We have a Baby!

She is a little tiny baby and we love her. She was born three months early weighing 1 lb and 11 oz, thanks to lupus nephritis and preeclampsia and placental reversible flow, but she is all there in miniature.  We think she's perfect. She is over two lbs now and traversing her NICU course with just a few bumps so far.

PR over, though, it's been hard.  I'm afraid to hold her. It is an odd thing to be afraid to hold your own child--any child really, but especially your own.  I'm afraid I'll break her. I've held her twice in her nearly three weeks of life so far and she was having oxygen dips the first time and then got a little cold the second time even though she was tucked down against the skin on my chest.  She has a breathing mask and feeding tube and iv line in her leg and temperature probe and respiratory monitor and heart monitor attached to her little body.  Everything is so tiny.  Moving her from her isolette to mine or M's chest is an undertaking.  The cords get tangled no matter what the nurses do to prevent it.

Most days we just let her grasp our finger with her hand.  She likes to hold her daddy's hand so hard sometimes that the tips of her tiny fingers turn white as she squeezes.  Today he told me it is one of his favorite things now.  She also seems to like it when we rest a hand on her quietly.

I dreamt last night that I was able to take her around with me but she had been born via surrogate as I was incapable of carrying her and then I had to keep going to classes and she would be there already and she was on the desk of one and so cold she was nearly dead. It was a terrible dream.  I woke up upset and misdirecting my fears and worries.  It feels unfair to not be able to have carried her longer and to not be able to be pregnant without such medical complications for both of us.  M was afraid he may have lost us both, which was unlikely but not impossible.  We spent weeks before she was born in and out of the hospital with pregnancy scares and lupus scares.  I wish it weren't that way.  I wish I didn't have lupus.  I wish I could kick it.  Because now it's affecting more than just me.  Stupid lupus.