Day 2 - Baby in Blue

We missed her that night and were so excited to bounce out of bed to get to her in the morning. But when we arrived at 10am she was sleepy again. After some holding and feeding in the baby room D was rubbing her eyes and it was obvious we should leave and come back later. We just could not figure out what time of day to visit when she wasn't exhausted.



I don't remember what we did in between visits. Sometimes we walked over to AAI/Layla house to get photos of kids that families had requested. Sometimes we went back to Kelley's house. Sometimes we went to a nearby restaurant. We yearned for her when we weren't with her and revisited every look, every head turn, every noise.

When we went back in the afternoon D was dressed in an enormous flowing blue dress. She was hesitant but we decided we needed to get her out of the nursery to work on bonding. This was my favorite visit. We took her into the little playground and I sat at the bottom of the slide holding her. We gave her a snack trap (the little cup with a plastic top with an opening big enough for little fingers to take out snacks) filled with cheerios. She couldn't figure it out at first but kept trying to poke her fingers in, shake it, even suck on the sides. It was pretty cute.

We got a few small smiles. J took her to the (less than safe) merry go round and slowly held her and pushed her around on it. More serious face. It was very hard to make her smile. Looking back I think she was feeling sick and very stressed.

(Look at that infected squinty left eye. It was bright pink and bumpy. Found out later it was part of her full body bacterial infection.)
A problem we kept experiencing was that when we were near the nannies they were constantly in her face, clapping, hugging, talking, feeding, over stimulating. They were just all over her. It was hard to push in and give her any attention. They did not encourage her to us enough. So we had to take her out of the baby room to do any bonding. But being out of her room was hard for her. It was a tough cycle.

I started to feel that my baby in blue was sick. She just was not the baby that Morgan had described to me. No sparkle or shine. No smiles. Just limp. With tightly clutching little hands. And I didn't think our visit was to blame. Something was going on....








~A