Out to a Mexican Restaurant in Aguada…he is not so sure of the whole thing!
Life with baby can be somewhat exhausting. He’s a good boy, but he still needs to eat every 2-4 hours even in the middle of the night which leaves us pretty worn out. We are starting to get the hang of it, though and have started to take him out and about with us around town. We are getting much better. We’ve had a few diaper blow-outs and had to find strange places to breastfeed, but overall, he is just sort of our tag-along and it has been fun to have a new sidekick in our adventures.
With friends Frank and Rosa at our first time back to Art Walk
At the beach
With our friend Tom in Isabela (on the table)
With friends Bill, Jenn and Liam
With our neighbor Julio at the farmer’s market
At a photoshoot on the property with friend Laura
Of course it’s not always easy!!
At Rincon of the Seas
At beach parties
Halloween (with our little magician!)
Silly Mommy and baby!
Me and the bebecito
Overall, he just sort of is with us pretty much everywhere we go and we love him so!
Not long after my discharge from the hospital (about one week), I began to feel very sick again. I soon felt weak and faint, could hardly breathe or walk and started to develop another fever. We ended up going back to the emergency room at Mayaguez Medical Center and I spent another week in the hospital with major hemorrhaging from placenta that was still retained even after having a D+C the week before. I lost so much blood that I needed 6 more units transfused for a total of 8 (the human body only has about 10!). Suffice it to say that it was a very scary time for us.
I am not sure we have fully processed that ordeal, but we are now looking forward to re-establishing a new normal as a family of three.
Britton and Aeden
Now we are happily trying to deal with the lack of sleep, feeding and changing schedules and the sheer confusion that comes with an infant instead of worrying about life and death issues. Thankfully, I am recovering quickly and am beginning to enjoy going outside and even working a little more in the gardens -something I hadn’t been able to do much of at all throughout the pregnancy.
“Hey, Momma, more boob!”
“Ok, enough with the pictures!”
We have mostly just been recuperating and settling in at home, but we have made a few voyages off the compound and we’re getting better at it.
A visit to the ocean
Enjoying our new normal at the finca -Aeden’s 1st month picture
And poor Kitty feels like he’s playing second fiddle, but we still love him! 🙂
The Doobie Brothers song, Long Train Running, became the soundtrack and mantra for the birth of our son. There was a documentary about the Doobie Brothers that we watched in the hospital after his birth and that particular song just worked its way into our subconscious. The question kept repeating: Without love, where would you be now? Through the long cold steel tracks of life that long train running brings us many places, but without love, where would we be now?
A week after the blessed birth of our son Aeden I became very ill and had to be hospitalized for 4 days due to a partially retained placenta. A fever developed that shot to 104 F and I lost so much blood that I was on watch for cardiac arrest and needed two blood transfusions, an iron infusion, IV antibiotics and a surgery under general anesthesia.
Lots of pokes, tests and prods
After some very scary moments on the line between this world and the next, we are now hopeful that we are in the clear and that my condition has improved. I am recuperating currently and finally have had a chance to give an update. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the village that came together behind the scenes to help our little family through this very rough time. If it weren’t for this crew of amazing people, I am not sure how we would have made it through.
First of all, thank you Britton for being there in the “sickness” part of sickness and in health. You have been extremely strong through this period that could break most people. I love you so, so much.
Britton is a great dad!
Thank you Missy, Ben, and even little Juliana for taking in a newborn, our precious baby, feeding him and loving him when we could not have him. Not many people would open their homes and hearts in such a way. Thank you to Missy for also rallying the troops for even more help. She kept us in communication, checked on us, provided us with supplies and so many other things. I do not know what we would have done without you when we were desperate standing at the emergency room door and they wouldn’t let Britton and I enter with our baby.
With Missy and Ben (and little Lucia)
Thank you to Megan and Kat who nourished us and our baby and provided us with extra breast milk when we had none. Thank you for everything else you did behind the scenes. Thank you to the fairy sprites Joanne and Francine (who I still have yet to meet) for cleaning our house and providing us with food and encouraging words. Thank you Jo for also making sure I made it to the hospital and making a special trip for the breast pump. After our ordeal it was so nice to walk into a clean house rather than the disaster we had left it when we rushed off.
Thank you to Ricia for washing our clothes and linens as well as the food and other supplies that have helped in my recovery. Thank you to Laura for the visits to the hospital, the food and the supplies we forgot in the hustle and bustle (like towels and pillows). Thank you to my family especially my mom Charlotte and aunt Annie who flew a long, long way to see me and make sure that I was alright. Thank you to Bill and Jenn for being in constant contact with us, the hospital visits and the smorgasbord of food when I was finished with surgery and doped up on morphine. Thank you to Brittany, Missy’s long distance ER doctor friend, who walked us through the steps and urged us into action or calmed us when it wasn’t needed. Thank you also to my friend Lisa who is a nurse and also encouraged me to seek medial help. Thank you to the medical staff at Mayaguez Medical Center. Thank you to the nameless people who donated the life-saving blood.
Blood transfusion
Thank you to Britton’s side of the family and everyone who wished us well and prayed for my recovery. I felt very loved in my darkest moments. Please forgive me if I missed someone in this list; it was quite the whirlwind. But know that you are appreciated! We may not have village tribes per se anymore in our modern world, but this was a shining example of the power of love when people come together to help one another. Without love, I don’t know where I would be right now, but it is possible my train may have stopped. So, thank you, thank you, thank you!
Life sometimes just sweeps you down the river and you hardly have a chance to pop your head up out of the water. Life events (and death) and mostly this pregnancy has taken us down all sorts of strange and stressful paths that has led us to dropping some of the balls, including keeping this blog up. While I have a moment I thought I had better at least share a few catch up photos from the last month or so.
Near Wilderness in Aguadilla
Lighthouse ruins (Ponderosa) of Aguadilla
Fun baby shower
With very nice gifts
Including a cool henna design
Friends and neighbors at the baby shower!
Henna design stain
Hiking through our jungle for the photo shoot -notice there are still a lot of down trees in this section of the property
My belly is huge! And I am nearly cooked!
Cool tropical flowers
Strange bug -longhorn beetle I saw in Aguadilla
Britton hiking our jungle
A “Survivor”-style shack on the beach someone built
I’m now in my 9th month and ready (sort of) for baby!
With friends Frank and Rosa at our first time back to Art Walk
With our friend Tom in Isabela (on the table)
