Birthday girl

Today is the first birthday of my little Alyssa! One year ago I woke up at about 7 am and felt some strange pain in my belly. I told myself that it means nothing, I still had almost 6 weeks to go before my baby would be born. I read through my pregnancy books and found some info about false contractions. They gave the advice to relax and wait. So I tried to relax and wait. It didn`t work. The pain came again and again, so I decided to call the hospital for advice. They told me to come over to have a look. My husband was at work, so I drove to the hospital on my own. It took me about 20 min. from the parking lot to the entrance, I always went about 10 steps and then had to stop to breathe deeply. The nurse at the hospital told me that she too thought that these were false contractions but didn`t want to send me back home, just in case. Well, after my water broke she was quite in a hurry!! That took her by surprise. I immediately called my husband and he arrived half an hour later. I went through everything without any medication and at 3:17 pm my angel was born. I only had time to give her a quick kiss, then they took her away to the children`s hospital. This photo was taken about 24 hours later, when I was allowed to hold her in my arms for the first time. They called it "kangarooing".

Two days later her billirubin was too high, she was weak and always tired, so we weren`t allowed to take her out of the incubator. She was lying under some kind of artificial sunlight with sunglasses on. They had to feed her through her nose, because she was even too weak to eat. She had to stay in hospital for 3 weeks. I stayed with her all the time, visiting her every 3 hours, trying to feed her, changing her diapers, controlling her temperature, weighing her diapers, holding her hand while the doctors had to take blood again and again... It was very exhausting and hard! My husband got ill about 4 days after she was born and wasn`t allowed to visit us for about a week. But after 3 weeks we were allowed to take our baby girl home! She obviously had to compensate the being taken away from her mommy for the first few months, because she was only satisfied as long as I wrapped her inside a cloth that was tied close to my body. But now everything is fine... Here is my birthday girl:

She loves berries, especially raspberries. She still wants to be fed about 4 times every night. She knows about 40 things, when you ask her where something is, she`ll point at it and says "DAA". She loves trying to stand in the middle of a room with nothing to hold on, grinning from ear to ear. She loves mobile phones and cameras, you always have to take a picture of her and show her the photo afterwards. She loves "reading" books with her mummy. She hates hats (this is the only photo I got with her partyhat on). She loves watching herself in the mirror. As soon as she hears music, she starts rocking. She has the cutest giggle in the world!

Happy Birthday Alyssa!