Oh to catch up...

WOW! I can't believe I haven't posted since July! What is wrong with me? Oh yeah, I had a baby, my brain fell out of my butt, I started school again and amazingly enough it's really hard to find the time to do this now! Haha. I'll get off my soap box on how busy my life is because it really isn't that busy, but it's amazing how much time a very small person can consume from my life. Kamry came home, and things just really started to settle into a routine. I was able to take a leave of absence from work the month of August so I could be home with her. That was really nice.

Before Kamry left the hospital we found out that she had a hernia on her left side on her pubic bone. The nurse noticed a small bump and they did an ultrasound. So when they did that they found out about the hernia. The nurse said that she had a baby that had that and they didn't catch it fast enough and it caused all sorts of problems. When you looked at her you couldn't even see the bump, you had to feel it. The nurse was doing her assessment and felt for it just to be safe. It was crazy how she found it. Anyway, so the day after Kamry came home we had to take her down to Primary Childrens Hospital for a consult. We met with Dr. Barnhart who was so nice and scheduled her surgery. So on August 10 Kamry had her hernia surgery. It was so sad to put her in a tiny little gown and watch the anesthesiologist walk away with her. Me and Nate were really stressing. Everything went fine and when they got in there they found that she had a hernia on each side so they repaired them both. I guess in preemies hernias right there on their pubic bone are actually really common. Dr. Barnhart said it was the most common surgery they do. Apparently their abdomen wall just doesn't close off all the way and the opening leaves space for a hernia to happen. Everything went great and she handled the surgery really well. My sister Deanna works in the Infant Med. Surg. unit at Primary's and she was nice and stayed the night with Kamry at the hospital (she was off duty) so me and Nate could sleep at her house and get a full nights rest. At first I thought her incision was a big one like my c-section incision, but once the glue like stuff came off of her there were just two very small incisions on each side. As she grows you probably won't even be able to notice them.

Once it came to going back to work though I started getting really nervous. She was still on the oxygen, and I hadn't nailed down a babysitter yet. So I started making calls and made arrangements with a really nice lady named Desi. She had a small daycare at her home and only had a few kids at the time which I thought was a good idea because then that means, less of a chance for Kamry to get sick from other kids. Sweet. Well, things worked out good for the first 2 days. Then I noticed that Kam was having a harder time breathing through her nose and was really stuffy. I mentioned it to the doctor and he thought she may have an allergy to the babysitters cat... and her house just wasn't quite as clean as I thought it should be. Those of you who know me, know my standards when it comes to clean.... they're kinda high. Clutter is one thing, but clean is another. So... after 3 days of having her at that daycare, we quit. Luckily, Nate was working with a guy, El (that's short for Ellery), and his wife is a stay at home mom and all 3 of their kids are in school. So I immediately had another babysitter. This girl, Jeanette was a clean freak. I loved it. Her house was sparkling 24/7. That worked out wonderfully. I started working again in the beginning of September. Before I had Kamry we had agreed that it was okay for me to go 3/4 time and only work 30 hours a week. That way I get to keep my benefits and everything. Well... when I analyzed it and realized that I was going to be working 30 hours a week, attending classes and doing 16 hours a week of internship... I would never be able to see Kamry. I was going to be gone way too much. Nate and I discussed it and decided that I only had 1 more semester of school to pay for so we didn't need my half tuition anymore. We could just pay full tuition my last semester. And we can get insurance through Nate's work, so just a few days before I went back I met with my boss and told her that I wanted to go part time and just work 20 hours. Well, I came back to work and about 3 days into it I decided I couldn't handle being away from Kamry that much. It was just too hard. So Nate and I discussed it again and decided that we could afford for me to stay home and just finish school. So I gave my notice at work. We were able to work it out so I only worked about 15 hours a week and we used up my remaining vacation leave to get me through the rest of September. Then, September 24 was my last day at work. I had been at my job for 4 years. It was sad to leave, but relieving that I could spend more time with Kamry where I was needed the most.

Friday Night, September 10 we decided to unhook Kamry's oxygen and let her try it on her own. The doctor had given us one of those oxygen saturation monitors that we hook onto her foot (because her fingers are too small) and we let her try it out. Let me tell you I didn't sleep much that night because I was so scared she was going to stop breathing. However, the night went great and that next morning we kept the oxygen off of her and it was official! She was off the oxygen and breathing completely on her own! YAY! That was a joyous day for me. No more hauling that stupid tank around and cute little Kamry could have a normal face and nose without a tube in it!

Anyway, so things were working out great with my babysitter, and then her husband got a job with the union and was stationed up in po-dunkville Montana like 15 minutes from the Canada border. Their initial plan was to keep living here in Utah, and have him stay up there and come home on the weekends because he was going to be working 4 - 16 hour days, but as it got further into the details of the job they found out he was going to be working 6 days on and 1 off so that plan kinda went down the tube. They then found out that he is going to be in Montana until July or August, so they decided to move. I had 1 week notice that they were going to move. It was insane. Luckily (AGAIN), Nate's cousin Sharon (that moved down from Idaho with her family in June) is a stay at home mom and said she would love to watch Kamry. It's working out fabulously! Kamry loves going there and Sharon and her kids just adore Kam so it works out perfect. One initial bump about it was that they live in Richmond and we live at the south end of Logan. So I was commuting her to Richmond every day and then coming back to pick her up. (I know it sounds crazy, but it will all make sense in a minute.)

We blessed Kamry on October 17th at my parents church in Lewiston. We decided that we didn't want to take her to the ward with so many possibly sick people so we did it after church in the Relief Society room. We also decided to keep it just close family, so only siblings and grandmas. We asked my dad to bless her and because I have a big pet peeve at blessings when there are so many people in the circle that they can barely touch the baby we decided to just have it be the two Grandpa's and the bishop. Well, Bishop Baldwin couldn't make it, but his counselor Ted King (my dad's cousin) was there so he was in the circle. It was a great day. It was funny because my dad was blessing her and said "Kamry Lundgreen".... that may not sound funny, but it is because he forgot her middle name! He should have said "Kamry Ann Lundgreen". Anyway, so after the prayer was over we kind of looked at each other and I told him that he forgot her middle name and he felt so bad. It was a simple fix though... so we had another short blessing to complete her name. Then we had dinner and just chatted. It was a lot of fun and a nice quiet blessing instead of an insane asylum party with 1000 people. That's exactly how I wanted it.

Well, Nate and I decided that selling our house on our own just wasn't working, so we decided to sign with a Realtor. We had met with a couple of Realtors that we really liked, and then we met with the lady (Nancy) that sold Nate's grandparents house. She was wonderful and we really liked her, so we decided to go with her. Because we have a baby and a dog, it's difficult for us to keep our house in "showing" order and constantly perfect. So we decided that because our plan once our house sold was to move in with Nate's parents for a while (lots of mounting medical bills from Kamry), that we would move in with them now and just stage our house so it's always "show ready". So we moved in with Nate's parents and got our house ready. I only had to commute to Richmond with Kamry for 2 weeks before we moved, so it wasn't totally crazy. Kamry was a ballerina for halloween. My friend Megan had made her an adorable tutu and Marie had bought her a sleeper that said "My 1st Halloween" that was pink and had little bats, ghosts and pumpkins on it. So I turned her into a very tiny ballerina. She was really cute and although she didn't realize it, she had a fabulous 1st Halloween. I decided to quit pumping breast milk shortly after I went back to work (and quit anyway :) ) but because I was done pumping I decided to take on the HCG diet and see if I could lose a little more weight. I was 20 lbs. lighter than I was when I got pregnant at that point, so I only had 30 lbs to lose to get to my goal weight of 160. Well, that diet is stinking hard! It's very effective and if you stick with it you can totally do it but because I'm a loser and have absolutely no will power, I only lost 10 lbs. But I've been off the diet for a month now and I have maintained my weight. So here I sit at 180 and I'm very happy with it. I lost about 9 inches overall too so that's fabulous! I can pull all of my pants off without undoing the button! It's been really good living with the in-laws. They are great, and we really have our own space because of the basement. But it's nice to come home and have someone to talk to when Nate is working late and when Kamry has needed attention but I've needed to do homework Marie has been great to help out. Don't get me wrong, she's not a built in baby sitter by any means. I still do everything for Kamry, and I cook a meal here and there too so I'm not getting a free pass either. I've probably cooked more here than I did when we were living at our house. That's pretty pathetic. Once our house sells, we are looking at buying some land so we can build a house. Hopefully we'll get it sold and be able to build next Summer. That would be nice. Thanksgiving was fun. We ate this year with the Lundgreens. Sharon's family joined us too so it was a madhouse with 18 of us (19 counting Kamry) but it was a lot of fun. I thoroughly enjoyed my lemon pie after stuffing myself extremely full too. The semester is pretty much over (classes end this week) and I don't have any final exams so once classes are over, I'm done. It's crazy to think that only one more semester and I will be a college graduate. I love that thought. I've started revamping my resume and hopefully I'll be able to get a good job as a social worker. Thoughts of a masters degree have ran through my head a little, but I need a break before I undertake that. I hope to get my masters someday, but right now I need to take it easy. 6 years of school (including summers) is way too much for my brain. Kamry had her 6 month shots the week before Thanksgiving. They gave her a flu shot too so she had a total of 4. The girls that give the shots are way fast and do a good job but of course she still screams. When she got her 4 month shots she did the screaming so hard that she held her breath for a short period of time. So I was kind of expecting that this time, but what happened I definitely did not expect. They hurried and gave her the shots and the girl was like "okay you can pick her up" so I did and I was trying to love her better when I noticed she wasn't moving. Well.... SHE PASSED OUT! I looked at her and her whole body was limp. I started freaking out and crying and the girl was like "blow in her face" so i did and she was pinching her cheeks and playing with her hands and she finally took a big deep breath and started screaming again. I couldn't believe it. She held her breath so long that she passed out. I was so freaked out. The girl was like "wow. lets hope she doesn't make a habit out of that" and i was like "are you freaking kidding me?" anyway... that was scary and I hope she never does that again. On December 4, we went to the Festival of Trees at the South Towne Expo Center in Sandy, and then to see the lights on Temple Square. It was a lot of fun. Kamry slept pretty much the whole day, but we had her all snuggled in her car seat with beanie and gloves on so she kept warm. I hadn't ever been to the Festival of Tree's before. For those of you who don't know what that it, it's a big thing where Families decorate Christmas Tree's in honor of a loved one and then they are available for purchase and all proceeds from the ticket sales and the tree sales are donated to Primary Children's Hospital. It's a great cause. I guess usually they have a little paper by each tree telling about the tree and who it's decorated for, but for some reason they didn't have that this year. It was still fun to see all the trees, because they are all so amazing, but it would have been nice to understand the trees a little more. Some people had pictures of the loved one next to the tree, so that was nice to see... except for a lot of them were children. That was really sad.

That morning (before leaving for the Festival of Trees), Marie and I went to Kmart as volunteers to wrap presents for the "Shop with a Cop" event that they have every year. It's where cops take under privileged kids shopping for the families for Christmas and they get to ride in the cop car and go to breakfast and everything. That's a really good event too. Well, right after we arrived at Kmart, Nate called and said Kamry had a huge lump on her neck. Well, Marie and I headed straight home and then Nate and I took Kamry to the doctor before we left for the festival of trees. The doctos said she had an infection and that he lymph nodes were infected and that's what the lump was. Well, he put her on antibiotics and told me to come back Monday. Well, today was Monday and when I woke up, Kamry's neck was even bigger so I called the Dr. and changed her appointment from 3:30pm to 10am so I could get her looked at sooner. I went there, and he decided it was best to get a second opinion and sent me to see Dr. Bennion, an Ear Nose and Throat specialist. He gave her 2 shots (so sad) - one was an antibiotic and one was a steroid. He said that I needed to watch it really closely. If it changes at all to call him. He was concerned because she's so little and I guess it's not very common to see this kind of infection in a small baby like her. He said there is about a 50/50 chance that they will have to do surgery on it (lance it) and release the infection. It's possible that the steroid will just make it go away on it's own. Well, I had to take her back each day to see how it was going. She got the shot on Monday, another one on Tuesday and Wednesday when I took her back things were looking great. The bump was getting smaller so he decided not to give her another shot and just put her back on the augmentin antibiotic. Well, Thursday things were looking great and it was a tiny bump. I went to my internship at Sunshine Terrace and when I was headed home, my babysitter Sharon called me and said that Kamry had been good all day and then woke up SCREAMING from her nap and the bump was back and it was huge. Her appointment was at 4pm that day so I was already on my way to pick her up to take her there. Dr. Bennion was disappointed but not completely shocked to see that it had come back. He was worried about that. We decided the best option (really the only option) at that point was to do the surgery to lance it. We scheduled it for 7:30am the next day (Friday Dec. 10). Dr. Bennion was leaving town for some work things, so Dr. Wood was the one we scheduled the surgery with. He's really nice and was great to work with. There we were again, watching an anesthesiologist walk away with our baby. It was so sad. Her poor neck was massive by that time and you could tell that it just hurt her so bad to move her head. Everything went well in the surgery and Dr. Wood said that there was A LOT of puss in there and that they irrigated a whole gallon of saline through the wound. Her cut is about an inch long on her neck (just a little below her ear). They had packed it with gauze that has antibiotic ointment on it. I have to take her back in each day to have a little bit of gauze pulled out and then once it's all gone, they will repack it and do it again. Dr. Wood said that it's very important to let the wound heal from the inside out or the abscess would come back. Kamry has been so brave through the whole thing. You could tell after the surgery that she was really hurting, but once we got her on a pain med schedule she was pretty happy and kind of returned to her usual self. This poor girl just can't catch a break. I sure hope that it's smooth sailing from here on out for her.

Well, If you actually made it thru that whole saga of the last 5 months I'm amazed. Here are a lot of pictures with captions of what's been happening too.

These first ones are pictures my friend Megan Bair took when Kamry was 5 months old. I love these pics! They're absolutely fabulous and there were so many adorable ones I couldn't choose. I printed so many of them!

















I absolutely love her blessing dress. It was perfect!



















Does this one say that she is my daughter or what?




Her random sleeping styles were so cute!



Nate was worried she would get cold when she was in the swing, so this was his solution.



This is the hernia on her belly button (umbilical hernia) prior to surgery



Kam in her little tiny surgery gown


Kam in her GIANT crib after surgery



Post umbilical hernia surgery. I didn't take pics of the scars on her pubic bone, but they're both about 3/4 of an inch long on each side.




Kam's blessing day





This is her "post blessing" dress


On Halloween, Marie and I went with Cori, Cooper and Kilee to Lee's to do the trick or treat thing and Marie had these so we put them on Kamry. CREEPY!

My beautiful Ballerina


First time eating cereal





Guess who found her tongue?!




HAPPY THANKSGIVING! Her bib says "Everyone is Thankful for Me" and that is SO true!


She kinda looks like a boy in this one cause I don't have a bow on her head yet. She's still cute though.


This is when we went to see the lights on Temple Square. She was wearing mittens to match too!


This is right before surgery. If you look at her neck you can see the huge lump. That was the abscess.


At the hopspital in her little gown (that was way too big for her) before they took her to drain the abscess in her neck.


Laying in the crib that fits her a little better now after the surgery. Her poor neck was wrapped up like a wounded soldier.

Again with the oxygen.... at least we didn't have to take it home this time.


Well that was all the pictures of the past few months. Christmas will be here all too soon and I'll post again.