and fall back asleep as this has been my normal routine with my new life of this pregnancy. Well that wasn't the case this time...I was instantly in tears and knew something was just "not right". I decided to take a bath around 3am thinking that would help with my pain, but when I could barely sit down, that didn't work. I was hysterically crying and Nate was in bed just telling me to hang in there and breath through the pain and stop walking around as the urologist said any standing and sitting, makes it worse (plus this was getting a tad hard to handle in his defense since the docs had said this is what to expect from here on out and I was not only keeping him from his job each day, but also keeping him from sleep!). But the problem was I couldn't stay still which was starting to scare me...it was SO BAD & UNCOMFORTABLE. Finally at about 4am, the "leaking" that I was used to wasn't leaking anymore, but a huge gush of water...my water broke!!!!!! I rushed into the bedroom and told Nate I think it's for real this time and we need to get going. By the time he was up and we got going, it was about 4:30 and as we were walking to the car I remember saying that I didn't think I could make it the 30 minutes to the hospital!

Thankfully Nate was a speed demon and got us to the hospital in about 20 minutes. On the drive, my contractions were about 2 minutes apart, something I wasn't paying attention to, but Nate was realizing and timing them which made this all more real to him! When we got to the ER, the same people that had checked us in the last 2 days, were there and said, "Back again?" but as soon as they saw me, they too knew this was different. They got a nurse immediately and raced me up to Labor and Delivery in a wheelchair. Nate had to run and park the car, but thankfully was able to catch us just before the elevator door shut. I was in shock at what was going on and when I was getting undressed and into the bed to be hooked up and checked, Nate was sending texts to our immediate family letting them know that we're about to meet our daughter! When the nurse checked me, she looked up at me and said, "Honey you barely have a cervix left, it's time to push!" I wanted an epidural so bad, but it was way past that point and I was about to do this completely natural! I looked at Nate and said, "Oh my God, I can't do this!" but the nurse chimed in and let me know that all the hard work was near over and I did most of it at home - I couldn't believe it! I was dilated to a 9 and a half! At 5:30am, at a full 10, I started pushing - with a few complications to keep it a little delayed, I pushed for almost 2 hours and by 7:10am our little angel was here - all 5lbs 11oz & 19.5 inches of her!!!!!!!!

They placed her on my chest for just a moment and then rushed her away to make sure she was ok. Through all the activity of the morning, I forgot that she was nearly 6 weeks early - Nate said there were about 17 people in the room, most of them being from the NICU. Thankfully I was preoccupied with some other post delivery things so I didn't see any of it, but Nate did and said it was pretty scary. Just a few moments after, I was holding my beautiful baby girl for the first time, completely healthy and ready to be a part of our family!

It is truly amazing what your body will allow you to do when you have no other options. The pain I felt was like nothing I can explain, but now that it's all over, I feel so blessed that it happened the way it did, am so proud of myself for sticking through it and am so happy our baby girl is here! She is a true blessing and a gift from above!

On a side note, with her no longer in my belly, I feel like a new woman with virtually no pain in my kidneys, so understandbly, I am celebrating in more ways than one today! I'll go down to urology tomorrow most likely to finally have an X-Ray of my kidneys to see what's going on in there, as I was only getting ultrasounds before because of Mackenna.

Daddy is doing perfectly and was SUCH AN AMAZING COACH guiding me through everything...and I don't think I was that mean (he might have a different story) :) He was nothing shy of amazing (even though he forgot to grab my hospital bag on our way out to the car, HA!) and I'm so gratetful to have gone through this with him and I fell in love with him all over again today, a deeper love than I've ever felt and am so happy he's by my side...if we would have waited ANY longer, looks like he would have been delivering our baby on the side of the road! WOW, what timing will do! It's a bittersweet moment for us, as we were so anxious to have an induction date for our family to be here for the big day. But thinking about how it all happened, it was pretty special and intimate and a great story from here on out! We know they are here in thoughts and are sending their love and we can't wait to see them as they all take turns to meet the newest addition to the Schlieman family!

Thank you for all your throughts and prayers and kind words through this whole journey! We are overjoyed with our baby girl and can't wait for everyone to meet her!

Love,

the NEW, PROUD parents of one incredible little lady!

Turn of Events...

So we thought this would be the easiest way to update everyone that has been following along, rather than make tens of phone calls; so we hope that's ok...

After our 6 hour visit in the hospital on Saturday, we came home and assumed all was ok and to just make sure I rested the rest of the weekend. Well on Sunday, things were about the same with my contractions and actually got worse as the day went on. I had called the on-call doctor at around 10am and he said it's really nothing for me to go in for again, to just monitor everything and go from there. So that's what we did...the pain in my back was so bad as the day went on however, I finally called the doctor again that night at about 10pm or a little earlier and he said if you're that concerned, you may as well go in as I can't tell you if you're in labor over the phone, etc. So, off we went, yet again.

Once we got back in a room and hooked up to the monitors, they made me drink 4 straight glasses of water to hydrate my system and mainly my uterus as dehydration can cause contractions. They checked for dilation again and I was still a dimple, or basically closed. As the night went on, the pain in my back got so bad I knew something wasn't right. At about 2am Monday morning, they ruled out labor, but put all attention then to my kidney stones. They gave me pain meds and told me the doc would be in, in the morning to see me. Nate tried to sleep in the chair, which wasn't too successful :( and I tried to sleep through the pain, which I was able to doze on and off til about 7:30am.

Once the doc came in; he explained to me they were going to have me get another renal ultrasound to check out how my kidneys look, if they are moving and trying to pass, etc. so they could determine what is going to happen from here on out and the duration of this pregnancy. I headed down to radiology and spent about an hour checking out my kidneys, but aside from that, they did ultra sound the baby again. It sure is great to see her in there and yesterday, I saw her mouth, lips (big bottom lip like her mama) and funny enough, her tongue lapping like a dog...she must have been thirsty, but man was that cool to see. The sonogram guesstimated her at 6lbs already...there is a 2lb error on either side of that, but 6lbs, I was kinda shocked!

I headed back upstairs at around 10:30 and they told us at that point, we just had to wait until Dr. McCurdy, my urologist, came to see us and talk about what we could do if anything. At around 12pm, our OB, Dr. Colombo came up to see me and chat for a little while. She made it sound like with the size of the baby, well potential size, and then all this pain I'm going through, they might even want to take our little girl at 37 weeks when they know at that point she's term and would be healthy and ok. Again, this would all be dependent on what the urologist sees with my renal results, etc.

Since we didn't know when the doc would be up to see us, Nate decided to head home, let Wrigley out and get a few things (some food for sure as at this point, neither of us had eaten since 830 Sunday night and I wasn't able to eat til after I saw the urologist but of course wanted him to get some food asap). He came back at 2 and at that point, still no doc...so we continued to wait all afternoon. I had thrown up 3 times at this point as well and like my initial kidney stones diagnosis, I threw up then too, so we weren't sure if it was from pain, lack of food, etc. At 5:30 Nate went out to the nurse's station again, let them know about my throwing up, how hungry I was (almost 24 hours with no food at this point) and asked if they could call and find ANYTHING out for us. The OB's and nurses were and had been great this whole time, but this urologist was keeping us and it was starting to get very annoying.

Another OB, Dr. Carrington, came in around 6 or so and let us know as much as he could. In a nut shell, the stones are not moving, or at least don't show too much movement, but with the pressure of the baby in my uterus, she is pushing down on my ureters and making the pain and blockage of urine and everything else that much worse at this stage in the pregnancy. Back at 20 or so weeks when these were first discovered, this is what Dr. McCurdy told me could happen; we of course didn't want this too, BUT that's what we're dealing with. Dr. Carrington gave me an Ambien prescription and more pain pills and discharged us finally at 7:30 or maybe a little earlier. Before we left, they gave me a meal and I ate a good chunk of it and was able to keep it down, so that was good!!!!! But then on our car ride home, I had to have Nate pull over and I was that girl yacking on the side of the road...awesome! Pain, exhaustion, mental stress I think were playing into all of this now.

So now what? Well, the doctors have given me a note to stop working as standing and sitting (2 things of which I do all day at work) are the 2 worst things I can do for this condition and lying on my side takes an immense amount of pressure off everything in there. So I'm now having to deal with that and my work this morning and praying all works out and then I'm awaiting a phone call from Dr. McCurdy the urologist to see what his outlook is since we just got the OB's outlook and we'll go from there.

I'm obviously home now for the duration and resting and drinking as many fluids as I can (I swear the bathroom is my least favorite place these days) and just hoping for the best. We go back to see our OB on Friday afternoon and we'll get some more answers about induction dates, etc. at that time.

As always, the good news, is baby and I are doing ok and are back home. Nate and I are grateful for everything and are just happy that she's ok in there and these stones are only affecting me and not her. Gee, what a story we'll have for her some day! Such a princess already :)

Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers and after Friday we'll let you all know what they decide to do with the arrival of our little munchkin.

With lots of Love,

Kara and Nate

6 Hours Later...

Well today has been an interesting day to say the least...

Last night was the beginning of quite the adventure...at about 11:30pm I had a leak occur yet again, then again at 2:45, 4:30 and 6am this morning. I was obviously worried and concerned, so sleep was officially out of the question and I just laid there thinking about what was going on and all the possibilities (aka, am I going crazy, etc). Thankfully, I did finally dose off for awhile and Nate woke me up at 8:20 or so as we had a vet appt with Wrigley at 9:15 and we needed to get up and get going. I wanted to get my oil changed, so Nate went one way and I went the other so we could get both things done as our original plan was to head to Abilene for the day to watch one of Tarleton's recruits that he's been working on.

After talking to my mom, while at the dealership, I decided it was best to call the on call doctor to make sure I wasn't leaking amniotic fluid and get her opinion as to what I should do if anything at all. After talking with the her, she told us to go immediately into Labor and Delivery to get it checked out. Nate got the dog dropped off at home, then came to get me from the car dealership and we headed up to the hospital for what we thought was going to be a quick test and off we went.

We got admitted to a room and they hooked me up with a few monitors...our nurse, Felicia, did a lihtmus test to test the fluid and it was negative, so she then checked for any dialation...she said it was a dimple, which means it was open just a tad, but not enough to be too concerned. She told us to get comfortable and they were going to let me lay there for awhile and she would test again. She came in a little later and did the same test and it too was negative, however, at that point, the one monitor on me was showing contractions every 5-6 minutes. So the on-call doctor told her not to send us home just yet and to do one more test to check the fluid called Amniosure. Once that test came back negative, we figured we'd be sent home, BUT contractions had then gotten to be 2 minutes apart, so they decided to give me a shot which I can't remember what it was called to try and calm my uterus down (it's a smooth muscle relaxer and is used ideally for asthma patients). Whatever it was burned when it went in my arm and then a few minutes later made me extremely jittery, but thankfully not for that long.

At this point it was about 2:30pm and we were both starving as we hadn't eaten since 8:30am and they really didn't want me to eat. Once they gave me the shot, they told me to start chugging water like it was beer as any dehydration could also cause contractions. I got a little light headed as well, so Nate went out to the station and asked if I could eat, and they were hesitant, but thankfully the head nurse ok'd it as she knew we had been there for awhile.

The shot didn't do much for the contractions, so the on-call doctor told our nurse to do one more dose, have me walk around for a bit, then come back and hook up to see if that helped and thankfully it DID! The shots made the munchkin rather active, so it was funny to listen to her on the monitor as each time she moved, it was a loud noise, so with the shots, it was pretty loud for awhile in there. But like we've always said, that sound of her little heart beating NEVER gets old, so it was a little treat to be hypnotized by it for 6 hours today!

We were finally let go at 4:45 this afternoon! We rushed back to town to get my car before 6pm and then sped to Grumps, a local burger place to get our hunger squashed!!!!! SO STARVING! We're home now and going to rest the rest of the weekend. We figure that it definitely wasn't a scare today, but more of a trial run!

We are happy to say we LOVE the hospital, the rooms, the nurses and all that we were able to see today, so we're looking forward to going through everything when it's really time. Now all we need to do is keep close watch to all the signs of real labor over false labor...we learned A LOT today!

We are thankful we didn't have our little girl today, but have to say, we can't WAIT to finally meet her!!!!!!

Another Check Up...

Baby and I went back to see Dr. Colombo this morning...her heartbeat was at a wonderful 136BPM; brought a ginormous smile to my face as always!

Before the doctor came in, I had my BP taken with my favorite nurse Tammy and today for the first time I was a little on the high side at 138/88, so she made me lie on my left side for a few minutes, came back in and when tested again, I was back down to 117/65...PHEW! She said that's just part of my body's way of saying, WE'RE ALMOST DONE AND I'M GOING TO DO THINGS LIKE THIS NOW :)

When Dr. Colombo came in, we discussed how I've been since the preterm labor symptoms and with my abdominal discomfort still going on, she ruled out 5 or 6 things and chalked it up to my IBS, that sadly, I kinda forgot I was diagnosed with last summer. She said that at the end of pregnancy, pressure is unavoidable, however with my IBS, it's like double the dosage for me. She was funny and said, "Kara, if you haven't noticed, you're ALL baby and if you're wondering what that cramping is, well just look down!" :)

No dialation yet, but she did talk about inducing and she said with all I've been through with the kidney stones, IBS symptoms and increased pressures as of late, if the baby doesn't come on her own before 40 weeks, she will most likely induce at 39...YAHOO! I am so ready, but of course, Nate and I just want her to be ok, so if that means going til the end, so be it! It sure is funny how all of a sudden you just wake up one day and realize, you're ready to be a mommy and your ready for this baby to COME OUT :)

We go back next Friday afternoon; we'll start talking about the labor and signs to look for from here on out and the potential induction at that time...we just can't believe that tomorrow, we're 35 weeks and literally have 5 if not 4 weeks left!!!! WOW

June 20th, Nate's Father's Day To Be Present ;) we head to a breast feeding 101 class and then June 25th and 26th, we have our 2 part Lamaze Class...We're looking forward to both of them to really get a sense of what we're about to embark on with birth and all it entails during and after!

Til Next Time...

Baby Showers!

The weekend of May 21st, I headed home to MN for 2 AMAZING baby showers!

The showers were so much fun and it was such a great opportunity to get all my friends and family into one room over the course of 2 days to celebrate this life changing time for me and Nate! I managed to get 3 suitcases back to TX, but still have about 5 boxes waiting to be shipped :) Thank you to everyone for coming and for all the wonderful things for Baby Schlieman!

(I apologize that I only have pictures of the one at my Mom's, but as soon as I get some pics from Tennille from her shower, I'll post those too!)

Week 33 and counting...

FINALLY, a new belly pic has arrived!!!

Sorry it's been awhile as many of you have made it clear we haven't stuck to our every 4 week promise...things have gotten a little away from us these days!

With the scare we had over the weekend and today, we were able to get ALL of Baby Schlieman's clothes, towels, blankets, wash cloths, head bands, socks...you name it, ALL of it washed and put away! Her diapers are all organized into sizes and the hospital bag is about packed.

At Week 33, we're praying we go at least to 37 or more, but after today, we learned we have to be ready at any moment! We're so thankful our baby girl is still "cookin" away in there and growing stronger with each day!

Til next time...

Kara and Nate

A Little Scare to Start off the Week!

So before I go into the story, I am happy to say, all is OK and Baby Schlieman and Mama are doing well!

Over the past few days, I have had some severe lower abdominal and lower back pain and also been "leaking" a little of what we assumed might be part of the "plug" (ask someone if you don't know what I'm talking about, LOL). I went into work this morning and called our Doctor and after letting them know what was up, they told me to immediately come in so they could check me.

Of course I was a little taken aback by this, but went in with a brave face and prayed for the best. I told Nate not to come up as worried as he was, but was ready to hop in the car at the first call he got if need be down from Stephenville, TX.

Dr. Colombo performed an internal exam and took some of the fluid to test; she wanted to make sure it wasn't from the bag of water, as any leaking of that can be very detrimental to the baby's health from this point on. From what she could tell, things were looking good and thankfully I hadn't begun to dialate or efface, so that was a relief!

She asked me how the baby's movement was doing and I explained to her that I wasn't sure if it was stress or what, but of course over the past day or 2 she wasn't moving like I was used to. At that point, she called for a sonogram to make sure that her amniotic fluid was at a good amount and that all was ok in general for her in there.

SIDE NOTE - Over the past several weeks, we have been made aware that our little baby girl has been transverse, which means sideways in my belly, so getting this sonogram would also confirm that so we knew what all we had to work with as we near the due date.

I had to wait awhile for the sono since I was a work in, but finally got in and the first thing they showed me was that the baby WAS head down...HOORAY!!!!!!!!! She is basically in the fetal position with her little butt on my right side and then her feet pushing through on my left...the one pic of her foot is pretty funny and if you look closely, I think she has Daddy's hammer toe, LOL! You can have anywhere from a 5 to a 20 when it comes to amniotic fluid levels (20 being the best) and I am at a 19, so even better than my doc anticipated.

All in all, we just had a little scare, but we are doing well and home resting today. If I am still having my lower abdominal pain, she wants me to call her tomorrow and then I'll have one more test to check for preterm labor that the naked eye and tests she ran today couldn't point out...so I'm praying that the pain is just from her moving her way down getting ready for her GRAND ENTRANCE! Just like her mama, she has to always make a BIG SCENE :)

(Picture 1 - Her foot pushing on my belly - it's hard to see, but if you look very closely, you can see her whole foot, heel on the far left, arch, ball of the foot and then on the right is a white ball looking thing which is the toe ;) Pictures 2 and 3 - Profile pics- she was sucking her thumb)