the Adventures of Harper Leigh

Finally I am able to put up some pictures of Harper and tell her story.

I suppose the story begins when we went to the hospital. The real contractions began early Monday morning and increased in intensity and frequency throughout the day. Matt came home late afternoon and we began planning what to do with Molly. We took her to the neighbors until Tonya could pick her up and headed off to the hospital. Even though my contractions had been 5 min apart for nearly 2 hrs before we got to the hospital I was still nervous they would send us home. We checked in around 6:30pm and waited for my Dr to come break my water. The nurse figured once my water broke, it would be a speedy delivery. So I got an epidural, Dr came, broke my water, and then we waited. Sometime after my heart rate dropped, I turned gray and nearly passed out. We got that fixed then baby girls heart rate started going crazy so they thought I was getting sick. I wasn't so they kept an eye on her. We thought baby girl would be born that day but just after midnight she decided it was time. The epidural worked perfectly and I didn't feel a thing. I pushed for about 10 min and then it was done.

This delivery was so much different than Molly's. Molly's was a nightmare
and then the weeks after were a dream. This time we switched it up and Harper's delivery was a piece of cake and afterward has been the hard part.

We held Harper for about 1/2 hour and then since her heart rate was still too high they took her away for some tests. They did an x-ray and her lungs were cloudy. Underdeveloped lungs and pneumonia look the same so they hooked her up to a bunch of machines and started some antibiotics. She was feisty and kept ripping out the IV's. She kept up the feisty reputation with all the nurses and she had many high tempered mornings. For many days she would get so worked up and then they would have to sedate her to calm her down. Hopefully that temper was just a hospital thing :)

The next 12 days are bit of a blur. Going back and forth between the hospital, ups and downs of her progress, sleeping various nights at the hospital, being told she would come home, then she wasn't, getting her off oxygen, then being put back on, trying to arrange places for Molly and maintain some sort of normalcy for this new big sister who couldn't even meet her the new baby we had talked so much about. Molly was so cute, she would walk around saying "baby sick", "Harper sick".

We had so much help through it all however. So many friends and family and prayers.
Late Saturday evening we were finally able to bring her home. (After a very frustrating day- we were supposed to leave in the morning but ended up waiting 10 hours for her monitor to arrive).

So now we are home. She is still on oxygen and will be for a week or two more. We are trying to adjust, find a schedule and slip in some sleep.

And now without further ado-

HARPER and her adventure