Francesca is 1 week old today!

Wow, it's hard to believe that our little angel is already a week old. I'm sure every parent feels the same way. Everyone says to cherish the time, and we are, but at the same time, I want to cherish it so much more... please let the time slow down a little bit!

Molly is doing pretty well. She is officially off of her pain meds, except the Advil. Her bowels are nearly back to normal. She has a case of the Baby Blues, so if anybody has some suggestions on how minimize the effects, please chime in!

Yesterday was a busy day... we'll, I should start at the beginning!

While we were in the hospital, we quickly discovered a couple of bumps in Frankie's road. The first one is that she has hip dysplasia in both legs. What does this mean? Well, it means that our little girl's legs don't fit quite correctly in her hip sockets. This is extremely common in breech births. It is also very correctable, but unfortunately, she has to wear a harness/brace on her body for the first 2 months of her life. She is a damn trooper, and doesn't mind at all. I think the brace looks like a gladiator suit, but molly thinks it looks like snow-white leiderhosen with built in socks. Frankie doesn't seem to mind, but it really saddens Molly. Instead of the cute clothes that people have given us, she has to wear sleepy sacks... but she is darn cute in those too!

The second little health issue for Frankie is that she has a Ventricular septal defect or VSD. https://health.google.com/health/ref/Ventricular+septal+defect What does this mean? This means that she has a hole in her heart between the bottom two chambers. MOST of the time this corrects itself in the first few months of a baby's life. In some cases where the hole is large, surgery is required to fix it. Frankie has no symptoms, but the hole is on the small side of moderately sized... so we have a good shot of it closing by itself. There have been people that have gone their whole lives without ever having it repaired and had no symptoms. We know very little about this right now, and won't know much for about 5 weeks when she sees the cardiologist for a second ultrasound. I like to think that our little girl has too much love to fit inside a normal baby's heart... so there needs to be a little hole to let some of that love out. Of course we were devastated when we first heard the news... but we've talked to several nurses, pediatricians and read many resources on the subject now. They all indicate that this is not a huge deal, and that in the worst case scenario, if surgery is required, that it is by far the easiest heart surgery that anyone could have, and has a huge success rate. It gives us a lot of hope, but is still very hard for us.

With these two health problems, Molly sees little Frankie has having some good connections to "Iron Man". So we sing that to her sometimes.

Breast feeding is hard! We're getting the hang of it... it doesn't help that we had to provide supplemental bottle feedings at first. Apparently bottles are the lazy baby's way to feed (so we've read) and breast feeding requires work for Mom and baby. So therefore it is unfortunate that we had to introduce Frankie to the bottle so early. We would like to thank Lindsey who provided our little girl with some good fresh breast milk to supplement Molly early on. We're past that hurdle now... but Lindsey is excited to be known as Frankie's wet nurse. We just like to think of Lindsey as being family. We're still experimenting with various positions and routines (and lack of routines) to find what works best. It is just that much harder with the brace that she is wearing now to get the position right. But like I said: It's working, it just takes time to get her latched and sucking, which decreases our over all sleep.

Lastly, Norma left for home yesterday in a very teary and heartfelt exit. We already miss her, and the support that she provided to us while she was here. I don't know how anybody can do this alone, and have a lot of respect for those who do.

I'll keep trying to post pictures. Perhaps I'll get one of her in her little brace today. We're having a hard time keeping it warm enough in the house, so keeping her out of her clothes long enough to get a picture of her not screaming will be tough. Maybe she'll pass out at the boob and I can pick her up and snap a picture before she awakens...

Anyway, thanks for all the support and well-wishing that we've received though facebook and emails and phone calls. Thinks are really beginning to level out some, so hopefully when Cherie arrives (today) for three weeks, we can start really responding to some of them!

With love, Molly and Josh