She's a 1 year-old! And she liked her cake.
She mostly just liked making a mess with the frosting.
And squooshing it between her fingers.
I do realize that these pictures are in reverse order but I think it keeps things fresh so I'm not switching them around. But here she is with her cake.
And here's her cake.
I love her.
Vienna looks a lot like Jude. Except when she's mad, then she makes the exact same sad/mad face as Carter. Exactly. And she is growing a fang. It's a good thing vampires are all the rage right now. Or were a few years ago. I don't know, I'm not up with what's hip right now. All I know is that she's cute, fang or no fang.
So, a few things about Vienna. She LOVES apple juice. LOVES IT! She is always on the hunt for abandoned juice or water or whatever. She is walking all over the place. These past few months, she's really gotten in touch with her independent, sassy side. She still loves to cuddle and is still very sweet.
So while I was thinking back over the last year, I realized that I never shared her birth story. I don't know if anyone is interested but here goes a short version of it. You'll see that she's a miracle for quite a few reasons. Now are you interested?
So the Friday before she was born, I went in for my midwife appointment and I was 5cm. She told me that if at any time during the weekend I wanted to go in and have her break my water I could. Dennison and I talked about it and decided to wait at least another week and see if things would start on their own. Monday morning came and we both decided that we'd just go in that day. I had an appointment to be checked again and I was 6 cm and 80% effaced. We made a plan to go to the hospital that evening after the midwife office closed and she would just meet us over there and break my water and we'd have our baby. 9:15 was when she finally broke my water. There was meconium in the fluid which meant I could labor in the tub but she couldn't be born in there. I also had to be on continuous monitoring. I was bummed about it all but more than anything I was really worried about our baby. Meconuim in the fluid is a sign of stress so I started to freak out a little. I had already been having contractions 2 to 3 minutes apart before she broke my water but now they were a lot stronger. It was between 10:15 and 10:30 sometime that I was fully dilated and had to get out of the tub. I was surprised at how quickly her head was born. But then... her shoulders were stuck. For a full two minutes (which seemed like forever!) she was totally stuck. I didn't know this but she was blue and not breathing. Dennison was really nervous. I had to keep pushing even between the contractions. I heard my midwife tell the nurse to "Get the OB specialist in here!" I wasn't worried about her, I knew she'd be fine, I just wanted her out so everyone would stop telling me to push harder! With the next contraction, my midwife was able to pull her arm free and she was finally born (10:45pm). She went straight over to the doctors and nurses to be resuscitated and then given oxygen. I still didn't really know what was going on, I just wanted to hold my baby. Then I heard Dennison say, "she's ok!" once she started breathing and crying and the look of relief on his face made me realized that she had NOT been ok. I'm just glad I didn't know all of this was happening until it was over. Once she finally started turning pink, they wanted to take her out to test her oxygen levels. I kept telling Dennison "I want to hold her. I want to hold her!" So he asked if I could just hold her for a second first. Then they noticed the oxygen testing machine (yes, that's it's technical name :)) was already in the room so they were able to test her while I held her. It was only a few minutes before her oxygen level started dropping again so they had to take her from me. THEN, I started hemorrhaging. A lot. They gave me some pills (not sure what it was) and pumped a ton of pitocin in me and my midwife kept rubbing my uterus trying to get it to contract. It hurt so bad! The bleeding finally slowed but I did lose quite a bit. I was really shaky and weak. I drank a couple cups of juice and that helped. I finally got Vienna back and she nursed for a long time then slept for 6 straight hours. She was exhausted after all that! She weighed 8 lbs 2 oz and was 19.5 inches.
Vienna was sent to our home for a specific purpose. The timing of it was no coincidence. She was only 3.5 weeks old when Carter was diagnosed with Leukemia. She is here to bring happiness. And she does a fantastic job of it. Carter just lights up (and always has, no matter how awful he's feeling) when she's close to him. She makes everyone smile that sees her. You can feel her goodness and sweetness. She is really something special. I can't wait to see what life has in store for our little sweetie.
