Welcome, Brooklyn Nicole

Well, I have some catching up to do. We have had a lot going on in the Ulrich household, so I will try to start at the beginning and work my way up.

Brooklyn Nicole
Born 4/30/2009
3lbs, 8ozs
13 inches

Here is a pretty new picture of her the day she was born. She was born on the day I turned 33 weeks pregnant and had to be on oxygen for a while as well as moved to the NICU in Peoria, where she still is. I went to the hospital on 4/29 with severe abdominal pain. After a day of tests and ruling out a lot of things, I started going into labor. The doctors gave me medications to stop labor, but still couldn't find out what was wrong. Meanwhile, my pain is only manageable under some pretty heavy duty drugs. On Thursday, they transferred me to OSF in Peoria so I could be at the same hospital as Brooklyn if they had to deliver her early. At OSF they took me into surgery pretty quickly without really knowing what was wrong but suspecting my appendix.

Once I went into surgery, they took Brooklyn out after realizing that sometime ago my appendix had ruptured. We don't really know how long before, but it was pretty serious. I ended up having a blood transfusion the next day and received 4 units, so I lost quite a bit of blood. The next days, I perked up quite a bit and enjoyed visiting Brooklyn in the NICU, but of course I missed my girls at home. It was (and still is) very hard to be torn between the 2 places. More to come on Brooklyn next time (I could write a lot but don't want to get too long).

P.S. I don't know why all this text is underlined; sorry if it makes it hard to read.