You've come a long way, baby!

Christmas always brings up touchy memories for me, because it was around this time that I started having major problems with my pregnancy with Jordan. The entire pregnancy was very bad, and I was in and out of the hospital, but at this point, I had a lot of continuous pain. I found out later that that pain was contractions. Jordan was due to be born at the end of March. I was sent via ambulance to Little Rock on New Years Day, after finally giving in and letting Mike take me to the hospital when I just could not take it any more. They held off my labor for 4 days, and on January 4th, right around noon, my oldest daughter made her appearance, 11.5 weeks early.

Although it was a long battle to get her well enough to come home, stong enough to eat, and fat enough to retain heat, she quickly progressed as well as a "normal" term baby. By 6 months she was 17 lbs. In the above photo, she was a little over a year old, and 23 lbs. Pretty good gain, since she started out at only 3. We dealt with one surgery, and a grade IV IVH, but thanks to lots of prayer, all that was smooth sailing.

This is the outfit that Jordan wore on Valentine's day. It's a gown that a friend of my parents got for her.
I can remember thinking, all I want for Valentines' is for her to be home from the hospital.

This is her first blood pressure cuff. As you can see, she can only get two fingers in it, and it was actually used on her leg.

To get an idea of how little she was.......this is a piece of copy paper beside her gown. (And it is a gown that is closed at the bottom, so her entire body fit in there, all 4 lbs, at that time! So I try to remember all my little blessings, especially this time of year!