This is the story of my daughter Oliana who was born blind. To read her complete story start with the blog titled Oli's birth. You can email me at shannongardner@live.com




Thursday, March 25, 2010

Baby Ginger's Arrival

Baby Ginger has finally arrived!!!  Ginger Malia Pomokai'i Gardner was born on March 9, 2010 at 2:58 a.m.  She was named after her auntie Ginger and auntie Julie (Seth's sisters) , whose middle name is Malia.  Pomokai'i means "good luck" in hawaiian.  She was 7lbs 7oz and 20.5" long. All parts are accounted for and she actually has some hair!!

 The day before she was born was a very busy and eventful day.  We woke up March 8th at 4:00 a.m to get ready to go to Dallas.  Oliana had an appointment at 9:00 a.m with her ocularist to get fitted for her new prosthetic eyes.  We ended up spending 8 hours at the appointment.  Mr. Trawnik had made her new green eyes!! We were very surprised. We thought he was just going to increase the size a little bit and fit her with clear conformers.  He put the right one in, then we had to leave and come back a little later to see if it bothered her at all.  Then he put the left one in, it was the same deal.  He ended making them both way too big and they were very painful so he had to take them in and out a bunch of times.  It was awful for her.  She was screaming in pain and it was our worst ocularist visit ever!!  Unfortunately its just a trial and error process.  He thought that her sockets would have expanded more than what they did.  I felt like a terrible mother for putting her through this and was seriously questioning why we do this at all.  I know later it will be worth it, I hope.  I just wish for the millionth time that it this had happened to me and not her.

So we finally were done with the ocularist at 5:00 p.m.  Mr. Trawnik finally made both of them smaller and was only able to increase the size  from the clears a tiny bit on both sides.  I'm really not that surprised they didn't grow more because she hadn't had new conformers in 7 months on the right and almost a year on the left.  The left side looks amazing.  It's huge compared to what it was and has a completely natural shape to it.  Of course now that the left is so big the right eye looks really small.  The right eye looks amazing too though.  The shape of her eye is now normal and not so round.  Her eyelashes actually flip out now instead of rolling in and sticking to the conformer.  All of these changes have occured because he made them custom fit.

So we got home at 8:30 that night.  I was so uncomfortable by that time because we had spent all day in and out of the car and walking around.  I jokingly told Seth to get the bags packed because I was going to have the baby that night.  At 9:30 Seth told me he was going to take a shower.  Oli was still awake so I put her in her spinner and layed down on the couch.  5 minutes later and a big kick from baby Giner, surprise, my water broke!!  I went and told Seth, who frantically started running around the house trying to get things together.  I, of course, was maybe a little too relaxed and took my time taking a shower and packing my clothes.  I was trying to dry my hair and realized that my contractions were pretty close together.  They still didn't hurt though and I had been having them for 4 weeks now so I thought we probably had at least 12 hours.  Seth ended up talking me into not drying my hair and leaving for the hospital.  Good thing!! We got there, got registered, and the nurse finally checked me at around 11:00 p.m.  She asked me if my contractions hurt.  I said no, not really.  They felt like they have for the last month but maybe a little stronger.  She said "You're not going to believe this."  I said "I know.  I'm dialated to 3cm and 50% effaced"  She said "No. You're dialated to 7cm and 90% effaced!!"  She couldn't believe I wasn't in pain.  I quickly got an epidural because I knew it was going to hurt.  It was only a short while after I got my epidural and she was ready to be born!!  Unfortunately the doctor was not ready.  She was next door delivering another baby!!  I had to breath through 20 minutes of contractions.  That was not so much fun.  The epidural was not 100% effective.  Finally the doctor came in and we were ready.  It was very quick and she was born pink and screaming.  She is still pink and screaming most of the time but, we are very thankful and blessed to have another beautiful baby girl.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Awww, she's adorable!!!! I hope we'll get to see some new pics of Oli's new eyes! They sound beautiful! How are Oli and Kekoa adjusting to having a new baby in the house?! :)